Mania’s Arcania

Did you know that Thornfang Ravagers, those glowing-eyed, spiky killing machines, are actually hiding happy-go-lucky, smiling clown faces?

Deathbang from Lightbringer (US) sent in this little snippet. He says:

Thornfang Ravagers have a face on their back! It has two spots that resemble eyes, a spike that looks like a long nose, and an indentation that looks like a mouth!

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An Alliance hunter from Llane, Juvial of the guild Kobayashi Maru, sent me this great screenshot of himself with his entire family of pets. (Click the pic for a full-sized view.)

Shadow the ghost wolf is Juvial’s normal hunter pet, the baby gorilla Bananas is a non-combat pet, and the red hyena Tracking Hound is a temporary combat pet summoned by the Dog Whistle from Scarlet Monastery.

I did a bit of housekeeping around and about the blog this evening that I wanted to mention.

First off, I gave up on resurrecting my sexy form-based Contact page, but at least I fixed the broken link in the footer that pointed at it. The footer points at the About page now, which I spruced up in order to make my contact information more obvious. I also added a blurb about advertising (just in case any of the multi-million dollar companies reading this blog want to advertise here!) and a PayPal donation button. I won’t be asking for donations, but it’s there if you want it.

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Ever wonder what I’m really like? I sat down with Big Red Kitty for an interview over dinner this past weekend. Read all about it at BRK’s blog.

Znodis from The Mystic Hunter has honored me with a drinking game! It’s really great — I just love it.

Some of my favorite rules:

• About the Name That Pet posts: “If you have a dwarf hunter, you are required to chug twice, /sigh, and then post a long rambling comment about that one pet you tamed and then foolishly abandon later, but never actually include either of those details in the post. One of the other commenter’s owes you a drink and a /pat, if you somehow manage to include the name of the pet in the post.”
• “Take a drink if the post is about some random minutia and she neglected something more important to investigate it.” That’s me, all right!

Also check out the great drinking games he created for hunters:

• The shaman gear drinking game
• The BRK drinking game
• The AotH drinking game

I only run a handful of add-ons in WoW, and fully four of those were written by Gazmik Fizzwidget. So when he told me that he’s working on a new version of Hunter’s Helper for patch 2.4, I was really excited to try it out. And when he told me he could use some help beta testing it, I immediately volunteered my readers. *grin*

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If you’ve ever e-mailed me, you probably know that I am not the fastest person to respond to a message. It often takes me days, sometimes even weeks, to get back to everyone who has written me. It’s awful.

Unfortunately, the problem is not that I am lazy or that I procrastinate — unfortunate because those (theoretically) can be fixed — but that I get too much e-mail to answer it all on a daily basis. It doesn’t help that from day to day I don’t know whether I am going to have 12 yawning deliriously free hours to play and work on Petopia and respond to e-mail and comments, or 30 minutes to eat half a grilled cheese over my keyboard while working on some urgent contract or other.

I love the fact that people e-mail me. I do my best to respond in a timely fashion, but … I know that I often fail. So I’ve added a warning to the Contact page here and to the About page on Petopia letting everyone know that I fail. That way, at least you are forewarned. *grin*

Seriously, I will read every e-mail (and comment!) that I get. And I will do my best to respond. But I may not always be able to.

There was a time, long ago, when hunters could have a lot of fun coordinating their mounts with their pets. In some cases, you could even get non-combat pets into the mix, say with a Black War Wolf mount, a Blackrock Worg hunter pet, and a Worg Pup.

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I did a bit more work on this blog today. I am now the proud owner of a Contact page! Of course, you are always welcome to e-mail me the old fashioned way, but if nothing else the contact page should make it easier to remember where I stuck my e-mail address when you need to reach me in a hurry.

I also added a spiffy link to the CafePress Petopia Shop over in the sidebar in case anyone has a hankering for every more Mazzranache (or a small selection of other pets). I’m hoping to get the artist to do me some more original art of different pets, but unfortunately first I have to make enough money to pay him for the last set. *grin*

There are a couple other small changes — the RSS feed should be easier to find and I added access keys. (There’s a short list at the bottom of the About page if you happen to use access keys.) As always, let me know if you see anything funky!

My husband and I were lucky enough to have the opportunity to join BRK and the very charming and utterly patient Mrs. BRK for dinner yesterday. After an evening of inspiring tales, I was motivated to do some minor work on this blog.

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