Mania’s Arcania

I’ve recently become quite fond of a couple WoW blogs that don’t have anything to do with hunters. This is so out of character for me that I wanted to draw your attention to the blogs in question.

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Last week I announced a really simple little contest to give away a double handful of Blizzard authenticators. All you had to do was leave a comment and let me know what region you’re in and, if you won, give me your physical address so I can send you the authenticator.

I divied up the entries into three regions and drew random names for each region. Without further ado, here are those random winners.

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I’ve heard a lot about accounts being hacked lately. I know a lot of players are concerned about it. The more people play WoW, the more potential profit there is in stealing our accounts for nefarious purposes … and the harder the hackers will try to do just that.

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Warcraft Pets, the best WoW mini-pet site on the web, is celebrating its third birthday today!

Warcraft Pets is one of my favorite WoW sites. It combines an adorable but uncluttered look with exceptional functionality. (Check out my mini-pet collection!)

In addition, Warcraft Pets has been an inspiration to me for my own sites, including Warcraft Mounts and WoW Tabards.

I’ve chatted with Breanni, maven of mini-pets, several times and I’m always impressed by the time and effort she puts into her site. I have some conception of how time-consuming running a site can be, but … I am fundamentally lazy.

Breanni isn’t. She serves her community well.

So happy birthday, Warcraft Pets. May you enjoy many, many more!

The voting for the most popular of the 43 (!) entries to the Hunter Pet Haiku Contest is finally over, and we have our winners!

As an aside: I have to keep putting the (!) after the number of entries, because I was expecting maybe 10, if I got lucky. I am thrilled that so many hunters decided to participate.

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The first round of voting for the most popular haiku is done, which means that we’re ready for the run-off round!

The top three entries from this run-off vote will receive excessive applause and laudatory congratulation here, as well as a special forum title on the WoW Petopia Community forums if they happen to be a member.

Here are the nine run-off contestants:

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Last time we caught up with the winners of the random drawing portion of the Hunter Pet Haiku Contest. Today I wanted to spotlight the other 43 (!) entries.

At this point I am not going to attach names to the entries because I don’t want the votes turning into a personal popularity contest. *grin*

Feel free to discuss the entries in the comments, but do please be polite. In particular, I’ve decided to accept these entries as valid, so let’s not quibble about syllables.

Remember, if you want to vote you can either hit the forums or e-mail me and I’ll add your vote to the total.

So here, without further ado, are the rest of the haiku! (Yes, that rhymed.)

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The Hunter Pet Haiku contest ended a mere 8 hours ago and I have already drawn and contacted the three random winners who will be receiving a free month of game time.

Since you can only win one of the two categories, these three are not eligible to win the popular vote. So I thought I’d share their haiku with everyone here, so you can appreciate it properly … and then go vote for your favorite haiku among all the entries on the WoW Petopia Community forums.

First, some fun numbers:

• A total of 29 people entered the contest.
• They submitted a total of 51 43 entries. (Multiple entries didn’t improve your chance in the random drawing, though. And you can only win once anyway.)
• The most entries I got from any one person was 5. The average number entered was around 1.6-ish.
• We’re going to have to run 5 voting polls on the forums to accommodate all the entries. After that, we’ll have a run-off poll to choose the most popular haiku.
• It’s taken me five hours so far to get myself organized to post some, but not all, of the entries on the forums. This may well be because I am very tired right now.

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[update]

And the haiku contest is closed!

I will be going through the approximately 30 entries tonight and getting them posted.

I’ll also be doing the drawing for the random winner and hopefully getting them posted on the forums as well.

This should be fun! You guys sent in some great entries.

[original post follows]

You have less than 24 hours to compose a stunning haiku about a hunter pet and send it in!

Haiku don’t take long to write, and you can win (somewhat) fabulous prizes and the approbation of your fellow hunters.

You can read more about the rules of the contest in my last post: Contest: Hunter Pet Haiku.

So it happens that I have a couple of months of free game time to give away.^*

I’ve been trying to think of an appropriate contest — something interesting but also easy. I wanted something creative, but I didn’t want it to be a huge hassle for anyone, including me. And honestly, I don’t want to have to judge anything creative because I know how creative you people are and I know I can’t choose between a whole bunch of great entries.

But last night as I was falling asleep I hit on the perfect thing: haiku.

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