Wednesday, June 6, 2012

First Blogiversary! ~ Contest & Giveaway


It's officially been a year today since I started this blog with my first post about using NPCScan to find silver dragons, and what an amazing year it has been! I've since posted 165 posts (probably about 85-90% of them specifically relating to rares, and I have had a blast doing so.

This blog was created specifically with the intention of helping others find rares in game, and I think I've done a decent job sticking to that theme. I've written the occasional post related to in-game holidays, mounts, and of course the WoW Ironman Challenge (which I've been quite obsessed with recently), but ultimately I try to and would like to continue trying to keep it mostly "rare" themed.

I've had a lot of fun hunting these rares down, taking screen-shots, writing about them -- and I think above all, I have really been enjoying the feedback from the community.

I've also had a lot of fun playing around with the blog itself. I'm still totally a blog noob, but I really enjoy messing around with the colors and gadgets, trying to figure out what looks best, while still making sense and not being a total eye-sore. My biggest goal recently was to make navigation a little easier, which I have sort-of succeeded at, but I'm still not done with it. My goal for the next year is to continue trying to make navigation easier, while of course adding new content.

Stats:

Stats are fun. Plain and simple. Because they are so fun here are a couple of stats from my blog from the past year:

Most Viewed Posts
Jul 25, 2011, 19 comments

Aug 1, 2011, 10 comments

Jul 10, 2011



Top Search Keywords
mysterious camel figurine
2,926
time lost proto drake
1,004
wow rare spawns
979
putridus the ancient
681
reins of poseidus
585
poseidus
581

My Conclusion: People like camels. That, or I must have some really good camel screen shots or something. People just keep coming back to that one post above all others. People also like mounts, and are clearly confused as to why their NPCScans are going off for Putridus the Ancient all over Northrend and are looking for answers!

The Contest:

So without further adieu -- I would like to thank you, my readers for sticking around, giving your input, suggestions, helpful information and support over the past year. In celebration of my first blogiversary and to thank you all I am hosting a little contest in the "rare" spirit of my blog.

The contest is fairly simple. I want to know what your favorite rare spawn is - or the one that you will never forget finding in game, and why. You choose what you want to write about. Be creative. Yes, the rares that drop mounts are awesome (obviously -- because they drop mounts), but if you are going to choose one of them I want to know what makes that particular rare ultra-special/memorable for you. Perhaps the unique way you found it, the length of time (or lack thereof) you put into looking for it, perhaps a rare hunter pet tame got your heart racing, or maybe a certain rare just brings back some very fond memories. Whatever your reason, I want to know about it. The contest will be open for submissions for 2 weeks, and will close on June 20th 2012 at 11:59pm est. A winner will be chosen before the weekend of June 23rd.

The Prize:


I am giving away an in-game companion pet of your choice to the winner from the Blizzard Store.

The pet choices (as shown above) will be:
How to Enter:

You can leave a response to this post with your entry, you can respond with your own blog post (and then respond to this post with a link to your post) or you can email your response to evensstarr at hotmail.com. Whoever is chosen as the winner will have their entry displayed in a future post.

How Entries Will be Judged:

Entries will be judged based on creativity and content. I am not looking for a particular rare as the answer, I am simply looking for a well-thought out response, and above all I want people to have fun with this!

I will be looking forward to reading your responses, and again thanks all for the great year!

23 comments:

  1. Happy Blog birthday Euphy! I have to say your blog is one of the ones that I think is GREAT in terms of how it's dedicated mostly to one thing, which makes it an easy blog to find things on! Your videos with finding them the info on taming them or searching for them are brilliant. It's such a great resource!

    It feels strange - has it only been a year we've been blog friends? I look forward to hearing all about your rares in Pandaria, and of course I will be writing my little piece to enter for your fantastic blog birthday competition, though really, we should be giving you something!

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    1. Thanks for the kind words Navi! I know its cliche, but time really does fly when your having fun. =)

      I can't wait to start hunting down those Pandaria rares! I hope to kittens that they introduce more rare hunter pets. I would especially like to see more of the hunter taming challenge type rares added to the game. That would make me a very very happy girl indeed.

      I look forward to your entry!! ^-^

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  2. Congrats on your blogiversary! Here's to another great year!

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    1. My favorite rares are Olm the Wise, Aotona, and Arcturis.

      Olm the Wise has always made me think of Hedwig. I think it's somehow appropriate that Olm is now a ghost owl, because of how Hedwig took an Avada Kedavra for Harry at the beginning of Deathly Hallows. I didn't manage to get the original white version of Olm tamed, but I do have the new spectral version in my stable -- I named it "Minerva".

      I love the parrots, so I'd been planning to tame Aotona as soon as my Hunter got to level 76. I thought I might have to camp for awhile, but to my great delight, my Hunter saw Aotona flying around as she was coming down on the parachute from Archmage Pentarus's plane! She hurried to dismiss her regular pet and get in range to tame Aotona. I was so nervous that another player would come along and disrupt my tame, but thankfully no one did!

      Even though my Hunter leveled as Beast Mastery, I wasn't particularly interested in most of the Exotic pet families. I felt like she should have at least *one* Exotic pet to use while in her Beast Mastery spec, though, so after a great deal of deliberation, I decided to tame Arcturis and name it with an anagram of the name of my husband's Bear Tank. I was busy with the Argent Tournament at the time, so every day after doing the sword quest, I would fly by Arcturis's spawn point on my way back to the Tournament, instead of just hearthing or taking a flight path. For days and days, I never saw Arcturis. One day, I saw a Night Elf Hunter at the same spot -- so I gave him a wide berth and hoped he wouldn't be there again the next day! After two or three weeks, I finally saw Arcturis. No other players were around, so I was able to tame him without interference. Whatever other pets come and go in my stable, Arcturis will stay.

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    2. Wonderful Kamalia! Thank you for the entry. =)

      I also never tamed the original version of Olm (I didn't have a high enough level hunter back then), but I just love his new look. I also agree, the change is quite appropriate -- you almost have to wonder if the folks at Blizzard did that with Hedwig in mind. Either way, it's nice to know that hunters have the option of having the spectral look without having to be BM spec.

      Aotona is just beautiful, congrats on that tame, what a lucky way to find her!!

      Arcturis, another incredible looking pet - I am so very glad that he wasn't made part of the Frostbitten Achievement.

      Grats on all your fun pets, and again, thanks for the entry!

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  3. Congrats! It's only been a year? Although it's hard for me to gauge because I've been doing this less than a year. About 5 more months before I reach my first milestone.

    Ah Putridus, I always thought it was funny how he would still pop up via NPCscan or the like no matter where you were.

    Your competition will actually let me revisit some of the more memorable rare experiences I've had in the past so I look forward to writing something up.

    But before all that, here's in an even better year and more :)

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    1. Thanks Cym! Time flies waaaaaay too fast...

      I can't wait to read what you come up with! =)

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    2. Just linking my entry :)

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  4. Happy Anniversary! It seems I've been reading you longer! Because of your blog I now have NPCScan and I'm finding those chests everywhere, thank you and I hope you have many more Blog Anniversaries to come!

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    1. Thanks Tome! Aren't those chests great? I wish I would have known about them earlier. I can't even imagine how many I've flown over or walked right by... Ahh well, better late than never. ;)

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  5. Congrats on your Anniversary! Well written and informative, your blog has been a great inspiration for Aygaren,(achievements) and several hunters who are proud owners now.

    Thank you :)

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    1. Thanks Aygaren! Nothing makes me happier than knowing I had a part in helping a happy hunter find their dream pet. ^-^

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  6. Congratulations on your anniversary and the many more to come.

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  7. Here's my favorite rare Euphyley!

    http://tomeoftheancient.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/my-favorite-rare-spawn-tlpd/

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    1. Thanks for the entry Tome, you lucky lucky girl!

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  8. I am an 85 Troll hunter on Uldum US but when I was working for my favorite rare the beautiful loque'nahak spirit beast I was at level 80 about a year ago. What made this such a memorable rare was this was the first pet or rare in that matter that I ever camped for Loque took me about a week to get with 6+ hours each day I saw him dead about 4 times in that week and that really got me mad. Eachtime my NPC scan went off I would nearly have a heart attack seeing the majestic beast just suddenly pop on my screen. I would scramble to click on it just to find it dead. FOUR TIMES. But on that last day I was getting ready to start my typical route to camp so I log in and suddenly he is right there in front of me I lay down my frost trap hit tame beast and caught my first spirit beast this sparked the journey to camping and I have caught every spirit beast since that besides Karoma but I'm working on that right now.

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    1. Great story Trinity, I'm glad to hear you finally got your pretty kitty. =) Thanks for the entry!

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  9. Happy blogiversary!

    My favorite rare spawn is Jadefang. I'm not much of a camper in WoW, because even when I have the time for it, I'm too impatient! But one day shortly after Cata I was home sick and thought well, since I'm just streaming TV anyway, why not park myself in Deepholm and see if that spider that drops the pet shows up? (I'm not a hunter, so I was planning to kill Jadefang for the cute spider pet) I had saved the bomb quest that you need to blast yourself into her lair, so I ran into the cave and parked myself, in kitty form and stealthed, right by her spawn point. Then I went back to poking around online and rolling around on the floor in a fever-induced delirium.

    I realized that a human DK was hanging out halfway towards the entrance of Jadefang's lair. I assumed they were camping as well - of course, right, why else would you be up in that cave? But they kept jumping. The movement was really annoying me for some reason. I would see the motion out of the corner of my eye and nerdrage! YOU THERE. WITH THE JUMPING. CUT IT OUT. I didn't know if they could see me hiding in the back of the cave, so I didn't interact with them. The whole time I was afraid they would steal my mob (not that I expected it to spawn).

    Then suddenly...Jadefang spawned! I screamed and spammed Swipe in a frantic attempt to tag it. Seconds later, I had my very own tiny shale spider! Then, guiltily, I looked at the human DK. THEY HAD GONE AFK. I laughed about my luck all the way to my hearth.

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    1. Thanks Akabeko! I enjoyed your story. =)

      I hope they add more rares that drop mini pets like Jadefang, I'm such a sucker for those little guys...

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  10. My favourite is this guy:

    http://harpysnest.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/a-rare-thing-humar-the-pridelord/

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    1. Thanks for your entry Erinys, I really enjoyed reading your story. Well done! =)

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