About me

My name is Emma and I live in Australia. I’ve been gaming on and off since I was about 11. I won’t tell you exactly how long ago that was, let’s just say long enough.

In-game I enjoy healing, fishing, collecting pets, playing the AH, and levelling the odd druid here and there. Outside the game, I occasionally like to sleep and/or eat.

I’m an amateur photographer, and this tends to show in my WoW screenshots. I have two jobs and nine pet budgies.

I play on Caelestrasz, US-PvE (Oceanic).

World of Warcraft is my first MMO, and I haven’t played anything else since becoming hooked on WoW.

.. but I assure you that I can stop playing anytime I like.


About this site

Tree Bark Jacket was born in October 2008, while we waited impatiently for WotLK to be released.

I created the blog under the pretense of sharing raiding strategies, but the truth is that I was going nuts not having anything to write about when Sunwell raiding was winding down. I would normally be bombarding my guild forums with strategies, diagrams, and all manner of wall-o-text posts – because I just love doing that kind of thing. Blogging gave me that creative outlet that I was searching for while I waited to dive headfirst into the meaty theorycrafting goodness of WotLK.

The closure of the premier resto druid blog, Resto4Life, and later, the death of my guild, made me even more determined to continue with my blog and contribute to the Warcraft community, even if I was no longer raiding.

I like to write, dabble in Photoshop and Model Viewer, and share whatever knowledge I can, and blogging gives me an excuse to.

I’m dead serious when I say that I count on my fingers, so any math you see on this blog is most assuredly not mine.



My WoW journey

I began playing World of Warcraft in October 2005, shortly before the game’s first anniversary. I had friends who were in the beta. They urged me to play the game from the start, but I told them that I didn’t want to get addicted (how right I was). Plus, I really couldn’t understand the appeal of a game that you buy, and then keep on paying for; it seemed a little steep to me. I finally relented, although I can’t remember why, specifically. On a whim I rushed out to Target and bought a copy.

I had heard so many things about the game that I was actually a little scared to load it, in case it didn’t live up to the hype.

My first character was a Night Elf warrior, but within a few levels I realised that swinging a sword wasn’t really “me”. I went back to my guide book and agonised over the races and classes. I’m not sure why I picked druid, in the end; I suspect that it was partly due to the shapeshifting elf in the cinematic, and partly because the hybrid nature of the class sounded as if it would suit my short attention span nicely. I had decided that I wanted to raid with friends, and that I would be a healer, since healers were in short supply. I loved the idea of supporting the group.

I was hooked from the start. Teldrassil is a fantastic starting zone to “sell” you on this game. Although I prefer to level Alliance characters in Elwynn, Teldrassil will always bring back memories of my first tentative steps into Azeroth.



Caoimhe, my first druid




Level 60: the Cheerleader

At level 60, I began to raid, although my Australian timezone meant that I could only raid once a week, as I had rolled on a US-PvP server (I had friends there, and Oceanic servers didn’t exist at the time). The most I ever got to raid was one day per week (my day off work) at 10am, plus occasionally Sunday mornings if they were running a Saturday afternoon raid. I was so keen to be part of raids that I would get up at 4am on Sundays to join a 2pm server ZG or AQ20 run. I loved raiding.

I still have my first DKP epic – the Staff of Dominance – and my treasured crafted FR gear, the Flarecore set, which was so expensive to craft, but I farmed it all for myself. As a part-time raider, I had no access to cores from the bank, so I bought them all.

I raided ZG, AQ20, Molten Core, and BWL. I saw a little of AQ40, but never C’Thun. I dipped my toes into old Naxx.

Over time though, only being able to raid once a week began to take its toll. I hated being stuck at work, watching the DKP site get updated, tracking which bosses they were killing without me. Through a little luck and faith, I swapped my day off so that I could raid on the day that I thought we might kill Nefarian – and we did. I’m so glad I didn’t miss that day.



Nefarian


But I couldn’t be there for the other nights, and I hated it. The knock-on effect that was although I contributed a great deal to the guild and was eventually promoted to officer, some of the others didn’t see me as a “real” officer because I only raided part-time, and therefore my ideas and suggestions didn’t carry any weight. I constantly felt frustrated – not only because I couldn’t be there to raid, but because I wanted so badly to help drive the guild forward – and I felt as though my voice wasn’t being heard.

Eventually, after paid transfers were introduced, I made the very difficult decision to find a guild with raid times that suited me a little better. I applied to a Naxx raiding guild on Blackrock (a US server with a heavy Australian population) and was accepted.

Sadly, what that guild didn’t tell me was that they were making a last-ditch effort to continue raiding as their numbers thinned towards TBC’s release. I ended up doing a single raid before they decided to merge with a second guild, which of course pushed me out of the raid group. I was stranded on a new server with no friends and no raids.



Druid #2 – Kiiva is born

I had very little drive to continue playing Caoimhe on a server where I knew nobody, so while I waited for the 3 month cooldown to lift (and for TBC’s release), I rolled a second druid back on my original server, to at least be able to socialise with my friends, even if I could no longer raid with them. Kiiva, the “baby feral”, was born.


Kiiva, my second druid – the baby feral


I had always wanted to have a feral druid to play around with, but hated respeccing. Back then, it was expensive, and annoying – there were no dual specs, and no easy option for swapping back and forth. So on Caoimhe I stayed resto, but often farmed in feral gear. When I created Kiiva for fun, I made her full feral, and had a blast levelling her. My intention was only to fool around on her in my spare time, but when she got to about 50 I figured I might as well finish the job and get her to 70. People laughed at me for having two level 70 druids, one feral and one resto, but I loved it. Not only did I avoid the annoyance of respeccing, but my bags weren’t cluttered with two sets of gear, and I could raid twice as much on weekends, because I had two lockouts!



Caoimhe – round 2

With the 3 month transfer cooldown up, I brought Caoimhe home, and helped to run 10 man raids (and eventually dip into 25s) in our small guild, which had since split into two guilds, ours remaining behind as the more casual half. I was able to raid a little more than before, because we often ran raids on Friday and Saturday nights to suit people’s odd schedules.. but I still felt like a hardcore raider trapped in a casual schedule. And I could only interact with my friends on weekends; during the week, when I got home from work, it was already 3am for most of them, and I would often be alone in the guild.

After a lot of soul searching, I decided to reroll.



Druid #3 – Keeva’s triumphant arrival in Azeroth

After the last transfer disaster, I didn’t want to get “trapped” again, so instead I thought I would reroll somewhere. Oceanic servers were now open, so I decided it would be a good idea to test the waters and see what they were like. I figured that I could roll a new druid and see how I liked it before I made any decisions.



Keeva, August 2009


I chose my guild and had my application pre-written before I chose my character. I had chosen Horde PvE because I hated PvP servers, and had always wanted to see what the Horde side of the game was like. As soon as I hit 20, which was the minimum level to apply, I posted my application and told them I wanted to be a hardcore raider, once I hit 70. I was accepted, and began my journey with Absolution.

I entered raiding with Absolution just as they managed to kill Kael’thas; I made it just in time to begin raiding Hyjal and BT. I was made officer partway through BT.

We constantly jostled for the #1 position on the server, narrowly missing clearing BT first, but leading the way in Sunwell. Unfortunately, like many guilds at the time, we were suffering badly from attrition with WotLK around the corner, and had to keep recruiting and gearing people to push on in Sunwell. A 1% wipe on Felmyst was the best that we could manage before several core members left and we decided that we couldn’t keep treading water. Absolution split.

I went to another guild to continue raiding, along with a few others. Some people left the server.

Within a couple of months, the old officers got together and admitted that they didn’t like being apart. Even after clearing Sunwell, they didn’t enjoy the game without the guild. Many core members echoed this sentiment, and said that they would be interested in reforming.

Inexorable, a name that I chose, was formed in September 2008.

Stronger than ever, our ranks swelled as we waited for WotLK. When it was released, we quickly kicked its teeth in, racking up almost all of the server firsts – Sartharion, Malygos, Naxxramas. We quickly did Sartharion+3 and the 5 minute Malygos achievement, 10 man Sarth+3. We were the first to complete the Heroic: Glory of the Raider achievement for our black proto drakes.



We led early WotLK progression


After that, though, there was little to keep people engaged until Ulduar’s release, and once again we suffered from attrition. Regardless, when 3.1 arrived, we moved swiftly through Ulduar (despite terrible bugs and glitches), leading progression by a decent margin. I believe we began working on Yogg-Saron while our closest competition had yet to begin on Thorim and Mimiron. We were in line for a top 5 Oceanic Yogg kill.



Most of Ulduar fell fast


It wasn’t to be, though. Two weeks of instense raiding and lots of extra hours wore people out, and they needed to take a break. Although we would not normally raid on weekends, some people were anxious to keep pushing on to kill Yogg-Saron. Others needed time off. The frustration of not being able to field a raid was too much for our raid leader, who took an offer from another server, and transferred away.

We picked ourselves up and dusted off, pushing on, and making amazing progress despite losing our raid leader and main tank. Another great raid leader stepped up and did a fantastic job. Yogg fell to around 15-20% but we couldn’t quite get him. We were confident he would die the following week.

But, the cosmic forces decided we hadn’t seen enough challenges, and our second raid leader also vanished in the night, transferring back to an old server.

Too many people had decided that we couldn’t press on, and looked for other guilds to go to. The negativity spread throughout the guild and we knew we were fighting an uphill battle to keep people.

Inexorable split in May 2009, weeks after Ulduar’s release, and agonisingly close to Yogg-Saron’s defeat.



Druid #5, Kiiva #2

Inexorable’s demise broke my heart. I poured absolutely everything of myself into the guild, and in the end, it wasn’t enough to save it.

I was gutted, and couldn’t entertain the idea of going to another guild.

I didn’t want to leave the game, but needed to get away from my broken guild. I decided to take a break from Keeva and from my other baby feral druid, Drucie (druid #4, another side project “for fun”), and go back to the Alliance for a while. I had, after all, come from the Alliance, but hadn’t seen any of the zones or cities or quest lines since TBC.



Drucie, another feral for fun


I created Kiiva, a Night Elf, in my original druid’s image (but with white hair). The other Kiiva was still behind on my old server, and I decided to give the new druid a similar name to my others because many people knew me as Keeva, and it was just easier that way.



The second Kiiva


She started with no money – I refused to send cash to help her. I wanted her to earn every cent.I levelled her quickly to 80 by myself, refusing help, and earning all that I needed along the way. When she hit 60, I had enough money to afford her epic mount, and at 77 I paid for epic flying and cold weather flying, and then dual specs in quick succession, having saved the money as I levelled her.

My goal of levelling a 5th druid, with no money, and giving her epic flying was complete, and I set about earning enough to buy a set of starter raid gear. I went to a few raids, and enjoyed them, but never really felt at home on the Alliance side, as I once did.

The Horde is my home.



Back to the Horde

With patch 3.2’s release in August 2009, I decided I missed my Tauren far too much, and decided to come back to her. She still lives in Inexorable, surrounded by alts and a few straggler friends who gave up raiding but didn’t want to leave the game entirely.

I miss raiding, but at the moment I am happy to do the occasional PuG to get my healing fix.

I have a feeling Keeva will be making a triumphant return to raiding in Icecrown, though… you can’t get rid of me so easily!



Icecrown awaits..