About the Bloggers: Dawn Moore

About the Bloggers introduces you to the people behind WoW Insider. You can find articles on more of our staffers in earlier About the Bloggers profiles.

Today you'll be meeting Dawn Moore, admirer of Dwarven hunters in-game rocks.

What do you do for WoW Insider?

Since January 2010, I've been one of the two columnists covering Spiritual Guidance, WoW Insider's biweekly priest column. I write specifically for the two healing trees, holy and discipline, since Fox Van Allen stole 1/3 of my job covers shadow. In addition to my column, I also unofficially cover the news and articles WoW Insider publishes on the Warcraft movie, since I keep a pretty watchful eye on the film industry.

Periodically, I also write feature articles on random topics such as vegetables and superhero costumes.

What's your main?

For a long time, I was a notoriously pretentious, overconfident Blood Elf priest from the servers Sentinels, Malorne, and then some. Having outlived the novelty of being the most obnoxious priest on the server, I've since retired to a more low-key identity on my favorite high-population server, Illidan. I still play a priest, but since I'm extremely paranoid, I sneak around like the paparazzi are all out to get me. Despite this, I'm pretty easy to find, because all my character names begin with the letter V.

What's the best 5-man instance in the game? Raid?

Halls of Reflection is probably my favorite 5-man in recent history, not because of the lore but because of the difficulty that the final race from Arthas proved to be for most PUGs. I love for 5-mans to be difficult, and since my favorite types of encounters are race or gauntlet fights, Halls of Reflection had a lot to keep me entertained. Fights where you're constantly moving are more fun than fights where you're just periodically dodging fire.

The best raid was Ulduar, for story, ambiance, difficulty scaling, encounter design, and so much more. In my opinion, Ulduar was the last raid that felt like you were really getting into something dangerous.

What's been your favorite expansion?

I don't think any expansion can really beat vanilla WoW for me. The in-game experience was so much different back then, not just because the game was different but because the people were. Maybe it's because we didn't know so much about the game back then or just that the game required you to work together more, but it seemed like a less snarky time in Azerothian history.

Horde or Alliance?

I've been playing Alliance the past two years because my guild faction-transferred, but I still feel Horde at heart. I remember when I attended my first BlizzCon, I was walking behind a film crew that was filming the line of people waiting to get into the venue. The host for the program shouted to the crowd, "Hey, are there any Alliance out here!?" Immediately, the line responded with a big cheer and several people shouting "Alliance!" The host turned excitedly and said something to the camera with a big grin on his face, then looked back to the line and asked, "Now where are all the Horde!?" Just as he finished speaking there was this deafening answer -- a great roar of unanimous cries screamed "For the Horde!" in reply. Throughout the line, hundreds of fists shot into the air to accompany the cheering, which lasted for several seconds. I remembered turning to my then-boyfriend and sharing a silent expression of, "Yeah, that's right; we're Horde."

What's your favorite thing to do in Azeroth?

Take pictures. I've always had a knack for photography, but in real life, I'm held back by the cost of camera equipment and the lack of diverse subject matter. In World of Warcraft, neither of those limitations exist, so I love to capture interesting places or sentimental moments with a keystroke. Sometimes I even orchestrate photo shoots, throwing costumes at my friends and getting them to spam the same emote over and over in one spot so I can get the perfect shot. I've featured several of my favorite screenshots in my articles, such as my Back to the Future parody.

What's the best way to make gold?

I'm terrible at making gold through that whole laissez-faire Auction House part of the game that Basil and Fox like so much, so instead I sell my Power Infusion to the highest bidding DPS during farm content. After a boss goes down, most DPSers start trying to get record parses to show off, so I start bidding at 100 gold per fight.

When I'm not playing WoW, I'm ...

... spending almost every free hour I have working in the StarCraft 2 scene. Since June, I've been the general manager of Team Reign, a professional North American SC2 team. As general manager, I do a little bit of everything, from playing the role of mom to my players, to writing press releases, preparing sponsorship proposals, and most recently, setting up the team's new training house.

When I need to have some fun, though, I'm an active commenter on a few news sites and like reading Wikipedia. If I need to get away from the computer, I like cooking, knitting, and reliving the '90s by rollerblading to remixes of soundtracks from SNES games.

What's the #1 thing Blizzard could do better?

Maintaining community inside the game. Making quests easier to solo and adding the random Dungeon Finder have made the game a lot more convenient to play if you've only got an hour a week, but for anyone who plays the game more than that, server communities have completely broken down. I can't remember the last time I made a new friend doing a quest or completing a dungeon, whereas in vanilla and The Burning Crusade, it was a weekly thing.

What's the #1 thing Blizzard has done great?

Aside from StarCraft? Making a world that people want to spend time in. When you first start playing WoW you want to see it all, explore it all, and have it all. There is just such a vast array of stuff that I think there is something that appeals to everyone. If Blizzard could just add a Harvest Moon aspect to the game so you could be more than just an adventurer, people would play it forever.