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That’s not my Tauren anymore

October 17, 2014 by fayedances

Back when I used to post in the  comments of WoW Insider a lot, the discussion used to come up that what we really wanted was for Blizzard to update the character models. There was always one commenter who vehemently disagreed with this conversation, stating that she absolutely did not want Blizzard to update the models, that she would be furious if they did because she was sure it would not look like her character anymore, and that she would want the option to keep her old model. I always thought she was crazy, especially since she played a human female, which I by and large thought looked like crap. I mean, any improvement is good right? Anything had to be better than the dated, pixelated mess that we’d been looking at for years. There was no way it could possibly be as bad as she was making it sound.

So. Today I’d like to say, “I’m sorry Ret Pally Jill.”

I no longer recognize my druid. She is not my character anymore. She’s tan instead of cream colored, her face is totally changed for the worse, her hair is brown instead of black, and her fur texture is so heavy handed that she looks quite masculine. Her nose doesn’t resemble a cow’s nose in the slightest, her mouth is open all the time, and her braids clip into her boobs when she breaths.

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Where is my wise, intense druid?

Her body is quite beautiful and I think her animations are okay. I’m happy that her fingers are articulated instead of weird blocky sausages. The fanboys tell me I should be happy with this. I wish I could be. I wanted to love the character updates. They were hands down the thing about WoD that I was most excited for. In a time when very little about WoW has me excited, there was this. Finally, I would have the tauren I’d always imagined in my head, one that didn’t look like a rushed, uncared for mess with a squashed spider on her forehead.

Even after a long, thoughtful thread of feedback about tauren female, they still went live with issues that make me cringe. Blizzard didn’t respond to concerns about character models at all, so I’m not really sure why I’m surprised about this, but I am. There is so much about the model that I dislike, but to someone who doesn’t care about tauren, it apparently seems nitpicky. I will just say that the revisions done to female tauren reek of laziness and a lack of caring for the original model. How else can you explain why the unique spotted skin we used to have is now just a copy of the males’ “spotted” skin?

This is what this feels like to me. Suppose you have a cherished memento, something that a friend made for you, like a mug from when they took a ceramics class. It’s a little uneven and the paint job is messy, but you still love it because it reminds you of your friend. Then someone breaks the mug. They buy you a new one, a hand crafted thing that they found on Etsy. It’s sort of the same style, and the color is off because the person didn’t really look that carefully at the mug they broke. It is, however without a doubt, a far more beautiful mug. But it’s not your friend’s mug anymore.

I really never thought I’d be so bummed out about something like this. I’m a bit surprised that I am, to be honest. There are way more important things in the world to be upset about. But the fact is, I don’t really want to play this character anymore, and she’s been my main since I started playing WoW. I like the revisions to the troll females, so I could always race change her, but I hate feeling like I have to pay real money just to enjoy my character again. And no, I don’t think this is part of some evil plan by Blizzard to get more money out of us. Just stating that I don’t want to do it. And besides. I like the lore behind Tauren. Not that I dislike trolls, but that’s not the story I want for this character.

But really, there’s nothing I can do. It’s Blizzard’s game after all, and I have to live with their decisions. I still haven’t pre-ordered WoD, and I’m seriously considering not doing so, because I’m so unenthusiastic about it. But I miss my friends and I miss my guildies, and I want to play with them again.

I just don’t know if I’ll be doing so on my druid. And that sort of breaks my heart.

 

 

(To all of the femtaur’s from the feedback thread, I’d like to give a heartfelt /salute. I’ve enjoyed your comments over the past few months, and I hope you can find some happiness in your new character.)

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A warcraft fairytale? Well, okay.

January 7, 2014 by fayedances

I posted a fairytale on my new blog that came from my favorite source of inspiration from WoW, the herbs in the game. It’s the tale of how rain poppies got their name. I’d actually like to make a whole collection of stories like this, making myself the Azerothian Sister Grimm. 😉

Rain Poppies: A Folk Tale

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New year, new home

January 5, 2014 by fayedances

I miss blogging horribly, but I haven’t been playing enough WoW to be able to write about it anymore. That makes me really sad, because I worked hard on this blog, and I enjoyed the people I met through it.

I decided to make a New Year’s Resolution to start blogging again, and to honor that promise to myself, I started an entirely new blogged called Among the Lights. I plan to talk about gaming, geek culture, design, and about general cool things I find online and off. I’ll even still talk about WoW from time to time I’m sure. 🙂 Anyway, if you feel so inclined, please check it out.

Happy New Year, all!

 

-Faye

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I named my Flame Kitten after my town.

January 4, 2013 by fayedances

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I’ve been not around for a while, in the blog world or really, in game either. At first it was just a matter of timing. Right around when the expansion launched, I got super busy with work, and didn’t have a day off for about four weeks. When that finally died down, I had some time to level my main, hit 90, and deal with the immediate overwhelming nature of rep grinds, dailies, and trying to gear up. I was still making a go of it, despite rising frustration with the way things were designed because in general, I really do love Mists.

But you see, then I got completely derailed again. And since images really do usually speak louder than words, I thought I’d just show why:

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The ocean is more or less my front yard. I live a block off the beach in a barrier island town that was right in the path of Hurricane Sandy. This is a picture that I took on the morning of the storm, about twelve hours before it actually made landfall.

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You can see here just how close the water already was to reaching the dunes. The dunes are there to protect the town from storm surges, and slow the water from barreling into the streets and homes of the people who live here. Incidentally, the dunes you see there are completely gone now.

My town was among one of the hardest hit by the storm and my area of New York was crippled by it. Living on a barrier island, we couldn’t be surprised that our town didn’t have power, water, or sewage for nearly a month. But it wasn’t just us. It was everywhere. And despite evacuating my town, which was completely unlivable, we were still living without power for quite some time, staying with family, and generally feeling uncomfortable.

Needless to say, I wasn’t playing a whole lot of WoW.

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Those boards you see are the boardwalk, swept up and away as far as the bayside of the island.

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The streets were covered in about a foot of sand in some places and nearly every car in the town was totaled.

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That boat…totally doesn’t belong there.

Anyway, it was a very stressful experience. And once power did start to come back on, I tried playing WoW again, as it’s always been my escape and stress relief. To my dismay, I found the game wasn’t doing much to calm me down. Dailies were stressing me out, and with a crappy internet connection and only my aging laptop to play on, along with no desk and no privacy, doing randoms wasn’t really that appealing either. Even reading through WoW sites started to upset me, as I realized just how far I was falling behind on gearing and, more annoyingly, getting irritated with people themselves. The final straw for me was when Blizz announced that proceeds from the Fire Kitten would go to benefit the Red Cross and Sandy victims. While most people applauded the move, there were of course those people bitched and got into flame wars about it. While also reading about coworkers who had lost everything and reading emails from my insurance company about how to go through the claims process on a totalled car (something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, btw) I decided I’d had about enough stress, real life or imaginary, and took a break.

Life is much better for me now, of course. We’re back home and I have a new shiny car and my town is slowly starting to rebuild. The Red Cross and National Guard have gone home as well, and things feel normal again. Plus, we were extremely lucky. The only thing we lost was my car, where others around us had their entire homes destroyed.  And so I’ve been trying to get back into playing WoW, though I have to admit it’s more difficult than I would have thought. I’m no longer the  know-it-all in /g telling people whatever information they need to know.

In fact, I honestly have no clue what’s going on in the game right now. I kind of feel like a newb. My main is completely undergeared, I haven’t run the majority of the instances, I have not yet caught all the battle pets, and I have no clue what’s going on in patch 5.1. I can’t tell you how bizarre it is to be the one asking questions! But it’s nice to have Azeroth to go to now that I’ve calmed down again, and there’s something very comforting about flying over Pandaria and seeing the beautiful landscapes Blizzard has made.

And, as it often does, the game has reminded me of just how much I do love my friends. They’ve helped me out with gearing, presenting me with crafted items to help me along. It’s a very overdue public thanks to them, but to Saph, Bim, Xall, and Tor, all I can say is thanks. And to Coups too, for keeping me company on a day when WoW was not where I wanted to be and hanging out with me in GW2 all day. I love you guys so much, and you’re the reason I keep logging into the game.

Anyway, that’s enough depressing stuff from me. I’ve been meaning to write this post for quite some time, and I guess I finally feel ready to get back to things now. And one of the  nice things about taking a break from the game is that I had lots of time to write, and I have some fun stuff that I might want to share here at some point. I tried my hand at writing a Pandarian fairy tale and provided I’m ever happy with it, I’ll definitely be sharing it here!

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How to get me to level a Worgen in one easy step

October 15, 2012 by fayedances

So I’ve tried leveling a worgen a couple of times, mostly because I like knowing the story of all of the races in the game. I’m generally pretty awful at leveling Alliance races though, and night elves and draenei are the only ones with which I’ve had much success. When Cataclysm dropped, I thought for sure I would be able to level a worgen because of the awesome Victorian vibe of the zone.

As it turns out, I couldn’t stand it, and my account is littered with various worgen across several servers, none of them above level 7. But today while flying through the Barrens on my paladin searching for a giraffe calf, I decided to check out what other pets I wanted to hunt down.

Wait. I should stop here to say: I didn’t play much of the beta. I also didn’t read much about the beta because I didn’t want to spoil Mists for myself. Going into Cataclysm, I read up about so much that nothing felt like a surprise to me when I got into the game. That was the last thing I wanted to happen this time around, especially since towards the end of the expansion, a lot of my desire to play WoW had left me.

However, since Mists dropped, I’ve had barely any time to play at all. Work has been totally kicking my ass. In fact, I only just hit 90 with Fayasha, my druid, yesterday. (This is also why I haven’t been posting at all, for which I have to apologize). So I should have spent today finishing up the Dread Wastes to get gear for her so I can start running heroics. Instead, I decided some pet hunting was in order.

Which brings me to that giraffe calf. I love how big this pet is. I decided it would definitely make a good friend for Fayasha, since she’s always the tallest one in a group, being a tauren and all. But since I’ve been focusing on leveling with the little bit of time I have to play, pet battling isn’t something I’ve been able to do. I’ve always loved searching for pets though, even before battling them was a thing, so I couldn’t resist the urge for long. I turned back to my old friend, Warcraft Pets to see what I might want to go looking for. And that’s when I saw it.

The Gilnean Raven.

Immediately I knew that whatever plans I’d had for the day were going to have to be put on hold and one of those languishing worgens would have to be leveled. Nevermind the fact that I have professions to take care of, a secondary main to level, and a main to gear. Nevermind the fact that I have yet to level my monk or my pandaren. Nevermind the fact that Mists really is an incredible expansion. I needed to go back to do that Cataclysm content that I hated so much, just to have a chance at that bird.

Okay, I realize it’s nothing more than a recolored seagull, but you have to understand. I was 13 when The Crow was released and one of the most interesting field trips I remember taking in school was to the Edgar Allen Poe house in Philly. I’m pretty sure I had “The Raven” memorized at some point too, but I’ve long since forgotten it. Also, ravens feature rather prominently in one of my favorite guilty pleasure books. What I’m saying is, this pet pretty much had to be mine.

And so where everything else failed, the promise of a shiny new pet is what finally got me through Gilneas. It’s actually a decent enough starting zone, though it felt like it dragged on and on in parts. I still can’t take playing a worgen seriously though, and the only way I’ll probably ever play that character again is if I race change her to a night elf. But it’s great, because now that I have my amazing new pet. I can get back to all of those important things I’m supposed to be doing, like gearing up Fay. Oh wait, is that a baby ape that’s only available when it rains?

BRB, camping a rainstorm.

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Going stag

August 30, 2012 by fayedances

 

What happens when you give druids a new toy?

 

They have an impromptu dance party in Orgrimmar to celebrate.

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Shared Topic: What’s your headcanon?

August 28, 2012 by fayedances

This week’s Blog Azeroth shared topic post comes from Akabeko from Red Cow Rise:

Canon refers to the actual events and characters that exist in a fictional world. Headcanon refers to any situations or characters that are imagined by fans of said fictional world. Sometimes they are silly, like the fact that Garrosh’s favorite treat is lemon squares. Sometimes they are serious, like positing that tauren store grief in the lungs. For my writing, I’ve come up with a lot of headcanon. Got a theory about a torrid romance between your favorite auctioneer and the patrolling guard? Given any thought to where mounts and pets go when they aren’t summoned? Do you know how your characters do their laundry, or what Baine Bloodhoof does in his free time? What are your headcanons, and where did you get the idea?

If I were to write about all of my headcanon, it would probably be enough to fill a small book. Or at least an entire short story. Headcanon is actually one of my favorite parts of WoW. I like taking this world that we were given by Blizzard and fleshing it out in my mind to fill in the gaps, yet still make sure it stays appropriate to the world. I think it’s probably good practice for me, since I’m notoriously bad at world building. I love telling characters’ stories, but making up an entire world is daunting to me. WoW gives me just enough freedom and creativity that I can be creative and not get overwhelmed.

The world we are given is much smaller than the world my characters live in.

In game, the world is understandably small (even though as far as video games go, it’s actually pretty huge). But when you think about it, it doesn’t make much sense that you should be able to fly from the northern most part of a continent to the southern most in less than twenty minutes. Well, I suppose it could make sense, but that would mean that this is an extraordinarily small world. With the mix of cultures and history in Azeroth, the setting seems too small, and so I choose to ignore what the game tells us in this regard.

I’ve written about this before, but I think it’s worth talking about again here, especially since it tends to be one of those things where people who aren’t used to writing with me get a little confused. For example, I like to think that Quel’Thalas is much bigger than Eversong and Ghostlands would have you believe. Eversong itself I imagine taking at least 45 minutes to walk from Silvermoon to the river that divides it from Ghostlands. And Ghostlands I imagine being much larger and vast. I generally say that I think Quel’Thalas is about the size of New Jersey, which gives me the chance to write in places that don’t exist in game, such as villages, other Amani settlements, outposts, and many other things. In order for the elves to stay as isolated as they’re supposed to be, they would need much more room to nurture their exclusive society.

Along with this, I like to think that travel is much more difficult than it is in the games. I don’t really enjoy including portals nor long distance teleportation in my writing. I feel like traveling back and forth between contiments should be a huge time and financial investment, with voyages (by air or by sea) taking days if not weeks. I’ll continue with this idea in Mists as well. Once my characters go to Pandaria, they are going to be there for the long haul with very infrequent trips back to Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms, if there are any at all. Even though WoW is a strange mix of fantasy, sci-fi, and steampunk, I like viewing travel, at least, with a bit more of a primitive stance. It makes the world feel more real to me.

The Silvermoon in my head is much cooler than the one in the game

I love writing about Silvermoon. It’s such an interesting fantasy city, with arcane replacing technology and a culture that has slipped into decadence. I love imagining different little corners of it that the game never gives us.

In game, Silvermoon has no residential areas or places to live at all. In my head, there are more districts, and like the world, I imagine the city to be much much larger than it is in game. There’s a neighborhood for just the noble types, for the merchant class, and more. Koralie has a flat in Murder Row above an apothecary shop. In my head Murder Row is more of a neighborhood than a tiny street. Within it there’s plenty of crime, but also a lot of fun. I had this idea that Koralie, generally rejecting traditional Silvermoon society, probably would rather shoot herself then go spend a night out drinking at the Silvermoon Inn, so I made a tavern called the Alibi Room instead. It’s a rowdy place with loud music (think Irish pub music with a splash of rock and turned way, way, up). Typical blood elves would sneer at the place, but I imagine it being great fun. At least half the time that I write about Koralie being there, she ends up getting into a brawl, which everyone generally approves of.

I take my cues from other decadent societies, like the height of the Roman Empire to imagine the political climate of Silvermoon. Without their king and with a Regent Lord who never wanted the job, I imagine the political jockeying much be intense. I love writing about the corruption that festers beneath the city’s shining surface. From corrupt court officials to blood knight generals that are only too happy to use their purses to manipulate and control those outside of the order, the corruption of Silvermoon is one of the main plots of my writing.

The Blood Knights are another place where I have quite a lengthy headcanon. For all the development they received in BC (when I wasn’t even playing!) they haven’t received much since then. I think this is rather a pity, especially considering the plot of Wrath would have been a nice place for them to shine. And so I have an elaborate list of all the general, commanders, many knights, and more within the order, along with their basic personalities and the connections between them. With my main RP character being a blood knight, I really had to flesh out the order so that I could write about it. Traditional military or not, it’s still military. I wanted to stay true to that.

I find that for whatever reason, I end up writing about food and meals fairly often, which begs the question, “What does this culture eat?” For blood elves, I tend to think they’re cooking a lot of French type food, so I mostly pull from that cuisine when I need an idea for a quick meal. Though once I did write a scene where someone was cooking an elaborate meal of salmon with raspberry mead sauce which is definitely not French. Still sounds elfy though.

Similar to that, I like to imagine that an elf speaking Orcish is quite hilarious with their graceful accent wrapping over those harsh words. Say “Lok’tar Ogar!” with a French accent. No really, do it. That’s what I imagine Blood Elves sound like to the rest of the Horde.

The wonderful herbs

This is another thing I’ve mentioned before, but I love thinking about background for the herbs of Azeroth and Outland. In my head, peacebloom is similar to tobacco. Sungrass is similar to pot. Stormvine shares properties with eleuthero. And Azshara’s Veil got its name from when the Queen herself demanded that thousands and thousands of the gossamer petals from the delicate, short-lived plant be fashioned into an entire outfit for her. Imagine her fury when the servants were only able to make her a veil! I actually do intend to do the other blog I mentioned before about the herbology of Azeroth, just because I think some of the things I’ve come up with are amusing and could possibly help others who are writing about this world.

I could really go on and on with all of the headcanon rattling around in my mind. I’d be curious to know if this is something that only people who write about the world do, or it others who play the game make up strange little facts about it as well. Where are the best vineyards in Azeroth? Who makes the best chocolate? What sort of fairy tales do dwarves tell their children? Do you have a story for the nice tauren lady that repairs your armor? Maybe your goblin priest is part of the Church of the Coin.

Actually, hang on. I like that idea. BRB, writing down more headcanon. 😉

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Navispammed!

August 26, 2012 by fayedances

So the other day, I was mindlessly leveling through Zangarmarsh on my hunter while listening to a podcast about writing. No one from my guild was online, and I was still half asleep from having stayed up way too late the night before pvping. I was about to go turn in a mess of quests when a message window popped up. I read the message first, then the name, then blinked.

Navimi? That couldn’t possibily be like…Navimie, could it? Not Navimie from The Daily Frostwolf. Why on earth would she be visiting me?

As it turned out, it was that Navimie. And for reasons that I still can’t understand, she was visiting me. I was being Navispammed!

I quickly switched over to my druid and took her to my favorite zone, Storm Peaks. It’s long been one of my favorite places in the game, mostly because I love mountains and the music there is amazing. Plus I know from past experience that the light there is good for taking screenshots. We started chatting and I’m sure I sounded completely ridiculous because I was quite starstruck. Navimie! Visiting me! And there were no guildies on for me to squeeee about it to.

We talked a bit about RP, which is always kind of strange for me. I often times don’t know how people will react to RP people and if they believe the stereotypes, like that we don’t know how to play the game or that we’re just interested in eRP or that we’re weirdos with no life outside of our fantasy world, but Navi seemed very cool and curious about it. I was all flustered, so I’m sure I wasn’t making sense, but it was fun to talk about all the same. I seem to remember that one of the reasons I started blogging was to be a good representative for the RP community, so this was very nice for me.

I probably should have summoned her on Koralie as well, since my pally has more fun toys than Fayasha does, but it didn’t even occur to me until after she had logged. But all the same, it was such a nice thing, and it actually totally made my day.

Thank you Navimie! I’m so glad I got to meet you “in person.” 🙂

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The cuteness cannot be contained

August 25, 2012 by fayedances

When I decided to try to get into blogging again, I spent a lot of time lurking on other blogs before getting up the courage to start commenting. And when I saw Navimie’s post showing off a tauren druid chibi, I both had to comment on the cuteness and get one for my very own.

The art that Sleepingfox does was just way to good to pass up. And so I had her do chibis of my two mains, Koralie and Fayasha. I absolutely can’t believe the level of detail she got in there, especially considering how crappy the screenies I sent her were. I’m so unbelievably thrilled with these and seriously resisting the urge to commission her to do chibis for more of my toons…and my friend’s toons…

Seriously. These completely made my day.

Koralie is wearing my favorite transmog for her and what I like to call her crazy punk armor set. I just love the striped stockings on it, and Sleepingfox captured the loot of the set perfectly. She also got Koralie’s slightly mischievous expression too.

Fayasha is wearing T11 because I think it’s one of the most beautiful druid tiers ever. I’m excited to start transmogging to that now that we’re going to be out of Cata soon. Sleepingfox caught the introspective and visionary expression that I tend to think Fayasaha must have most of the time. And the staff. <3<3

So happy and excited! Sleepingfox, you are amazing!

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