Life got busy and I had to take off time from blogging. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to it soon, and build up a reader base. I have some fun plans for future focus too.
In the meantime though, I saw a post on Sugar & Blood advertising for Azeroth’s Next Top Plate Model, and had to post a pic of Koralie in her transmog set for the Best in Show contest. I call it Harlequin Punk Pally. 😉
Models used:
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
I thought I would post my response to the Druid Class Feedback thread here, since I suspect my response might have been slightly drowned out amidst 76 pages of people complaining about their form, lack of form, and whatever else happens to irk our little druid souls. I’ve modified my response a little here, since I was trying to be fairly concise on the forums, and possibly failed entirely.
Coming soon after this….my ret pally feedback. It is far more ranty.
What type of content do you focus on?
PvE (Resto with feral off spec)
If PvE, what type of PvE?
10m raiding
If PvP, what type of PvP?
N/A
What are your biggest quality-of-life issues? For instance, no longer requiring ammo could be considered a quality-of-life improvement for hunters.
I’m actually very happy with where resto is at the moment. I….don’t even miss being a tree all the time, and I thought having to stare at a big tauren butt would ruin the class for me. 😉
Lifebloom switching can be a little scary when I’m tank healing, especially if there are some moments of overlapping damage on the tanks. The ramp up time to get lifebloom stacked is an issue for me on fights with tank swaps.
It’s not an issue for me anymore, but I HATED not getting to play with fun shapeshifting toys when I was in ToL form, and I think it sucks that the other specs don’t generally get to, especially with the shorter duration ones like Orb of the Sin’dorei. The fact that I can run around looking like a flame druid using Leyara’s Locket but still be in kitty form is pretty much the most awesome thing ever. I would like to see this applied to more transformation effects.
The cooldown on Rebirth is kind of irritating. Since it can only be cast once per fight, I really do wish the cooldown were either shorter, or not there at all. I’m the only person in my raid group that has a battle rez, and it’s so frustrating to not have it available for every attempt during the learning process.
What makes playing your class more fun?
HoTs on the run. I love the resto toolkit, and I think our major cooldowns are awesome.
I love the versatility of druids in general. I love that I can play my healer as a melee dps as well, and that I can easily pop over to bear form to save myself when I make the mistake of pulling a few too many mobs when soloing. I love being able to sneak around in prowl and I love flight form.
What makes playing your class less fun?
HoTs getting sniped by other healers, resulting in a gigantic waste of mana. At times feeling powerless when there is major single target damage incoming and despite having full hots up on the target and spamming healing touch, still watching them die. Fights like Baleroc also make me feel incredibly weak. Nourish could have a slightly shorter cast time and I wouldn’t complain.
I don’t play my kitty spec in groups often (it’s mostly for me to do dailies and solo things) but when I do, I really can’t believe how unforgiving the positioning for Shred is. I greatly prefer playing melee dps (in fact, all of my dps toons are melee) but I think that would drive me absolutely nuts in a raid setting.
How do you feel about your “rotation”? (Rotation is the accepted order in which abilities are used to maximum efficiency.)
Not really much of a rotation here, except being sure to keep up lifebloom and harmony, which I like. I do think the duration of harmony could be a tiny bit longer, because it can fall off when I’m dealing with heavy raid damage or recovering from a disaster.
What’s on your wish list for your class?
I’ll speak for the Boomkins here and say that I hope they see a graphic upgrade soon. I know that I personally could never get into playing balance because I hated looking at the model. Gender variations between the rest of the forms. I love playing as kitty, just wish I didn’t look like a guy when I did so. Wish there were a more feminine looking graphic for ToL as well. I just use glyph of the treant as it is.
Some way to switch lifebloom easier between tanks. Possibly also a damage mitigation cooldown, but NOT at the cost of potency of our current tools.
More tier helms that don’t look utterly ridiculous on a tauren.
What spells do you use the least?
In my resto toolkit, I use mostly everything, with the exception maybe of nature’s swiftness which I tend to forget about. Would love to see a shorter CD on that. Also, nourish has become almost useless for me in a raid setting.
Can’t remember the last time I casted soothe.
Posted in raiding | Tagged class feedback, healing, i don't actually know if i want my tree form back, raiding, resto druid | Leave a Comment »
So I’m going to try to get involved with Blog Azeroth’s whole Shared Topic thing. This week’s Shared Topic over at Blog Azeroth was suggested by Saga.
The WoW in-game music is awesome, but there are times (at least for me) when I’m listening to my own music instead. Are there any specific songs that you connect with WoW? Whether it’s tied to your own characters in some way or simply because it reminds you of WoW. Please share!
Music is very important to me and always has been, so this is a topic rather close to my heart. I tend to have a very eccelctic playlist, but there are definite trends and themes that tend to permeate all of my musical choices.
For a long time, I would always listen the in game music during raids. I loved the atmosphere of Naxx and Ulduar, and the the music only added to them. During ICC there were many moments when I would call attention to a particularly awesome part of the music (Hey guys! Listen! They’re using a variation on the blood elf starting zone music! Oh my gosh did you hear that little phrase from “Invincible” during the start up speech to fight LK? GUNSHIP MUSIC IS WIN!!!)
For whatever reason, I stopped doing this during Cataclysm raiding, and I think the reason for that is that the music in raids is, for the most part….Not that great or noticeable. For all the time I spent in BWD, I couldn’t tell you a single stand out moment in the music. I listened to the Firelands music for the first couple of weeks, and then got bored and turned it off. The only raid I can think of with really distinct music is TotFW, and my rants about the wasted opportunities of that raid are best left for another day. 😉
But I need music to function, so instead of listening to the in game stuff, I generally turn to my old friend Pandora to get me through my raids. Pandora and I have a long history of me creating playlists and then screaming at it when it thinks that just because I wanted to listen to Metric, that I will also like Phoenix. No really Pandora. Thumbs down. I hate that band. Stop playing them.
For raiding, I tend to go back to my punk roots, and I have a playlist based off of one of my favorite songs ever, “Generator” by Bad Religion.
I chose that song to create a playlist from because it generally makes me feel like I can go out and take on the world. After some tweaking, I got Pandora to understand the kind of punk I wanted to listen to, and now I’m happily healing my way through Firelands with Bad Religion, Social Distortion, the Descendants, Rise Against, Dropkick Murpheys, Fugazi, and many more. And then I get wonderful moments when I mention what I happen to be listening to and one of the younger kids in my raid goes, “Who’s that?” and I can reply “Well, they’re this really great band that’s been around for….oh dear God, 30 YEARS I’M OLD.”
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m and RPer along with being a raider. I love coming up with character concepts and personalities for all of the toons I play. Every one of my toons has some sort of backstory worked out for them, and even if I don’t RP on that toon in particular, I know their story and who they are. Toons that don’t have a personality I can’t get into playing, which is probably why my shaman is stuck at level 55, throwing me furious looks as I ignore her in favor of leveling my night elf.
Since both music and character concept are so important to me, it’s probably no surprise that most of my characters have a theme song that works along with their concept. When I first started playing my pally, I was having a real problem with her. I’ve never liked playing the religious lawful good type in any RP game, but my guild was doing some fun Blood Knight RP that I really wanted to be involved in. So I did a little research and realized that Blood Knights were likely the one brand of pally I could actually manage to play, and Kora was born.
My original concept for Kora was actually based off of an ex of mine. He was a total punk and very much a “eff you authority” type, and yet…he was in the army. Those two things were just so totally at odds with each other. How could someone who really believed all of the anti-authority stuff that spawned punk music have ever thought to enlist? His answer was simple. He was living in New York when 9/11 occurred, and it changed his outlook on a lot of things. And so, applying real life reactions to the fantasy WoW world, I decided I could also have a character who was very much anti-authority but after tragedy felt the need to grow up and change. Silvermoon’s complete destruction by the Scourge seems like a powerful motivator in any Blood Elves life, so I took the idea and ran with it.
Today, Kora is my most developed character and the one I love the most, even if she’s not my main. She is my survivor, and even though she may be a Blood Knight now, she’s still very anti-authority and hates a lot of what goes on in Silvermoon. While writing about her one day, I had my playlist on random, and a song came on that fit her so perfectly that it’s been her theme song ever since. Whenever I’m feeling a little lost with her character, I go back and listen to this song and it gets me back on track.
My rare pet hunting continues (141/150!) and I have spent A LOT of time killing stuff in Winterspring and Wetlands, searching for the Azure and Crimson Whelplings. I wasn’t entirely convinced those actually exist until I saw the Azure Whelpling show up on the Alliance AH for 999,000g. Seriously are people on drugs? Anyway, I will obviously not be spending that much for a stupid non-combat pet.
But that means my sanity is wearing thin as I reach upward of 4000 kills in Winterspring for an adorable blue dragon. At first I was listening to all sorts of music while I did this, but even that wasn’t working when I got yet another inert elemental piece rather than the damn pet. So I’ve turned to Audible instead.
Audiobooks can be insanely expensive, and Audible takes the sting out of buying them by signing you up for a monthly fee membership. Rather than spending $40 for a new audio book, you spend $15 a month and get one credit each month to download whatever you like. There are all sorts of other benefits to it, but the main one is preserving your sanity during horrible, soul sucking grinds in WoW. It also works well for hellish drives from New York to Pennsylvania when it takes upwards of three hours to go 30 miles to get out of the NY area.
Right now I’m listening to the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. I was originally introduced to this series through the podcast Writing Excuses, which Sanderson is on. I’ve always highly respected what he had to say about writing but never quite got around to reading his books. Audible gave me that chance. If you’re at all interested in reading epic fantasy and you haven’t yet checked out this series, I encourage you to give it a read or listen. The magic system that he uses is highly inventive, and it managed to suck me in pretty quickly. Plus, hearing stories told about an amazing fantasy world makes killing yet another elemental guy much more bearable.
Posted in Shared Topics | Tagged audible, bad religion, character concept, music, seriously azure whelpling just drop, soundtrack | 9 Comments »
I love tanking classes. Of my 5 85s, 4 are capable of tanking. I have one of each tank class, and the next closest toon I have to max level is a second paladin. My most played toons are a druid and a paladin, and my DK and warrior are pretty much tied for third.
But I don’t play tanks.
It’s not that I don’t want to. In fact, I’ve said for at least two years that I want to try tanking. But not on my druid, because she’s my healer. And….not on my pally, because she’s my DPS toon. I had high hopes for my DK, but I had so much fun with blood dps that I didn’t want to switch to a tank spec. And my warrior, well. Warrior tanking just seemed too complicated, and besides, there’s nothing more badass than a forsaken chick running around with two gigantic 2h swords doing front flips.
Then there’s my second pally. He was actually leveled as prot, and so I understand how to play a prot pally somewhat. But I still don’t know how to tank because…I just don’t tank.
Considering my love of melee dps, and plate wearers in general, me not having a tank has become more and more glaringly obvious. I heal on my druid, priest, and occasionally pally, and I’m bringing a resto shaman up through the dungeon finder. Healing comes naturally to me. Melee dps comes naturally to me. I like playing support classes and having responsibility. So why can’t I tank?
Enter Ayame. She is my one alliance toon on my home server that has a function beyond standing at the neutral and Alliance AHs. I have a soft spot in my heart for night elves since my first toon was a night elf druid, and I particularly like their starting area. Sometimes when I’m stressed or just want to take in the pretty world, I’ll switch over to my nelf, away from my guild and chatter and from the grinds that I feel compelled to do. Ayame is freedom, and I usually feel like I’m playing a completely different game when I’m on her. The quests are all different, the feel of the zones of the different….Even the AH is different because there’s a ton of stuff on it!
But I can’t play a toon without giving them a backstory, and Ayame is no different in this regard. I’ve always liked the idea that the night elf women are the warriors and protectors for the race, and so I decided to make Ayame one, figuring she could be a sentinel of some sort. A friend of mine rolled up a night elf druid around the same time, and after kicking around a few ideas, we decided they were traveling together so she could protect him while he learned the finer nuances of being a druid. Since I so recently leveled a warrior as fury, I decided to spec Ayame as prot.
Yesterday, as I got irritated over still not having found that damn azure whelpling on my main, I switched over to Ayame and did a couple of quests, then stared at her tanking heirlooms for a while. There was really no reason I couldn’t tank a low level dungeon. They’re not that terribly hard. So I tried to boil down what exactly it was about tanking that scared me.
Looking over the list, I realized most of my issues with tanking are pretty much about me not having confidence in my abilities, not about tanking itself. The only one that isn’t really about me is wanting to represent my guild well, and since Ayame isn’t in a guild and she’s on the opposite faction from the people I normally hang out with, that really wasn’t an excuse. I decided that I needed to get over it.
So, I opened the random dungeon finder, clicked on the tank button, and then queued specifically for Ragefire Chasm. I know my way through that one, and I know what to do in there as well. It’s not like Wailing Caverns, which I know I would just get hopelessly lost in. Predictably the queue popped seconds later, and then, there I was, standing in the front of the dungeon with a bunch of weird looking Alliance toons. Where was the comforting hulking presence of the orcs, trolls, and tauren? Where were the spinny jumps of the blood elves? And where were the hunched forsaken with their wicked laughs? Where were my friends?! Oh that’s right. They were right outside that dungeon portal, hanging around in Orgrimmar. And….they would kill me if they saw me because I was a night elf! A tanking night elf!
After a few moments I realized that, oh shit, I’m supposed to be leading this group. Because I’m the tank! So I quickly typed into /p that this was my first time tanking and that I might mess up a bit. And then….I pulled.
First couple of pulls went okay. I didn’t really feel confident. That’s an understatement. My hands were shaking horribly, and I forgot about important things like, warriors need rage to start hitting stuff. Then the first boss fight began and I managed to lose threat on an add somehow. Fortunately, my tidy plates made it COMPLETELY OBVIOUS that was happening, and so I calmly switched targets and hit taunt. Nothing happened. Hit taunt again. Nothing. Swore. Taunt is broken! The add is eating the druid! OH GOD I SUCK AT THIS!
Then realized, no, I’m just not in defensive stance. Silly me! I quickly switched stances and then realized that I’d never actually set up my bars for defensive stance. I’m a smart one.
Fortunately no one died, and I quickly set up my bars so that there were actual attacks in it. And then….I proceeded to tank my way through the dungeon. I wish I could say that I did a good job with it or that I handled things flawlessly, but honestly it was pretty rough. No one died, but that’s because it was RFC. I managed to lose control of mobs during trash pulls, and I’m not sure if that was my fault or DPS hitting something before I even got a chance to thunderclap it. Fortunately, my taunt button did actually work after I was in the proper stance (imagine that!) so I was able to mostly get things under control. It was probably a slower run than people were used to, but no one complained and no one made fun of me, so that was a good thing. I decided to make a new list of things to think about for the next time I attempt tanking
I probably won’t use the dungeon finder that much as I’m leveling, because the whole point of this toon is that I get a new story to level through, and running RFD yet again really isn’t going to give me that. But I think I can do it occasionally, especially if I specifically queue for places I know I won’t get lost in. And more importantly, I did it. I finally got over that fear of hitting the tank button and going in to lead the group. My second pally is really excited about this prospect, and so I am because….man I really don’t want to level through Uldum again!
Posted in general | Tagged night elf, ragefire chasm, RDF, tanking, turn on defensive stance you idiot | 7 Comments »
The other night, I got a text from one of my fellow officers, asking if I wanted to go run Black Temple. We all want T6 for future transmogging endeavors, so I said yes and signed onto WoW to get it done. Five of us met in Shadowmoon Valley and jumped in with the intention of kicking Illidan in the pants and stealing his stuff.
I started playing this game shortly before Wrath launched, so I missed the apparently glory of BC raiding. On my very long trek to 80, I got invited to a couple of retro raids, which is how I saw things like Ony, ZG, ZA, and Black Temple along the way. I never really had the pleasure of running those with the guild I’d just joined though, so I mostly spent those raids feeling very confused, completely unwilling to roll on any of the cool stuff, and feeling too shy to talk in raid chat. Still, I was intrigued by the entire thing, and made a note that it was something I wanted to look at again when I had the chance.
Ony, ZA, and ZG I have obviously now had far, far too many looks at. In fact, if I never see the inside of the Zuls again, it will be too soon. (Somewhere, my pally is screaming that she wants to be geared too, dammit!) But Black Temple…man that place is amazing and epic feeling, even now.
It took my group not very long at all to smash our way through the place, and we got very lucky with drops and tokens. Our pally managed to complete her T6 set, and I picked up the shoulders for mine. But even beyond the gear collecting, this was one of the most fun and relaxing nights I’ve had in WoW in a long time.
I won’t lie. Firelands has been very difficult on my raid group. We lost a great DPSer early on to boredom, had countless computer and internet problems, gotten unlucky with drops for the majority, and generally aren’t making the kind of progress we’re used to. It’s been disheartening, and it’s taken a lot of fun out of the raiding for me. But after the Black Temple run on Monday, I felt like I started last night’s Firelands raid with a much clearer head than I have in weeks. And judging by the pleasant chatter in Mumble, it seems like other people did too.
This got me thinking. I haven’t run a Zul in awhile because I’m sick to death of them and needed a break. My druid is geared to the point where I don’t feel like I need to rush to get that next upgrade. So most of my recent game time has been spent collecting pets and either soloing old content or doing it with small groups. And suddenly a lot of my negative feelings about the game have lessened to the point that I actually want to go back and finish the Molten Front grind on my DK.
After playing around in the fun of Black Temple and Tempest Keep with ragtag groups or soloing Karazhan on my own, my first thought was, “Augh! Why didn’t Blizzard revamp THESE places to become five mans instead of the freaking Zuls?!” Then I realized this is the very last thing I want Blizzard to do. Inevitably if they were to update these old raids and throw them into the random dungeon finder, they too will be ruined by the monotony of being forced to run them constantly and dealing with idiot puggers while doing so. The moment that these places lose their relaxed, non-mandatory nature is the same moment they lose what I think is their current amazing (and important!) contribution to the game.
You know how during a fancy meal, you get lemon sorbet after the first course? That’s Illidan. That’s Ulduar. That’s Karazhan. Hell, it might even be ICC.
I think the game needs the old places, not just for their sense of nostalgia, but because they serve as a palate cleanser for current content. Running them is purely for fun, not for personal or guild advancement. We can chat on Mumble about completely unrelated to the raid sort of things while running through, but we’re still doing something together as a group. Or I can listen to a podcast or audio book while I solo old stuff and curse Attumen for not dropping that damn horse. Again. But the thing is, even though I would really LIKE to see those reins drop, it doesn’t ruin my night the way a bad session of progression raiding can. I just shrug and move on, figuring that next week, surely, I will see what I want. And if I don’t feel like flying over to Kara on the next lock out….eh, no big deal. It’s not like it won’t be the week after.
WoW is a grindy game. There’s no denying that fact. You “have” to run your dailies and your randoms and your progression raid so you can get the gear that will make it easier to do all that stuff. Somehow I feel that no matter what Blizzard does, eventually it will feel like a grind. But these old treasures break up that grind and make it easier to jump back into smashing your face against a Firelands boss the next week.
Blizzard, let these old favorites stay in the past rather than revamping them. They’re much more powerful there.
Posted in general | Tagged black temple, grind, karazhan, old content, raiding, retro, t6, tier 6, warcraft | 3 Comments »
I may not play a hunter, but man do I hunt pets. Just not the helpful kind that actually assist in battle. No, I’m more of a minipet collector, though my true dedication to the pursuit has only happened recently.
I’ve always liked pet collecting on my main. I made it a point to get whatever holiday pets I could for her, along with all of the Horde and Alliance faction pets. At level 60, I prowled my way through LBRS to get myself the worg pup, which is actually what kicked off my love of minipets in the first place. Still, I never went particularly crazy for farming the rare drops. The only rare drop I had is my magical crawdad, and I got that from pure luck after five casts in Terokkar. Really getting into the collecting was always something I planned to do “someday.” A couple of weeks ago, I realized I was really close to 100 pets and the Petting Zoo achievement and figured that I might as well work on getting there. Possibly up to the 150 achieve if I was lucky because the Celestial Dragon is awesome.
Around that time, I happened to notice one of my closest WoW friends hanging out in strange places like Winterspring and Zul’Drak. When I asked her what she was up to, she said she was working on getting to 150 pets as well. I suppose that motivated me, because since then I’ve been actually putting effort into my collection.
So I started looking over my collection of pets, seeing what I would need to do to hit 150. Unfortunately, since I started playing only shortly before Wrath, I’ve missed out on a lot of promotional pets and one time event pets. I’m still missing two Children’s Week pets. And that’s when I realized…..shoot, I have a crap ton of farming to do!
After getting lucky with a quick Sprite Darter drop, I spent a little time on WarcraftPets.com trying to figure out how long I could expect to see an Emerald Whelp drop. When I saw people saying things like “700 kills and still nothing!” I wondered if there was some addon out there that kept track of these things. The only one I saw on Curse was outdated, but in the comments, another author linked to the addon they’d been working on. I quickly downloaded it and was thrilled that it does exactly what I wanted!
Rarity is currently in beta, and from what I’ve found, it’s an awesome addition to pet collecting. Now I know exactly how many times I’ve killed random mobs in Winterspring, hoping that the stupid Azure Whelpling will drop (Hint: way too many times).
From Allara, the author:
Inspired by Bunny Hunter, Rarity tracks how many chances you’ve had to obtain various rare items throughout the game. It will tell you how likely you are to obtain the item, track how long you’ve been farming for it, etc. Primarily, this is useful for farming companion pets and mounts, but it also supports virtually any item including patterns and designs, archaeology projects, etc.
Some of the features are:
Personally, I mostly love this add on for showing me how many times I’ve killed stuff, and I especially love the achievement pop up telling me when I do actually get the pet. I would have definitely missed looting my Firefly without it, since I was half asleep when that sucker dropped and my bags were full!
Pet farming is generally a mind numbing experience, but addons like this actually make it more fun. Or at least easier to scream about how bad your luck is. If you’ve decided your crazy enough to try for the 150 achievement, definitely download this one to help you along the way.
Oh and as for me? I’m at 132 pets now, with a bunch of rare drops in my collection. 18 more and that dragon will be mine!
Posted in general | Tagged addon, collection, companion, drop, luck, minipet, pet, rare, rarity | 3 Comments »
Let me introduce you to the bane of my existence. It’s called Masterwork Elementium Deathblade. It’s not the bane of my existence because of the weapon speed (though I hate that too) or the fact that it has haste on it (also not a fan of that problem). No no. My issue with this sword is the hideous, horrible, overused model. Dear god, I am sick of it.
Let me explain. My pally is my favorite toon. She’s not my main and I don’t get to raid much on her, but she’s my favorite. While I spend most of my play time on my druid (and I love her too!) the pally is the one who has most of the achievemtents and collects the mounts. She’s my main RP toon, and during Wrath, I got to raid on her as well, and she was extremely well geared. I obsess about her dps and I keep up with ret pally theorycrafting. I don’t get to raid on her because I am the raid healer for my group, and that’s where I’m most useful. I’m not particularly good at holy healing, so even when I can bring alts into the raid, I usually don’t get to bring her. It’s sad, but I’m okay with it.
I still like making sure she has good gear though. The Deathblade is the best that’s available to me without raiding, so that’s what I’m using. But MAN do I hate that model.
Prior to the Deathblade, I was using the pink version of the sword, Blade of the Fearless. I had been using that since about….I don’t know….maybe three or four weeks after Cata dropped. I joked with my guildies that I felt like She-Ra with it, and changed my pally’s hair to resemble her for awhile. But after six months of looking at that sword, I’d had enough. I was stoked when I saw there would be a crafted sword because it meant I wouldn’t have to look at that awful thing anymore. Then I saw the preview and it was the SAME MODEL. It’s just blue this time, which I guess makes her He-man? Arg.
Needless to say, when 4.3 hits, the first thing I will be doing is running to the ethereals and transmogrifying the crap out of that sword. My first choice is my long lusted after favorite sword model in the game, Twinblade of the Phoenix from Tempest Keep. I honestly think this is one of the best swords around for a blood elf paladin. If RNG doesn’t smile upon me, I’ll probably use Greatsword of the Sin’dorei until it does. I loved that sword model during Wrath, and I only got to use it for a few days before an upgrade dropped for me in the five man ToC.
And possibly more exciting is that, as a ret pally, I have grown used to my belt and boots never matching my tier. It’s always either DK or warrior stuff, and sometimes that looks okay (like in t11) and sometimes it looks terrible (like in t10). Finally I will be able to use the models from those healie belts and boots and will not look like I’m color blind. And I will never have to wear a WWE style belt EVER AGAIN!!!!
I’m not just excited for my paladin here. My first thought when I heard the announcement was that I needed to go farm up the entire t6 set for my druid. Then, while playing Atlasloot dress up in guild chat last night, I realized that the off set drops from Black Temple look amazing with T12. While it’s not my favorite, I don’t mind t12, except for the shoulders and helm which I don’t care for in general, and make my poor tauren girl look like a deranged linebacker. But oh, it looks amazing with those two off set pieces!
Plus all of those gorgeous feral staves that look so perfect for a druid? Yeah. They will be mine.
My mains aren’t the only ones I’m excited for. I’ll probably deck my DK out in his starter gear again and will dual wield Tankard O’ Terrors. My engineer priest will be wearing her Wrath goggles full time. My warrior will get any other sword model than the freaking Blade of the Fearless….twice. And the beauty of it is, I’ll be able to change the look of these rarely played characters of mine who don’t often get upgrades, so that when I do get the chance to play them, I don’t have to look at the same gear for months on end.
I’m happy with the way Blizzard is doing this as well. I like that you still need to go get the gear if you want to wear it. I think it adds another level of achievement onto the whole thing. And I’m really looking forward to running old content with my guild so we can deck out our toons the way that we envision them. I would say that this is such an awesome thing for RPers, but really, I think it’s awesome for everyone to have more options. And it will be great that max level characters won’t just be complete clones of each other.
Oh, and as for void storage? Let’s just say my pally’s bank is rejoicing.
Posted in general | Tagged art, loot, patch 4.3, she-ra, staves, swords, tier gear, transmogrification, transmogrify | Leave a Comment »
A lot of times when I see people who are new to the idea of RPing in WoW starting to become curious about it, they have some questions about how to handle game play mechanics as opposed to story mechanics. We can assume that gameplay does not exactly equal the world that our characters live in. It’s obviously not possible for our toons to walk around carrying a bunch of bags with several sets of armor, bushels of herbs, raw fish that are months old, and explosives. There are many things that the world game needs to have from a practical view-point that make the game not annoying to play that just don’t work when you try to think of your character as a real person. But how do you decide what is a purely gameplay mechanic and what is something your character could be experiencing in their world? This is something that I encourage roleplayers to think about when they’re writing or RPing on their characters, and it can add to some interest in their stories as well. Some examples of what I mean:
Travel – All things considered, even in game terms, Azeroth is pretty big. It takes awhile to get from place to place even on a flying mount. However, when I handle myRP,I think of the world as being much larger than it could possibly be in game. I treat travel back and forth between Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms as a gigantic and expensive pain that takes quite a long time. I imagine zones being far more vast and expansive, and not possible to being walked across in a few minutes (And to make things more difficult, I vary how I handle this from zone to zone. Eversong and Ghostlands I imagine being slightly larger than they are in game, where a place like Mulgore or the Barrens I imagine being much much larger.) For the most part, I ignore the existence of portals, especially the ones that are in cities to help you get around. I don’t even really like including mage portals in my RP, but I will do that occasionally. But I tend to think of it as something that is very expensive and not commonly done.
Why do I make things harder on my character like this? For me, I feel it cheapens the world to be able to get around it so quickly in character. I want the world to feel big, and so when a character of mine has to travel from one continent to another, it feels as though it’s a serious investment of their time to do so. One of the themes I play with a lot in my RP is the idea of being away from loved ones for the sake of duty, and that entire things feels a lot cheaper if you can just instantly walk through portal and be wherever you want.
Reputations – I do a lot of rep grinding on paladin, mostly because she’s my mount collector. For this reason, she’s exalted with many factions that, in character,she just couldn’t care less about. She may be exalted with, for example, Ramkahen, but in character she’s only spent about a week in Uldum, and that was on vacation. She’s exalted with the Darkspear Trolls because I wanted the Crusader title for her, but in character she just really does not like trolls.
Generally what I do for my characters is pick a couple of factions that I do think they would actually care about, and gently work them into my RP. My paladin has done a lot of work with the Argent Crusade. My druid is all about all things…druid. My second pally worked a lot with Wyrmrest Accord when he was in Northrend. I really try to think of what is important to my character’s personality and determine important groups for them from there.
Raiding – When my guild killed LK, the way that I personally handled it in my RP was to write an epic battle scene with the Alliance and Horde vs. the Scourge. The assault on the citadel had gone on for a long time, with constant setbacks to explain why we didn’t just storm in and kill LK in one day. When we finally got to the point where we fought LK, I decided having it climax in an epic battle would be more fun than simply progressing through bosses as we did in the raid. In my version of that final battle, the platform we were all fighting on was a lot bigger, and there was a gigantic Braveheart style battle that broke out, with the two sides charging each other once the attack began. I used certain elements from the actual LK fight in the story, including Tirion’s beginning speech and some of the fight mechanics, but I also drew from other parts of ICC for inspiration as well.
I also tried to use the idea of raid groups in my story. My pally fought with a small unit, including a couple of healers, but once the chaos of battle started, it was easy for things to go wrong. She fought a group of Darkfallen, for instance, when she was seriously injured. And in the end, I used the same climax that we saw in the raid, complete with LK killing everyone and then getting a mass rez, but it wasn’t my character, or even my raid group alone, that killed LK. It was a very large group effort.
Healing and Rezzing – The concept of rezzing is one I most often hear asked about by new roleplayers. In the game, it’s such a common mechanic. All of the healers can rez you. DKs and locks can rez you. Strange spirit ladies with wings that like to hang out in graveyards can rez you, but they like to break your armor first. Without rezzing, the game would be no fun at all. That doesn’t mean it makes for a good story mechanic though. I like for my character’s lives to have weight and matter, and if their deaths could be solved with a simple spell, suddenly difficult choices no longer have an important meaning. Death is one of the most imposing aspects of life, and to take that away from your characters really cheapens everything they do.
Generally I don’t even think that rezzing exists in the world of Azeroth, unless you’re talking about extreme cases, like in the fight with LK. I tend to view it as when we see a character “die” in game, they’re just being knocked out or have grievous injuries that will take a long time to heal. I also don’t tend to write about healing being as easy and effective as it is in game. I like the idea that my characters can walk out of a battle banged up with cuts and bruises and scars. Generally, I view healing as something that allows them to keep fighting, but only time and rest can truly heal wounds.
There are plenty other pieces of gameplay mechanics that don’t necessarily fit into good storytelling. As is probably clear, I prefer to cut out a lot of the things that are convenient and would make my character’s lives easier. Just as Lord of the Rings wouldn’t have been as compelling if the fellowship could have ported to Mordor or Order of the Phoenix would have lost its weight if Sirius simply could have accepted a rez, I think in general good story telling comes from difficult situations that need to be overcome. Letting your characters have things to easily makes for a boring story. And boring stories make for boring RP!
What are some gameplay mechanics that you’ve felt have no place in storytelling?
-Faye
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For quite some time, I’ve wanted to start a blog that chronicles my love of WoW.and the community attached to it. I kept myself from doing it because I felt I lacked having anything to share that hasn’t already been covered somewhere else in the blogging community. I’ve decided to go ahead with it anyway, and hopefully along the way I’ll have some interesting views that others in the community will find entertaining.
About me: I started playing WoW almost three years ago, a couple of months before the launch of Wrath. I had always been interested in WoW, but never had the time to play. I blame Mr. T for finally luring me in. After seeing his commercial, I went and downloaded the trial (and was thrilled that it ran on my Mac, by the way), rolled myself a night elf druid, and immediately fell in love with the world that Blizzard gave me. The moment I walked into Darnassus, I was completely overwhelmed by how beautiful it was. Something about the entrance and the huge “Alliance Territory” that flashed on the screen really hit home for me that something epic had occurred. Then I glanced down at trade chat, was vaguely horrified by what I read, then was asked if I wanted to eRP by some random night elf warrior, and I promptly signed off. A few days later I told a real life friend of mine (who was a former WoW player) about my experience, and he told me to reroll Horde on his old server. Despite the fact that I didn’t want to be “one of those big cow things,” I listened to him and have been an avid Horde player ever since. I still love Teldrassil and Darnassus though, and will occasionally roll up a new baby druid just to experience the zone again.
These days, my mains are a restoration druid and a retribution paladin, because I enjoy healing things and smacking stuff in the face with a sword. I’m an officer in a guild that focuses on both RP and 10-man raiding. I’ve never been interested in doing 25-man raiding because I like the tight nit nature of a smaller group. I make it a point to set aside time each week to RP. For me, if a toon doesn’t have a good character and story behind it, I can’t get into playing it.
In the real world, I work in the a creative field, and my degree is in graphic design. Unsurprisingly, I’m fairly obsessed with having a nice looking UI. I’m the person in my raid who will say random things like “Huh, interesting, they’re using the main melody from ‘Invincible’ as the undertone for the music that they play here,” while waiting for people to come back from a break. I love that Blizzard takes the time to add so many “flavor” items to the game, and think it would be pretty boring if everything in the game were about upgrades.
My hopes for this blog is that it will have a fair mix of entries about raiding, RP, lore, and general silliness in between. I’ll let it evolve naturally and see where I can find my niche in this very vocal community.
-Faye
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The Dancing Tree 