This Was A Triumph

Here's a shot of Deathwing before he became too busy tossing people off his back in LFR to burn the world. This was taken moments before I met a fiery end while trying to fish peacefully in Uldum. "Oh, the fire won't extend this far..." Famous last words, DW, but I got my revenge.

I was actually awake when the NDA for Mists lifted! I could have written a blog post then and been a forerunner in blog news. Instead, it’s a few days later and everyone has had time to pick over and digest all of the new information and so you won’t learn anything new here!

Of course there were some things I am interested in with Mists. One is a new character slot – hallelujah! Of course, I would have preferred a few new character slots (five, maybe?) but I’ll make do with one. The hardest thing for me is looking at my roster of characters and deciding who is going to die. Which one gets the axe? I know there are some folks for whom deleting characters is actually somewhat cathartic or commonplace, but for me it’s a big deal! I’ve only ever deleted one character who was higher level than 40; my ill-fated hunter. I just never “clicked” with her. Actually, I lie – I didn’t even delete that character, I transferred it to Voss’ account. So the highest level character I’ve ever deleted was twenty.

I’m not sure if it’s because of my inherent RP attitude that it’s tough to do – although I did joke that I “killed” my night elf priest when I race-changed her into a draenei. It’s like I’m murdering a person? Anyway, I need at least two new character slots, one to house my draenei monk and another for a pandaren of some persuasion. Characters that are currently on the chopping block:

-Sarika, 32 Draenei warrior: Warriors are pretty fun and all, but I seldom play her and don’t have much interest in tanking generally. My intent was to level her as a tank and blog about it. She doesn’t have much story or background to speak of either so as far as “murders” go it’s pretty low-risk.

-Jun, 16 Night Elf rogue: I finally made a rogue but I only played her for a day. I have to admit, the lowbie rogue experience seems to be lacking in some way? (Or else it’s me that’s the problem). I learned poisons but they didn’t tell me squat about poisons, and the only way I found a poison vendor was looking on Wowhead. If I had been a new player with this rogue I probably wouldn’t have put poisons on my dagger for approximately 50 levels or similar, as it was it’s a miracle I remembered that you could put poisons on EACH dagger. So Jun’s fate is uncertain, at the least I will probably keep her and use the name for my pandaren.

-Mildred, 41 Forsaken priest: Actually, Mildred’s name probably doesn’t belong on this list because I can’t bring myself to delete her because her name is Mildred. Even though I have little interest in playing a priest or a Horde character at this time. I’ve considered deleting her just to remake some other class so I can experience the “new” Forsaken experience everyone is talking about. But Mildred is the perfect foil to my Millya, so she’s probably okay. Plus Voss has adopted her name as a means of referring to someone who is doing something annoying, such as running halfway across a zone to pick a Mageroyal, losing track of every person in your leveling group, then stopping to pick 8000 Peacebloom. He hollers, “MILDREEEDD!” I suppose you have to hear it to appreciate it.

Anyway, one of those characters will need to die so I have sufficient slots. I had intended to level Jun so we could work towards the Classy Night Elves achievement, but I grossly overestimated available time and interest. Maybe Mildred should be a mage instead (because I need another one! No, really!)

Mists sounds like it’s going to be pretty great for pet collectors, clothes horses goats, and folks who have a sick addiction to dailies and rep grinds like I do. I played Farmville for awhile, until the pressure to harvest imaginary vegetables made me ask myself, “Why am I logging in at specific times to plant more blueberries when I could be playing WoW instead?” Now I’ll never have to experience that dilemma again. I’m not even being sarcastic, I’m excited to plant Warcraft vegetables. I think this addition might just tip the scale and get my Mom to play WoW too, which is why I’m not going to mention it to her. I was telling some guildies the other day that I asked my Mom if she wanted to try WoW because I thought her tolerance for repetitive activities would make her the ideal herb-farmer and miner. In her off-time, she would collect pets. I’m informed that considering using my Mom as an herb farmer makes me a horrible person, which is probably true. But she’d be so GOOD at it!

I like the female Pandaren models. I’m interested to see more of their faces, but I think they are much better than they could have been; they are obviously not an afterthought as female worgen were, which shows that Blizzard was listening to those criticisms, which I appreciate. I’ve heard that some bottom dwellers have already come out of the woodwork to complain that they are fat, to which I say, they are PANDA PEOPLE. Get over yourself! She could have been even fatter and I would’ve been happier, but she’s fine the way she is. I’ll be happy to play one, which is pretty different from my initial feelings about the Mists expansion.

Generally, everything I read about Mists made me more excited to play it. I think the story sounds interesting, I think exploring the continent sounds exciting – even the 10,000 waterfalls, which I will no doubt visit because I like a healthy dose of masochism with my gaming. There will be so much content at level 90 that I can’t possibly be bored. Not being a Warcraft III player, I had no basis for the existence of Pandaren but as friends urged me to keep an open mind I put any premature judgements on hold. Even Voss has warmed to the Pandaren and is looking forward to leveling one with me. The only thing that will need addressing before Mists is my serious dearth of bank space. I finally sold my Darkmoon Card: Volcano just the other day in desperation and to free up one more slot. Farewell, old friend. You served me well for three tiers. You will not be missed.

I eagerly await the time when mounts are made account-wide so that I can ride my ridiculous and awesome rooster mount on any character. They’ve said it’s next on their list after pets, now that the tech is in place to make it happen. That’s a feature worth having, as far as I’m concerned! Cory Stockton also said that there’s been a dramatic increase in the number of people who are raiding since LFR was introduced; he had to be a bit sly about specifics, so no percentages or numbers, but that’s pretty neat to hear. LFR obviously has its upsides and downsides, but the ability to queue for it with friends from other servers has made a big difference to me. Plus, I’ve been using loot from it on my main for months now so I should probably not say much!

Last but not least, here are two links to things that caught my eye today.

My fellow Moonrunnerian (Moonrunnerite?) over at Double Protection wrote about a topic near and dear to my heart: Loot! Don’t lie, you love the purples too. Specifically, he’s addressing a problem that our raid group has experienced – loot distribution for tens. We had six weeks of constant Conqueror tokens, I’m not even kidding. We only recently started to get Vanq again, I got my four-piece bonus just a short time ago, and two of my pieces were from LFR. I like some of his ideas.

Alas of Kiss My Alas fame is sadly wishing the Warcraft blogosphere farewell (Kiss this Alas goodbye). Alas’ voice will be missed, also her querulous sheep that never fails to make me guffaw. (Okay, I’m biased, so what). Best wishes, Alas! Mage mage.

And Cynwise did a reading round-up just today, so in a lazy roundabout way you should check out his post if you’re looking for yet more great posts!

 

 

Then and Now Update

I wanted to thank everyone who participated in the “Then and Now” challenge. I’ve really enjoyed reading your reminiscing and seeing your screenshots from back in the day! Thanks to MMO Melting Pot as well, who featured it. I thought it’d be a shame to miss out on the great posts from folks who wrote on this topic, so you can see them below. I based my list on comments or trackbacks I received, so hopefully I got them all! Nineteen blogs participated, so there is a lot of great reading here. It’d be a shame to miss out on these posts from around the WoW ‘sphere. I had been updating the original post but I didn’t want those links to get buried.

Apple Cider Mage

Orcish Army Knife

Dancing Runes

Water Bender

Power Word: What?

Info About WoW From The Altoholic

Warcraft of the Worlds

Need More Rage

Jaedia’s Menagerie

I Like Bubbles

Kamalia et Alia

Tiny WoW Guild

Bubbles of Mischief

The Daily Frostwolf

Jed’s Corner of WoW Shenanigans

Killing ‘Em Slowly

Sugar and Blood

Need More Rage

Ironyca Stood In The Fire

The Stories of O

Raiding After Dark

Sixth

So there is a meme going around to go into your screenshot folder, go to the sixth folder and take the sixth image there. I don’t have any screenshot subfolders, so the sixth screenshot in my folders is this one:

I was tagged to do this by a number of folks, I’m sorry but I slacked off so long that I can’t remember exactly who they all were but Cymre was definitely one (possibly the first). This was the outfit I wore to hang out with Velen while I was doing the Love Is In The Air stuff. I wanted the pink lovebird, so I made a visit to my faction leaders every day, and on this day it happened I had gotten my hands on the Velen staff look-alike from the quest chain in SMV. I was thrilled because I THOUGHT I had done the quest chain already and somehow lost the staff, but it turned out I’d never completed it! This staff is an essential component of any draenei caster’s repertoire.

Speaking of the joys of transmogrification, check out today’s From Draenor With Love for another glimpse into my mad ‘mogging. Bag space is becoming a serious issue.

I think every single person has been tagged to do this screenshot thing already, but if you haven’t, consider yourself tagged!

Friday Link Love

It’s been a definite adjustment to me learning to juggle the needs of a webcomic, a blog, a guild/raiding and oh, that real life thing, too. Unfortunately it’s been Manalicious that has suffered the most because I consider the webcomic to have a hard deadline, and I’ve given priority to some RL things as well. (For example, visiting my Grandmother weekly, which I consider time really well spent).

Anyway, long story short – I haven’t written here but I’m not dead and it’s just for lack of time. Today I’m working on finishing off my Secret Santa Art Trade piece, which I’m excited to share when it’s done. Look for it next Tuesday! If you check out that link on the 25th or later, all of the art should be up.

If you haven’t otherwise been reading From Draenor With Love, we started a seasonal story arc a few weeks ago. You can check it out starting here:

Winter Fail (Part One)

It has rockets, gifts, and snow, so it’s pretty much the perfect holiday gift, in my humble and extremely biased opinion.

I also took part in a cookie exchange organized by Liala over at Disciplinary Action. Rather than mailing cookies, we traded and baked recipes from mystery givers, while someone else baked our own recipes. The cookies pictured above were not my cookies from this event, I made them last year but I can’t resist using the picture again. They are draenei! But also gingerbread!

Mana Cake Musings wrote a nice Fire mage specific guide to Dragon Soul, if you are a mage of the fiery persuasion it’s worth checking that out.

On a more serious note, Jaded Alt writes about Mental Illness and WoW in a piece that I found both insightful and personally significant. If you’ve ever struggled with depression, you’ll probably recognize yourself in what Windsoar describes. For me, WoW has been at times an unhealthy escape and a blessing. It’s good to have a way of being in contact with people, however minimally, at a time when your tolerance for socializing might be low. It’s also good (for me) to take myself away from WoW sometimes to get out and meet with folks face to face. I usually have to force myself to do that if I am depressed, and it usually does help.

Redbeard at Parallel Context has been writing about how the blood elves and draenei are really more alike than they’d like to think. He starts part one here, but it’s a four part series so make sure you read the later three if you’re interested!

Tzufit has a post about The Ethics of Raid Finder Loot that’s very thought-provoking! You may have already seen it as it was linked from WoW Insider, but if you haven’t it is well worth a read.

Many WoW bloggers took part in the Furtive Father Winter event and their posts are starting to be posted! I didn’t take part myself (because I was already doing the art exchange and I was already behind on doing it so I knew I wouldn’t have the time) but I’m sure there are some great gifts that came out of it. It’s always fun to discover new bloggers this way, too.

These are just a few items from around the WoW blogsphere I wanted to mention. Meaning, these are people who have been writing when I haven’t. I hope you find something you enjoy, and Merry Christmas to you if you celebrate it, happy holidays otherwise, or have a great weekend if none of the above apply to you! I’m going to be curling up with a good book and eating too much with my family. We already ate most of the baking, but it’s as if the chocolate in this house is multiplying (not that we mind).

 

 

Twisted Nether Blogcast

I don’t have much to say today, I just wanted to mention that I was invited to be a guest on the Twisted Nether Blogcast tomorrow at 8 Pacific (or 11 Eastern, depending on which one applies to you). The show is live so you can ask questions if you have any, or just hang out with Fimlys, Hydra and myself for a bit. I’d love to see you there!

Also, thank you to everyone who has been to check out From Draenor With Love this week. Our second comic went up and I am excited to post a third. (Waiting an entire week is killing me every time).

Solidarity and Silence

I was talking with a friend via e-mail about the Corpsegrinder dust-up at Blizzcon. Pradzha has already written about it more eloquently here, and my friend sent an e-mail that I found particularly poignant. I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I’m not going to try. If you haven’t read Pradzha’s post I recommend you do that first.

The long and the short of it is that George Fisher (aka Corpsegrinder) said some nasty stuff about Alliance players, and he couched it in very homophobic and hateful terms – and it was played during the Blizzcon concert, albeit with much of that bleeped out. That’s the tl;dr version. Below is what my lovely friend had to say about the matter:

Many years ago, when I was still in high school, a cartoonist named Doug Marlette did a cartoon of Ed Meese, who was then-President Reagan’s Attorney General. In the cartoon, Meese was standing with his enormous belly hanging out, and a little starving child was sitting in its shade, all skin and bones, while Meese said, “I see no evidence of poverty in America.”

It was a harsh criticism (if sadly accurate), but that cartoon always stuck with me, because it so clearly represents something you see time and time again — not just from public figures, and not just about poverty, but from regular people about regular things. How many times do you hear somebody say something like, “I don’t know why <x> is so worked up about <y>, I don’t see any problem.”

Maybe <x> is a woman and <y> is the salary gap. Maybe <x> is a gay person and <y> is the right to be legally married. Maybe <x> is a poor single minority working mother and <y> is child care. Whatever you plug in for <x> and <y>, those of us in positions of privilege naturally tend to generalize from our own experiences to the experiences of others, to our detriment and theirs.

And when I say this, I’m not excluding myself. Sure, maybe I have some disadvantages being a woman in a highly male-dominated technical field, but on balance, I’ve got all kinds of advantages that are not available to other people. As much as I try not to let that colour my views, it does, and that’s something I have to be aware of.

So, when I see people like Blizzard putting an asshole like George Fisher up there on stage and an audience cheering at his filthy, homophobic language, it makes me very sad—but it doesn’t surprise me, and I don’t think they’re necessarily evil: They’re just playing out the cultural template that we’re given. That doesn’t excuse his behaviour (or theirs), but it does mean it’s not a problem we’ll solve by condemning Blizzard. I just hope that someday we will get to a point where playing a video like that will stun the audience into shocked silence, rather than drawing cheers.

I like to think that the reaction was mostly to his flag-waving rather than his homophobia — that the cheers weren’t for “fag” and “fucking queer” but for “Horde pride”. I don’t think faction loyalty is necessarily bad in itself.  But even if that’s true, it means people are shockingly unaware of the rest of the template that’s playing out—the casting of sexual orientation as choice, the marginalization of difference, the whole panoply of human xenophobia that we are painfully heir to.

That’s why I say that it makes me sad more than angry. The whole thing makes it starkly clear how much more work there still is before us.

The fact that it’s human nature doesn’t mean we should sit by and accept it—that is after all what causes the problem in the first place—but we won’t get past it with rage.

What my friend is saying is that this isn’t a problem specific to Blizzard. Do I think they should acknowledge and apologize that their actions contributed to hate speech? Yes, I think they should. Bleeping it out doesn’t make it go away. Endorsing someone like that and putting him on stage at their concert is tantamount to endorsing his message. But I also think we could all stand to take a look at not just this one incident, but what it implies. Check your privilege, recognize that you probably have advantages that others don’t; opportunities and privileges that you don’t even realize, and you can never fully understand someone else’s experience. But you can listen, and you can damned well try. We all can!

We can stop ourselves from using slurs that demean other people, which yes, includes saying something is “gay.” You never know who you are hurting, and even if you aren’t saying it directly to an LGBTQ person, you’re furthering a culture in which it’s okay to say such things and think nothing of it. Hate speech is ugly, and it’s needless. I’d seen this video long before it was played and I cringed and felt a bit sick at the vitriol directed at other people for what – the imaginary cities they inhabit in their imaginary worlds? This is a person with some serious issues, and for the record, I love my Horde friends. I couldn’t care less that they happen to play “on the other side.” I’d love the gaming community to be known for its tolerance, acceptance and solidarity in the face of internet dragons. We’re all people. Be good to each other.

Hot Off The Presses: Thursday Link Love

I was recently journeying through Bloodmyst when this happened. Augh, I'm a shadow of my former self...and I'm half the size of this guy here! Also, I have no hooves. What is the world coming to?

Here are some posts I’ve enjoyed from around the community in the past few days! If you’re looking for a read or a laugh to get you through one last work-day before Friday, check them out!

First, Akabeko at Red Cow Rise writes about the Midsummer Fire Festival . It’s not a guide, it’s actually about the festival. I loved the comparisons to ‘real life’ traditions from various cultures.

Rades has some tips (including videos) for folks struggling with the torch catching dailies that are part of the festival. I don’t know about you guys, but I had a harder time with this task than I remember having in the past! Now that I’ve remembered it I’m fine, but initially? Wow. I thought it was a problem of Vid’s for awhile there. (Clearly her, not me.)

Runzwithfire (Do you see my theme, here?) tried his hand at his first vlog. I guarantee you that every blog post would be better if it involved a British accent.

My friend Saif over at Raiding After Dark has a letter to all raiders. I won’t spoil the ending.

Finally, Ophelie at The Bossy Pally is back after jaunting all over North America! I might be biased because one of her stops was in my city, and we hung out, but I love reading about trips and WoW blogger meet-ups. I’m going to be writing about meeting her soon, myself (as soon as I stop procrastinating) but in the meantime, you can check out her trip account here.

Odds and Sods

I have just a few odds and ends for you this Monday afternoon. First of all, Business Time is recruiting! We’re looking for a dedicated and awesome healer to fill out our roster. You can check out our recruitment thread here for more info. The one class we’re missing is a resto shaman but we wouldn’t discount any other type of healer. All exceptional applicants will be considered. I’d like to note that even though recruitment in this expansion has been crazy and we’ve had to bring more new people on board than ever before, that I’m proud we haven’t had to resort to bringing people “just to make the numbers” that really aren’t a good fit personality-wise. We are a group of friends that loves to get things done and clear heroic content, but people have to fit in with our small posse first. We’ve never compromised on that account, and so BT continues to be a great place to play. You should check us out! The sooner we can find the right person, the sooner we can get ready to hit Firelands together.

Now, for some link love! I’ve read some really great posts over the past few days. First up, check out When The Healer Says “Pull Bigger” over at Heavy Wool Bandage. Glorwynn has summarized everything that makes me irate when I’m on either a tank or a DPS character (naturally, as a healer I never tell my tank to do much of anything besides let me drink and don’t break line of sight). I’m not even going to try to express it, because she’s already said it so well.

Zinn at Jinxed Thoughts has some interesting insights into the difficulties that 10s and 25s have faced so far in Cataclysm. Speaking as someone who has been focused on tens for as long as I’ve been raiding, I think these things are always interesting to analyze and think about. Well worth a read!

Finally, The Daily Blink writes a blog post to follow up the comic Lament Of An Ex-Mage. Remember the private hell of tanks and healers, my DPS friends, lest they forget where their taunt button is located!

Sunday Linking Love

This week has seen me spending a lot of time in front of the computer with a weird cold (It’s weird because I felt awful but it was never a full-blown cold). I’ve been catching up on silly achievement things that Millya hadn’t done yet. For instance, I had to get Vidyala the reputation to buy the schematic to make this bad boy:

In actual fact, I don't think Millya would ever have a license plate that says "pwn" because it's not grammatically correct.

So I’ve been having fun creating noise pollution and generally looking badass (come on, you can’t tell me that doesn’t look badass) and not really writing anything of my own… But I have read some blog posts lately that are worth a look if you’ve missed them!

Heavy Wool Bandage wrote about Intellect Issues – not the stat. To me, this post is a reminder to have patience with everyone who is playing and think about the things you say. We’re all playing for different reasons and with different skill-sets, and sometimes it’s easy to forget. That’s different, not “better.”

I’m not linking to a specific post, but in case you missed this news, Jaedia is blogging again at Jaedia’s Menagerie after a hiatus. Drop by and say hi!

Kamalia posted an image of a curly-haired Tauren I just love. You may have guessed from my own character, but I like curly hair. It’d be great to see some new Tauren hairstyles in general.

Akabeko at Red Cow Rise wrote a short fic about an archaelogy item that’s bothered me, too. I found it poignant and sad.

Finally, Shintar shares some of her pug stories from recently. They aren’t horror ones, either, further reminder that sometimes pugs are just fine. (I think we all need that from time to time).

Voss and I booked our hotel for our trip at the end of June. We’re not going to Blizzcon, but we are going to Vancouver and we’ll meet three guildies/WoW folks during the trip! I don’t usually do this, but I’m trying to build a buffer of posts to schedule for while I’m away. If you have any requests or ideas for posts or things you’d like to see here, let me know in the comments and I’ll see what I can do! No promises, but the muse could use a bit of a hand right now.

Tuesday Art Day: More Mini-Sketches

You might remember on my anniversary post I was giving away freebies, of sorts. Here are some that didn’t make it into the first batch or that I’ve finished since! If you requested one and I’ve missed you, maybe you could call my attention to it? I had folks who wanted one but didn’t share an armory link and I’ve gotten a bit confused keeping the comments all straight.

Anyway, mini-sketches, 5-minutes each, you know the drill.

In somewhat related news, you can see the gentlemanly murloc I did for Zelmaru over at Murloc Parliament and check out her snazzy new layout while you’re at it!

Rades and Beru each wrote posts that were tear-jerkers for different reasons – Beru’s a moving story of success, Rades’ a lament for a lost friend.

Also, my friend Liala featured me in her comic, Disciplinary Action – after I complained that there was a serious lack of draenei representation. She set out to teach me that the cliche is true – you really do have to be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

There’s no patch tomorrow, unfortunately. I’ve never anticipated a patch quite so eagerly – I really want those new meta gems. How about you, are you looking forward to the patch for any reason or wish it wouldn’t come? Voss observed cheerfully, “Well, that just means I get another week of being OP!” He has a way of looking on the bright side.