Moar alts!

Tyrael's charger: now you see it, now you don't

2011-12-10T14:05:00.000Z

I've never had any problems with Blizzard's GMs, or the in-game support that's been provided to me. I'm unfailingly polite in my (rare) GM tickets, and always, but always have thanked whichever GM that dealt with my issue. It's one of the things I've always thought Blizzard have had in their favour - their customer service, in my experience, has been excellent.

Imagine my disappointment now. I signed up a few weeks ago for the Annual Pass, mainly because I *really* wanted Tyrael's Charger for my paladin (and my other belfs...), but also because I figured that I'll still be playing WoW in a year, so it was win/win. When 4.3 hit, my mount was duly delivered to all my characters and I really loved it. It felt like the right mount for my paladin, but it worked well with some of my other characters as well. Plus I could take screenies like this:

So I was a happy gamer. A few days ago, I logged into my account, and my mounts had vanished, from all my characters. Gone, removed, no longer there. I wrote a polite ticket then had a quick shufti on the forums - sure enough, it wasn't just me that this had happened to. Three days later, I repeat that: three days later, I finally got a response to my ticket, saying that I had failed to reply to the email they had sent about my Parental Controls. Those would be the Parental Controls that I had only set up because of the Real ID fiasco on Sven's advice. However, a while ago I disabled it because I thought it would be nice to have the option to catch up with a few people there.

I'd gathered, from the forums, that this was the standard response, so I wrote politely back, saying that a) I don't have Parental Controls active, and b) that I haven't had an email from them about the Annual Pass. Could they now kindly find a solution, and restore my mounts please? I've just had a response to this which is the exact same response. Word for word. Nice copy and paste job there, folks. Thanks for that. I have pointed this out, in another ticket... And now I wait, with breath that really cannot be described as 'bated'...

To say that I'm unamused is putting it mildly. I had to activate the damn Parental Controls in the first place because of the RealID privacy issue. They are no longer active. I haven't had an email from Blizzard (and just for the record, Himself, who does still have active Parental Controls replied to the email and still doesn't have an active Annual Pass, weeks later!) anyway. They would also like me to provide them with a scanned copy of my identification, such as my passport! Can I just ask you to take a moment to decide whether, with all the security breaches from games companies in recent months, if you would happily scan a crucial document, such as your passport, then email it to a company who, allegedly, has reasonable cyber-security (at present anyway... But then again, I'd hazard that Sony also thought that... )

I'm incredibly disappointed. I understand that there can be occasional issues when new things (such as the Annual Pass) go live, but the customer service that I have experienced on this occasion, has been shabby. I thought Blizzard were better than this.

Responding in kind

2011-12-01T18:39:00.001Z

Dear Niae

Thank you for your recent letter, and the charming pictures you enclosed.

I get that you want to ditch mining, I really, do, but sweetie, you're a paladin. Not a druid, not a shaman, not, heaven forbid, a *whispers* Tauren. A Sin'Dorei paladin. It's not really even appropriate that you're wafting around flower-picking is it? Be thankful that I didn't follow through with my plan to make you into a blacksmith...

And, whilst we're on the subject of paying your way, who decided that they wanted a ret spec after seeing this? Because, sweetie, even if you get geared enough to try that stuff, I'm not sure I'm good enough to help you out! So you got your ret spec and the armour didn't you? And then what did you decide? That actually you felt quite squishy as ret and that you probably did almost as much damage as holy, but without losing half your health in every fight? I think I got that right...

I know right now, you don't think that you'll want to fly even faster, but trust me sweetie, you will in a bit. And learning alchemy means a lot of time spent riding round all the places that ~~you're~~ I'm bored with, just to gather a metric f*ck tonne of plants. I'd understand if you would consent to doing archeology, because then eventually we might have a shot at this but as you insist on grumbling that surveying is nearly as tedious as mining, I'm guessing you're not going to go for that.

You're doing really well, sweetie. You're getting much more skilled and experienced. Why, just today you were rewarded for the assistance you provided to the Horde in Dragonblight and I'm very proud of you. Keep that sort of work up, and I'll seriously consider procuring alchemy training for you.

See you soon!

When your alts start writing to you... you have a problem.

2011-12-01T12:17:00.000Z

Dear Sally

Hullo, it's Niae here. Niae? The Sin'Dorei paladin that you're currently playing through Northrend. I've been trying to explain some things to you, but you don't seem to be taking it on board, so I thought I'd write to you and see if that helped.

Firstly, stop dragging me back to Orgrimmar. I like Dalaran. It's virtually deserted now, you know. If (for some unfathomable reason) you need me to get back to the orc city quickly, there is a perfectly good portal that the Sunreavers have gone to a lot of effort to maintain. There are a number of perfectly acceptable hostelries for me to rest in, ok The Filthy Animal might not be at the top of my list, but the chambers in the Legerdemain Lounge are very acceptable. I know that I'm supposed to be paying my own way (more on this later) but Reginald Arcfire has stopped being quite so uppity about his clientèle and now non-engineers can use him to auction off their goods as well.

As I've mentioned the paying my way thing, can I ask you (again) to re-consider your view about me needing to have two gathering professions? You know how much pleasure I get from herb gathering but the same cannot be said for mining. I know you think that I need to earn as much as possible, so when I'm finally skilled enough to be sent to Hyjal or the Twilight Highlands I'll be able to fly faster but really, I'd rather fly slower and be allowed to train as an alchemist. I'm fed up with swinging a pick. I've been spending some time in the alchemy shop in Dalaran, the Agronomical Apothecary, and I'm enclosing some pictures I took. I hope they persuade you...

Ice-thorn growing indoors!

Look how many potions I could learn to make.

See how many books they have?

Tiger-lillies growing in the middle of a city!

And Talandra's Rose!

The Agronomical Apothecary

2011-11-28T08:40:00.000Z

*knock knock*

Is there anybody out there...? Or have you fainted with shock at seeing a Moar Alts post appear in your Reader? It's ok, I don't blame you for either not being around anymore (not sure why I'm comforting you in a post that you'll never read, though) or for being a tad shocky. The awful thing is that I'm still playing a lot of WoW, I just haven't been writing about it. I've not bucked the trend for Skyrim or for SW:ToR (but I have watched Himself play the beta and yeah, I don't really do Star Wars. I'm not even sure that I've seen the films; has my geek cred disappeared totally now?) and I've unwillingly unsubbed from Rift as I wasn't playing it. Ever. Ok, you're up to date now, amirite? Good.

So, Himself has a max level hunter (which I clearly don't resent him for, not a tad, especially not when my hunters all stall in the mid-30s. I'm really ok with him having one. Honestly. Convinced? Excellent!) that he's kinda (I think) decided to do that extreme mad soloing thing that hunters and their turtles do, only in his case there's a scarab not a turtle. Yesterday, when I hauled my streaming-with-cold self off the sofa momentarily, I saw that he was going into Tempest Keep. Hey, wait! WTF, honey? Why are you doing that without me?? Himself muttered something about starting to solo stuff, and wanting the tier 5 2 piece set bonus thing for moar pet healz, but was very gracious when I ~~demanded~~ offered to come along too, I'll bring my priest along, then, y'know, there will be healz and stuff. Unfortunately, unlike hunters, priests don't have stealth so we had to remove some of the trash first... We outlevel this content by 15 levels. Ok, it's a 25 man raid but we're still 15 levels above it. Damn, if it isn't hard though. The Void Reaver was the one we needed to kill, and actually we got him on the first try, so Himself got his shoulders and I got mine ('mogging stuffz? They're odd looking though...) Himself hadn't managed to soak up all the damage from the arcane orbs on his own, so whilst I did bugger all damage, because, gee ain't silence fun when you're a priest, I did absorb 50% of the hits, giving him enough breathing space to still be alive at the end. And y'know, I was in Tempest Keep. Woot and stuff. I've never been before. Best I did in BC was Kara, Zul'Aman and Magtherion.

After our success with the Reaver we went to Serpentshrine Cavern to try our luck with Leotheras. He might need a few more people...

Self-Promotion (of a sort)

2011-10-06T16:44:00.000+01:00

As I'm failing to find the time to blog here regularly, I'd like to take the opportunity to direct you all to I Started With a NES, a brand new new blog about games and gaming which I will be contributing to. Aside from my usual irrelevant gibberish there will be posts from a diverse selection of gamers about a diverse selection of... games. So c'mon people, add it to your Readers! And if you're still pining for me, the RL ranting and gibbering can be found here.

Furbolgs should be a playable race

2011-09-13T09:03:00.000+01:00

But they aren't *sulks*. However this:

Gives me this and this. Which does this:

Click to enbiggen.

So that's ok then!

In which I do a maths joke

2011-09-09T12:36:00.000+01:00

Snark-eology

2011-08-24T19:21:00.000+01:00

Or, as you may be more used to it: archaeology.
First off, I didn't get it for months. I've tried it, as I levelled and pootled around, but it made me 'meh'. I tried it on Pilf who hated it (no shock there - digging in, like, dirt and heavy labour - uh-huh... you do the maths) and all my other characters on my live account are low level and don't have (fast) flying and I just wrote it off.

Those who read my personal blog may recall a post some weeks ago that mentioned my lack of competitiveness. They may have confused this with sheer downright bloody-minded competitiveness, mind you, detailing as it did, how I nearly killed myself on our cross-trainer (of pain and evil) as I was determined to ~~beat do better than~~ keep up with Himself. So, at the point where Himself decided he was going to take up archaeology on one of his characters, I knew I was... done for. AND he cheated and had the temerity to use his druid so he doesn't even have to mount up. AND he has the further temerity to do it whilst levelling and level insanely fast as a result. However, clearly I have not let this bother me. Oh no. Quite the opposite. You might be forgiven for thinking that, at the point when he achieved the 'Assistant Professor' title, I was concerned. You may be forgiven for also thinking that when he showed me his shiny toys he was making I was jealous. You would be wrong on both accounts...

For instance, there is no way that I would have re-activated my other account because it has my high level characters who have speedy flying on it. Oh no. That was coincidental because... I... missed them. Additionally, it is inconceivable that I have had my butt glued to the chair until about 10 minutes ago - huzzah, because I wanted to get the AssProff title as well. That would be an unhealthy competitive dynamic to foster in a marriage - amirite? Good, I'm glad you agree... So I'm off to... ahem... just trundle around Azeroth some more. Who knows, maybe I'll trip over some of those artifact thingys as I stroll. Stranger things have happened.

Scrub and ding?

2011-08-08T07:28:00.000+01:00

I've been reading 'Reality is Broken' by Jane McGonigal over the last few months. No... I'm not *that* slow a reader - I just find it's one of those books that is best dipped into in short bursts. She's essentially one of the proponents of 'gamification' of life, but I'm not about to debate whether that is a 'good' or 'bad' thing. People get exceptionally hot under the collar when it comes to gamification, from the posts I've read, and I'm not about to enter into the fray. Just spout off a little...

Ok - who loves housework? ALL housework? Really? Ok, you can stop reading now you strange person. The others can carry on at their leisure. Maybe I'm late to the party again (hey - it wouldn't be very surprising) and the entirety of the gamer community knows about this already, but Chore Wars? Really? I'm not going to explain the concept in any depth - you can go and read the FAQs for that but I'm not convinced. I'm especially unconvinced by the thought of kids being happy to do chores in reward for 'virtual' gold as opposed to 'actual' pocket money. When I was a young lass (many many ~~years~~ decades ago) we 'had' to keep our bedrooms tidy and then pocket money was 'earned' by washing the car or some other 'additional' chore. I think if we'd have been offered 'virtual' gold (which I'm not 100% certain, but I'm making a fairly solid guess here... I don't think my local corner shop lady would have accepted in return for 'actual' sweeties) we'd have scrunched our foreheads up in a bemused manner and gone back to reading a book. (Because, y'know we read then and we didn't have a tv...) Maybe I'm incorrect, the site testimonials sing the praises of Chore Wars for getting kids helping out (and being happy to do so!) but I think my daughter would /sigh then /eye roll, and carry on sitting in her room in gothic gloom listening to 'music' that consists of fast guitar and angry men (like I used to...)

McGonigal writes very sweetly about herself and her husband vying to clean the bathroom because it 'gives the most xp' but it made me twitch. I'm not sure that I can envisage a situation where Himself and I 'compete' to do the cleaning. In my view, chores are done by the person who has the lowest tolerance for clutter and /or grot. That's it, in a nutshell. And I remain unconvinced that a game that grants xp for ironing, for example, will change either my view that clothes should be ironed (in which case xp is irrelevant) or Himself's view that ironing is a futile waste of time (in which it would, I suggest, need to be a more 'tangible' reward before his mindset would alter.)

Lipstick on your collar

2011-07-26T11:32:00.000+01:00

I think it's time I found a lover.

I'm done with teenage crushes, they just don't last long enough.

I'm happily married, but occasionally I want something... different.

A nice low-key affair, that's what I need.

NB: This is a metaphor. Or a smilie. Or an allegory. I'm never certain of the difference.

See, I had my teenage crush when I played Rift. For a few weeks, it was all I wanted to play. It was shiny, it was oh so very pretty, it was briefly a very intense experience, but it wasn't substantial enough. So the passion died and I got bored.

WoW is my marriage. It's been there for years. It's solid, dependable. I know my way around it. I know its flaws and its good points. I know the things it does that makes me happy, and the things it does that makes me grind my teeth. We fit well together, WoW and I.

But sometimes... sometimes I want something that isn't WoW. I want something that's familiar enough, but different. I don't want a lover who's identical to my husband. I want one who isn't demanding, who knows the score and occasionally buys me silk underwear. But I don't want a teenage crush. I want something that'll last. Something that I can visit when WoW gets too humdrum. Something that I can play one evening a week, that gives me enough kaboom that I can happily toddle off back to WoW, secure in the knowledge that I can visit again, when I want to, without any demands or regrets.

I think LoTRO would fall into the category of being too similar to my husband, as would other MMOs based in a 'fantasy' world. Now Wiki's list of MMORPGs are kinda heavy on the 'fantasy' genre. To say the least. But having looked and visited various sites I'm off to ~~shag a superhero~~ create a supervillan on City of Heroes. I expect it'll turn out to be just another teenage crush but you never know...

Iron (Wo)man Proper

2011-07-20T08:16:00.000+01:00

Ok dear, oh dear... I was foolish enough to go and read Vyrkerion's Iron Man post to remind myself of the rules of the challenge which I've nicked and re-posted here for your edification:

1. Use only white/grey items.
2. No spending talent points. No specialization at level 10. (Regular skill training is fine.)
2. No Primary or Secondary Professions other than First Aid.
3. No means of XP boosting (No Recruit-A-Friend, No Guild, and obviously no Heirlooms)
4. No consumable bonuses (food, potions, elixirs, etc) - Rogue Poisons are Okay.
5. No enchants.
6. No Groups. (Since clarification was requested: That means no dungeons, no Dungeon Finder, no battlegrounds, no anything that puts you in a group and no grouping up with people to quest or anything.)
7. No Death Knights.
8. No Glyphs

So when the realms come back up, I think I'm going to make a new alt *ahem*. Pilffe. Pilf-Fe? Geddit? That's a sad chemistry joke right there, this one is better though:

What do chemists call a benzene ring with iron atoms replacing the carbon atoms?
A ferrous wheel.

       Fe - Fe
        /       \
       Fe       Fe
        \       /
         Fe - Fe

(A benzene ring is is a hexagonal molecule of carbon atoms with six hydrogen atoms attached to each carbon, comme ça)

       H      H
         \    /
         C - C
        /      \
    H - C             C - H
        \      /
         C - C
        /     \
       H       H

(Well I'm laughing...)

I need to decide on a class though. Clearly, as she's a(nother) Pilf she'll be a belf but as to class... I'm undecided. I need to go and play with the character creation screen a bit...

My mouth is full...

2011-07-19T14:04:00.000+01:00

And my momma told me not to talk with a full mouth. (She also told me that nice girls don't spit... but I guess that's another story - amirite?) So... It's a good job I'm typing then, eh? Oh, why is my mouth full? That would be because I bit off waaaaaaaaay more than I can chew with Tranq (so named because I need valium, I'm coming to believe...)

Allow me to expound:

The curse of alt-itis
I've never been very good at what Himself calls JFDI (Just Feckin' Do It) as anyone who's heard me whinge about writing essays will know. So I've always enjoyed levelling, but I... how can I put this. I get a bit bored with my characters. Even when I was levelling to be a srsbznz raider, I ran other alts that I could snatch a few minutes here and there on just to get a break from my main. When I gave up raiding, I lost what little ability I had to focus on one character. Now I could play around with as many as I wanted - guilt free! Wheeeeeee!! Which, y'know, is grand an' all, but it means I don't ever get anything actually done. I love my alts, but sometimes I need someone to stand over me with a stick and make me actually level one!

The additional curse of having been playing for a while
I'm even worse at the moment because I'm going through a 'meh' phase with gaming. I log onto WoW, I cycle through my *ahem* 48 various characters (yep - nearly at account limit) and then I log off. I log onto Rift and I think... meh. Rift is too WoW like... Last night, Himself suggested that maybe I should play something else for a while. 'Like what?' I asked him. He shrugged, 'I don't know - why don't you give LoTRO a go now it's F2P?' So I went and looked at their website and thought... yeah it's another fantasy MMO. I'm not sure I wanna play another fantasy MMO... So Himself suggested Minecraft. Umm... nope. (Please, take a moment to feel sympathy for Himself and marvel at his patience.)

Trying to keep it fresh
This means trying new stuffs doesn't it? Hence teh challenge. Don't get me wrong, I will do this - even if it takes me until the servers go offline forever. (And I'll probably still be in Elwynn). But it's hard going. I need to be in the right frame of mind, which is one of the reasons why I'm struggling at the moment - dying to things 10 levels above me is ok if I'm in a happy-go-lucky mood (hey, stop laughing - it does happen sometimes!) but if I'm not, it just makes me cross and spitty.

Further conclusions

I need to do this one on rested xp only. Whilst the xp from gathering increases with level, oddly, it makes no difference whether I'm gathering herbs that are grey to me (in terms of levelling herbalism, if you see what I mean) or orange. So peacebloom gives the same xp as wild steelbloom. Basically, I could spend the next x number of years in Elwynn and get to 85. I'm not sure my sanity would be intact, but theoretically, it seems like it would be possible.
I am booooooooooored with being in starter zones. Now I have prowl, I've expended my horizons somewhat (hello Duskwood, hello Redridge) but the death count goes up accordingly. In newbie lands I can HoT, shift back to kitty and outrun mobs. In the next zones up I can HoT but I basically still eat dirt regularly. For sheer ease and speed of levelling, it makes more sense to circle Elwynn. Oh god, I see my future writ large: cross kobolds and stroppy bandits...
The server economy in copper ore, silverleaf, peacebloom and earthroot is utter and total incomprehensible madness. The prices fluctuate daily and I have no idea if my peacebloom is going to make 2g a stack or 20g. On the plus side, I now have over 400g at level 13. That's more than some of my characters had at level 70 (ok, minor exaggeration, but not much of one.)
I need to play malicious 'murder, kill, death' characters as well. So I now have an orc fire mage and an undead aff'lock. She's called Thropy - which enables my FlagRSP to be set to Miss Ann Thropy. That makes me happy.

How are my fellow Iron-(Wo)Men getting on?

Sheathing my claws

2011-07-12T07:31:00.000+01:00

You may recall from here that I had some slightly bonkers idea about levelling only through herbing, mining and exploring (until 20 when archaeology kicks in).

Meet Tranquilitas

Also available in kitty flavour...

Well, what can I say - I've hit level 10 and yeah, it's interesting. I have zero kills and zero quests completed:

I was amazed by how strong my 'attack' reaction is! I've nothing on my action bars except my racial stealth and my healing spells... It's fun to be doing something so different though. I have to be in the right mood - running away and dying can be frustrating, but I'm getting more zen about it.

The only irritating thing is that I'm really confined to the newbie zones - I can't take hits from anything more than a few levels about me and stay alive, so it's fair to say that I'm a bit bored with Elwynn, Kharanos and Azuremyst! However, now I've reached the dizzy heights of level 10 and can be sneaky kitty this might change. I'm also impressed that I have 89 mining and 115 herbalism at such a low level!!

I suspect that the other folks in the Iron Man Challenge are gonna beat me hands down in terms of levelling speed, but I'm enjoying slowing right down and smelling the roses (remind me of this in a few weeks time when I'm frothing at the mouth please, loyal readers!)

D&D and you & me and us & them...

2011-07-08T17:15:00.000+01:00

Uch - I've been trying the watch The Dungeon Masters because I really don't *get* D&D. Himself and his long term friends are ALL gamers, who have their roots in table-top and I've had other friends who played D&D in their youth (or not so youth). I guess, because my first exposure to any sort of RPG was WoW where everything is really taken care of for you, I get boggled by the concept of, well, having to do all this work yourself. I'm so used to it being given to me in pixel form, I'm thrown by the idea of sitting round a table, with pen, paper and dice and figuring it out.

Leaving aside my inexperience and lack of imagination for a moment, I think D&D still has its uber-geek image. Whether that translates into kudos or horror is probably a personal opinion. I know that when I moved in with Himself and went to move an ottoman out of the way, I nearly wrenched my back - said ottoman was stuffed to the gills with D&D manuals and assorted other RPG stuff. Gods, those manuals are heavy! I remember when he eventually got over his embarrassment enough to show me his briefcase thing which contained his D&D figurines (all lovingly hand painted) and being really quite amazed by the detail in them. All this stuff is hidden away, mind you. I made some comment about making a display case for the figurines and he nearly died at the thought, and put the case away... I'm not even sure I know where it's currently residing.

Now Himself is a proper grown-up (as I've mentioned before) and has a Proper Job. His gamer friends are also well-adjusted; they're in Proper Jobs, with long-term relationships, children, some are even quite easy on the eye *giggles*. I.e. they're pretty much at the opposite end of the scale from the D&D stereotype, living in his parents' basement and existing off Doritos. But they still refer to their gaming in code, "alligator wrestling" being a favourite, and when some of us went out for our pre-wedding dinner, there was some comment made about being "amongst friends" which was clearly code for "can we talk about gaming now?"

These are not the type of people portrayed in The Dungeon Masters. I have to say, at this point, that Love Film (via the tv) decided to have a hissy fit mid-way through, but I've seen just over an hour of it. Would you like to pick a gamer stereotype, because I'm pretty certain that one of the three main characters will fit into it... The substance of the film consists of following three GMs, in both their gaming and non-gaming lives. Two of the GMs are male, one female. Their usage of D&D to escape from their real lives is a stick that you're beaten with from early on. The fact that they're all portrayed (rightly or wrongly - it's all in the edit after all) as being fairly dysfunctional doesn't help one iota.

Much is made of Elizabeth's habit of covering herself in dark body make-up (she RPs a Drow (I'm sure D&D folk know what that is) elf.) She discusses her inability to make relationships work ("my last boyfriend used to blow me off to raid Molten Core") but also says that she's either asleep or online. She wants a boyfriend who doesn't spend all his life in Azeroth but doesn't seem to be comfortable going out and meeting people IRL, in a non-gaming sense. This in itself is odd, as she's clearly adored by the male gamers she GMs for.

Richard appears to devise incredibly intricate campaigns and then send all the characters to their destruction. One such example appeared to have lasted years and the players didn't seem to have really come to terms with all the time and energy they'd put into their creations being wiped out, on what appeared to be a whim of his. In a similar vein, he explains how he left his first wife and step-children without telling them anything, "I asked her to drive me to the airport and when I got out the car, I said "I hope you have your keys because I'm not coming back" *shrug*"

Scott is writing a book. His wife appears to be the breadwinner and holding everything together. They don't seem happy - there are uncomfortable snippets where it's apparent that she'd rather he was actually contributing to their life, in a 'normal' way.

It's just all a bit saddening really. Whilst I accept that gaming can be away to escape from RL (and I've been guilty of it on at least one occasion) I wish that they'd made more effort to give the film a balanced view. If you met Himself, or any of his friends you'd *never* think they gamed. I've stopped being offended by people being amazed and telling me I'm not the "type", when I 'fess up to my hobby. I still enjoy (kinda - depending on my mood) the look on people's faces when they find out that Himself and I met, not just online in the dating sense (like 'normal' people do) but online in an MMORPG.

I guess I dislike stereotypes and 'documentaries' such as this one just doesn't do any of us any favours. Or do they? Daughter has blazed a trail through her school by being so utterly unapologetic about being an "emo" and a "geek", responding to teasing and taunts with a "yes...and?" comment. To the point that she's gained popularity (notoriety?) with her peers - she hates this mind you, raging that if, all of a sudden she's "cool" and her "look" is being emulated, what does this leave her with? "Do I need to dye my hair blond now, wear mini-skirts and cover myself in make-up to STOP being cool???" She's finally accepted that she needs to wear specs (she's ragingly astigmatic) and has proper geek girl glasses, with heavy black rims. Fully expecting grief for this, she returned home today looking bemused, "Everyone says my glasses are really cool and they want ones like them *deep sigh*" and much as we tell her that by being able to be "different" and stand up for herself so effectively, she's giving others the courage to be who they want to be, she's still anti-cool. So here's the question: do we want gaming etc to be viewed as cool or are we happy with our geek image?

And that's me done for the weekend - happy Friday folks, see you on Monday :)

2011-07-08T09:22:00.000+01:00

In one of those slightly odd kismet things, just as I was considering whether it was possible to level in a pacifistic manner, a couple of people wrote posts about their own personal WoW challenges - Psynister is intending to take up the WoW Iron Man challenge set by Vrykerion and Ironyca has written about WoW's Unconventional Heroes. I'd originally planned to make Pacifae level in this manner, then I changed my mind due to the awesomeness of hello kitteh rawr! But hey, like Psynister said - "There's always room for one more alt!" and after all, these are words from the undisputed master of alts *bows*

So I've made myself another night elf druid (I'm getting good at this!) with the following caveats, queries and observations:

No killing. Anything.
I need to work out if rooting stuff can potentially kill it.
No questing. Not even quests that don't require killing.
That means no pacifistic dailies either - so no sneaky levelling of cooking and fishing...
Xp gained ONLY from exploring, herbing and mining and (eventually) archaeology.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to die a LOT. But there's no penalty until level 10 *huzzah*!
Night elf stealth helps.
Prowling in kitty form will help even more. But I have to level to get there.
Taking all damaging spells and abilities off the action bars helps.
I can (eventually) wear pretty clothes.
No-one will see the pretties if I'm almost always in kitty form...
Tranquilitas is a nice name but I can't think of a Flag RSP title to go along with it *sniffle*
It's going to take forever. And them some.
I will learn to be patient. And not get (as) cross when I die...

squeeeeeeeeeee!

2011-07-08T06:50:00.000+01:00

So some of you may remember the tussle I was having with my conscience with regard to RMT - specifically about buying the Winged Guardian mount of loveliness... Well, I opened my email last night and there was a lovely message from Blizzard telling me that someone had bought it for me! I did a huge *squeeeeeeeeee* (loud enough to bring Himself running into the room going '"wtf??") and fired up WoW to take screenshots:

So Feebs, chickie - thank you. I love ya!!!

Hello kitteh!

2011-07-06T07:38:00.000+01:00

I'm so permanently late to the party that when I finally show up, I fully expect 'what's hawt' to have come full circle; the wallpaper will be migraine inducing circles, the food will be vol au vents and fondue and 'toons (the musical sort, sorry, I can't bring myself to write 'choon', even in a heavily ironic sense) will be D.I.S.C.O. *Himself will be wearing his leopard print flares...

So yeah. I've known for ages that druids get kitty form dependent upon their hair colour but whenever I've tried to play a druid I've always opted for boomkin, unsuccessfully, I might add. I want a druid - they're extraordinarily cool, but I've never gelled with one. So when I decided that it would be interesting to make a character, with the concept of getting them to level 20, then levelling only via gathering and archaeology, a feral druid seemed like a sensible option. Then, in the only flash of min-maxing I've ever had, I opted for a nelf on the basis of the racial stealth spell. Rules of the game were going to be no killing. Not even in self-defence. So an additional aggro-dropping spell would be ftw! So I made myself a pretty lass, with purple hair - which meant I would have:

AMG purple kitteh!! (Yes, I'm *that* ferocious - be very afraid!)

I'm interested as to whether it would be viable (as opposed to 'possible') to level purely through dual gathering and archaeology. I'm doing it successfully thus far on Pilf (more of that in another post) but she can fly, so herbing etc is a lot faster. I put level 20 as the limit on questing and killing because that's when you can pick up archaeology. I didn't expect to enjoy feral druid-ing but goodness me, kitteh rawr! is really quite effective and fun!

It's so much fun that my plans for non-violent levelling have been shelved - despite her now having a completely inappropriate name (Pacifae would be fine for, say a resto druid, it's less fine for a feral kitteh rawr! one) and I'm blazing through content. Somehow I've hit level 24 without really trying hard. I hit a few buttons in hello kitteh rawr! form, shift out to HoT myself, shift back and go through mobs like a hot knife through butter. Why did no-one tell me levelling as kitteh was this easy?

I have no clue about what I should be doing, by the way. Energy is something that I'm not familiar with, so I'm hitting mangle, claw, rip (I think) then bite as a finisher (if they're not already dead) and relying on Pawn to tell me what quest rewards I should be taking. from which I assume that it's +agi, + stam, ignore everything else...?

And of course, I'm more ferocious than the kitteh in the picture above. I'm actually this ferocious:

Be very afraid...

*Himself does have a picture of him dressed in such attire. If I was less lovely I would post it.

Hoisted... by Picard

2011-07-05T09:03:00.001+01:00

Like any couple who have been together for a while, Himself and I have our own shorthand for various things. Some of it is game-related; f'r'instance I struggle quite badly in crowds for any length of time, in a "Get me outta here NOW!" way, not just a "Oh it's a bit busier than I'd like it to be..." way. We refer to this (in public) as the framerate dropping, as in "Can we leave please, I'm getting a low framerate!" or "Are you ok honey - is everything getting laggy?" Whilst, yes, it's geeky it does allow us to communicate stuff that's a bit personal in a slightly cryptic manner.

We also have various other phrases - "a bit corgi" for example, describes a certain type of person, as does being full of "eastern monosodium gultamate" (serious *highfive* for anyone who gets the references - but really? You're *that* sad as well...!) And some that have just crept into our vernacular after I've had a dizzy moment - sunlight is now pixels rather than photons... And, as the post title may suggest - in the house of Himself and Myself, one is not hoisted on one's petard but rather by a famous Captain - usually indicated by Himself yelling "...Picard to Bridge!!" or something kinda like this.

Right - there is a WoW lead here, honestly, mainly to do with a Picard-related incident. I've been vaguely opposed to RMT/micro transaction thingys - not hugely anti mind, just a bit... grouchy about it. I've never wanted any of the pets in the petstore, cute though they are; with the exception of the plushie windrider that has an in-game baby one too, that I got for Christmas - but that was wanting the plushie, the ingame pet was a bonus rather than the original want. Yes, I realise that wanting a plushie is probably worse, but thanks for pointing it out... I never wanted the Celestial Steed - I want sparkle form not a sparkle pony, but Ghostcrawler seems to be unaccountably unwilling to notice my QQ! So when the Winged Guardian mount was released I went "Hmph, another way for Blizz to make money from the masses." And carried on. Then I began to see them ingame. And you know what - I really like them. I like them a lot.

Which leaves me somewhat hoisted - I've muttered and grumbled to Himself (and on this blog) about RMT things. I've poured (small amounts of) scorn on people who pay RL money for ingame stuff (sorry!) But now I find myself at the Blizzard store, stroking the screen wistfully and thinking how nice some (all?) of my characters would look on it. And I can see the appeal in having a mount that does it 'all'. A mount that ups speed and flying capability depending on your riding skill. I know that mounts are small change these days, but having a Winged Guardian on all my current and future characters is quite appealing.

But... we're in self-imposed financial penury due to wedding spending, plus we've just all had to have new glasses (in my case three pairs - one long distance, one short distance and one set of prescription sunnies!), the roof on the car appears to be fucked (thank you complicated electronic folding roof - come back manual soft-tops - all is forgiven!) etc, etc, so do I *really* need to spend £17 on a virtual item? No of course I don't need to. But I kinda want to. And the bad bit of my brain says, 'that's only three bottles of wine... that's less than the bottle of champagne that you and Himself opened at 5pm last night... that's about what it costs for you all to go to Costa...' and I try to ignore it. (As an aside - we don't usually drink champagne on Mondays. At 5pm. Or at all. We'd bought a bottle to celebrate our first anniversary and forgot to take it away with us and the bottle was bunging up the fridge... And it was lovely on the balcony, in the sun, watching the tide go out and yeah... that's my excuses run out...)

But the Winged Guardian is soooooooooo strokeable! So c'mon folks - opinions from the peanut gallery requested: should I be hoisted (and spend money) or remain firm and principled...?

Just when I'd convinced her Azeroth was safe again...

2011-07-04T12:09:00.000+01:00

Poor Pilf...

Raaaaaaaaaage!

2011-07-04T09:08:00.000+01:00

Himself and I watched the trailer for the new Age of Conan thingy over the weekend; not that either of us had any intention of actually playing it, but now it's Free To Play we thought we'd look. And also do a boob count (I've only ever heard about AoC so I wanted to see if it was as bad as I'd been led to believe.) In fairness, the trailer only had one (!) topless woman (and it did also, I should add, have bare-chested men) and my abject loathing for the game dissipated fractionally.

Then this morning this post from Killed in a Smiling Accident popped up in my Reader and I nearly put my fist through my (new, lovely) monitor. Just to be clear: I'm not criticising KiaSA in any way at all. (In fact, I should almost be thanking them - it's been a while since I wrote a properly 'frothing at the mouth with fury' post.) I'm raging over being able to purchase women in game, sorry, my mistake - they're not mere 'women' but 'pleasure priestesses' who make those "long nights by the campfire much better." Seriously?

I could write pages on how cross and ranty this makes me but then I figured that a) y'all would agree with me anyway and I'd be preaching to the converted, or b) that you wouldn't agree with me and frankly, if that's the case, I don't give a flying feck what your opinion is anyway. So very brief rant follows:

Women (or men, or children) are NOT objects to be bought and sold. Do NOT tell me that they're 'virtual' so that makes it ok. It doesn't. Do NOT tell me it's 'just a game' - that line of defence is ludicrous under most of circumstances and downright offensive in this case. If you think that objectification of ANYONE is acceptable, do us both a favour and remove me from your Reader. Ktnxbai.

Conversations with characters

2011-07-01T10:27:00.000+01:00

I'm really enjoying Azeroth again. I've masses to do - more, probably then I'll ever actually get around to doing, but I have this niggle. Everytime I log in, I see Pilf at the top of my screen, and I get a little twinge. I miss her. Often. So I ventured off to Nagrand, to her home in the clouds and we had a chat.

What do you want? Why are you here?
Well, it's been over a year. I've given you space and time. I've left you here, with Lenore, floating, but maybe it's time that you continued with your journey now.
No. Leave me alone!
Look, I know you're scared. But you're better. You're ok now. You've beaten it all. All your scars have faded, they're gone. There's no trace of fel left on you, or in you.
How do you know? How can you be sure? Here... here I'm safe. I'm fine. It's peaceful. I don't need anything.
You can't run forever.
I'm not running. I stopped running when I got here. Now go away, please.
Pilf... I can't do that. I need you to be brave and to take a chance. I need you to trust me. I won't let you come to any harm.
But you did!
I know. But things are different now. I'll protect you.
Why should I trust you? Why should I leave here?
The world is changed. Have you no curiosity to see what The Sundering wrought? The new lands? The havoc wreaked by Deathwing? Are you not running low on gold...
I'm managing.
But for how long? You're willing to waste all your training, your talent? You'd rather sit here until your money runs out? Then what?
Then I will work for one of the villagers in Garadar.
What can you offer them that they don't already have, Pilf? Outlands is all but deserted now. Shattrath is almost a ghost town.
You want me to return to the North?
I'd like you to consider it, yes.
For whom would I work?
I don't know. Whatever you're comfortable with.
Can I not just collect herbs to replenish my reserves?
Just do that? You don't want to assist your kin with the ongoing effort?
I don't want to think about my kin.! This was wrought upon me by a Sindorei!
Ok... ok. It's ok. If you're happiest starting off with herb gathering, that's ok. There is a new craft now though. It's hard work, so maybe best left until you're stronger...
A new craft?
Yes. Archaeology. But it's physically hard labour.
When have I ever been afraid of hard work???
You haven't. But you will need to go to a city to speak with a trainer... Can you do that?
I'll think about it. Give me a few days.

(Unwilling) Oppression

2011-06-29T09:26:00.000+01:00

After I'd completed the 'can you pick cactus apples' challenge, the cook baked me a pie from my spoils of... well, not war. Fruit picking. The spoils of my fruit picking? Oh dear. What will I tell my father? He'll misunderstand me and think that I spoiled fruit. Doubtless with my axe. "See how brave my daughter is? She triumphed over fruit! With the axe I gave her! (Wait. Did you really say fruit, daughter? Did I not mishear you? Perhaps you meant to say... foes?)" I think I may wait longer before I put quill to parchment and advise them of my progress...

I was asked to report to Foreman Thazz'ril who was allegedly in urgent need of my assistance. So I ran through the dust, eager to offer him my services. He explained to me that his team of workers were not up to scratch and they needed to be deal with. He then handed me a wicked looking blackjack and instructed me to savagely beat the peons I happened across who were napping. Beat them! With this horrible looking thing! I took it gingerly - what else could I do? My parents raised me well - I'm respectful of my elders, but I wasn't sure quite what to do with it. When I looked questioningly at the Foreman he raised his hand in the air, and brought it down in a swift, striking motion. "Look under the trees, Steka - that's their favourite spot for snoozing. Lazy good-for-nothings..."

I walked away, hoping that all the peons I happened across would be hard at work, and sure enough, the first few I saw were chopping wood diligently. Maybe I could report back to the Foreman now? "They all seem to be hard at work Mr Foreman. No dozing, no slacking off..." but then, as I watched one, he dropped his axe and curled up by the pile of logs. Within moments he was asleep, mouth agape, snores rattling round the Valley and echoing off the rocks. Oh great. Half the problem seemed to be the noise. If only they could sleep quietly! It would be a lot less noticeable. I shuffled towards him slowly and put my hand on his shoulder. I shook him hard, but he brushed my hand off, muttered something intelligible and went back to snoring.

I looked at the blackjack in my hand. Unwillingly, I poked him gently in the ribs. No response. Oh for goodness sake! I'm trying to make this easy for you, Mister... I poked him a bit harder. He muttered something I couldn't catch (it sounded like "Me not that sort of orc" but I suspect I misheard!) and turned over. I straightened up, sighing. In all honesty, he didn't look like he had much gumption. He was an orc - he should be wielding his axe (which looked a LOT sharper than The Axe of My Father) with pride! Even if he only was using it to chop wood. I tapped his shoulder gently with the blackjack. A cloud of red dust flew up from his leather jerkin but he remained motionless (but not silent - alas!) Giving up, I raised the blackjack in the air and struck him with it. As he stood up I grabbed for The Axe of My Father - expecting to have to defend myself, but he squinted at me and picked up his axe, "Ok, ok Steka. I go back to tree-hitting now." He appeared to hold no grudge against me for the abuse I had visited upon him. Heartened by my success I found others and when I had awoken a good number I returned to the Foreman. He gave me a handful of small coins and instructed me to go to the cave to the east and retrieve his mining pick.

I am unwilling to do this. I fear that whilst the blackjack was a horrid, weighty thing, at least it's blunt! What will happen the next time the peons nap? Is he planning to attack them with his mining pick? Whilst I'm certain this would ensure he had their attention, I fear that he would soon have a much reduced workforce. Perhaps I need to ask him (tactfully) if he felt able to resolve the issues he has with his employees in a less... violent way? Or would this be dis-respectful? Oh dear, I rather thought being a warrior would involve less moral dilemmas than it has done thus far...

Does not play well with others

2011-06-23T08:36:00.000+01:00

Manalicious recently wrote about how playing alts might be harming your game play, and as a confirmed altoholic I went over and gave it a read. Unsurprisingly, it's an insightful and balanced post, and as I was planning to write something about alts and player capability I thought I'd use this as an intro point. Usual disclaimer: all points about raiding are now historical, and filtered through the (rusty) sieve that is my memory. I don't raid anymore, blah, blah, blah, y'all know this already...

I love mah alts. You may have noticed. I love them enough that one of the things that has pulled me back to Azeroth (again) is making myself a new Project 10, on a server that I have no heirlooms, gold or bags on. I'm starting 100% from scratch (so I'm even more n00b-like than usual) for a real challenge. But I have always had alts. Mainly very low level ones. I only ever raided on my priest. As I begin to play classes I've not played before (very much) I find myself going through the 4 stages of competence that most people are probably familiar with. For those of you who aren't (and who CBA to clickly the linkie) the basic premise is this:

Stage 1 - Unconscious Incompetence
Translation: you know fuck all but don't realise this. (You shouldn't be raiding. Or doing anything with others until you've gotten to Stage 2. Play on your own, learn your own shit, m'kay?)

Stage 2 - Conscious Incompetence
Translation: you realise you know fuck all. (You should be running instances/grouping with others, reading blogs or forums or whatever, and taking advice.)

Stage 3 - Conscious Competence
Translation: you know stuff, but damn if it isn't really hard work keeping on top of it. (Raid. Work. Learn more. Practice.)

Stage 4 - Unconscious Competence
Translation: you've known stuff for so long that it's all now automatic, i.e. you don't need to be told to get outta teh bad! (Your raid leader loves you.)

I usually sit somewhere between Stages 2 & 3. I rarely hit Stage 4 and I'm my own harshest critic so I don't spend much time (I hope) in Stage 1. In raiding you need to ideally be at Stage 4 but Stage 3 is ok for a bit. I would think that if you raided with more than two characters, you'd be hard pushed to remain in Stage 4.

The people I raided with who were deep, deep within Stage 4, were those who just raided with one character. They'd raided with that character for some time (not that they'd never raided with anything else, but they'd done a lot with the current one) and you knew that they'd know the fights and their role inside out. In my experience, these players tended to just be awesomely dependable folks. They signed up for raids, turned up (on time, flasked, repaired and with reagents etc) without fail, didn't grumble about wipes etc etc. The backbone of your raid team, in other words.

Having raiders who had numerous max level characters can be helpful. If you're a healer down, and someone has an alt, better that than no raid? Probably. I've raided with a few, very few, players who are just good. They can tank, they can heal, they can dps. But they're a rarity. I've raided with a lot of people who think this applies to them. And that, as a raid leader, is headache inducing. Syl recently wrote an excellent and painfully honest post about raiding. If you haven't read it, you should, but the one point that really resonated with me was her point that, if you're a raider, you have a 'contract' with your guild. If you applied as a dps, tank or healer, that's what you were taken on as. Along with multiple other things like attendance etc. I used to hate seeing someone's alt signed up on the raid calender. Why?? Why are you suddenly signing on your rogue not your priest? Why is our top dps warlock suddenly signing on his tank? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot???

And when I logged in, I'd say, hey - whats with the change in 'toon? and they'd say, oh, I wanna swap my main - that's cool isn't it? and I'd *headdesk* and then try to explain that well, whilst no-one wants to tell you who to raid with, you need to, y'know, discuss this sort of thing with an officer or someone, rather than just assume it's ok to suddenly change. 'Cos, you know, you've been gearing up as 'role x' and we kinda need you in that role, and how well geared is this other character? Oh, right. In blues and stuff. Well, that's going to be a bit difficult as we're currently x/y bosses through [insert raid here]. And if you switch then others are going to want to... and *headdesk*. And some people were fine about that and some weren't. But if people start to switch then lots of others want to and all of a sudden you're progression is... stalled. And your main character players (the Stage 4-ers) are frustrated and then drama happens. And we all hate raid drama, amirite?

I'm fine about bouncing between my warrior and my mage and my hunter, getting confused about the buttons, what class of armour I should be wearing what what (and where) my 'oh shit' button is. But I'm levelling, on my own, so Stage 1 & 2 is fine for this. I'm resigned to my anti-socialness. But if I was to ever raid again (which I will, when hell freezes over) I'd be pretty determined to raid on one character, and be at least comfortably ensconced in Stage 3.

The Axe of My Father

2011-06-20T17:16:00.000+01:00

I am confused.

In fact, I am irked. Irked and vexed.

For years and years my parents had regaled me with tales of the brave orc warriors, my kin, who had fought vicious wars and covered themselves, the Horde and the Warchief in glory (and presumably a fair quantity of blood). I had relinquished my dream of following a more peaceful, shamanic path some time ago. They had not been granted sons, I heard (almost nightly), and therefore I should go out into the world, when I was of age, and make them as proud as any sons would have made them. And ok, you have to respect your parents wishes, don't you? So I agreed that yes, when I was old enough, I'd take the battered, chipped old axe that my father had killed many... things... with and I'd present myself at The Valley of Trials for conditioning and training. And hope that they didn't take one look at The Axe of My Father and fall over laughing. They might even, I supposed, provide me with a decent whetstone to sharpen it with.

Obviously, I was expecting some warning. Some conversation nearer the time. I knew that they'd tell me that it was time I went, rather than ask me, but I didn't expect to be frog-marched into the Orgrimmar barbers and have some greasy goblin clamber onto my shoulders and hack away at my hair. This, apparently, was their way of telling me that it was time for me to go. I'm not vain, I'd like to add, it's just that I'd thought maybe if I kept my hair long, they'd look at me one day and reconsider, "yes, clearly Steka looks much more of a... wise woman than a warrior. Perhaps we should think again about what SHE wants...I'll see if that shaman wants an apprentice..." that type of thing. But no such luck. What I got was a giggling goblin shaving the sides of my head and slapping something probably made of crushed beetles over the remains (to darken the colour, it turned out - not just for his amusement) and then taking the remaining hair and gluing it (with I don't want to think what) into three long spikes. Then he poked me until I bared my teeth at him and then my parents were proud. They took me to the tavern, gave me some quite disgusting mead to drink and my father proudly presented me with his axe. It looked even more battered than I remembered, frankly, but I held it reverentially and promised him that I'd make it look like a true warriors axe (i.e. cover it in blood and gore) as soon as I had the opportunity to.

My father made some gruff speech about the world changing and allegiance now being shown to Garrosh and how I'd need to prove myself even more under his rule (oh joy!) and then they whistled up an incredibly hairy wolf, strapped me on and waved as this thing charged out of the city, it's tongue lolling out of its mouth, its tail wagging madly. What a perfect send off (did you note the sarcasm in that sentence?) It deposited me unceremoniously in the Valley and after brushing off the worst of the dirt and strapping my axe to my back, I presented myself to Gornek. He couldn't have cared less about The Axe of My Father - all he wanted me to do was to go and kill boars. Not wild, roaming boars with huge tusks mind you. Just small, grey boars in a wooden pen. I'm still not sure why - they were hardly a threat to the locals, but it doesn't do to ask questions, so off I went.

I'd like to tell you that this was a truly epic challenge - that The Axe of my Father served me well and that despite it's battered and chipped appearance it was a weapon of keen sharpness, but I can't. And for the record, the boars were so docile that I could probably have beaten them (slowly) to death with a soggy piece of parchment. Their sole method of defence was to snort. So I returned to Gornek, not especially blood coated, to be sent off to see a cook who required me to collect some apples. Apples! Ok, they were from moderately prickly cacti but I'm an orc! We have quite tough skin...

I'm not sure that this warrior lark is quite the same as it was in my father's day.

It's a new life for me

2011-06-07T15:10:00.000+01:00

Azerothian utopia, dystopia, whatever...

2011-06-05T18:12:00.000+01:00

First off: I have impetigo on my face. Less than a week before I get married. For those of you that are lucky enough to not know what it looks like you can see it in all its glory here. That isn't my chin and mine isn't that bad (and thanks to the wonders of health care on a Sunday and mega doses of antibiotics it hopefully won't get that bad), but I do expect sympathetic comments by the dozen. Yes, /sympathy does count. Beggars can't be choosers.

In the spirit of trying to cheer me up (or something), Himself decided to tell me what he plans to say when the Registrar rings this week to do the final 'marriage chat-ette' thing they do now. Himself's view is he'll say something along the lines of "Pilf.... who? Ohhhhhhhh, Pilf! Yes. The one I marry soon. Hopefully this English girl will stay married to me, so I can stay in England, yes..?" (Because that's the sort of thing Himself finds amusing when I'm having 'wedding fret'...) And I told him he had the dodgiest pseudo-Eastern Europe/Russian/whatever accent imaginable (he did. It was terribad...) Which (somehow) led on to us discussing Turkmenistan. There is a reason that this is a Warcraft post. You just need patience.

For those of you who don't know, Turkmenistan was, until December 2006, ruled by a... fairly eccentric dictator (this isn't a political blog, nor is it a political post, this is for teh lols, ok); the self -styled Türkmenbaşy who had a habit (it seems) of being a trifle... capricious. Amongst the things he banned were: ballet, opera, circuses, long hair (on men) and beards (presumably on both sexes), dogs (from the capital city), libraries (outside the capital city because the only books people needed to read were the Koran and the book he had written), the use of lip-synching at concerts, gold teeth, and most epically, in my opinion, smoking, after heart surgery meant he could no longer smoke. It's the last one that pleases me the most. That 'if I have to suffer then dammit, everyone in my country will suffer with me!' view of the world.

In Azeroth therefore, I would introduce mandatory sparkle-form for warlocks. Or maybe not mandatory... just a 75% damage reduction debuff when you aren't in sparkleform. All warlock headpieces would look like this:

(And the 'hide helmet' option would be grayed out in the Interface Options)

There would be added Tinkerbell stylee sparkle sound effects when casting a spell. And pink minions, a la Saga. And spell effects that are no longer threatening balls of dark matter but stars, kinda like this:

Soooooooooooo. If you could outlaw/enforce anything in Azeroth - what would you choose? Serious, insane, funny, downright bizzare and bonkers. All donations are welcome, and will be donated to the good cause of Making Pilf Laugh Even Though She's Pissed Off.

Making your own challenge?

2011-06-02T12:05:00.000+01:00

Forgive me for writing another 'Rift' post on my main blog, but I'm using Rift as an example - not the be all and end all. And I'm not saying, in any way, than game x is better than game y. Just to be clear about that...

My (admittedly) limited MMO experience is based around the so called 'holy trinity' of roles - tank, healer and damage dealers. But Rift added a new string to that (for me - probably not a new mechanic, I'm sure!) - the buff/debuff role. Now I can imagine that that type of role can cause difficulty with balancing - ok, I get that in a raid group (and I think that raids are 20 players in Rift) you can tune the fights around having at least one 'support' role, but how does it play out in 5-mans? If you require a support role to manage boss fights, that leaves another 'necessary' role, along with the inexorable tank-healer combo so only two DD slots. Hmm. However, that was a tangent.

I'm a cussed sort sometimes. I levelled my priest in WoW from 1 - 70 as holy (before the days of dual spec) and I didn't find it that much of a big deal. (Until I levelled a warlock and things just fell over.) I know tanks had, to a degree, the same thing. You took the 'pain' levelling for the 'rewards' of end game. Period. Then dual specs made it much easier to have a DD 'off spec' or vice versa and all of a sudden, the need to take the levelling 'pain' was removed. And levelling got easier.

In Rift I'm playing mages and clerics. For the unitiated (or those who have been hiding under a rock...) clerics can tank, heal or DD depending on soul choice. Mages can heal, DD or fulfill a support role. So clearly there are specs that are 'easier' in terms of levelling progression than others. Himself is playing a shaman as his 'main' spec and is sliding through packs of mobs 2+ levels higher than he is like a hot knife through butter. I think he gets a bit bored sometimes...

I love my necro but it's not exactly challenging when you've got a pet tank. Same with an elementalist who has a rocky minion as a (sort of) tank. Various warrior/rogue builds get pets etc etc. You get my drift. Now having been levelling my cleric as a total healer I did start to get a bit... frustrated by how long it took me to level, but boy I had fun in groups. My latest addition is a support mage (an archon, to be precise) because I wanted to see how viable it is to level in a 'support' role.

So the point of this post really, is to seek opinion on whether we can make our own challenges in-game. If it feels to easy levelling as a DD, should we try making levelling harder for ourselves, rather than wanting the game designers to increase the diffiuclty levels? Or is that just bonkers...?

RL quests are epic!

2011-06-01T10:44:00.000+01:00

Map showing quest objectives/quest givers.

Quest overview.

Transport choices.

Arrival completion!

Preparations...

Woo-hoo! First reward...

[To be continued as I remain determined to hang on to my sanity via the medium of self-mockery...]

Don't stop shining

2011-05-31T08:14:00.000+01:00

I miss you. I think of you often. Happy 21st.

20 Days of Warcraft Redux - This Upsets (Bugs) Me.

2011-05-27T12:30:00.000+01:00

It's Saga's meme time again - huzzah! And unfortunately I fell into a bottle of vodka last night (quick tip: vodka is only the answer if you know what the question is) so I have the hangover from hell. But today gives me a chance to be ranty about stuff that generally sticks in my craw. Yay. Mind you, my last few posts haven't exactly been happy and smiley, so apologies... I'll try to minimise shouty CAPS and profanity...

Let's have a bitch fight

I hate blog drama. Really, I do. I'm incredibly bad with confrontation that involves me personally, but I also loathe it when bloggers start splitting themselves into 'factions' and taking sides. Healthy, productive debate is fine. Disagreeing with people in an intelligent manner is fine. Challenging people is fine. Taking agin people for either no discernible reason, or for some 'reason' that's so minuscule it's on the pinhead, dancing along with the angels, just upsets me. And then using that 'reason' to troll people's blog saddens me further. I read again today, a slightly vitriolic post (that I'm not linking to because it's the kind of 'churn' post I hate) which consisted of someone spouting off about a known blogger/podcaster (that I'm not over-endowed with fondness for myself but I just kinda... don't engage with it) for seemingly no reason other than they disliked each other (I do get the feeling it was mutual...) and predictably the comments, in the main (with some exceptions) were not particularly relevant to the alleged 'point' the blogger was making but were along the lines of "OMG [other blogger] is win!!11 U r fail!!11" /yawn. See that /yawn. Not even /popcorn. Let's just make like the imp and "all just get along..."

Trolling and being a jerk

See above. But also on forums, on blogs, and in-game. BE NICE! Don't be ableist, sexist, racist or a bigot in general. If you must insist on maintaining these charming personality quirks, please keep them out of game. Seriously, my 13 year old daughter wants this t-shirt. If she can be mature - so can you. Also, don't be an elitist jerk. Don't tell people to L2PlayN00b. It's utterly and completely futile. Chances are they aren't deliberately playing badly... and if they are - well that won't make any difference anyway.

Jumping

I can't jump. In Blackfathom Depths you need to jump up early on - I need a half an hour head start to swim round in circles cursing. In Wailing Caverns I fall through the hole because, even with a run up, I usually can't make it. Raid bosses that require me to jump (I'm looking at YOU Thaddius!) make me sweat and grind my teeth Even with levitate, even with speed potions, chances are I'm going to unintentionally kill you with bad polarity as I try to get across. How do you do it so easily? How??

PvPing

I don't know why. I don't get PvP. I'm sorry. It upsets me that with so many bad things in Azeroth, you'd want to kill each other... /takes tongue out of cheek. Nope, sorry, still don't get it. I love the fact that you love it. It just bugs me that I can't understand why you do. PvP has one use in my life: to serve as a cheesy pickup line to use on Himself (*yoinked* from Bell's Valentine's Day post) "Hey baby, you look like my WoW character. Why don't we go back to my place and PvP..."

So there ya go. It's a short list; be grateful for the fact that I'm dehydrated and my head hurts. Happy long bank holiday weekend fellow Brits, and have a good weekend all you poor souls who have to go to work on Monday...

Entitlement

2011-05-24T20:53:00.000+01:00

en·ti·tle·ment/enˈtītlmənt/Noun
1. The fact of having a right to something.
2. The amount to which a person has a right

Ok - all clear about that? Good.

So... you are not entitled to anything in a game. Other than what is in your standard T&Cs. If Blizzard so chose, they could take all the WoW servers down tomorrow and other than refunding the subscripition fee for the remaining 'game time' you have purchased, you are entitled to nothing. Zip, nix, nada, rien, niente.

You are not entitled to new content, raids, zones or battlegrounds with new patches.

You are not entitled to assume that because you feel your particular class is over-powered/nerfed in a specific situation/context that this is a game breaking situation for other players and Blizz should devote every millisecond of their dev time to fixing it NAO!

If Blizz so chose, they could implement this and there is bugger all anyone can do about it.

You are, however, entitled to vote with your wallet at any point. If you don't like the move towards RMT stop playing. Seriously, if it bugs you that much cancel your sub and go play something else. If you're not at this point, know that you can reserve your right to cancel at any time in the future. That's what being a consumer is about.

Blizz will milk their cash cow for as long as they can (and before it turns into a dog.) Activision is a business. It reports to shareholders. Shareholds don't give a fuck about class balance or content. Nor do they care about what you think you're entitled to...

Epic... handbags?

2011-05-23T23:30:00.000+01:00

I do enjoy my debates with Sven, and readers of both this blog and FailPug may have noticed that recently, he's written a string of posts centering on game design. Some of his points I've agreed with, some I haven't. His recent post about removing the cap sparked debate via Tobold and MMO Melting Pot (no I'm clearly not jealous - my eyes have always been this shade of... green). His most recent post echoes one of his previous posts, both of which have caused me to comment and then write a post in response.

Please take a moment (if you haven't already) to read them and then come back and we'll talk handbags.

Both of these are handbags. So why do I want the one on the left and not the one on the right?

A while back, I tried to give up smoking. I went to my GP, got the miracle medication, felt sick as a dog for a fortnight whilst my body adjusted (the only time, I might add, that I bailed out half way through raids - the room would literally spin so hard that I'd have to lie on the floor and hold on) and then I stopped smoking. And, as many of the 'how to quit smoking successfully' theories will tell you, I religiously put the money I would have spent on cigarettes into my Paddington Jar. Eventually, I'd have saved enough money to go to Selfridges and buy my dream handbag (for the un-initiated amongst you, that's a Chloe Paddington.) And not because non-entity celeb whoever had one, just because I adore them. And they (along with anything vaguely 'designer'-y) was (and remains) firmly out of my financial reach - the only way I was going to get one was to overcome the obstacles (not going back to smoking) and then I'd be rewarded for my effort. I didn't want someone to buy me one. I didn't want a Primark knock-off. I wanted to have 'earnt' one myself. It was symbolic of the 'struggle' I'd gone through in beating an addiction. I never got one, by the way. I started smoking again long before I'd saved up enough so my dream handbag remains that. Just a dream.

Ok, so I've than perpetuated a girly stereotype of handbag obsession, but what does this have to do with the recent discussions about removing the raid number cap? Quite a lot actually. Because for me, trying to separate out the 'raiding for challenge' and 'raiding for epics' mentality is well-nigh impossible. When I raided I loved my epics because I felt that I'd 'earnt' them, from showing persistence, team-work, commitment etc but I also felt a personal sense of triumph when we downed a boss. Would I have raided if there was no tangible 'reward'? Raided 'just to see content'? I might have done, I'll never know for sure. But I know that a visible reward for the effort I had applied helped. For me, it was probably 50/50. Loot helped, personal satisfaction helped. I'm not sure one without the other would have worked.

My Chloe handbag would have been symbolic of the effort I had made in quitting smoking. It would have been 'more' than a handbag to me. But to others I might have just been swanking around with a designer label bag ( flexing my...handbag-peen...?) Is this how we view epics? How we view raiders? Is the reason for not removing a cap on raid numbers really as straightforward as the 'elite' wanting to stay that way? Or is it because that our shiny purples are symbolic of something else, obstacles overcome, challenges met and because simply being able to zerg it wouldn't be as satisfying? Wanting a tangible reward does not make you a bad person. But nor does the view that as many people as possible should be able to see content.

So how do we reconcile this? I'm not sure we do. It's very easy to sit on one or other side of the fence and become entrenched in our view. It's harder to have that view challenged and try to make a coherent, rational argument for continuing to hold it. One of the most commonly mooted answers is 'easy' and 'hard' mode. Does this help though? Another answer is the one Sven proposed - remove the number limit and leave the loot table the same. The smaller your (skilled) team, the faster you gear up. And maybe, this is the middle ground. It's not ground that sits well with me, but maybe it's the least bad of the options.

And another question - people keep citing Rift to me as an example of how Trion do it differently. I'm playing Rift. As far as I'm aware, Rift instances have a number limit. Maybe they don't... but I keep seeing people asking for 2 more for RotF, or 1 more for DD or whatever. I think maybe instanced content does have a number cap, it's only the 'rifts' themselves that are zerg-able...

Cautionary Tales

2011-05-21T15:38:00.000+01:00

There seems to be an increasing number of posts and comments popping up all over the blogsphere stating (or implying) that people are coming towards the end of their raiding 'career'. Or that it's over already. I know the standard defence for this is twofold: that we're not all that far into the expansion as yet (or conversely: there isn't 'enough' content to keep people interested - pick your 'side') and that summer is coming and people naturally slacken off when the sun is shining and the outside world is more inviting than their monitor. Yeah ok, maybe those are true. But I'm not convinced. As we were drawing to the end of Wrath, I continued to read a lot of posts about people exulting in their triumph over the Lich King (even via PuG groups) and there seemed to be a buzz about raiding in Cata. The raiding glow seems to be diminishing at an alarming rate. There are many reasons proposed for this, but the most common seems to lay the blame solely at Blizzard's door due to the perceived change in difficulty level of heroics and raiding between Wrath and Cata. In Wrath it was 'too easy' - do you really get the same level of satisfaction (and glory?) from downing bosses that PuGs can drop? And in Cata it's been 'too hard'. As Sven asked: who'd be a game designer?

Can we, for the sake of debate, try to remove perceived changes to game design from the equation, and instead look at firstly the player base, and secondly at what I call the 'raiding mentality'?

Let's take the player base first. According to Wiki, WoW has been around since 24 November 2004. So that's six and a half years. I don't know about you but my life was a bit different that long ago, however I was still a responsible (ahem) adult. I was in my... ok, my late 20s but I still had kids and a fulltime job and a mortgage to pay. I'm not sure how representative of the player base that is though. I'd hazard a guess that when a lot of the people we now consider to be 'veterans' started playing they were in their early 20s. Now they're in their mid - late 20s (maybe (the horror!) even their 30s.) Their lives are probably markedly different. They'll have shouldered fulltime jobs and mortgages, and have bills to pay. They may have (non gaming) partners who are going to be (in my view) probably less then cool with them being surgically attached to an online game for hours regularly. (And, as a minor, but relevant aside, have you ever listened to someone raiding without the understanding of 'WoW language'? Can you imagine how excluding that could be?) They may even have rugrats and as many parents know, 7pm ain't the ideal time to be needing peace and quiet and uninterrupted time when there are rugrats bouncing about. So is it fair to assume that players' lives may have changed considerably outside of the game? I think it is.

Then there's the raiding 'cycle'. For some people, every new expansion brings a series of new raids and they're cool with their hard-earned epics being tomorrows vendor trash. For others, it isn't that easy. If you raided in vanilla, you'll be on the third loop of the cycle. You'll have geared up in vanilla, in TBC, in Wrath and in Cata. Technically that's four times, but I felt, like I think most people do, that the first time you raid and gear up it's all shiny and new and exciting. But is it really, that much of a surprise that on the 3rd or 4th time round, the pervading feeling is one of 'here I go again...'? We all know the drill: you hit level cap and start running heroics, crafting epics and the rep grind to get entry level raid gear. You do the entry level raids and start getting 'proper' epics. Then you get gear with a higher item level as the bosses and the raid content gets harder. You get tier gear sets and then the new raid is patched in and whaddyaknow? It drops the next tier. Rinse and repeat for every expansion. And that right there - that's the definition of a 'grind'.

Also, and this next bit might be totally specific to me, I think raiding gives you a set of blinkers. Or tunnel vision. The primary focus of the game becomes raiding, raid prep, gems, enchants, gear, buff food, elixirs/flasks/potions, loot tables, DKP and on and on and on... The entire game starts to revolve around raiding. Everything else starts to form part of your peripheral vision, ok, it's there but it's off to the side and a bit out of focus. I've lost count of how many posts I've read bemoaning the nigh-impossibility of being an 'RPer' and a 'proper raider'. That saddens me. Again, speaking for me (and trying to ignore my officer/raid leaders responsibilities as I realise that they form part of the 'raid management' experience, rather than straightforward 'raid experience') the game turned into just being about raiding. Everything else got sidelined. Now, you can argue (and I wouldn't disagree with you) that this is a choice of sorts. One does not have to raid 5, 6 or 7 nights a week. One, I'm sure can be more... moderate that this, but when you're going for progression it's tough. When you form part of a 10-man, and a 25-man (pre shared lockouts) raid team, it's very hard to just take a few nights off. More so when you're a proven healer.

So when do you realise that you're burning out, and how do you manage it? I know people with stronger willpower than I, who simply took a few weeks off and accepted that their need to have some head space took priority over raid progression. I salute those people, I really do. I was never able to just take time off like that. I tried to, and then I'd log on to play an (unguilded) alt, and I'd feel guilty. Would they get the raid going tonight? What happened if one of the other healers had issues and couldn't make it as well? I hated that feeling of 'letting the team down' and whilst, in many cases, that's an admirable trait, when you're burning out it isn't. Others I knew decided that the guild was what was making them unhappy, rather than the raiding. They guild-hopped, always leaving amicably, switching guilds every few months, searching for that one guild who they'd feel 'right' raiding with. Totally unable to see that, often, they didn't need a change of guilds, they needed a change of pace. Eventually, they took extended breaks or vanished off into other games, or just into real life.

When I stopped raiding, Azeroth became a complex, multi-facted environment again. I had time to play around with alts, to level professions, to sit around and chat, to re-roll on an RP server... I had time to re-discover all the other parts of the game that I'd almost forgotten existed whilst I'd been wearing my raiding glasses. I know that I have issues with not hurling headlong into things. My motto is much more likely to be 'everything in excess, nothing in moderation' than the correct way round. So I know that, for me, raiding is a closed door now. But I still miss it.

Lastly, I'd like to salute those who are still there, plugging away at the latest raids. Just remember that Azeroth is a big place, full of wonder and enchantment. If it seems to only be existing in capital cities and portals and raids then it might be time to refresh yourself. Talk a walk through Winterspring, or along the coast somewhere. Don't let yourself burn-out, because once you have, it's bloody hard to be able to get going again. In other words, don't be me.

20 Days of Warcraft Redux - People You Admire

2011-05-20T20:52:00.000+01:00

From Saga's meme of awesome (which I continue to find hugely enjoyable, both in terms of writing and reading other people's responses to) comes Day... erm... 13. Because I missed some out. So this is clearly about WoW people, as opposed to people I admire IRL, as it were. I've kind of been mulling this one over for a few days now, and trying to think about how I'd actually write it, because it could turn into quite a long list.

Starting with the obvious then - bloggers.
I have a huge admiration, as I think most people do, for fellow bloggers. Anyone who is willing to sit down and spend time and effort committing their thoughts to (virtual) paper, for the entire world to read (should they choose to) deserves respect. The people you see on my blogroll are the ones I enjoy reading. Because I'm a bit tardy at reviewing my blogroll regularly there are a few that are missing. Ahem. They are in my Reader though... Jaedia (welcome back - huzzah!) should clearly be on there. As should Mortigan (also huzzah for a returned blogger!) I miss Jong and not just because he was a belf with awesome hair... really!) who used to make me howl with laughter and regularly spit coffee over my screen and keyboard. I really, really miss Jong *sniffles*. Also Oath (where are you?? Come back...) again, not *just* for being a belf with good hair. Ahem. I seem to see a theme developing...

Moving on from belf adoration (wow, that's something I thought I'd never write) into what is fondly known in the Pilf Household as the 'blogging circle of lurve'. Saga and Jae (you've had linkies already my darlings!), Kam, Ama, Jen, Alq and Seph. Himself, who I'm desperately trying NOT to link to, for writing a blog that's always challenging and a great deal different to mine. And for being the source of inspiration for more of my blog posts than I've ever given him credit for (see darling, I kept schtum, aren't I good?) It's a REAL joy to live not only with someone I adore (obviously) but with a bloke who's a fellow gamer AND a fellow blogger. There ya go, gush over.

Additionally, I have a huge admiration for Tobold for both his blogging output and the intelligence of his posts, and the discussions these create. The Girls Gone WoW posse get a credit for their podcast and commitment (Syl, I will get in touch re guesting when life just calms down fractionally!) Gaz for his blog, which is both a thing of beauty and a wonderful, intelligent read. Pewter for her... I want to say bravery, but I'm not sure it's exactly what I mean. Pewter has the drive and the confidence to write about controversial subjects that she feels passionate about, and stay calm and rational. As I'm unable to do this, I'm in awe of it. In a different vein, I have to say I do admire (which is NOT the same as like) Gevlon, partially for his output, but more for his seemingly unshakable 'fuck you all, I'm right'-ness. Which charms me and irks me in equal measures.

The people who makes things tick - officers and GMs
As we all know, they're the often unsung heroes and heroines of Azeroth. Having officered for some time, I can attest to the drive and commitment that can often change the slant of the game for these people. I'd NEVER, in a million years, want to wear a GM cap. Ever. But gods I'm glad that people do. I've not always gotten on, on a personal level, with my various GMs, but I've always, but always respected them.

Azeroth folks - the good (and bad) guys and gals
I can't admire Thrall at the moment. Sorry, but he's poncing around in the Maelstrom looking like a hippy whilst Garrosh thuds around grunting. Bah. I'm loving Vol'jin though. I blame Himself for opening my mind to the way of the troll. God, I hope that he eventually opens a can of whoopass on Garrosh (Vol'jin, I hasten to add, not Himself.) Sylvanas *swoons*. Don't care that she's evil, don't care that she's a scheming, plotting bitch. I think she's wonderful. Lor'themar. Yeah, you know me well enough by now that I don't have to explain this - amirite? Good. And I'm pleased that Tyrande and Malfurion have been reunited. I do love a happy ending.

I did say it would be a long list. I'm sure that I've missed people off and I'll later think 'd'oh! What about so-and-so?' so if you think you should be here... you probably should. Have a cookie and know that you're loved.

You get what you pay for?

2011-05-20T07:11:00.001+01:00

There's been another kerfuffle started about RMT/micro-trans-whatsits and basically, I'm not going to chuck my hat into the ring in the specific case of WoW's 'premium' cross realm dungeon feature. Mainly because the blogsphere is full of pro and anti posts and you'll have already read a fair number of them by the time I get round to publishing this. And also because *cough* my sub runs out on 21 May. Which coincidentally is when I'll actually ascend as part of the Rapture. As opposed to ascending as a Guardian. Or not. Who knows? *shrug*

Anyway - I guess what I was planning to write semi-coherently about is not the inherent good vs. evil of micro transactions but rather what players would be ok about paying for. From the posts and comments that I've read people seem to fall into two broad camps.

Firstly, we have the camp that is happy for RMT (which I'm going to use from hereon as I can't be arsed to write micro-transactions every time. Yes, I know that there's a difference, I live with a mathematician, come statistician, come economist - Himself has a broad and impressive intellect, but RMT is measurably quicker to type) to be part of the game as long as it's for, what could simply be described as 'vanity items'. The sparkle-pony, or the pandaren, or whatever. Take your pick. If it's just done for the sake of looking at pretties that not everyone has, it's cool. If it affects 'game play' it's not cool. The trouble is that people's view of what 'affects' their game play is as broad as the player base. For some people, the mobile auction house gave certain players an advantage. I can't see what mobile guild chat would do to your advantage (except keep you awake if you could read it during interminably boring meetings at work) but it's a premium service none the less.

The other camp doesn't see an issue with any form of segregation - as far as they're concerned, you get what you pay for. No issues with paying for additional raid content. No problems with paying to play with the people you like, rather than putting up with Mrpwnstarr. Want to have a max level character? Pay $20 and you can have one. Hey - EQ2 is considering it. What about wanting more skill, or better PvP? GuildWars is cool about selling you that. Allods will sell you gPotatoes (yawhatnow??) which you then use to purchase seemingly everything in-game. However, both GuildWars and Allods are free-to-play. There's no subscription. And that, for many people seems to be the rub. Should games be both? I don't know the answer to that, I'm afraid.

But, unsurprisingly, I've deviated from what I meant to write about. I was going to discuss what I'd pay for. Ahem, which is a bit moot, admittedly, but let's say that the sub price went down to, oh, I don't know, £5 a month. And let's not think about a specific game, but rather a 'generic' MMO, which, for the sake of ease, I'll call Pilfkin Online (scary thought, innit?!)

[Disclaimer: I don't pretend that any of this stuff is earth shattering, or new, ok. It's just my thoughts!] So, for your £/$/€5 a month you get all the basics that enable you to play the game. You get six character slots per server, and no strictures on faction/race/class choice. You can play through all content on the basic subscription, with the exception of raids (that'll cost you extra). You'll get a ground mount when you hit the requisite level, but that's all. Want a speedy mount? Buy it. Want to fly? Buy it. Want a sparkle dragon of pwn? Buy it. Want to PvP? Ok, let's make battlegrounds free, but arenas chargeable. There are no vanity pets in-game. There are many to purchase. In-game currency is for show only. You earn 'token' gold but everything is available to buy outside of game. If you want to skip the levelling game then cough up and have a max level character, in 'entry level' raid gear.

Thems is the basics, but for me there would be a few more things that I'd pay for. Not vast sums of money, but I would pay (a one-off charge) regardless. Wanna hear them? Of course you do! I'd pay to play on an RP server with heavy moderation and a big ban-hammer. Not to have RP enforced, heavens no: if, like many, you just want to play quietly, without your eyes bleeding from 1337 speak, that's fine. But if you're talking in public channels in an inane string of half formed, misspelt letters and numbers, boom! You're gone. If your character is called Mrpwnstarr and your pet is called ChaseyLaine, boom! C'ya. You get the gist. I'd also pay for something that Rift has done for free (I'm sure they're not the only ones either) which is a character wardrobe mod. What your character has equipped as clothing (for the stats) and what you see (for the image, as it were) are different things. I've set up an expensively-dyed clothing set and now when I get an upgrade I equip it without changing her looks. Simples. Small thing that makes Pilf a happy player.

Of course, I'm me. There would be other things that other people would pay for. So come on. Give it to me baby - what would you pay for? Or would you not purchase anything. Ever. Period?

Darling... It's not you... It's me.

2011-05-10T10:11:00.000+01:00

Every so often, I seem to fall out of step with WoW. It goes, seemingly overnight, from something that I can't get enough of, to something that I feel at best, ambivalent about. I've been through this cycle enough over the course of 5 or so years to have finally reached the conclusion that forms the title of this post: it's not the game that's out of sync, it's me. So I've unsubbed (well, when I say 'unsubbed' I mean I've removed my auto-renew thingy, I've a few weeks of game-time left if I choose to use it) and I'm ok with that. I'm not rage-quitting because of anything Blizzard have, or haven't, done. I'm not quitting to play Rift (though I am playing it a fair bit at the moment.) See, I've stopped playing before and that time I wasn't playing anything other than RL.

And, in fairness, RL has a lot to do with it this time. I'm under 5 weeks away from getting married (zomfg!) and wedding prep is taking up a fair proportion of my time. I'm also trying to empty and paint my old house (which is 200 miles away) and get it on the market so Himself and myself can buy a house together. On top of that, I'm halfway through my first Uni module and am hoping to try and do 2 in the autumn (Open University, wonderful institution though it is, can mean that an undergraduate degree can take up to 7 years to complete if one doesn't shift one's arse and double up modules sometimes) and it's nearly summer. In fact, it's been very summer-like for the last month or so in my part of the world. And sometimes it's healthy to walk away from things and allow them to just be... whatever they actually are. Forgive me for a brief tangent...

A few weeks ago, I took Himself back to my childhood home in Cornwall, as part of that 'I want you to know all of me' thing that involves sharing your past with your beloved. Cornwall was my home from 10 - 17, so not that long; I've lived away from there longer than I lived there. But for years and years, especially when I was unhappily living in outer London, Cornwall was 'home'. I used to go back regularly, but eventually my parents sold the house and moved. But it was still 'home' in my head and heart, because it was my sanctuary. Even after leaving London and moving to Somerset, and being very happy in my little house, Cornwall still resonated 'home' to me. I hadn't been back for a few years, mainly because I used to get very churned up and conflicted about it. I was happy to be there but hated leaving. So I'd warned Himself that we might drive a long way... only to turn round and drive back (emotions being a bit heightened anyway due to wedding and house clearing). As it turned out, I went back to the village I grew up in, walked Himself along the moors that I walked and rode on as a teenager and took him to the beach we often went to. And it was lovely. No conflict, no feeling twisted and tangled up. Which was odd. Nice, but very odd. It wasn't until I got back home, to the flat I share with Himself, that I worked out why it hadn't bothered me this time. I didn't need Cornwall to be 'home' anymore. I have somewhere that is home. Our flat. So I was free to enjoy Cornwall, without needing it to be anything.

I think I get on best when I feel like this about WoW. If I need it to be something, whether that 'thing' takes the form of distractions, or socialising, or whatever, I probably won't enjoy it. I've been working hard to make it feel like a distraction recently ('I'll just play another level then I'll do wedding stuff/study/the ironing etc etc') and haven't felt like I was enjoying my play-time. I'm enjoying my mage but I'm happy to take a break. What I want the most from WoW is something I probably won't get back. I want to be able to play Pilf, and really 'feel' like her again. But I suspect, as my life has changed, so has she. I have logged onto her a few times recently and she's just pixels. As daft as that sounds, I don't want her that way. I want her the way she used to be, neuroses, insecurities and all. And I don't know how to remedy that.

I'll still be blogging here, by the way. I've a fair few days left in Saga's Challenge and I'll probably twitter and witter about stuff as usual. Just not as often. I'm trying (without success, I might add) to persuade Himself that we should have a joint blog; that way we'd actually get a decent posting schedule sorted, but so far nothing concrete has been agreed. If you're pining for me and don't mind RL and Rift posts (and feel like bunging up your Reader with utterly insignificant ramblings) then you can always find me here as well.

Off topic (ahem)

2011-05-09T15:11:00.000+01:00

Necro-focussed Rift post here. WoW blogging will return soon (TM).

Breakin' down the stereotypes

2011-05-05T06:43:00.002+01:00

Because sometimes it's just such a joy to sit back and watch a master at work. It's even better when he's funny too. Go here and worship.

20 Days of Warcraft Redux - A Regular Day

2011-05-04T14:03:00.000+01:00

Hold on to your hats - it's Day 12 (I'm finkin' I missed a few somewhere along the way) of Saga's Challenge! Because I'm determined to make this post longer than a few sentences I'm going to treat you all to the *thrills and spills of 'A Day in the Life of Pilf-the-Housewife-Extraordinaire'

5.45am Alarm goes off. Himself rolls over and swipes at it until silence reigns once more.

6am Alarm goes off again. I drag myself out of bed and stagger to the kitchen. Usually manage to fill kettle up and get coffee made on first go. Occasionally I am outwitted by the kettle not being plugged in and so it takes even longer for caffeine to get into my bloodstream. Am thankful that we decided to drink less 'proper coffee'. I love, adore and worship my Gaggia expresso maker (it's red and shiny!) but the co-ordination it requires is a bit beyond me first thing in the morning... Pack Himself's lunch (yes, I am that devoted!) and make Himself toast and marmite or bagels and cream cheese (please refer to previous point re levels of devotion) for brekkie. Eat banana (my brekkie).

6.15am Drink coffee in companionable near-silence with Himself whilst we sit side by side browsing our Reader. Point out posts of interest to each other. Pick up emails that have appeared over night (usually whilst on the balcony having the first of many cigarettes.)

6.30am Kiss Himself goodbye as he leaves for work. Drink more coffee.

7am Wake up Daughter and sort out her brekkie/homework/ school uniform/any other crisis that didn't exist at 9pm last night but now does.

8am Kiss Daughter goodbye as she leaves for school. Occasionally get a kiss or a hug in return.

8.10am Load dishwasher and washing machine. Drink more coffee. Smoke more cigarettes.

9am - 12noon Choose options from the following: ~~Try to~~ Study. Panic about essay deadline. Swear at the idiocy of sociology modules. Reply to emails. Think about blog posts. Play some Rift/WoW. Potter around doing household chores/cleaning /de-kippling/ironing/shopping etc. Drink lots of coffee. Smoke more. Deal with phone calls from "the computer company" and try not to lose temper at blatant (and time consuming) lies designed to make me hand over credit card details (favourite response to this was Himself, before I lived with him, asking "the computer company" to tell him which colour his ethernet cable was "because I don't know which one it is"...) Catch up with friends. Write blog posts. Panic about wedding stuff. Read trashy novels.

LUNCHTIME!

12.30 - 3.30pm (approx) As 9am - 12noon.

4pm Himself and Daughter arrive home from work and school respectively. Catch up on the day.

5pm Cook Daughter supper.

6pm Cook Himself and myself supper.

7pm Eat supper (with Himself on balcony in the evening sun whilst looking at the sea /flex) and chat.

8pm Either watch film or go WoWing/Rifting!

If WoWing pick from the following options: Log onto guilded alt and chat. Log onto unguilded alt and quest. Decide you want to go gathering so put appropriate music on and go flower-picking or mining. Heft heavy bags to AH and try to strike a balance between ripping people off (I twitch (for no good reason, Himself would add) at putting stacks of briarthorn up for 50g) and almost giving stuff away. Try to remember if you're on an RP or PvE realm and price green gear accordingly. Log onto high level character briefly then log off again. Log onto Pilfkin, tell her you still love her and log off again. Decide whether you really need yet another alt. Try to convince yourself to roll a hunter. Chide yourself for seeing bugger-all content post-80 and resolve to do Something About This.

If Rifting pick from the following options: Log onto Defiant character in the 20-ish bracket. Log onto lowbie alt. Log onto main (with Faebulous the fairy!) and remember how many levels you have before you get your satyr. Log off in a sulk. Go gathering. Swear that the economy is still flat and try to decide whether to hold onto crafting mats for an as yet undefined time on the basis that eventually they'll be worth something or just to flog them for a few gold. Go to creation screen and make another High Elf. Log into Guardian start area, realise you are a fantasy cliché and log off. Sulk. Fiddle with character creation screen for... a while. Try to convince yourself that you will play something other than a mage or a cleric. Chuckle at excessive self-delusion.

10pm Bedtime... (wiggles eyebrows suggestively...)

Sometime after 10pm... Sleep.

*Ok, there aren't many thrills. And the spills tend to be of a coffee related nature. Also this is an average weekday. Also I do do stuff like use the toilet and have baths (not like, multiple baths in a day. Just bath. Singular. One a day.) and scratch my head and fiddle with my hair and paint my nails and... yeah, you get the picture - amirite?

/Grump

2011-05-03T13:56:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking recently about how I'm currently playing MMOs. Or, to be more precise, how I'm incorrectly playing MMOs. For whatever reason I'm playing both WoW and Rift like they're MOs. Minus the 'Multi-player' bit. Ok, maybe that's less true of Rift, where grouping is an essential part of the game, though I guess, if I really chose to, I could just play solo the entire time, by choosing not to hit the 'join public group' button in rifts. But in the main, I go my own way, alone (save my minion in Rift and my water elemental in WoW) and that kinda suits me. I know there are other players around, I see them, I interact with them (if such a word is applicable in the circumstances) via the auction house, but aside from that I don't have anything to do with anyone else.

Two of my characters in WoW are guilded and I like both guilds and characters a lot. But I'm playing my non-guilded ones. Which is kinda frustrating as I quite like both my (guilded) warlock and priest. The trouble is that I log on, feeling vaguely sociable, and after a short amount of time I'm all socialised out. This is especially difficult on my priest as I go waaaaaaaaay back with a lot of the guild members so even if I just bow out of guild chat people still talk to me via whisper. Oh woe is me - I have too many friends... Yes, I know. You're playing the smallest violin in the world right now...

I'm not quite sure when this occurred. I used to be very sociable, the life and soul of ~~the party~~ guild chat etc etc. But at the moment it's all just too much work, dammit. I don't WANT to have to talk to people and be polite when I log on, and there's something else, which I suspect is the fault of ano domini. I can't play and talk any more. By which I mean I don't appear to be able to stay alive and type simultaneously. If I talk to someone I'm dead (or as good as) by the time I've finished writing the sentence. And it never used to be like that! I used to be able to instance and carry on a conversation in vent and two via whisper. And only occasionally send the wrong tell to the wrong person... As it's doubtful that WoW has gotten harder, I guess that I'm just not as quick reflexed as I used to be. Le sigh.

So what I want Blizz to implement is an offline button. Much like MSN or whatever. One that enables me to be online, playing my characters but NOT appear as logged on on guild or friends lists. Then, when I want to be sociable, I can just click a button and materialise into guild again. That way I could play whichever character I wanted to, regardless of whether I want to be sociable. Then again, I have a good line in wanting to have my cake AND eat it AND make trifle from the left-overs, so I won't hold my breath...

Bittersweet

2011-04-28T12:54:00.002+01:00

As I'm continually late to the party I haven't seen all the changes to the zones post-Cata. Which, in many ways, is lovely. I still have that sense of 'ooooooooohhhhh' on a regular basis, which means that I'm not hitting my boredom threshold too quickly. As I've (mainly) played Horde since the x-pac I've seen some of them, but my reasonably recent re-rolling of some Alliance alts means that there's a bucketload more content that I've not yet seen. Darkshore is a good example. If you haven't yet played through this zone and it's on your 'list of things to do' stop reading now as you REALLY need to experience it for yourself. And to be doubly sure this happens, I'm putting in a cut (for the first time ever on this blog, I might add) to ensure that it isn't ruined for you.

Darkshore really is an excellent example of how well Blizzard can re-vamp content when they choose to. It has everything, as far as I can see. It's rich in lore (but we all know that lore isn't my strong suit so I won't expound on this. Let me just say that I really read the quest text, which is a rarity for me, even nowadays.) It has moments of utter poignancy - the first quest I was given required me to find some survivors, all recognisable NPC names, which inevitably meant one stumbles across those unlucky few who didn't survive.

There are wonderful comedic quests - one of which provides an entirely new take on battling with our old enemies - the murlocs. If you want the best way to kill murlocs you should definitely consult a gnome. Preferably one with a pink quiff, and beard to match, called Gary. He has an effective method that merely required a modicum of your assistance. All you need to do is take control of a clockwork bot (with gnomish self'destruct' technology) and wade in...

And watch the murlocs go KABOOM! What more can you ask for! Once your joy has subsided (and really, I think as a quest reward we should just be given one of these bots to keep, should the murlocs, unfathomably, not have learnt their lesson!) you move on to Lor'Danel proper and start questing there.

Darkshore used to be one of those zones that irritated me as it was long and thin and you had to run from one end to the other over and over and bloody over. Which, if your default position is 'idle mare' like mine is, just makes you tetchy. Blizz (goddess love 'em) have resolved this by giving you nightsaber pick-up points to ferry you between quest hubs. Some of the old quests remain - A Love Eternal, for example, which still makes me cry. Literally, no matter how many times I do it, I hate killing Anaya. That's always round one of tears. Then giving her pendant back to Cerellean starts me off again: "Perhaps it would have been better... if I had done it myself. But even after these thousands of years, I could not bear to raise my hand against my beloved." /sniffle, /sob, /WTB tissue.

Then another of my favourite beings - Grimclaw, appears to be deceased (more sniffling). Fortunately there's a handy Keeper around who can heal him, and even nicer, the quest to collect the ritual materials means you don't harm the local fauna. Rather the opposite, in fact. You can only gather the required items peacefully. Carebears of the world join me in rejoicing! Once healed, Grimclaw returns to Lor'Danel to keep Cerellean company: "And you needn't worry about my loneliness. Grimclaw has taken to keeping me company, and I have to say he's a more comforting companion than I would have expected." If that isn't enough to make you happy (and frankly it should be) there's something even better as a quest reward - Withers! Again, I was SO grateful that I hadn't read about Cata zones - this was a huge surprise (and made Himself smile a LOT as I wriggled with glee and squees in my chair!) and a really, really nice one. Withers is not only epically cute (and a very nice pet for a night elf) but he works with his environment... As I ran through water (inevitable in Darkshore) he absorbs the moisture and grows, then shrinks again when he starts to dry out. Totally unnecessary, I grant you, but really very sweet indeed.

I've totally outlevelled the zone - I'm playing a night elf mage on AD so she's wearing heirloom robes and shoulders - but I'm staying here until I've 100% done it. And I am playing a MAGE! Kind of. But really badly. Himself roared with mirth at my method of combat, which involves running into melee range then starting to cast. Apparently this is not the way of the mage? What can I say... I'm trying...

Happy Anniversary Saga!

2011-04-27T07:28:00.000+01:00

Saga, over at Spellbound, recently celebrated her blog's first birthday. She has a beautiful blog, and is a wonderful writer. If you don't read her, well, you should! As part of her birthday celebrations she volunteered to come up with a topic for her commentators, and, bless her, gave me one that made me think:

"Okay, so for a topic.. Since you’ve recently started a gnome while you normally play horde.. How about a post comparing the two factions. Do you notice any difference in the players that you encounter as horde or as alliance – or is it really all the same in the end? Everyone always says that the kids play Alliance and the Horde are more mature players, do you find that to be correct or just an urban legend?"

Good fodder for a blog post, huh! I have to say that my gut reaction is that there's no difference in the player base of Horde or Alliance. But that was my instinct. As I've always said, I'm not good with numbers or data (and that is why I have a Himself who does this sort of thinking for me) but this is mah blog post, not his, so you're gonna have my opinion, not evidence-based, data-mined facts.

When I first started playing WoW, I read (a tiny bit of) the booklet thingy that came with the game and decided that the Horde were the 'bad' guys and the Alliance were the 'good' guys. Therefore I wanted to play Horde. Mwahahaha! My first character was an orc rogue. NB: This was just before TBC launched and I'd discovered belfies. I was utterly new to the concept of MMOs and it took me a while to start to interact with the community on my server. After a relatively short period of time I re-rolled Alliance and got guilded, levelled and raided. Then, with the advent of SAN I went back to being a Hordie, where I've remained until recently. I would, with my hand on my heart, say that for me, what makes the difference is the server, NOT the faction.

Let me explain. I'd spent all my time, until SAN, on a regular PvE server. RPers, on the whole, had a bit of a negative rep, which no-one ever felt able to explain other than a generalised "well... they're just weird aren't they?" thang. But it had itched away at me... what were these servers like? Were RPers really a bunch of cyber-lol'ing freaks? So when SAN came around I jumped for joy at having an excuse to RP. Huzzah. I adored Argent Dawn. Honestly, I cannot tell you how much I loved it there. People were polite, they talked (in the main) in complete sentences, free of smilies everywhere and the leet speak plague appeared to have bypassed them. However, this doesn't answer the question.

The guilds I raided with Alliance side were stuffed to the brim with adults. SAN was stuffed full of adults. I've gamed with teenagers on both sides. Do I think there is a marked difference in the player base? No. HOWEVER, with the perception of the good/bad Horde/Alliance divide, I would suggest that younger newcomers to the game might prefer to be on the side of the 'goodies'. Would your teenage son/daughter prefer to be a Jedi or a Sith? See, I'd go for Sith... proving... well, nothing. Other than I am, in fact, old...

But, if one adds to the good/bad divide the appearance of the races... the Alliance are more immediately identifiable with as, well they're all human-ish. And in the main, can be made to look attractive. Humans look... human. Dwarves are short humans. Gnomes are ~~evil~~ cute small humans. Night elves are humans with elf ears. Draenei... ~~should just have been Broken~~ Ok, they don't look that human. Worgen are basically humans that howl at the moon (sorry, I know that they're lore-correct unlike the Draenei but I just can't get a handle on them.) On the other hand you have the Horde. Trolls are human-ish in form, but with scary tusks - it's kinda hard to make a 'pretty' troll. Tauren are... beasts. In the nicest way. Orcs are... rudimentary, somehow. Big and tough, human-like...ish. But not pretty. Undead are clearly humans but... rotted. Belfs... ok, yeah. Pretty. And that's just the boyz. Goblins = green gnomes? Sassy, rather than pretty, I'd say. Is it more likely that a 'younger' player will want (consciously or not) to roll an 'attractive' character?

In summary, and to answer Saga's question: I think that faction division based on age is an urban legend. That said, I'm always happy to be argued with - so if you think I'm incorrect... let me know!

Do you 'win' if you 'cheat'?

2011-04-26T17:27:00.000+01:00

But only because I cheat...

Sven's post here made me realise that actually I've got too much to say about this to fit on his comments page, so I thought I'd give him some link love (which he's been lacking lately, poor baby) and write a response on MY blog. Go read his post then come back, m'kay? And just to be clear from the start - I'm not aiming to tear Sven's post apart, mainly because he'd beat me hands-down in a ~~battle~~ debate but also because I think he writes highly thoughtfully and intelligently about game design (and other stuff). Like, waaaaaaaaaay better than I do. I excel at sparkly stuff and ranting. Not necessarily at the same time. That said, I am going to take each of his statements and put my spin on them...

"I’d like you to join me in a simple thought experiment. Imagine a simple change to WOW: each player is given an additional ability, called, simply, Cheat. It’s not bound to any key by default, but it’s there if you want it. It does one thing – it instantly kills whatever (non-player) mob you are targeting." Righty-ho - let's start with that then shall we? Why would you want this? Oh, because of this: "Finding a particular encounter too difficult or annoying ? Simply press Cheat and carry on with the rest of the game. Getting tired and frustrated after banging your head against a particular boss for weeks? Don’t let your raid guild fall apart - just press Cheat and there’s automatically a raid wide vote on whether to kill the boss and move on. A single veto and you carry on as before."

Ok, I think I get this. Rather than getting cock-blocked by a (raid) boss you have an insta-death button. So when you're grouped you vote to decide whether that will happen and the majority rules. Oh no they don't: "A single veto and you carry on as before." Ok. Leaving aside (for the moment) any sense of personal accomplishment, can you think of an easier way to divide a group and make people rage-quit? Surely there's enough entitlement/resentment towards epixx and the loot divide anyways? What happens when your raid team is split with 50% (approx) wanting to do things the good old-fashioned way and the other half wanting free epixx NAO! But Sven's view that: "As a result, this change wouldn’t affect people who enjoy raiding for the challenge it poses: they can get their fun as before, with the personal satisfaction of knowing they did it the hard way." Pre-empts me. Or does it? I guess you could just say that this would make PuGing easier - rather than having your 'go-go-go' (wo) man you'd now have your 'cheat-cheat-cheat' (wo)man. If you just wanted to blast through for your phat lootz you could at least do so with a group of like-minded souls...

"People have been using cheat codes in single player games for ages, to avoid content they dislike. What’s the difference? MMOs aren’t a zero-sum game. By getting the shiny epixx from Mr Bigboss, you aren’t preventing anyone else from getting them." No you aren't. But really, if you want to play a single-player game... go play one. I don't care what haxx you use when it's just YOU (and I know that's rich coming from a player who's currently choosing to play an MMO like it's a SPG, you don't need to point out the irony.) Haxx when it's just you are one thing. I've watched Daughter plug cheat codes into various Sims and have all the Simoleons she could spend in two lifetimes roll into her bank (or whatever) but it doesn't impact on anyone else. I guess that you can argue this point with MMOs as well - if I'm happy to stride round with the "Mighty Halberd of Foozlecide (with New, Improved, Shadowfire Animation!)" equipped as a result of just hitting my 'cheat' button, why should this impact on anyone else's game? I guess the short answer is that it doesn't. You can purchase BoE epixx after all, so what's the difference? And this is where I start to get into the muddy waters of 'morality' or the 'deserving' vs. the 'undeserving'. Which I'm not sure I'm equipped to do, but I'll give it a shot.

Imagine two guilds - Guild LolGiefEpixxNao (LolGEN) (which, by the way, will be my guild's name, should I ever create a guild on a PvE server...) and Guild WorkPlayRaid (WPR). Guild LolGEN pile through all the raid content in one night every week and have epixx rained down on them by the benevolent gods of the cheat button. All their players are equipped with the leetest of leet gears. Guild WPR choose not to cheat and each week progress slowly through content. Their players have to 'earn' DKP (or whatever) and take their chances with Lady RNG. They have to know tactics, be able to not stand in The Bad, come raid ready etc etc. They will be badly geared when compared to Guild LolGEN. Which guild is 'better'? Which guild is more 'deserving' of epics? Sven's point: "The only people who might be bothered are those whose real reason for raiding is to collect status symbols to show off to other players. If everybody gets the Mighty Halberd of Foozlecide (with New, Improved, Shadowfire Animation!), how is anyone to know how ~~insecure and attention-seeking~~ superior the status-raiders are?" might be valid. But I'm not sure it is to all players. I'm not convinced that raiding is all about flexing your e-peen. It's about overcoming challenges in a group. It's about tenacity, comradeship, grit and determination. Does that make Guild WPR more 'entitled' to their epixx? My view: yes it does. Sorry, but having a button that allows loot to rain down on you is taking the concept of 'privilege' a step too far. There's no measurable impact, this goes without saying, but to me it 'feels' wrong (I can imagine Sven rubbing his hands in glee as soon as he reads that sentence...) And not just 'wrong', it's... pointless.

Because if you have a big total annihilation button what else are you going to do? Why are you even playing? There's no challenge at all. There's no point in levelling. You can take your level one character 'Rawrrpwn' to any zone, take on any mob and win. Is this even playing a game? Cos it sure as hell doesn't sound like one to me, and not because I'm an e-peening raider. Because I haven't been (a raider) for a long time now. But because I, or Himself as I guess it now stands, don't pay my subscription fee every month to hit one button. I'm not really sure if anyone does. But it's certainly an interesting thing to think about. I'd love to hear your thoughts (and I bet Sven would as well!)

Imp Unionisation...?

2011-04-23T21:19:00.000+01:00

Warlock Minion Heads of Department Monthly Meeting

Friday 22 April 2011

Present:

Flaaghuun - Felguard

Khaanom - Felhunter (Minutes)

Dartai - Succubus (Chair)

Thultaz - Voidwalker

Belnip - Imp

Apologies:

None. Standard dispensation from attending given to representatives from the Inferno and Doomguard Departments.

[Please note: what follows is a verbatim transcript of the meeting and is NOT for general circulation - official Minutes will follow.]

[Belnip] I don't see why yet AGAIN Dartai is chairing, leaving someone else with the slog of the Minutes...

[Dartai] Because, as I have explained time and time again, I cannot be expected to write and type with these *extends hands and wiggles fingers*. My client has standards and expects a certain... style when he summons me. Immaculate nails are all part of my uniform. Anyway, it's not even your turn this time. However, when it is...surely you have enough free time, as one of the lesser summoned amongst us...?

[Belnip] I object! All the imps in the Department work incredibly hard. We have no choice! We're the first one they can summon! Some of them faff about, yanking us in and out of the Nether until they find one whose name suits them! Imagine that! None of the rest of you have to suffer that indignity! And who has to teach them the basics about having a minion? Not you Dartai! And I would refer you to The Manual: page 324, sub-section 16, clause 42, which clearly states...

[Dartai] If you are about to say "This is not in my contract" Belnip, so help me, I will make you regret it! Anyway your use is so... transitory. Especially now Flaaghuun and his crew are on the scene so much earlier. Isn't that right Flaaghuun, sweetie? [Dartai extends her hand and strokes Flaaghunn's knee gently.]

[Flaaghunn] Dartai makes a valid point. Now a speciality allows the clients to summon members of my team when they are so inexperienced our workload has increased dramatically...

[Dartai] Which brings us neatly to Agenda Item One. Workload Distribution. Any immediate thoughts...?

[Belnip] *mutters about 'inappropriate liaisons' under his breath*

[Dartai] Anything... constructive?

[Flaaghuun] As I was saying: things have changed. All of a sudden, felguards are the preferred minion of choice from an early stage, which requires me to focus a great deal of my management time and effort on recruitment and retention. Demand is heavily outstripping supply. In my honest opinion, our clients are being allowed to wield far too much power before they are able to effectively manage it. My lads are really under the cosh at the moment. Stress related absence is rising, which puts even more pressure onto an already over-worked team. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them.

[Thultaz] I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum. My team are really fed-up and under-motivated. I know it's not your fault, Flaaghuun old chap, but these changes have had a massive impact on voidwalker morale. I know my boys used to whine a bit about being over-worked, but they don't know what to do with themselves now. I've gotta tell you... I'm worried about them. With nothing to do, they're just sitting around, talking about the old days. They're even wanting to change their speeches when they are summoned! They want to be given temporary respite from asking to be 'sent back' until the situation has stabilised a little.

[Belnip] This is exactly what I was worried about! As soon as minions become under (or over) worked, all hell breaks loose! We'll have a strike on our hands soon enough, and then what do you think will happen?

[Flaaghuun] Oh well now. I don't think it's that bad yet, Belnip. That sounds a bit doom-mongering, and as our friends from that Department aren't here... That was a joke. A pun? Doom-mongering... doomguards...? No? Oh well. I did try.

[Thultaz] I agree with Flaaghuun. Not that much would change for my boys if there was a strike... but you're being hasty Belnip, surely?

[Belnip] Ohhhhh sure, send in the little guy. I'll say all the unpopular stuff, so you guys can keep your 'reasonable' image!

[Dartai] It's only about image if you're a succubus, Belnip. Surely I don't need to remind you of that? But I'm confident that Flaaghuun and Thultaz know their teams and are on top of any problems. I have every faith in them. Khaanom, I assume that if you had anything to add you'd have sent me an engraved tablet?

[Khaanom] *nods head*

[Dartai]. Excellent. Well, that's Item One dealt with. Shall we move to Item Two - Team Updates, or have we already covered that? Anyone got anything further to add?

[Belnip] I still think that we need to have a proper discussion about The Manual. Sometimes I think that I'm the only one who has actually read it!

[Dartai] That would come under Any Other Business, Belnip. And we aren't there yet, are we?

[Belnip] We never are. We always seem to over-run and not have enough time for AOB...

[Dartai] Item Three then, Gender Equality. Now I think this is unavoidable. Times change, gentlemen and in all honesty we want both the Nether and our workplaces to be as diverse as possible don't we? I understand that there's a long-standing 'tradition' of gendered roles for minions but I think we have to accept that our clients want more options and just accept that we're going to have male and females imps, felguards, voidwalkers and felhounds.

[Belnip] And succubi.

[Dartai] *glares* They would be incubi. And I think you'll find that feedback from our clients suggest that of all the changes being discussed, this one is the least... popular.

[Belnip] Feeling threatened?

[Dartai] Any feedback from your teams, guys?

[Flaaghuun] Mixed. But generally positive. The usual concerns about uniform and weaponry but I think if and when it happens, the team will be supportive.

[Thultaz] My chaps are concerned that they'll have even less work, but I expect we'll work something out...

[Dartai] Super! And we'll reconvene as soon as we have more details. Right, well if that's everything... My client is due in a battleground in a few minutes so I'd better get ready. There is nothing worse than being hauled through the Nether when one is halfway through one's preparations... Now where could I have put my whip?

[Belnip] But what about AOB?????

[Dartai] Customer needs come first, do they not? We'll definitely find time for it next month, Belnip. Especially if you say please...

{Meeting closes}

20 Days of Warcraft Redux - Bad Habits & Flaws

2011-04-17T09:49:00.000+01:00

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin... What? Oh, ok. Apparently this refers to in-game flaws. Not RL ones. *Phew, you got off lightly there...

I have commitment issues
I make and ~~murder~~ delete alts so regularly that I often need to check whether the name that I want to use is currently in use by an 'alive' alt. The trouble is, I'm only really happy playing casters, preferably casters who can heal... I try to convince myself (sometimes) that I could play, y'know, melee, but then I realise that that involves standing up close and actually thwacking stuff... Euch.

I'm permanently broke
Because of the alt situation I have daft sums of gold and bags in transit between characters. And I still often delete alts without having sold/mailed everything to another character. Which is quite stupid, after 6 years of playing the game. I'm just also really bad at making gold. I hate feeling like I'm gouging people (because I'm a moronic social no doubt) and when I was guilded and had a high level alchemist I spent my life taking flasks, potions, etc to raids rather then selling them. I also CBA with addons like Auctioneer. Basically, I have no-one to blame but myself (but that doesn't stop me whinging about never being able to afford a chopper...)

I'm a bit 'all or nothing'
Which kinda screws me up when I raid. And is the reason that I don't bother nowadays. I expect 100% of myself, all the time, so mistakes that I wouldn't even notice, if they were made by someone else, give me excuse for epic levels of self-flagellation (not as fun as it sounds... honestly!)

Sometimes I want to be sociable, other times I want people to leave me the f*ck alone...
Which can be hard work for my in-game friends. I used to just need to be guilded, WoW was where so much of my social interaction came from that I was utterly incapable of playing without friendly green text scrolling past me. Then when my guild stuff went... back-asswards I wanted to be left alone, dammit, to do things my way. Nowadays I hover in between. I loved being guilded with SAN and I like the fact that I've now returned, in a low-key way, to my original guild. That said, I have many, many alts (!) that aren't guilded, and won't be. I do find now, with guild levelling, that it's bloody hard to play unguilded, as I seem to be spammed by guild invite whispers... The oddest thing is, despite Himself and I getting started (as it were) via the medium of WoW we don't, and haven't ever (other than 10 minutes with some spacegoats and a few dungeons with our paladins) played together. We play companionably, often on the same server, sitting elbow to elbow at desks, but we have very little (if any) interaction in-game.

I want the world to be full of rainbows and I really dislike confrontation
I often feel like the imp, why can't we all just get along? This carries into RL too - I really hate conflict and even being on the peripherals of it upsets me. It's the reason I wasn't that great at officer-dom - my instinct is to soothe and to agree (then often regret), rather than being able to be a bit more strong and upfront. It's the 'man up princess' syndrome. And I fail at it. I want everyone to be happy, whilst knowing that it's impossible to please all of the people, all of the time. And I really struggle to understand why people are ok with being rude, to utter strangers as well as people they know. I get banter and in-jokes and mockery... with people you know, but I never understand how people think it's acceptable with being asshats to strangers.

*list subject to change and updates without notice or prejudice...

20 Days of Warcraft Redux - First Blogpost

2011-04-13T07:52:00.000+01:00

Hmm this one is kinda straightforward. My first post on Moar Alts was about the hunter class (!), odd really, as I don't play hunters. Ahem. It makes me laugh because, at that point, I was singularly determined to actually level one. Unsurprisingly, I didn't manage it.

My first post on a joint WoW blog with my ex is here. Man it took me some time to find that blog... But it was nice to re-read it. Good guild memories.

My sadly neglected ficlet's blog's first post is here.

And the first post of my most recently started blog is here. I'm enjoying having a blog that I can throw my thoughts into, without feeling like I 'should' be writing about a specific topic. And that does free up Moar Alts to remain (vaguely) WoW focused, so those of you that don't want all my RL nonsense don't have to sit through (too much of) it.

I hope that's enough firsts for y'all...

20 Days of Warcraft Redux - 10 Things (You Might Not Know) About Me

2011-04-12T13:30:00.000+01:00

I've never known what I wanted to do with my life. I've had many varied jobs (barmaid, administrator, soldering wires to chips that go into missiles, packing rice pudding, working with drug addicts) most of which I've enjoyed (but unsurprisingly, some of which I hated) but I've never had an epiphany about what I was born to do. I envy those who, by virtue of knowing or being lucky, have a career that they feel they were made for.

I've been married twice before. The first time was when I was 18, so as far as I'm concerned, it barely counts. How many of you would be happy (in your 30s) with the boy/girlfriend you had at 18? Being married at 18, though, does give me the option to bat my eyelashes and flick my hair when someone remarks on the fact that I don't look old enough to have teenage daughters: "I was a child bride you know...". The second time, I thought it was forever. This time (11 June) I know it's forever. I'm terrified by being in love like this, but it brings me more happiness and joy than I ever thought possible.

I'm proud of what I've achieved. It's very little, in the grand scheme of things, but I've raised two happy, healthy girls. One of my biggest sources of pride is that, just occasionally, something I've said to them in passing, sticks with them. Some small thing: how you behave to people, how you show loyalty to your friends, what equality means, your social responsibility, having someone's back, the importance of having an informed opinion. The words that mean the most to me are 'you're a good mum.'

A year ago I couldn't cook. Anything at all (other than cakes and cookies, fried breakfasts, kiddie food (fishfingers and potato waffles etc) and the occasional roast lunch.) The first time I had to cook for Himself (who's veggie) I had to have a colleague explain to me, through gales of laughter, how I cooked vegetable stir fry. Now I actively enjoy cooking. Sometimes, in the supermarket, I don't recognise the person who looks like me, but has pak choi, tofu, root ginger, rice vinegar, fresh herbs, sambal oelek and shallots in her trolley.

Warcraft was my escape from being 'me'. Online I could be Pilfkin, or I could be any character that I was playing. Gaming gave me the ability to become someone else.

I'm really bad with 'pop' culture. My family didn't have a tv until I was 11 so I read. Voraciously. We used to have to make two trips per week to the local library, where I'd max out my ticket and my mum's ticket (my sister maxed hers and my dad's). I still rarely (if ever) watch tv and I generally prefer books to films. I loathe 'celebrity culture' and have no interest in reality tv shows. I usually feel out of step with my peer group, but I'm used to this now.

My mum took me to The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the theatre when I was twelve. Twelve (for a lot of girls) is an... impressionable age. And seeing your mum flirting with men who are beautiful, who can walk on terrifyingly high heels, and have better legs that you'll ever have, is quite an experience, at such a tender age. I blame my mum for my predilection (now thankfully fixed, but that plagued my late teens and early 20s) for men in leather and eyeliner.

I adore writing. I adore talking. I need people around me. I send myself up all the time. I'm not even sure who I am some days. I'm one of the most self-obsessed people you're likely to meet (but I'm also kinda nice.)

For many years I looked like this *points up*. In my head, I still look like this now. Then daughter plays me the music she likes, which I would have liked when I looked like this, and all I can hear is frantic drumming and roaring and it makes me tired, and makes my head throb. I am no longer gorgeous and in my 20s.

All I want from life is happiness, for me and for those I love. Ideally, I'd like the world to be happy, but the older I get, the more I realise that you can't fix everything and everyone. I want to believe that if everyone made the effort, the world would be a better place. But I know that humanity isn't that easy to fix.

Come here so I can bite your ankles.

2011-04-11T12:46:00.000+01:00

So this whole 'being a gnome' thing is the exact opposite of the 'being a Tauren thing' and I don't just mean the faction. The issues I have with Tauren; the fact that they seem to be loping along in slow-mo, which I can't handle, translates to gnomes, except that gnomes move in this coked-up fast-forwarded pace, like a child who's OD'd on E numbers and sugar, and the world is big. Really extra-ordinarily HUGE. The gnolls in Westfall tower above me like bloody skyscrapers - I'm glad I'm a caster class so I don't have the ignominy (see that - that was a pune, or a play on words! And *huggles* if you knew the reference without needing to follow the link) of having to savage their ankles with a sword or something... But she's soooooooooo cute. And she has freckles.

I've got there, with the big 'who is this mysterious lady' reveal, and it was nicely done. Mind you, I spent about an hour traipsing around the tunnels leading towards the Deadmines dungeon entrance being thoroughly... directionally challenged. I am teh fail. It's official. But the black and white film noir cut-scene was worth it, as was the revenge (mwahahah) Having been sent off to Stormwind with orders to report to Varian, whilst she razes Westfall to the ground, I kinda felt like I was on her side. Especially when I saw what he'd done to his castle. Tosser. I've still got some quests to finish up there, I suspect, despite being at the upper end, level wise, for them.

My guild (as in the guild that I'm in, not 'my' guild...) has recently reached guild level 23 which is kind of cool. They have a multitude of perks (most of which are utterly inapplicable to me due to my guild rep being at neutral and the fact that I'm only level 16) but they have the additional xp one which does knock on to me. Grr. Even without BoAs I'm still exceeding the content level. I know I've ranted about this before (and if I could be bothered I'd link the post) but it does annoy me that there isn't an off-switch for additional xp. Especially as all the stuff is new Alliance side, and I'd quite like to actually see it... Le sigh.

It's nice being guilded, though. I'm very much on their coattails; with them, but not of them, if you see what I mean, but I'm ok with that. Familiar names and jokes are nice. The main-character-shuffle is a bit confusing but I'm getting there. One of the funny little marks of the 'old school' crew is how people are still referred to by their original character names, despite the fact that they probably haven't played them in a few years. I will always be Pilf (and actually that's ok, as I'm now Pilfette) but Kin remains Kin, despite his namesake warrior having been no more than his bank alt for years, Eve is Eve despite the DK (I think) having been deleted. Bob is Bob despite the retirement of his warrior. You get the picture. I've gotten my vent running and I can still easily pick out voices I haven't heard in a year or more. But I'm kinda avoiding voice chat. I don't want to get dragged into the game being my life again, and automatically firing up voice chat along with the game is a sure way to make that happen for me.

The oddness, though, lies in being on a PvE realm again. Lore? Pshaww... What do you want to bother with that for? Character traits? Yawhatnow? Quote: Pilf, stop being one of those weird RPers and just go back to being you. What if I stopped being 'me' in-game a while back? What if being my 'character' is now the norm? Huh? It's a strange headspace - neither fish nor fowl, as it were. I'm sure that eventually I'll slot back to being the Pilf that they know and recognise, but it might take some time!

20 Days of Warcraft Redux - My Desk

2011-04-08T08:18:00.000+01:00

Ok, here comes Day 6 in Saga's (horribly neglected by me) Challenge. Gods, I've seen some of the other responses to this, along with pictures of shiny, ordered desks and... yeah. Part of the sitting room in our flat bears a striking resemblance to a LAN party... We have, like, Daddy-Bear, Mummy-Bear and Baby-Bear computers and our desk(s) are usually chaos! No I'm not being falsely critical, they're a state... see:

No modesty here folks - this is me, warts and all! I actually did a count the other day, to see how many (working) points of access we had to the interwebz and came up with 8. For 3 people. Methinks that's a trifle excessive...?

When I moved in with Himself his desk was in the bedroom and mine was out here. Then we realised that basically, that's kinda anti-social. We moved in together to actually spend time together (whereby 'spending time together' is defined as being in the same room, communing with the interwebz, ok?) so we re-arranged the sitting room so we could at least sit elbow to elbow and... talk. It works well actually, and sometimes we're a proper geek family, as daughter will be doing her homework on the laptop next to me. More usually she's in her bedroom with music blaring communing with Facebook via her netbook... i.e. the default state of teenagers everywhere.

I'm realising, as I write this, that I'm totally procrastinating. I have the Parental Visit tomorrow (that's right...) so clearly, I should be making concerted attempts to lessen the chaos, rather than blogging in a pseudo-proud way about it! So yeah... happy Friday people, and have a fabulous weekend. I'll be spending Sunday watching my utterly MAD sister run a marathon and thanking god that it isn't me!

You're not in Kansas anymore, baby!

2011-04-07T10:39:00.000+01:00

Because I loathe and despise Kharanos (apologies to all who don't - but seriously - what is WRONG with you?) I've taken Pilfette to the human-lands, where I've historically levelled all (but my Draenei) characters when I've played Alliance side. I'm still chuffed to bits with the insane amounts of flight-paths that have been added - I'm not 100% sure that the run from Goldshire to Stormwind was so tedious that it really required the ability to fly from one to the other, but nevermind. Goldshire, in the main, is pretty similar to how I remember it. I'm still required to rob kobolds, for reasons which remain unclear; the dearth of gold dust and candles hasn't ever really been explained... at least not to me. They still need logs at the Eastvale camp, and the wolves and bears continue to be a menace. Ok, all pretty standard stuff.

Then I got the quest that requires me to go and have words with Hogger, and massacre the general gnoll populace en route. So there I was, smiting away (ok Hogger, you might be bigger than me, but I'm a disc priest. I can (and will) bore you to death if that's what's required) when out of nowhere charge representatives from the Stormwind posse. What? Why can't I kill Hogger? He's got one hit point left! ONE point - lemme finish the job already! But, no. Not this time. This time they take Hogger into custody and transport him off to The Stockades. Now this is one of the times where I'm SO pleased that I hadn't read all the Cata spoiler stuff, because I didn't know this! So it gave me IMMENSE joy. And then I rushed off to WowHead to confirm that YES!! Hogger is now the final boss in the Stocks! Win, win and some win-sauce!

So after this joy, it's only right and proper that I come back down to earth with a thud in Westfall. Horse-icide and CSI moments aside, Westfall is now Not Nice. Varian really appears to be a bit of a tosser right now. I don't like the quantity of drifters and vagrants, and I really don't like the poor children who appear every time you've killed someone and rob the body. That's just... nasty and unsettling. But.... Oh but I do like the shadowy (female) figure who's up to No Good. God, I want it to be Jaina. Please, please, please let it be Jaina (it's ok, l I know it isn't... But dammit - that would be cool, wouldn't it!) I've only just started in the zone... so you'll have to forgive the short post... but I really want to go back and find out how it plays out. And that's what really makes me happy - that wanting to play, not to level up, but because I want to unravel the plot...

Dynamite comes in small packages!

2011-04-06T06:57:00.000+01:00

Having given quite so much love to * whispers* Rift recently, and gotten halfway through a post (which I will eventually finish) about raiding, I figured that before I started writing about WoW again, I should really like, play it! So I had a think about what I wanted to do and decided that actually I'd kinda like to catch up with my old guild... that's where a lot of the people that I originally played with are still playing and though they're pretty srsbznz nowadays I figured (correctly) that they'd probably have a slot on their guild roster for lil' ol' me (and I was right - huzzah). I also realised that this would require me to be (stinky) Alliance so I decided that at least I'd be cute... and Pilfette the gnome priest was born.

She is just darling, and the gnome starter area is all shades of awesome. I was a bit busy ~~gossiping~~ catching up with all the old crew, so I died... a few times. But what really caught me was how, having not played for a few weeks, and more than that, having played something else instead, how out of practice I was. Daft as it sounds I really had to think about what I was doing! And, you know, baby priests aren't exactly complex to play: shield, SW:P, smite. How hard can it be? Well, the map was different, the interface was different, there was a cogwheel not a hand, I had to think more. And that's the biggest difference. I hadn't taken in quite how much Rift spoon-feeds you stuff. I'd gotten used to not really having to engage my brain much - the map really takes you by the hand and leads you to where you need to go (much more so than WoW does, believe it or not) and it just required me to engage much more of my brain than I was used to. Plus I don't appear to have talents (sulk) nor can I have a mount until I reach 20... Bah! But all (tongue in cheek) comparisons aside, it did feel nice to be back in Azeroth.

I haven't played priests since... well, since before Cata so I gather it's all changed a bit. Like, holy is now a viable levelling build?? So I'm torn between holy and disc. I figured that I'd try and not take the easy route of shadow until I'd really given one of the other specs a decent shot.

So wish me luck as I again venture into Azeroth...

I ain't dead

2011-03-28T10:48:00.000+01:00

Just fickle. Soooooooooo... Rift post here for those that aren't too anti :)

Pilf xxx

So here we are (again)

2011-03-17T07:35:00.000Z

Following on from yesterday's post, I decided to bite the bullet and have a 'non-WoW' blog. I always feel kind of guilty when I write about non-gaming related stuff here (in fact I feel guilty when I write about non-WoW related stuff here) but I want to write it somewhere. It's not polished (not even close to being so) and the writing is the same. Unpolished and unanalyzed (actually, it's probably over-analyzed...) Minimally compliant. Hey - I have the mind of a belf... what else can you expect? Oh yeah - it's tangled, neurotic and generally Quixotic.

I'm not going anywhere (other than Telara...) so /moar alts isn't closing up shop - not by a long way, but I want to get back into the habit of writing. But without the rigidity of a 'themed' blog. There won't be WoW-related posts there, those will remain here, so don't feel obliged to drop by, but if I'm quiet here and you're wondering if I'm still around... come visit and *wave*?

I am not a-mused.

2011-03-16T11:54:00.000Z

Oh muse, oh muse, why hast thou forsaken me?

Probably because I'm not gaming much at present, either in Azeroth or Telara. I do go through these burnout phases reasonably regularly, as those who've read this blog for sometime know. I have phases when I post (nearly) every day and phases when I post every week at best. It's intensely frustrating... It's nearly frustrating enough for me to start a non-gaming blog, because when I'm not gaming I'm not writing and I miss writing. I miss it so much, seriously, I do. Himself used to voice his awe that I could churn out a post almost daily, but the reason I did was because it's the writing process I love. The game itself is almost a 'prompt' of sorts, a creative solution to writers block, if you will. Maybe I should just keep a non-WoW blog as well, to keep me in the 'habit' of writing... I dunno... Bah.

Kam, who is a darling, in general, and in the specific because of this, has challenged me to write what I call a ficlet, and what she calls a vignette, about one of my characters, either in Azeroth or Telara - probably, because as I've mentioned, she's lovely and realises that I need something to gee me up and get me back into the writing mold again. So I logged on to my Rift characters, some of whom I'm having fun with, but they're just... pixels. They aren't anywhere near having personalities, and because I'm nowhere near to getting my head round Telara lore I'm struggling on both fronts! So I took a (very) deep breath and logged onto Pilf. And it was... odd. It wasn't helped, admittedly, by accidentally (because I'm a klutz) hitting my friends list shortcut and being faced with a load of Erc's characters who I'll never see logged onto the game again. That didn't help at all, as you can probably imagine. But odd because I just can't seem to 'connect' with her at the moment. I re-read my old posts and think 'Dammit, I used to be able to write! What in the hell happened?' But that's hardly constructive either.

All of which is a long way of saying - how do y'all deal with writers block? (Or whatever you want to call it) because, right now, I need some time off from weddings and study, I need some downtime, some time to do stuff for me, and writing used to be that outlet. All suggestions welcomed and appreciated...!

20 Day of Warcraft Redux - Favourite Item

2011-03-12T23:38:00.000Z

So Saga's meme brings me as far as Day 5 - Favourite Item In-Game. Last time I tried to do this one I was in the midst of packing up my house and I couldn't face it, but tonight, as insomnia bites and I'm feeling a bit wistful (for reasons I can't really identify) I thought I'd try it again. But, like the WoW Memories, there are a fair few, so picking just one... nuh-uh. I'm going to have to fudge it. Again.

Oddly enough, there are parallels with the packing I was doing. Every so often I'd come across something, shoved in the back of a cupboard, in a box, on a shelf that made me stop and have a 'moment'. Not because any of it was valuable in real terms, but because it had a memory attached to it. And this is very much how I feel about the items I like most in-game. The stuff that clutters up my bank(s) because I can't bear to get rid of it. My warlock, for example, still has the bell, wheel and candle items for the Dreadsteed quest. Or, at least, I think she does. As the quests are now obsolete maybe they're not in my bank anymore. Who knows...?

Shadrynne has the Vampiric Batling from Prince Mirkblood (an additional boss in Kara during the pre-WotLK zombie-fest.) She's probably got the most... stuff as I played her so much. She certainly has the pets I love: the Sinister Squashling, and boy did Lady RNG hate me, I think it took me two years to get it *sad face*, the Captured Flame, Pengu, Snarly. You get the picture. She does love her pets. Anything that needed a rep grind to get, Shad's got it. Mounts as well, the green proto-drake, the talbuks (in every colour mind you.) She's even got a zebra. I still have various candies in the bank from old guildies. And I can probably tell you which one was from whom... She was also my raiding darling so she's got masses of old tier gear stashed away.

And Pilf. Pilf has so much stuff that I can't bear to get rid of that she's badly in need of a vanity guild so I can have moar space. Each of her outfits has resonance for me - the outfit she wore to SAN's fishing extravaganza (that won her a prize!) which is the same one that she wore when she was offered drugs. There's her mooncloth robe that was a rep grind to get the pattern for...but got Himself (before he was Himself, so to speak) to Silvermoon to admire, which led to this robe, (more suitable for the beach dahling!) which led to this. She also has the white turkey.

However... If I have to pick a favourite in-game... thing... I pick Pilf. No pause for thought, no competition.

brb!

2011-03-08T06:30:00.000Z

I've a head full of wedding stuff a mile long, plus essays that need to be written. I'm not going away for good, but things'll be quieter around here for a bit!

Kisses,

Pilf

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic - Favourite Weapon!

2011-03-05T20:49:00.000Z

Yay for Blog Azeroth's shared topic this week! And yay for Kallixta for starting it! What is your favourite weapon in-game? As opposed to favourite weapon out of game, which would possibly make an even more interesting blog post. Himself: his look of utter boredom and scathing disdain for the world around him. Daughter: her switchblade attitude. Mine.... umm... probably (if I can still do it) my 'walk away now girlie/sonny' look - utilised to great effect in my previous incarnation as manager of a pub... Not sure I can still do it though *sniffle* - either that or Himself and Daughter are just immune to it...

I guess for me, and I'm sure that this won't come as too much of a shock here, it's got to be Benediction slash Anathema. I wrote about the actual stuff that you go through to get it back in April (*boggles*) last year (jaysus that's a long time ago now!) and I'm still damn proud of it. Partially because that quest was hard. And I guess more poignantly now, since The Sundering/Shattering, I'm not sure whether you can still get it. Does Molten Core still exist? I know that The Plaguelands have been revamped so maybe the entire quest has gone? The one thing I'd have loved to have gotten was the Tier 1 (or was it Tier 0.5?) set as well - the first set of 'proper' priesty stuff to go with it. But that would have been utterly bonkers and I'm not sure that there were enough willing souls to go through that havoc with me...! My soulcloth vest and soothsayer's kilt work well with it though, as does the mooncloth robe. Goodness me - this post is turning into a 'let's play dress-up' post... Apologies.

Of course, its all tied up in Pilf as well; how I played her, how she 'felt' to me, how 'real' she was. I had so many 'firsts' with her, and learnt so much about the RP side of the game. She was with me through a period of huge change in my life and there was so much of me in her, and vice versa, that I've basically rendered her unplayable now; a fact which never fails to sadden me a little. I wouldn't change a thing mind you - she got me to where I am now, you see. Destination Beautiful. And that's where I want to be.

SM (No, not that SM...)

2011-03-03T12:39:00.000Z

*Before Himself and myself vanished off into the fashionable (*ducks*) wastes of [whispers] Rift, we did an instance on our paladins. Again, just the two of us - Himself being tank and some dps, me being heals and some dps. We figured that we were mid 30s (well, I was. Himself was 29) so we should give the Monastery a shot and we were pretty surprised by how well we did. Graveyard - cake. Library - Loksey was more like... umm... something that is far removed from cake. Brussel sprouts maybe? Anyways, he was a hard cookie, and just blatted (with the help of his puppies) Himself into a pulp, so Himself went off and gained a few levels. When he reached 31 we came back. Loksey - meet the stone floor. Doan - a smear on the carpet. Herod? Well I'm not too sure who was more bored, him or us but we one shotted him as well. By god he does rather go on about his blades of light... I'm not 100% certain that he isn't compensating for something I'd rather not think too hard about. We decided that the Cathedral might be pushing it some so we stopped there, but it does give rise to an interesting question.

If two of us, at approximately the 'correct' level for the instance, in non-heirloom gear can two man this - what must it be like in a five man? I remember, from my dim and distant past, that SM was kinda... hard. The trash is still irksome in that they run at low health, and if you're not lucky they come back with many friends, but we solved that by Himself HoJ'ing them and me having my insta-cast exorcism ticking over for a final smack when necessary (and Himself 'reminding' me that one was about to run...) We also went slow. Himself is an old school tank inasmuch as he goes carefully, pulls trash back into a cleared room, LoS casters and generally tanks in a vanilla/BC manner. All of which is fine by me - I'd always rather take 30 seconds to set up pulls then to Leroy it in and wipe. He's also deeply commanding when tanking... Mmm. Sorry, where was I? Yeah, 2 man vs 5 man. Mad huh? And, y'know, I'm not a very good player. My ability to heal (even just myself and one other person) and be aware of... other stuff happening is bad. Himself, bless him, marked which one he was hitting so I could just tab to star at an appropriate moment to blat rather than actually having to be on the ball. Poor Himself...

So.... where does that leave the dps? The whole thing would have been quicker with dps, for certain, but would it have been less hassle? If it was people I knew then of course it would have been fine, but if it was PuG players? I dunno... I know that they would have driven Himself nuts (and he them, most probably) if they were from the 'gogogogo' school of thought. Its an interesting experiment this, and I wonder how far we'll get before we have to admit that we do need dps to get somewhere...!

*Just to be clear - this post is not, I repeat: NOT about me bragging about being leet. I'm not. At all. Ever. Even when I was raiding I was the girl that went along because people liked her and she made them laugh. I never raided because I had mad skillz. I have never been, and will never be elite. Are we clear? Good!

(D)rifting

2011-03-01T13:20:00.000Z

Having had time to calm down after my rant, and also feeling ashamed after reading Sven's well-balanced and thoughtful The Drunkard's Walk post, I thought that I'd try Rift again - thought progression below:

Arse! The Mac client is crap so Himself has to dual-boot the Mac and make it run Windows.
Feed Mac cupcakes to try to compensate for this level of abuse.
Character creation is beyond gorgeous. Ohhh /strokes screen and gets staticky...
Waste hours playing with hair and make-up. Nothing new there then...
Finally I have character exactly how I want her. Daughter has insisted her hair matches hers.
Log into game.
Ohhhhhh shiny graphics are shiny.
Yay for interface that I understand.
Yay for being able to just play!
Having three talent trees makes my brain ache.
Pick spells that look shiny... in an evil way.
I am not a 'good' cleric.
Wtf is my rotation supposed to be? /whimper
Oh I have mail. Ohhhhhh mail contains two-headed turtle mount of awesomesauce.
Mounts at level 5 are kinda cool...
Rifts are weird. I start beating things up and suddenly people join me and wtf I'm in a raid group?
General chat is full of the inevitable WoW comparisons.
God the graphics are amazing.
Rifts are cool. Wish I knew what to do with the thingys I earn though.
Gathering. I can understand gathering.
I appear to be a combination of a paladin, warlock and shadow priest.
I'm confused.
I don't understand death.
It's still exceedingly pretty.
I might need to L2P.
FINALLY my legs, stomach, chest and arms are covered by believable armour!
(This armour is less shiny. This is a good thing...)

21st century games? Or just games for the boys?

2011-02-26T20:00:00.000Z

I don’t bring gender politics into my blog – it’s about gaming, ok... I’m rather of the opinion that if you feel strongly about equality, go and take some action in the real world, as opposed to a manufactured ‘fantasy’ one. Go and volunteer on a helpline, in a refuge, take issue with your colleagues and mates over oppressive language, do something, ANYTHING that makes a difference. I’m aware that there is an issue to be taken here: if you want ‘change’ then you address it on as many levels and in as many arenas as you can, and that’s fine. I’ve avoided the many debates there have been in the blogsphere about sexism and equality on the basis that I describe above, but today I’m making an exception.

Whilst I’ve been away, packing up my house, Himself has had some belf-free time to play some 'headstart' Rift. Last night, when we were out for a drink, he told me about it, and I was interested enough to want to see another MMO, with the thought that I might be a bit of a tourist and go and visit. So when we got home today, he loaded up his game and started to explain it to me. I am now going to rant. Those of a delicate disposition may want to look away now. Because I am so CROSS, I’m virtually frothing at the mouth. I’m also aware that I’m probably not the first (nor hopefully will I be the last) to be chewing her (or, in an ideal world - HIS) nails to the quick with rage and frustration about how the gaming world appears not to have moved on AT ALL. There will be CAPITALS (you may have guessed.) There will probably be swearing. After I’ve written this, normal Pilf-like service will be resumed.

So, as standard, you start by picking your side – loosely described to me by Himself as ‘either science or god’. I pick science. Yay – that was easy (and kinda cool, lore wise from the smidgen he told me.) Then you pick a race as per usual, yada yada yada. Himself is clicking on the male models, which is fine and dandy, but honey… I play female characters, c’mon, gimme a female character ok? So then he clicked onto the female character and I stopped wanting to play the game right then and there. No you are not getting a single fucking penny out of me, not now, not ever. Job done – do not pass ‘go’ do not collect a subscription fee. I guess you can imagine what is coming here? The male characters are clothed in sensible trousers and tunics. Legs covered, chest covered, arms mainly covered. The female ones? Oh for fucks sake, the female characters have a wrap skirt, fold-over-top (not quite knee high but a damn good approximation) boots and what might charitably be described as a ‘crop top’ on, i.e. a bit of fabric at the front and not a lot at the back. No matter what race you pick, they’re all wearing just enough so you don’t see boobs, but it is JUST enough. The sad thing is that they’re actually sensibly proportioned. They don’t have gigantic boobs, yeah they go in at the waist, but not to a cartoonish degree. They have sensible, reasonably well muscled legs. All of which makes it even WORSE that they’re so… underdressed. What? You can actually get sensible proportions of the female form in pixel form and then to redress the balance and effectively reduce them to eye candy, you just HAD to go and give them ‘fuck me or protect me’ clothing? Really?? And Himself did then go onto class choice and onto what I would describe as the bit that makes the game appealing to women (apologies for the generalisation) which is the insanely high level of customisation. Which is gorgeous, and fun and something I want to play with (and would… for hours) but I cannot get over my instant ‘what the fuck?’ reaction. Please refer to pictorial evidence below:

This is my character standing next to a quest giver. Who is sensibly dressed. She's still pretty, the clothing is still detailed, but she's COVERED UP.

For the sake of fairness, here is another NPC. Ok, there's a bit of 'slave girl' in the stereotypical sense going on here, but again, she's got some skin covered...

Now for complete fairness, here is a male quest giver. Chest out, agreed. But a serious, arguably even learned face, witness the beard and the frown lines. Hardly eye candy?

These are IDENTICAL NPCs. They're both Centurions (I think). Whose armour do we think might be of more use? Also, note Himself's strapping, awesome Amazonion character. Who is now wearing quest gear. Which consists of... basically a chain mail bikini.

Now, I don’t pretend to have a grasp of stats, with regard to MMOs but I’m fairly sure that it’s accepted that the gender balance nowadays is as near to 50/50 as makes no odds. Gamers are no longer the stereotype of teenage boys or sad men fantasizing in their basements. They haven't been for a long time (if ever). They're a diverse range of often intelligent men and women. Why then, WHY would you potentially alienate 50% of your player base by being so overtly sexist and gratuitous? Maybe there are female gamers out there who don't mind the utterly stereotypical clothing on offer, if you're out there, well /cast vicious sarcasm right on sister /end cast. But for the love of all things, PLEASE accept that there are many, many of us who DO NOT want our gender denigrated and objectified. There are many of us who just want some equality. Really, is it so much to ask? Just give us armour that makes it as hard to disembowel us as our male counterparts. Give us clothing that makes us look like we have a purpose. Aside from eye candy.

I really don't know what else to say. Other than my twelve year old daughter initially thought Mum was over-reacting, "oh God, Muuuuuum, you're SUCH a feminist, it's a GAME". She's now taken a closer look and has just said, "It's such a shame. Because the graphics are amazing. And they've used it to do that." I repeat: she's TWELVE. If she gets it, why the FUCK don't game designers? Answers on a postcard, with suitable donations to a feminist organization of your choice. Failing that, don't give Trion your hard earned cash (yeah, I said it.) Do something fucking small to stop this sort of shit.

dying swan

2011-02-24T10:00:00.000Z

Not in WoW you understand - I've barely played this week *sulks*.

*Dying swan* because I'm packing my house up, then I thought I'd stop and blog as a treat to myself (hey - it's like 9.30am - it's too early for vodka, m'kay!)... only to find that the installment of Saga's challenge that I was up to was Day 5: Favourite Item(s) in-game. Which would require me to log many, many characters and go to their banks and... unpack stuff - which would make me SCREAM. So instead I'm going to have a rant about RL (I know! The shock... you poor things...)

Packing my house up is a big, steamy pile of this. It's soooooooo hard. And I'm feeling incredibly feeble having been going at it since 5.30am on Monday. Ok, I have stopped to sleep. And eat. And whinge. And play my pally a little. A very little. But basically I'm sorting through 8 years of... stuff. Happily (or not...) I'm also sorting through junk from two marriages (which is a phenomenal achievement as I'd divorced first husband waaaay before I moved here - and I kept thinking 'why didn't I get rid of this shite when I moved? Really, wtf`?? And then I realised - because it's easier to pack it and chuck it in a cupboard than it is to go through and sort it out and recycle it or take it to the dump. And my self control and lack of CAPS in that sentence is epic) and one long term relationship, so add emotional stress onto physical stress and you have a very feeble little belf rocking in a corner.

But I am being amazingly good. The recycle/charity shop/give away trawl has massively out-weighed the 'chuck' trawl. Books were the KILLER. I have *coughs and mutters a large number* boxes of books that I'm keeping, but a great deal more that I've given away - NOT at the behest of Himself and the raised eyebrow at the utter trash (think Twilight saga then worse) that was on my bookshelves, bollocks to that - I like my escapism, but because I realised that there was no way I was going to re-read all of them. We're talking yards and yards (possibly a mile of I actually laid them all out) of books. They've gone to good homes (or charity shops) so I feel slightly virtuous. But worse than the books was the general crap - the 'oh I'll put it in that cupboard there and sort it when I have... time' stuff. And then worse than that was the wedding photos. Epically, I managed to find BOTH sets in one cupboard, which is good going even for me. Daughter was charmed, having never seen any photos of her parents wedding, "Mum - you were SO young!!" , "Yes darling. I was 18. That's 5 years older than you." Daughter grimaces and mutters something about "love being stupid" under her breath...

And, because every blog post needs a happy ending... Last night Daughter was staying overnight at her friends and I was tired, so very tired. And hormonal. And feeling generally unloved, having rung Himself earlier and gotten a "I'm in the car (on hands free because Himself is a Good Boy) so I'll ring you when I get home. I might be a while though." And I'd had a bit of a cry (because I miss him) so I rang my Mum, all sniffly, "Can I come and stay with you tonight?" so emergency parent taxi had departed (I know, I'm 34 - how sad does this make me look!) to collect me and Himself rung. "Where are you?" "Just going to my parents." "Oh, ok. I'll come and join you then." "........????? WHAT???" "I've just parked." My neighbours must have been edified to see me explode out of my front door and run, yes actually RUN (last seen circa 2002 in Brixton to get the night bus), at speed, down the road into Himself's arms. And cry some more. Daughter returned home about an hour later (because she needed cash - why else) and greeted Himself with "What are you doing here?" "I missed your Mum so I thought I'd come down and see her." 'OK, now I accept that you love her. You can marry her now." And I'd like to add, for further bragging rights, that it's a 360 mile round trip for Himself, who left at 6am to go and do a days work. All because he missed me like I missed him. Now THAT'S love /ends brag.

Do we want this? Do we need this? Do we already have this?

2011-02-18T09:45:00.000Z

I was emailing a WoW friend today (god that's a horrible expression, apologies - you know who you are!) and towards the end of the email my hands hovered over the keyboard whilst I tried to work out whether or not to type the next sentence. The sentence is question, of course, being the phrase for our times "If you want to look me up on Facebook my name is..." And yes, I did eventually type it, but not without some thought.

I should say now that I know people can be very pro or very anti FB. I'm kind of ambivalent, I'm realistic enough to know that I'd lose touch with a lot of people if I didn't have FB to keep me up to date with their lives; and to forestall the arguments: yes, I know we did manage pre-FB. I'm old enough to remember life without the internet and mobile phones, and the first music I bought was on vinyl. I'm not going to debate whether or not social networks are A Good or Bad Thing, I'm just talking about the reality of 'now' *breathes*. I'm grateful that I can see pictures of my friends hen/stag nights, weddings, birthdays, kids etc (especially as I can do so quickly if I want, minus the running commentary and without having to feign interest in every single damn shot!) So whilst I'm not madly pro - I update about once every two days and I rarely, if ever chat on there, and I have... less than 100 friends (which makes me the most terrible loser in the eyes the Girls who have... lemme go check exact numbers, 790 (omfg! gulp!) and 171 (less gulp) friends respectively) I'm not anti either. Himself is Anti. Himself has Strong Opinions about FB and the data it gathers/holds on people who aren't even signed up to it...

I do have 'WoW friends' on FB. Them being the people who I no longer have much contact with in-game (mainly due to server differences) but who I like to keep up to date with. But hells' teeth, it's a weird conversation to have. It's bad enough in RL. I'm old enough not to just chuck FB friend requests to everyone I meet - case in point, whilst Himself isn't on FB, his friends are, some of whom I'd like to add, but there's that slightly odd convention about whether or not it's appropriate. So I haven't. Discretion being the better part of valour and all. And I appreciate that there are people like Himself (who I don't think is in the minority here) who want their WoW/online lives separate from their RL/offline lives. And that's totally understandable and fine.

So do we have an MMO equivalent of FB? (I know there's Twitter but gods I can't fathom it out.) Would we want there to be an equivalent? Surely we've all had people leave the game who we'd like to keep in touch with, or just people that we'd like to keep in touch with but not in a full-on FB way? How many times have you seen someone come online who you thought had left? How pleased were you that they'd re-appeared? Would it be nice if we could link in outside of WoW/LOtRO/Rift/whatever (clearly, not with the entire realm, but people that we just liked having contact with from whichever server or online game) but under a character (or whatever) name? That way, when RL gets on top of us, we can have a break without feeling (unless we wanted to) that complete disconnect from what, for many of us, appears to be an important social network (argh - spit spit *washes mouth out - I hate that phrase!!) Or do you think this would be a disaster and yet another 'burden' that people would feel they had to carry?

Get me - an entire year has passed...

2011-02-17T07:34:00.000Z

So when I said my blogs anniversary was 7 February I was, in fact, out by 10 days. It's today! Huzzah and w00t!

I find any sort of 'another year gone' stuff quite odd - vis the performance that Himself had to sit through for the last few weeks about my birthday proper (which was on Tuesday). It's also the reason why I'm even more grumpy about New Year than I am about Christmas. Not in a 'time is passing and I'm so old' way, I should point out. Just that, for me, these sorts of occasions make you sit back and take stock and reflect (possibly too much, if you have an inner belf like I do.) And if you've had a year of change upon change upon change with a soupcon of change scattered on top, there's a lot to take stock of!

In WoW terms (as well as in RL terms, I should add) it's been a good year. It's been more than a year since I last raided, and although watching raiding vids on YouTube still gives me the itch, I don't want to scratch it enough to consider going back to raiding, even on casual terms. I dread to think how many alts I've made in the last year. Dozens and dozens would be my closest guess. Some of them blossomed and flowered, some never managed to poke their shoots above the earth. I think I've played every race and every class at some point. Not well, I should hasten to add, but I've tried them all. Azeroth is a huge ice cream stall for me at the moment, there are so many flavours and combinations and toppings and extra stuff you can sprinkle on top that I'm not even close to being bored. I think probably, I'll always be a healer at heart, my shockadin healed Himself's tankadin through Shadowfang Keep last night - just the two of us again, one shotting everything upto whats-his-face, Lord Godfrey, where we just didn't have enough pew to pwnzor him *sad face*. And I remembered how much I like healing. In the right environment...

This is a rambly post I know. I've got a head full of wedding stress, plus a head full of 'going back and packing my house up next week' stress (in the same head obviously... I don't have two heads...!) Plus I'm still failing to recover from the gig I took the Girls to on Monday (which proved a few things: a) I cannot pogo around for hours - I barely made it through the one song I knew (a cover of The Middle by Jimmy Eat World) by which point I was a little sweaty, b) that by 10.30pm I wanted my bed, not to carry on for another hour, c) that I'm now old enough that my back aches if I stand for four hours and d) that dear God, DEAR GOD modern youth is so bloody YOUNG!) and the hangover yesterday from having the sum of three alcoholic drinks (I rarely drink - like once every six months) And too much stress. Or did I mention that already...?

All I need to say now, is to everyone who reads and lurks, or comments, and has done at any point during the last year - THANK YOU. Like Saga I still squee with excitement when someone not only reads my nonsense but takes the time to say something in return. I love you guys...

Oh no - and one last thing. Having told Himself I want to honeymoon in Sen'jin, the last thing I expected him to say was "Ok, you want to go to Sen'Jin, I'll take you there." And whilst I was stuttering and stammering (something about, no darling, I didn't mean I wanted to play WoW for a week...) he fiddled around with Google Image Search and said "There. Will this do?" Is there a more blessed woman on the planet than me? (It's Tulum, Mexico just in case you're wondering.)

White sand, blue sea and palm trees? Check.

Troll ruins? Check.

Pally Powah?

2011-02-14T08:20:00.000Z

Over the weekend Himself and Myself decided that we'd put our new(ish) pallies to the test and actually 'do' something with them. Himself was level 15 (and a tauren) and I was level 16 (and... a belf...) Himself is prot and I'm seeing if the much loved shockadin build is viable to level with. In a nutshell, I'm holy. Neither of us are fans of LFG - Himself admittedly, does actually do them, or did, but I'm steering well clear. Especially on a character that I'm still learning to play on...

We figured that Ragefire Chasm would be a good bet for us to try and 2-man. The trash there is about 13/14 elite and the bosses are 16 elite. That should be about right for the two of us. Bear in mind that I've never really healed with anything except a priest, who, like them or not, have a huge variety of heals. Kinda different to paladins who, at my level, have Flash of Light (omnomnom you can haz no mana...), Holy Light (ok, you can haz mana but the cast is sloooooow), and Holy Shock (you can haz instant cast but with cooldown) and Word of ~~Awesome~~ Glory. With Pilf I used to toss around Renews and CoH and basically do Flash Heal. And it didn't eat my mana bar. With Niae I quickly realised that FoL spam would equate to Himself being dead on trash as I went out of mana. Himself pointed out that FoL is kind of the 'oh shit' button and that HS/HoL might be better, honey...

When we'd run back in we tried again, and it was a lot better. Himself has tanked before and I have healed before, but we were both on classes that were all but new to us. Pally healing has such a different rhythm to priest healing, and it took a while for me to get the tempo right. Luckily Word of Glory means that if I ran into difficulties (or started to look low on mana) Himself could cover enough to keep him alive until I'd recovered (either my composure or some mana...) Additionally, we were both low enough that greens were great upgrades - we weren't loling through in heirlooms... And how awesome is it that instances now have all the questgivers just inside? No more running all over Azeroth, making sure that you've gotten all the quests you can do there, before zoning in and realising that you're missing one, and it requires an item, so the other party members can't even share the quest with you!

And we did a full clear. Yes, it took some time and some wiping, ok, a lot of wiping, but we did it. Just the two of us. And you know what? I quite like pally healing. I like the pacing of it. With the caveat that I'm not sure I'd like to heal in a PuG with a less than considerate tank and aggro-happy dps. I could keep Himself alive whilst he blatted things but I'm not sure that I'd manage to keep 3 others up as well.

We got phat loots - ok we got blues, which was cause for huge celebration - especially as one of the quests gave me mail with caster stats - huzzah! Himself got an awesome blue - 'Hey baby, have you seen the big bone I've got in my hand...! And on that note I'll leave you... Happy Love is in the Air (for those that celebrate that stuff) - my Valentines evening, as previously mentioned, will consist of RAWK!!11!! with Himself and my girls (who needs mini-breaks to Paris?)

Kalimdor Honeymoons (with apologies to the Lonely Planet)

2011-02-11T16:56:00.000Z

No matter how much I try to distract myself, my head returns to Wedding Stuff. Specifically, the honeymoon – I’ve finally thrown Myself on Himself’s mercy and ~~begged pleaded~~ asked him too Just Bloody Sort It. Honestly, I’ve driven myself round the bend and back again browsing the Lonely Planet website, Trip Advisor, Expedia and about a million hotel websites. Last night I told him to take me to Sen’Jin… Poor Himself. But I now present you with Pilf’s Honeymooners Guide to Kalimdor.

Bloodmyst Isle

Who could resist a moon like that? Could you ask for more romance? Maybe you could do without the hostile plant-life though. And the general levels of corruption that permeate the Isle. Oh, and the evil satyrs. I’m sure any decent medic can give you jabs to prevent you catching anything too nasty from them – after all, it’s not really a proper holiday if you don’t have to get vaccinations is it?

Feralas

Want to get away from it all in? Keen on the natural world? Then Feralas could be the ideal destination for you. Perfect for romantic strolls through lush wooded groves and beside tranquil rivers. Just watch out for the giants. They're kinda huge. Oh, and the ogres. And the hippogryphs. I wouldn't recommend availing yourselves of the clear waters off the coast, unless you're happy to bathe with pissed off naga (and are there any other kind?) And you might want to steer your husband away from the harpies as well - surely that doesn't require any further explanation?

Moonglade

Divine Moonglade - with its beautiful light and ethereal atmosphere you're guaranteed relaxation and good vibes. Enjoy the architecture, stroll over the bridges and dabble your toes in Lake Elune'ara. It would be unwise to plan to holiday here between the end of January and the middle of February - the Lunar Festival means that you'll be prey for Omen, and unless your tastes are very... specialised, psychopathic two-headed dogs and their minions tend to put a dampener on romance.

Tanaris

All the beach bunnies out there should undoubtedly head off to Tanaris. The coastline is exquisite - white sand shelves gently into the calm turquoise waters, and if your idea of happiness revolves around sand and sea then you'll be blissed out here. Rocky shorelines are a magnet for pirates though, so keep a good eye out if you're wandering along the beach, and avoid exploring any caves that you chance across. Sticking to the coastline and avoiding the hinterland area will mean that you avoid the numerous unpleasant insects, ogres, basilisks - and if you do venture inland stay away from the ruins as the trolls there appear to dislike tourists visiting.

Durotar

If Tanaris is a bit too far flung then try the beaches at Sen'jin. Although the beaches are red sand, rather than white, the sunsets are to die for. Durotar itself provides plenty of opportunities for keen hikers to explore, although the wildlife (in the forms of boar and scorpions) can be irksome. Some of the caves contain hostile cults, so ask advice from a local before venturing in! The colourful, bustling city of Orgrimmar can take some time to acclimatise to, bit it provides a variety of accommodation and is currently reasonably politically stable.

Winterspring

For those seeking the exhilaration of skiing, skating or snowboarding - look no further. Winterspring has it all. Off the beaten track, with beautiful scenery, this land steeped in a permanent winter has delightful hideaways such as the hot springs (pictured above) - what could be more enjoyable than after some strenuous exercise than relaxing in a natural hot pool with your loved one and giving those over-streched muscles a much needed break? Stay alert as dragonkin abound, along with bears, yeti, alpine furbolg, and ice elementals and giants. Not particularly accessible (making friends with the Timbermaw prior to travelling is a much) but well worth the effort required.

(I know I'm nuts, but writing this has given me some much needed amusement and perspective on my current state of wedding obsession. If I haven't got it all out of my system I'll do the Eastern Kingdoms next...) Pictures nicked from Wowhead and tarted up via Piknik.

20 Days of Warcraft Redux - Favourite memory.

2011-02-10T22:52:00.000Z

I can’t answer this. It’s as simple as that. I cannot pick one WoW memory as my best. It’s one of the reasons that we blog surely? Writing about our experiences, sharing them and reliving them, keeps them alive. I can’t be the only one who goes back through her blog occasionally, not out of any self-seeking, or self gratifying purpose, but just to look back at stuff I’d nearly forgotten, and chuckle and bathe in the soft glow that memory and nostalgia affords us. So, unsurprisingly, I’m going to fudge it a little, and give you a few.

When I first ‘got’ why you’d be guilded

When TBC came out I rolled a belf warlock – Brodmann, who I loved dearly. He still exists, having been a female gnome warlock for some time, then back to a blood elf, but female. I haven’t the heart to delete the character because Brod was the first one I got to level 50 and 60, but not the first to 70. That was Pilfkin-the-First, but Brod followed soon after. When I was about, umm level 15 or so (still in newbie-ish belf lands) I got chucked a guild invite, and being the newbie I was I just clicked on the ‘accept’ button. The guild was, well… it was ok. But most of its members were younger than me. Eventually a few of us left the guild and formed our own one, but not long after I changed faction ‘loyalty’ (as far as I have, or have ever had, faction loyalty…) and went to play Alliance where I was guilded with the people who I went on to form some of my most important, and longest standing in-game connections.

The guild itself was fairly new and growing fast. I’ve blogged so much about my experiences with this guild that it almost feels like there isn’t anymore I can say about them, but I guess I focussed on the stresses that came later, not the halcyon early days. We were all levelling up together, you see, and that does make a difference – that common purpose, that shared goal. For most, if not all, it was our first time levelling a character so we were all newbies together. Guild chat was full of ‘gratz’ and smiley faces (which didn’t annoy me in that context, funnily enough) as people progressed - people were on hand to give advice on trade skills, craft stuff you needed, joke, take the piss and generally just enjoy the craic. Eventually we all hit max level (70 then) and started to gear up for Kara. Some of my fondest in-game memories stem from The Friday Five – a bunch of us who were running Outland instances, and having the fun and camaraderie that I long to find in-game again, but am doubtful I will. Instances runs before LFG – when LFG was a channel, with people from your realm in it. In fairness, LFG was a bit of a wasteland, but we did guild runs. I haven’t forgotten the in-jokes; so much stuff that still makes me chuckle now. The names, long gone from game but names I won’t forget for a long time. Patish, Dindariel, Saigyo, Jaiden; I could run on for a long time, but my memory is flunking out on me. When WoW was a genuine joy, before I got jaded and burnt out. Those runs were golden times, made possible by my gilded guild.

Becoming a raider

I was lucky to be a TBC baby – we got Kara as our first raid. God, that place was wonderful. I remember the first raid I did with crystal clarity. (I also needed macros and focus target explained to me but, y’know …trivial details!?) I remember being summoned to the stone and seeing raiders. Proper raiders, about to go raiding, in their natural habitat, as it were. As ludicrous as it sounds now, I’d always viewed raiding as something that the really elite players did – and all of a sudden I was there, with them. I kept expecting someone to turn around and say "Ok Pilf – now you’ve seen the big boys and girls in their place. Run off back to Shatt now, honey, you’ve had an eyeful… pop off back there… there’s a good belf.” But astonishingly no-one did. Admittedly, my epics were intro level crafted, not proper BoP drops, but I was there, at the stone, with my guild about to go raiding! And I was… well, I was kinda scared. But excited too. I remember the adds, the crowd control, the marks (mine was always star for shackle). I remember Moroes and the stress of healing and shackling. I remember the details in Kara, the atmosphere, the staircases, the chandeliers, the feeing that this really was some spooky, gothic mansion. I remember getting a Tier token (can’t remember which Tier now and CBA to Wowhead) and not knowing what to do with it – “How do I equip it?” “Pilf, if you don’t know what to do with that, we’re gonna give it to someone else!” my RL had said, in mock-stern tones.

The places

I couldn’t, if I tried, pick a favourite place in WoW. I remember being stunned by the cities; Orgrimmar, which always felt to me (pre-Garrosh-DIY-and-MDF) like it had been forcibly hewn out of the red soil and rock of Durotar. Thunder Bluff; the rope bridges which still give me slight ‘don’t look down’ vertigo. Undercity; the despair and the need for vengeance rising from the slime filled canals. Silvermoon; when Pilf wrote about Silvermoon, a lot of it was, well... it was me.

I love Azeroth’s beaches – I’ve always loved the coast IRL so whenever I got a chance to take a character to the beach in Azeroth I was happy. I really liked the coastline off Tanaris, the shores bordering Eversong Woods and of course Sen’jin (but more of that later). The places I took Pilf to in The Grand Tour – whilst they were places she liked, there was so much of me in her and vice versa, that they were some of my favourite places in-game. I really regret not writing more in that series.

The RP

As I’m writing this post, I’m having some internal dialogue with myself. If I really, really had to pick one memory to answer this question, what would it be? Which leads me neatly onto RP and RPers.

When I started playing on an RP server I was terrified. Really and honestly - when you play on standard PvE realms, you are indoctrinated that RPers are just downright weird and freaky (and not in a good way) and I’d met a fair few people who’d had less than pleasant experiences on RP servers (allegedly – I’m still not quite sure how…) I’ve played on RP realms for just under a year, so about one sixth of my overall WoW time and the memories I’ve gathered and stored from this time far outweigh five years worth of memories on PvE servers. I remember being thrilled, in a real squee!! moment, all over guild chat the first time I had some ‘real’ RP. And it wasn’t just the RP itself I loved; I enjoyed writing my little RP ficlets. I must try to get back to that, I miss that creative bit of WoW now…

Anyone who’s been reading this blog for sometime will probably have figured out what I’m going to link to next. Because it was extraordinary. Because when I re-read it (as I just have) I can recall all the emotions - both mine and Pilf’s. I can picture Pilf and the Beachcomber on the shore – it’s making me churned up all over again because it was so believable and so right, nothing felt forced, just total spontaneity. It was a privilege and an honour beyond imagining to have had such an artistic and committed RPer and individual as Sven, even if he’s left me hanging, as he’s only written parts one, two and three. I live in hope that one day, part four will materialise on his blog, but somehow I doubt it will. If I had to pick one WoW memory as my favourite, it would be Pure Shores. But it would be a close run thing.

And the world turns...

2011-02-10T15:28:00.000Z

Yeah... this kinda over rides this morning's post I suspect...

Ho-hum. I’ve accidentally rolled another belf. ‘Accidental’ character creation must be a bit like ‘accidental’ infidelity: Sorry darling, I don’t quite know what happened, I must have slipped, tripped and fell onto… the character creation screen. Can you forgive me?

See, when I log into WoW (especially at the moment when I’m doing it as a distraction to stop me ~~obsessing stressing~~ thinking about anything to do with the “W” word) I log onto whichever realm and I ponder. Who do I feel like playing? Do I feel like a depressed human warrior? Do I feel like a trollish drood? Do I (heaven forefend) feel like a dorf? (God – life was so easy when I had a ‘main’!) And today’s answer, was, unsurprisingly, oh noes – I feel like a belf! Ok, that’s my default state of being, I know, but sadly, I don’t really have a belf that I feel like I ‘connect’ with at present. Pilf is just… well, she’s just retired. I’ve got too much… stuff tied up in her (still) to really be able to enjoy playing her, and I’m ok with that. I’ll never get rid of her – I’ve got… far too much stuff tied up in her to delete her and I don’t begrudge her the character slots at all, but I don’t want to play her. My baby warlock is just that – a baby, and I’m a bit warlocked out at present. Same with hunters. Pet overkill, I think.

I’m not managing my Tauren paladin. I just cannot handle the size of Tauren – not even for the out-of-this-world wonderfulness that is a paladin kodo (and that’s the only kodo you’ll ever hear me apply the term ‘wonderful’ to as well!) My high level paladin is just a bit yawn worthy. I’ve never managed to bring much (if any) ‘life’ to my old PvE raiding characters... so the logical thing to do is to make another paladin belf is it not? Of course it is! And no dissenters please! I’ve got a vague RP concept for her – nothing too fancy-shmancy at the moment as I want to see where she takes me first. So yeah – see below really!

A bit Pete Tong...

2011-02-10T07:45:00.000Z

Pilf – are you not too old to be using pseudo Cockney rhyming slang? I hear you ask. Why, yes I am – thank you for pointing that out. But I’m also too old to say the *following words/expressions: cool, awesome (cf: awesome-sauce, made of awesome), win, epic, omnomnom, hawt (as in ‘he’s so totally…’), sexeh, babe, fit, (as in ‘he’s so totally…’), ~~fat~~ phat, etc etc. Himself, I would like to point out is like totally purely allowed to say them ~~being soooo old that it wouldn’t be possible for him to say them in anything other than with a heavy dose of irony~~ as he’s not Mum and therefore can’t be as embarrassing. /Sulk.

Moving on though – the world is going a bit Pete Tong because every day this week (and for most days last week) blogs that are on my Reader have shut up shop. All of which makes me a sad kitten. Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand WoW and/or blogging becoming a draining time-sink that’s no longer enjoyable, and I wish all the bloggers happy lives, both in MMOs and in their real lives… but I’d JUST got my Reader sorted (and I was exceptionally proud of myself) and now the list is getting short again. So help me out here folks – I’m especially bad with finding new blogs so leave me linkies to anything I should be reading (and no porn plox, unless it’s of the belfie persuasion!) And yes, I know that I should just visit Blog Azeroth regularly and see what appeals but I’m made of idle and you’re all soooo lovely…

I’ve also been a bit daft. Having avoided priests (Project 10 one aside, and she’s a gnome so whilst cute she’s still stinky Alliance and I continue to be For the Horde!!11!!) successfully for… quite a long time now, I made another one. Not a belfie one – I’m trying, for the sake of both my in-game and RL happiness to stop being quite such a belf (Myself: “There is a difference between neurotic and multi-layered and complex you know!” Himself: “Yes, yes you’re right. There is.” Pause. *Significant glance* that implies I might not be on the right side of the neurotic/multi-layered divide.) So she’s a troll. I’m trying to be more troll-ish you see and I love my troll druid a lot. And ohhhh I love her. I love her a lot. Now, I fully accept that I’m fickle and as shallow as a puddle, with commitment issues… But gosh-darn it I do love me a good priest. Or a bad priest, come to it. Or priestesses in any form. So Project 10 might slow down a little whilst I try to wash the discipline out of my hair…

*NB: List is non-exhaustive and subject to amendments/additions without notice. Definition of 'too old' also subject to change without warning. Gotta love teenagers...

20 Days of Warcraft Redux - First Playtime

2011-02-09T13:50:00.000Z

Do you know, it's so long ago now that I'm not sure I can remember my first day in Azeroth exactly. But that might have something to do with having installed WoW... it wouldn't run. And eventually working out that whilst my comp was no dinosaur the graphics card wasn't good enough to run it.

When I eventually did get it working I remember firing up the character create screen and playing for... umm a while. Quite a long while. This was just pre-TBC so there were no lovely belfies, or draenei for that matter, so my first character was an orc rogue - which still kinda stuns me. She was kickass though and made it to, IIRC the dizzy heights of level 40. That's the highest I've ever gotten a rogue. I also made an orc warlock as well. 2 orcs! But then TBC came out and I went belf and, as you may have realised, once you go belf you never go back...

I remember Durotar vividly - and I remember spending what felt like days in the cave in the Valley of Trials trying to find Thazz'ril's bloody pick, being munched by sprites and felhunters... and dying over and over and over. I still hate caves today - I barely know my left from my right, so East and West (not to mention North and South) are... problematic. Himself finds this amusing: "I might not know how to mop floors honey, but I can read a map..." (as I was totally lost in Stonetalon at the weekend.) I feel the same way about castles and keeps as well. The other thing I recall vividly was the lack of load screens - the fact that the graphics just went on and on and on and on... And realising that the sun and the moon rose and set, and being awed by that.

It's the connections that make it real...

And of course - the other players. All these characters running around, emoting, riding, casting, fighting. They were all other people, at their computer, just like I was. I remember just how... amazed I was by this. Nowadays of course, it's just something I take as read, but for my first week or so I was completely boggled by it. And just occasionally, when someone /waved at me, I got that odd (but more commonplace now) feeling of 'My oh my. Some stranger just waved at me.' And that slightly warm feeling you get when someone who doesn't know you, who has no reason to be nice to you, just decides to be friendly. Little did I know how much social contact WoW would give me, not on that first day, not on that first week. Probably not during the first month. Nor did I know that ultimately, some of the people I met in game would become incredibly important in my life. I certainly didn't ever think that I'd meet my future husband in Azeroth.

I've come along way since that first day or so. I've raided, got various titles and achievements, been in guilds, written blogs... And one of the nicest things about Cata for me is how often I've got that 'ohhhh' feeling I had so regularly when I first started playing. Because it's wonderful, when it's all shiny and new. But re-visiting old haunts is also kinda nice. Especially when there's enough to be familiar, but also enough to make you curious.

When... bad orcs go ...good??

2011-02-08T09:10:00.000Z

In a change to scheduled posting I bring you a non-20 Days blog post. Partially because I need to think about my first day playing (it was a while back!) and partly because I'm half asleep, thanks to the oinks in the flat next door (and their mates) deciding that 3am was an excellent (and reasonable) time to have a no-holds-barred domestic in the hall outside my flat. Honestly - someone should come up with an 'insults app': Want to step away from that old fashioned method of insult hurling? Fed up with using 'fuck' every second word AND as punctuation? Want to expand your profanity lexicon? There's an app for that... Seriously - it was like having a Jerry Springer show filmed 5 yards away from your bed. Really, I don't care who allegedly slept with whom. I really needed the bathroom and I struggle to pee to the (not so) gentle rhythm of fists meeting flesh, so as a result I didn't get my ass out of bed this morning, Himself went to work having not had his coffee and breakfast made for him, or his lunch packed and I had less then 15 minutes to get Youngest up, washed and dressed and out the door to school. Snarl.

Right - that's the rant over with. Kinda.

There are still masses of levelling zones I haven't seen yet. I've haven't finished Stranglethorn (though I am getting there slowly), I haven't played through Thousand Needles, Desolace, or Plaguelands. And that's just the zones that are up to level 40-odd. This is due, in part, to enjoying all my Project 10 alts (with the exception of the rogue, le sigh) and of course, I'm seeing the new Alliance zones as well now. All of which means that I've yet to hit 40 on any character but boy am I having fun. Himself finished Stonetalon at the weekend and... got up and left the computer to... collect himself. Intrigued, I asked him what he'd been up to - Himself, like Myself, does get very immersed in the game but it's unusual for him to get that drawn in. All he would tell me was that I needed to go and do the Stonetalon zone.

Naturally, none of my Project 10 alts on the Horde side were the right level, so I logged onto one of my SAN characters (which was nice - I'm not used to seeing guild chat nowadays!) and took her off. By sheer coincidence she's an orc warlock, which was quite apposite, as it turned out. As an aside, I'd wondered how insane levelling would be with BoA gear and rested xp and guild xp bonuses. It's totally OP. Seriously, I like my BoA gear on my orc warlock - she looks really good in it, I get guild xp bonus if you're levelling 80-85 or whatever, but really - WTB an option to turn off increased levelling speed please! Infact, WTB an option to gain 25% less xp when levelling so I can do the zones justice. I was handing in about 4 quests and levelling, and this is in the mid-20s...

However - Stonetalon. Again, it's very linear progression, but the story is well-told and really draws you in. Doing it as an orc is wonderful. As usual, I'm not going to give you details - if you've done it you'll know what I'm talking about and if you haven't - well go do it! It's really, really interesting. And you don't realise (or maybe it's just me being a bit slow on the uptake) how sucked in you're getting until it's kind of too late. And then you're so enmeshed in it all, up to your neck in it - that you have to follow it through. And then you have to face Garrosh and hope he feels merciful. Yeah - Garrosh and mercy - two words that don't sit well together...

In other important news - there is a thing of great beauty here. (Also here if you'd prefer YouTube.)

If you fetishise belfies like I do, and have always seen Silvermoon in a film noir context - go and drool. A lot. It's kinda NSFW - Himself muttered about me watching 'belf porn' (which may of had something to do with me squealing at intervals, admittedly) but it's not *that* explicit. I think it's gorgeous. And just the thing to cheer you up after you've been held responsible for the deaths of innocent cows...

20 Days of Warcraft Redux - Why Did I Start?

2011-02-07T07:03:00.000Z

Why I decided to start a blog, or why I decided to start a WoW-blog...? As an adolescent (I would say teenager, but I’m 99.99% certain I was 11 when I started) I kept a diary. A proper, pour out your heart and soul onto blank pages diary which I wrote in every day without fail. Every Christmas my parents would buy me a new one, usually A4 size but sometimes A5 (which was cooler because it was twice as thick – each day gave you two pages to write in…) and honestly, until my mother and I had a discussion a few years about it, where she told me the truth (i.e. of course she read it regularly – her defence being, I kid you not, “It was better that I knew what you were doing darling, what mischief you were getting into, than I had unspecified concerns about just about everything. I know that you’re mature enough to understand that now.” Really – wtf??) I thought neither of them knew where I hid it. Under my pillow. Duh – why would I need a better hiding place…? It was my diary and I was a (pre)teen, therefore of course my life was private and no-one would dare invade that. Hmm.

Anyway, when I left home at 16, I took them with me, and they stayed with me through a few house/flat moves but about a year or so later I was foolish enough to start to re-read them. Clearly, reading ones youthful angst should be best left until said angst has departed, say around the age of 30-something. I was so distressed by, and unable to cope with, all the emotion they contained (and my life was far from stable at the time) that, to my deep and abiding sadness, I burned them – yes, that’s kinda angsty and dramatic as well... It’s something that I regret – mainly because now my Eldest is 15 I’d really have liked to have given them to her to read: see, I was young once – I do understand!!

For years and years I didn’t keep anything resembling a diary, a journal – call it what you like. Then, and I can’t recall how, I started to be aware of the existence of blogs. Hey – online diaries that remove the need for all that tedious handwriting!! (I assume that I’m not alone in being able to type a great deal faster than I can write now?) So for a long time I kept a ‘personal’ blog, that I emptied my head into. It got me through a marriage break-down and funnily enough, it was where I first started (I think) writing occasionally about WoW, eventually I stopped writing there – it has served its purpose and I no longer needed that ‘escape route’ for my emotions. As I’ve mentioned before, I deleted it some time ago – my life has changed a great deal and I wasn’t comfortable with all that (slightly more grown-up) angst being on the interwebz. I missed writing though – it had become part of a routine – and then one day a guildie linked me a page from the sadly missed 4Healz - it was the Valentines Day post and it made me roar with laughter. Then I realised that there was an entire sub-set of people, an entire community, who wrote about their experiences in WoW.

My first WoW blog was jointly written but briefly lived. Then I eventually moved to /Moar Alts, where I have remained for nearly a year now. Writing is still part of my life and something that I love. Despite my occasional breaks I’m always drawn back, both to blogging and Azeroth. I can’t see that changing hugely in the foreseeable future…

20 Days of Warcraft...Redux! Day 1

2011-02-04T19:50:00.000Z

Blame Saga - she's given us another meme! And everybody loves a good meme!

So Day One: Introduce Yourself. Ohhhhh I get to write about my favourite subject... me, me, me! God, I love this meme even more now...

So omg-hai! I'm Pilf, and I'm a confirmed alt-aholic. You know this...

In real life I'm a belf on the inside, but a dorf on the outside. I'm 33 (oh god, in a week and a bit I'm 34...) and I have two daughters who are 15 and 12. Soon to be 13 and 16. Fuck... On the plus side, I can embarrass the hell out of them, just by... you know, being. They're just the right age for Mum's existence just to be too embarrassing for words. That said, I'm taking Youngest to her first gig on Valentines Day. How cool is that? Himself and I get to go and rawk! rather then sitting in an overpriced restaurant surrounded by other couples being romantic. And rawk! we will - Youngest has an excellent taste in music (which I take ALL the credit for) so we're going to see some screamo band. All Youngest has to do (as does Eldest, for that matter) is believe that Mum isn't going to re-live her goth-chic days and go dressed in jeans, a black Wonderbra and a fishnet top. Which I'm not. But only because I haven't got the figure anymore...

I live on the sea (not literally, that'd be kinda wet and cold... I mean on the sea front) in the South of England. If you want an idea of what it's like just listen to the lyrics on this. That's my world, right there. I live with Himself, as you might have noticed. Himself is slightly senior to me and is a Proper Grown-Up with a Proper Job. He's somewhere between a Troll and a Tauren (in personality NOT looks!) But he forgives my belf tendencies so it's all good. I'm sort of a grown up... but basically I agree with Margaret Atwood. Currently I'm a housewife cum student. Himself thinks that when I've gotten my degree I'm going to be a SpAd. Himself might yet be disappointed...

Wow - it's harder to write about me than I thought it would be. I'm bored of me now. I'm looking forward to reading about you, so get on with the Challenge folks!

Gender roles (quests?)

2011-02-03T16:52:00.000Z

Really, I do. Once everything in the house is ironed!

Himself is a New Man (deliberate capitals). He really finds it hard when people ask me what I do and I say 'I look after Himself and Daughter' (even though it's true - Pilf is a housewife IRL!) - I always suspect that he'd rather I said I was a student (which is also true) and then dropped in that I'm studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics. (True again. I'll give you a second to pick yourself up of the floor and dust yourself down. Giddy Pilf might not be quite as giddy as she leads people to believe...) But he is of the New Man school that believes in equality and opportunity for all - regardless of gender (or anything else, come to think of it.) [whispers] I think he quite likes being looked after mind you - but he insists on telling people, with his tongue on his cheek, that having a wife-y is a moral burden...

Ok, I know you're all wondering where this is leading.

There's a quest in The Cape of Stranglethorn - this one to be precise, which Himself couldn't do. He tells me he tried it four times... I've never known Himself quit on a quest before - unlike me who regularly has a paddy and storms away from the 'puter. So natch, I had to see what was so difficult. All you have to do is pick up a mop and swab the deck of the boat for two minutes. The stains glitter and everything! So I did it first time (ahem) which caused Himself endless amusement. We decided that really, I'd better blog it, lest Himself got carried away and brought the ire of... parts of the interwebz down upon him. I'm not kidding here - he couldn't wander round the deck and mop stuff up... Good job that us wimmin are experienced with all the cleaning we do, so are on hand to do those difficult quests...

Waffles (minus maple syrup)

2011-02-02T19:12:00.000Z

Yesterday I had a huge compliment paid to me. A blogger who I read regularly, had left me a comment in response to a comment I had left her, regarding my blog, and whilst even my ego (which is large enough to warrant its own post-code) thinks it would be too much to link to said post, I'm flattered and kinda genuinely amazed. You know who you are *hugs*.

All of which is good blog fodder, isn't it folks? Because I don't really think too much about my little corner of the interwebz here. I like blogging, so I blog. Sometimes I like blogging more than I like gaming - and that's a pain in the ass. One of the things I missed the most when I took my WoW-hiatus, was that I couldn't write. Sad Pilf was sad. And I kept a personal blog a while back but... personal stuff permanently etched onto the internet makes me a little... anxious nowadays. So that blog has been deleted for quite some time. And actually, I like blogging about something that other people also blog about. That feeling of being part of a broader community, circle, web, call it what you want. I continue to be... well, flattered, I guess when people leave me comments. I've never had tracking addons installed on my blog so I have no clue as to how many people come here, and what they're looking for. Having read some of the 'search term' blog posts, I'm a bit glad about that... And in the main, I write to empty my head out onto the screen. Sure, when you keep a public blog, there is no getting away from the fact that you are, to a degree, 'writing to be read', but that's not always the case. Sometimes it is - especially when, as in my last few posts, I was hoping to get some feedback (which I did - thanks folks!) about topics that were making me go 'hmmm'.

More often though, it's just about the process. Kinda similar (I think) to Zen gardening. It's not the end result, it's the journey. And much as I loved my RP stuff when I was really immersed in RP, I'm so anti-social in-game now, that I'm not getting me any RP. And much as I should be able to write ficlets from my imagination... I can't really. I need people to bounce off to get the, uh creative juice, as it were, flowing sufficiently for me to be involved enough to want to write. Because forcing yourself to write just leads to frustration and angst. Both of which I have a Masters in, natch...

All of which is avery roundabout way of saying to everyone who reads and comments - thank you! I'm quite pants at commenting on the blogs that I read usually, and only do if I have something that I feel is relevant, so it's always a privilege to get an email telling me that not only has someone read my drivel, but they've replied to it as well (y'all are mad, mad folk!) On 7 February (uh that's like.. next week - yikes!) it'll be my blog anniversary so I really need to find some inspiration for an OMG I made it a year!!!111!! post. Apologies, therefore, if it's a bit quiet here until then!

Fan-gurl

2011-02-01T09:07:00.000Z

I need to do something, anything to stop me staring at the Spreadsheet of Doom (aka the wedding costs spreadsheet) before I go (even more) bonkers than I already am. Poor Himself must be wondering who abducted his bonkers (but-in-a-way-he-understands) fiancee and replaced her with bridezilla. So off I toddled to Blog Azeroth (my go-to 'I need to blog but have no inspiration' site) to see if anything gripped me and came up blank. The current topic 'Digging Archaeology' doesn't apply as I... umm... haven't, and the previous topic 'What causes an encounter to click?' doesn't really apply either as I haven't raided in the best part of a year. Le sigh. Inspiration, why hast thou deserted me? Happily my blogging circle of lurve means that sometimes comments lead to thoughts, and thoughts lead to the germ of an idea for a post. So for this I thank Kam, Saga and Jen for their input on my last rambling post (yes, I'm now going to have pink linkies because it makes me happy) and Himself who tried the beta for another MMO last week, but appears to have gotten bored very quickly and returned to WoW.

Azeroth really does seem to exert a hold over people. Despite all the much publicised WoW-hate within the MMO blogging community (and sometimes within the WoW blogging community itself) it's still a phenomenally successful game whether you agree with the game tweaks and the numbers or not. I've never tried another MMO. Most of the people I know in-game (which isn't huge number admittedly, but is a fair few) haven't either (I'm not counting CoD as an MMO by the way...) Some have flirts, one night stands, or short flings with other games, but return to WoW. In my experience, people quit playing for a load of different reasons, but I don't think (and I'm racking my brains here) that I know anyone who's stopped playing because they've been lured away by another MMO.

The game Himself has been playing (dire intro aside - really, WTB decent voice actors???!) seemed to be to be kinda ok. It looked like WoW, but then I'm led to believe that a lot of games do, and that WoW's interface came from Everquest or whatever anyway. (There is nothing new in the world. Le sigh again. Oh ennui, why doest thou hound me?) It certainly was pretty. Pretty and shiny. Which, interestingly, didn't hold much appeal for Himself. He likes WoW graphics - the fact that they are slightly... cartoon-like... isn't quite the phrase I'm looking for, but it'll have to do. I liked the game he was experimenting with because the graphics were more... realistic. Again, not the right phrase. Bah. My daughters, plugged in via boy mates to CoD and the like, roll their (heavily mascara'd) eyes at WoW for many reasons, but one of the things that bugs them are the graphics. To them, they're clunky and old fashioned. We explain server-loading to them in vain - they just think it's like sooooo whatever... God, play a modern game Mum... Which is fascinating, because when I started playing WoW I couldn't believe the lack of load screens and the detail in the graphics. How things change in 5 (or so) years.

I don't pretend to be plugged into the MMO world - I get rumblings through blogs that are more MMO orientated and less about just WoW tso that even I know that every so often a game comes along that's talked up as 'the one' that will finish off WoW. The one that will lure away the huge subscription base. Whether it's Aion, Rift or the Star Wars thing, they will all cause the death of WoW. Or, y'know, maybe they won't. Don't get me wrong here, I accept that eventually WoW will falter and stumble but I'm not sure it's demise will be because of a similar fantasy MMO. Surely people who want to play fantasy MMOs and who already play WoW will, in all likelihood, continue to play it? Because of the investment we have made into our characters? Possibly. Because of our social networks? Possibly. Because basically it's a solid, bug-free (in the main) game? Possibly. Because of the breadth of the game? Possibly. Because of a combination of the above? Very likely.

That last point, by the way, was one that Kam made. She said: "I don't even have enough time for everything I want to do in WoW, let alone any other MMO! Perhaps it's a difference between wanting a depth of MMO experience -- exploring all the different aspects of one particular game, such as WoW versus wanting a breadth of MMO experience -- exploring all the different aspects of the MMO genre as a whole by dabbling in a variety of MMO games." And that's a GOOD point. If you made a list of everything you can do in WoW; alt levelling, all the classes and races, the RP aspects, professions (primary and secondary), achievements, instances and raids, playing the AH and getting to gold cap, PvP (battlegrounds and arena), guild levelling, and more than I can't think of right now, you've got a HUGE game. And, leaving aside the people who really play a skewed (i.e. massive) amount of time per day, who really has time to fully experience all those things? I understand that some bits are more appealing and more attractive to individuals than others, but isn't it great to have a game that covers so many bases? And I know from experience that what you 'want' can change. I used to be a srsbznz raider and really struggle with levelling. I think we have seen that that has now... changed. Himself plays the AH game and whilst it doesn't appeal to me, I can't deny that he's good at it. I get madly addicted to professions (I never used to bother with First Aid - and now all my characters appear to have it - go figure...) and have power-levelled fishing and cooking on too many characters to comfortably count. The sheer variety of stuff to do is incredible. And I don't think, in the midst of all the post-expansion blues and the WoW-hate, that we're that good at sitting back and looking at what we do have.

So thanks Blizz - I know you get a fair amount of stick, but all in all, I like WoW. Don't go changing (to try and please them)... That said, what would an MMO have to do/have to lure you away from WoW? I'd be interested in your thoughts!

In which Pilf blithers

2011-01-28T09:20:00.000Z

One of the downsides to both Himself and Myself having a lurgy is that we've no energy to do anything, other than sit around, play WoW for a bit, then collapse in a heap and talk. Now, at first glance, that's not too bad is it? But what do we talk about? Mhm, you guessed it. As a result of this, there are numerous half formed post ideas floating round our place, little wispy things, floating in the corners of the rooms. Oh no... wait. Those are cobwebs. Dammit. Pilf fails at house-wife as well...

This post, therefore, is going to be a repository of various fragmented discussions, some of which I might turn into proper posts at some point in the future. Equally, Himself might. You never know. Lastly, please feel free to yoink them if you think you can write more coherently about them (to be honest, it wouldn't take much effort at present - I would suggest giving 10 monkeys 10 typewriters and not being surprised when they write something a little more structured and understandable then this wall of text).

But... I don't like Tauren
This is heresy to Himself, who does like them, for all the reasons that I don't. I think they're boring - he thinks they're peaceful (quote of the week from Himself (not said in a pointed manner in any way at all *coughs*): Everything doesn't have to be neurotic and have a dark past. (He's adding to this statement as I type with "you don't have to be troubled - it's ok to be calm and sensible." Like I said: boring! Sorry if you love our bovine friends (and particular apologies at this point to Kamelia *hugs*) - I just can't make myself enjoy playing them. In actuality, after some more discussion, the thing that I find really troubling about them is how slowly I think they move. Now just pause for a moment here. Movement in WoW is quite finely tuned - does the world seem to speed up when you play your gnome? It does to me, in the same way that it s l o w s d o w n a l o t when I play Tauren. It's relative to height; I know that they're actually moving at the same speed, but Tauren lope seems to be slower than other classes when they run... Add to that, the fact that paladins are not the most exciting class at lower levels (like 13) and it's all a bit *yawn*...

Are we drawn to playing races we *identify* with?
Do I like belfs because I'm neurotic and add a bucketload of complexity to everything? Does Himself like Tauren because they're calm and rational? Do we play races (and classes) that match our perception of ourselves (leaving looks completely aside for a moment), and if so, why? If I'm feeling feisty am I more likely to want to play my goblin? When Himself has a bad day at work and wishes he had a personal blight supply, will he want to play his Forsaken? Do we have similar views of racial 'personality' or is it something much more intimate and personal? I don't have the answers, by the way - I'm just chucking stuff out there for my beloved readers to contemplate and digest (and maybe help me with answering!)

Why don't I enjoy playing certain classes, but I do enjoy playing others?
Example the First: My preferred (but sub-optimal) method of playing is having a casting class, but standing toe-to-toe with the bad guys and getting smacked in the face whilst I cast them to death. Some classes this is ok with - I know it stems from my years of playing priest where basically you just bubble and pew - but arguably the most optimal class for this method is a shaman. You have a shield, you have decent armour, you can self heal and you blat the bad guys with phat bolts of lightening (rawrrr - I am Thor-like - fear mah ire!) Job done? Not really. I've played a shaman before (I actually got one to 60) and I'm playing one again for Project 10, but I'm not enjoying it. Logically, I know I should - it ticks all my boxes, as it were. In fairness, I'm also a dorf and, as I've mentioned before, I actively dislike the dorf area. I've also only just hit 10, so now I have thunder as well as lightening. Hopefully I'll start having funsies soon. Example the Second: I'm amazed, beyond amazed, in fact, to find that I like my warrior. I've never gotten on with melee but dammit, Victory Rush is fun. So is Charge. Again, only hit 10, but I'm having fun. But... but how can I be having more fun with a melee class with no spells than a casting class? The force is... juddering, nevermind tremor-ing...

Nelf females are less... centrefold-like than I remember.
My rogue is a nelf. I go through phases with night elves. Sometimes I like them, sometimes they irritte the bejesus out of me. I had a 'moment' yesterday whist my little rogue was standing around as I did something, not sure what now, and she appeared to NOT bounce. Yeah *that* bounce. The infamous one. And I dragged Himself over to the screen and made him look, LOOK dammit - where has the bounce gone?! As we both sat there, staring, she still didn't bounce, and then a thought struck. Maybe this was why subscription number are dropping. Maybe Blizz have removed the nelf bounce and everyone has gone to play Tera instead:

But it's not just all about the boobies y'know. It's about the legs as well...

Finally, she stopped shifting her weight from side to side (booooooooring!) and she bounced. Reality re-asserted itself and we breathed a sigh of relief... or something. In fairness though, she's very stabby-stabby and actually quite kickass. Himself has persuaded me that I should go Subtlety and because even I can't disagree with the majesty that is shadowstep, I've agreed. Watch this space...

Why I don't have time for more than one MMO.
I'm sort of in awe of people who manage to play multiple MMOs. Himself has got a beta key to a game which I'll leave unnamed, lest he wants to blog about it, and I'm hiding in the corner - "Nooooooo! Don't let me see another shiny game - I don't have time...!" Seriously people, how do you manage to play multiple time-sink games? I'm quite capable of playing WoW for... too many hours straight before unsticking myself from the screen and going to do something more important, like, y'know eat or sleep. (I'm kidding, I'm not that bad. Well, not very often.) But if I had multiple games, with even more multiple alts, something would have to give. Maybe sleeping? I don't know. If you do play multiple games let me into the secret would ya? I'll give you cookies...

Enter Lady RNG and Project 10

2011-01-26T16:34:00.000Z

I'm reading a LOT of burnout posts and posts about people quitting - fundamentally I agree with Sven's PoV (and it pains me to say so, with the amount of belf-mocking comments he leaves me on this blog...) But I've been there, in both the 'quit' and 'burnout' head spaces and it's not pleasant - and I don't want to go there again. So - I present you with Pilf's guide to how (she's going) to not get bored with WoW:

Decide that you should really start Project 10. That is, level one of each class to level cap. I'm not, despite Himself's faux-helpful suggestion, going to level one of each class and each spec to level cap. I'm not that much of a sucker...
Decide on race/class combos. To minimise boredom I'm going to play (stinky) Alliance as well, but as there's only 10 classes, that means leaving out skittery ~~werewolves~~Worgen and ~~spacegoats~~ Draenei.
Make ~~Gant Chart~~ table to track said alts and then sort out names. Cuss maintenance for being just at the time that you need to be able to log onto servers and check names.
Pick Himself's brains about specs. Add 'spec column' to table. Ditto blogs to read.
Yay - maintenance is finished! Make characters!! Many characters!
Decide that it is permissible to use your druid (level 30) and your hunter (level 32) as you love them and you didn't start them until after Cata hit so it *does* count.
Log onto first character and squee!
Realise first character is a human warrior - I thought I'd combine the race I dislike most with the class I expected to hate the most but then I was, I have to admit, pleasantly surprised. Warriors got a bit easier since I last tried to play them (possibly in vanilla...) She's hysterical, somehow I managed to make her look... grumpy... and the way she moves - even the way she mines, is just like "Oh my God, it's all sooooooo depressing." I think she's a Twilight Cultist who's pissed off that the world didn't end...
Get them all to level 10. Once they are all there, whenever I want to switch 'toon I'll /roll 1 - 10 and see what number crops up (yes there is a 'number' column in the table...)

Ok, it might be bonkers, I might get bored really quickly, but them again I might not. And it's making me play classes that I'd previously written off as 'not for me'. And you know what? It's fun as well...

5.9 million years???

2011-01-26T07:23:00.000Z

That's the collective time we have spent playing WoW since the 2004 release - according to 'Reality is Broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world' (link here). Helpfully, the review in New Scientist gives us a comparator time frame: "that's roughly how long it's been since our ancestors stood upright."

If you'll excuse me, I'm off to have a lie down, as thinking about that has left me a bit boggled...

EDIT: I'd like to add that a) I'm not a mathematician, especially when b) it's early, and c) my brain is streaming out of my nostrils, so whilst that figure is bonkers-ly large I can't break it down for you and say for certain whether it's even vaguely correct. You can do that maths if you so desire and tell me if I'm wrong...

What is it with leveling at the moment?

2011-01-25T13:14:00.000Z

I'm willing to accept that it's just me - it often is. Example from earlier today: Himself has been trying to explain to me how to play mages and hunters, and has been getting boggled by my inability to run away AND do damage. Leaning over my shoulder this morning, he growled (words to the effect of) "Run AND damage! NO, don't STEP backwards - RUN!" After I'd finished whimpering and returned from the corner (*sniffle*) I gave him my best puzzled face (which he sees a lot) and asked him, well, basically... WTF he wanted me to DO?? Then he explained to me (after his amazement had dissipated) what the 'Q' and 'E' keys were for. They'd be the 'strafe' keys that I didn't know existed. Yes, I know. Fail much?

So disclaimer/explanation of my ongoing ability to fail over with. On with the post-proper.

I'm doing a lot of leveling at present, having waaaay too many alts who I love, but with each of them, seemingly regardless of class, I'm out-leveling zones. I have NO BoA heirloom stuff, so that isn't the explanation. Yes, I'm gathering, which I know gives xp, but surely not that much xp? It's incredibly frustrating; no matter what I do, if I complete the quests, the quest mobs are, at best green, and at worst, grey, before I finish the zone itself. And, you know, with the way the quests are structured at the moment, with the high levels of linear-ness (is that a word?), I want to finish the chains. Because I'm enjoying the stories being told.

I'm in no way advocating a return to the 'good ol' days' (*ahem*) of Vanilla/BC where you had to run all over Azeroth and hop between continents to find leveling appropriate quest zones. I wouldn't do that anymore than I'd advocate a return to first mount at level 40 (especially as I'm currently in Stranglethorn and I remember that place when you had to run everywhere.) But I'm just not convinced that there isn't a problem with too much xp per quest, or mob, or something. Now, I'm not that bothered, as I'm just pootling around, but if I was actually trying to level quickly I think I'd be narked by getting halfway through a zone and finding all my quests are green. The potential for frustration comes, like it did this morning, when Himself glanced at my screen and asked why I was in Zul'Grub (I'm level 31 - it's a fair question) and why I was a raptor. Now Himself loves trolls, so I was surprised that he hadn't done the (very troll-ish) chain, especially as I've seen him level through Stranglethorn. The answer? Presumably he'd out-leveled to the extent that the quest didn't show up (I permanently have 'track low level quests' ticked) so he'd missed it. And more so than that, that not only are 'stories' not fully played out (all of a sudden I understood why I'd been carting a lashtail raptor hatchling with me everywhere) but also the end of these long chains dishes out shiny blues as a reward (if one cares about such things). Now if you don't want lore or stores, then surely you want shiny new gear?

So... Is anyone else finding questing a bit... OP at present?

I love it when an (RP) Plan comes together.

2011-01-24T20:54:00.000Z

I'm often jealous of how easy Himself finds it to come up with character concepts - he just seems to have a myriad of ideas drifting round his head whereas I've barely ever been able to come up with a concept from scratch (i.e. before I make the 'toon, not as I play them.) The closest I came to was considering making my warlock a 'Soul Trader' but I suspect that's slightly naff and been done before... See, my head is full of important stuff, like, ummm, birthdays of relatives and what day of the week it is, not semi-formed fantasy things. Ahem. He's just bought me chocolate (and Pringles, because I am a poorly girl of poorliness *sad face*) so I'd better be nice.

But then I discovered that it's possible to have a seagull as a hunter pet - which is kinda cool. This led me to Petopia , and as everyone knows, as soon as you start browsing Petopia, five pet slots just aren't enough. However, I narrowed it down to wanting a character that had birds, lots of birds, which led onto a a falconer character (would be quite novel you gotta admit) but this led onto parrots as pets, and then, inevitably to a pirate character. And of course, once that's hit as a plan everything else kind of fades away.

So I have another hunter. She's a goblin and she's gorgeous. And made of feist. Himself was kind enough (oh dammit, he has been nice today - I apologise for mocking him earlier) to run me through Deadmines (that place has changed a LOT!) to help me get not one but two parrots - a Monstrous Parrot and Ol' Beaky. And happily, the colouring of Ol' Beaky matches that of the Cockatiel sold in Booty Bay - huzzah - I now have a Mommy parrot and a baby parrot! And he was also kind enough to make me a Swashbuckler's Shirt as well so now I look like this:

Happily, Blizzard seemed to have heard my often-voiced pleas for a pretty belf to call my own, so for a period of time they gave me Johnny Awesome, who decided that he'd come with me, rather than staying in the Sludge Fields; for an only too brief moment of time I had three pets. And I was squeeing with glee. He even came with me to the Ruins of Southshore.

Unfortunately I needed to go back to Undercity and much as I was looking forward to strong, muscular arms clasped around my waist whilst we rode the... bat, he vanished. Now I'm a sad, sad panda.

Oh dear, I've been distracted by belfs. I didn't quite mean for this post to degenerate into... belf fetishising. My apologies. I'd better go and retrieve my goblin and go back to fixating on parrots.

Rex mortuus est, vivat rex

2011-01-17T10:21:00.001Z

I logged onto my mage this morning, the one who's guilded (in a casual capacity) with my old raid guild to find this as the somewhat terse GMoTD: Pum (not her real character name) has quit WoW. She was finding being the GM was having far too much impact IRL. The Officer Corps will deal with any queries. I'd add like to add at this point, that from my point of view, you reap what you sow. I never had much time for the player in question - she played what could best be described as a political game in order to obtain the GM-ship of the guild. She came into the guild as a server transfer, as an indisputably capable tank, swiftly displaced the 'main' tank after a few raids as off-tank, for reasons which I couldn't fathom, despite being a Senior Officer during the process ("Pilf, you're a healer. Don't worry about the tank situation"), was promoted swiftly to the Officer Corps, along with her husband (oh yes, we had that dynamic to deal with as well) and then, just after I left the guild, organised a coup and displaced the GM. That was about, what, a year ago, I think.

Since then, from what I can gather, she's been effective at pushing the guild forward in terms of raiding. She's also female. Without raising gender politics (not the point of this post) she was battling with a very large guild - 500+ players now, who are predominantly male. When I raided I did so with one, maybe two other women (when you use vent you have nowhere to hide your gender...) Whether this is representative or not of the player base, that was, and is the gender imbalance within the guild. The Officer Corps were (me aside as the token girl IRL) entirely male. And they're forthright blokes, the Officer Corps, not backwards about saying that they think. But she seems to have managed well. The usual gender based slurs aside ("She can be really 'bitchy' in raids, she can get 'upset' when things don't go her way", I would suggest that with a male GM/Raid Leader that would be said as "He can get arsey in raids and is bloody minded about how he wants things done..." but it would be said with an element of admiration - see the difference?) she appears to have been reasonably well respected, if not hugely liked.

So what happened? And what happens now? Because if your GM suddenly quits - for whatever reason, someone has to step up and pick up the slack. Maybe if you're in a smaller guild it can be managed by a Council/Officer Corps, with 'GM' as a figurehead, if you like, but when a guild is used to being run with a strong figure holding the uppermost rank, it needs to be rex mortuus est, vivat rex or you're going to be in a world of pain shortly. The Officer Corps has been stable for some time, and rightly so. How many Officers does a guild need anyway? The various responsibilities; website admin, DKP admin, raid leading, class leadership, recruitment, mentoring etc etc are equitably distributed, it appears. All the Officers are adults with lives, jobs, families and responsibilities. No-one, it seems, is eager to pick up the vacant position (ok, it's not vacant, there's a placeholder character, an officer alt who's name is at the top of the Roster) so being a GM isn't actually all that sexy and desirable when it comes to it? It's something I never wanted, for certain, but I'm surprised that no-one is eager to pick up the mantle. When I was an Officer I spent my life being asked, by bright young things, how one 'became' an Officer, and I always used to say the same thing: "The Officers in the guild play despite being Officers, not because they're Officers.. Trust me, it's more fun when you can just play the game" and I always got a bemused response. But then, over time, as people were promoted, they'd come back and say, "Pilf, remember when I asked you about being an Officer... remember what you said? Well you were kinda right. When do I get to just play for me...?" and I used to chuckle (quietly, in a non-bitchy way, behind my monitor.)

It's similar to volunteering, being an Officer or a GM. I can now say this with the weight of (some) volunteering experience behind me - basically you're asking people to commit their time and energy to something that they don't actually have to do. Something that they won't get any 'material' thanks for. Something that they do because they want to give back a little, or something equally altruistic. So how much should you push people, when nothing is obliging them to undertake this role? IRL, volunteering wise, without going into finer detail, I spend a certain quantity of time per week on the phone, asking people if they can cover certain shifts. People who are usually giving up some of their 'free' time anyway. And boy, it's hard to do. I'm getting better (slowly) but it still makes me feel a bit guilty. Especially when they (for totally valid reasons) can't help, and apologise or justify this. Basically, they're a bunch of good committed people, and they do feel guilty when they can't help, and yes, they commit to a certain amount of time per week, but is still doesn't change the fact that they're doing this for no gain for themselves. Responsible roles within guilds are the same - most people want to play WoW, be a bit sociable, raid or whatever to gain shinies, level alts (ahem) and then log off and do something else (broad generalisation, I know, but I think a fair one.) They don't want to deal with the dross and drama every day. They don't want to log on and be hit by a wall of pink text flooding across their screen, from people who want answers NAO DAMMIT! Who would want that?

The upshot is, that one of my most favourite people in Azeroth (no, not Sylvanas) is going to take on GM-ship, and god love him, but it won't work (last time he stood it for 2 weeks before he couldn't handle it any longer). He's a wonderful guy, a fantastic raid leader, a committed Senior Officer and one of the founding guild members, but he's not GM material. I've talked about it with him in-game today, and tried to talk him out of it, and whilst he knows it's a sub-optimal outcome, he says that if he doesn't do it, the guild will either fall apart quietly or will crash and burn spectacularly and he doesn't want that to happen. And the sad thing is, he's probably right. The even sadder thing is that the guild has been running for about 4 years now and needs to fall apart so it can be rebuilt again. It's got such ingrained issues, that just aren't addressable in the current culture. If it went kaboom, it could rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes and start again. But it's like a divorce isn't it? How do you choose who gets what? How are the material and intangible things distributed? And with the guild levelling system and the perks the guild has, it's even more likely that Mom and Dad will stay together, miserable, so as not to disrupt the children's lives. It saddens me, when people feel they 'have' to do something that isn't right for them in their game time. It saddens me that people find the pressure of gaming so extreme that they quit. It saddens me further that so much guild culture seems to be based around an 'obligation' on the few to make life good for the 'masses' and that the few aren't clapped more for what they give. I'd like a guild culture where Officers and Raid Leaders (as well as the GM) can take a Leave of Absence from their responsibilities and just be allowed to play sometimes. But I know that within progression raid guilds, that's easier said than done.

And this post is too long....

If you only read one blog post today

2011-01-14T18:01:00.000Z

... read this courtesy of NowIAmTree . It raises an incredibly interesting point and is insightfully written. My view is similar (you may have gathered from my ranty posts on the subject) but I'm not any closer to a sensible and viable suggestion. But damn it makes for an interesting discussion. Why are you still here? Go and read!