Skip to content

Living in the moment

16-Sep-10

I’ve seen a lot of bloggers reminiscing these days, about WotLK, about TBC, about Vanilla WoW and all sorts of other things. Others have been looking towards the future that is Cataclysm, with thoughts and opinions that range all over the map. Now don’t get me wrong, I like to look back on my own memories and how things were. And I’m excited/nervous for Cataclysm just like everyone else. But right now, I’m happy with the game at this exact moment.

Being a TBC baby, I’m certain that I see things differently than those who have been around since Vanilla, or those who only started playing in WotLK. If I wanted to wave my old lady cane around, I could talk about the times when us hunters didn’t have Aspect of the Viper as we leveled. Or how paladins would have to reapply their blessings every 10 seconds because they’d lose them whenever they used a judgement. Or how about even much more recently, in the time before they nerfed Halls of Reflection, when me tanking on Saraku and Kazi healing were one of the few tank/healer combos that could actually get past the first two bosses on heroic? /flex

Does this mean that I grumble about how they’ve made things easier for all of those newbies that have since joined the game. Of course not, because what right do I have to steal their fun away? If they had kept paladins the same, I probably would have never rolled Saraku. In fact, I did roll a blood elf paladin back in TBC and abandoned her at level 14 when I grew sick of having to rebuff myself after every judgement. Why shouldn’t hunters get Aspect of the Viper early on when they’re just going to have to learn how to use it down the road? And thank god they made HoR easier because it took weeks before I was able to bring Niqo in there; we just couldn’t find other tanks/healers that could do it.

Dungeons Galore

The LFD system also seems to have people reminiscing about the good old days, where it took you time to get a group together and you bonded during the whole experience, wipes and all. I remember those times a lot differently. I remember being terrified to go into a dungeon because I was worried that I’d make some huge mistake and everyone would be mad at me. I would be scorned as “that huntard” for accidentally pulling a pack of mobs. So I never really grouped with anyone. Before Niqo reached level 70 in TBC, she had maybe been to 3 dungeons in her entire career. And I’m fairly certain that for at least two of those, I had to be persuaded by my friends. Even once at level 70, I believe I stepped into another 3 dungeons at the requests of my guildmates in Bloodriver.

It wasn’t until WotLK came out and I felt well-protected by Bloodriver that I began to venture more into dungeons. I despised pugs back then, almost only running instances with an all-guild group. I remember there being a core of us 5 officers tentatively toeing our way into heroics in our quest greens and blues. We eventually got our piece-mail epics, almost none of them tier gear until we started raiding Naxx about the time Ulduar came out. I recall guild members scheduling “badge runs” where they would spend all day running as many heroics as they could (because of flight times back then).

Then the LFD system came out and with it the opportunity to run dungeons faster, thereby acquiring badges faster. Kazi and I paired up and threw ourselves into random after random. Our Naxx gear was replaced with tier 9 in a matter of about 3 days. Strangely enough, these randoms were the beginning of my confidence boost. I was having to play with people I didn’t even know and…I wasn’t screwing up. The strategies for each dungeon were becoming second nature by now; I could actually make my own way through them without getting hopelessly lost. And for half of them, I wasn’t some faceless DPS in the back, I was the freaking tank! I, who would have huddled in a corner and cries if someone asked me to run a dungeon two years before, was now leading a group of complete strangers through a dungeon and deftly keeping the attention of packs of mobs on myself so the rest of the group lived. You have no idea how much of a change this has been for me.

Now I find myself being more drawn to the LFD system than ever. I have two characters, a warrior tank and a disc priest, who I am leveling up solely through random dungeons. You may think that I’m completely nuts but I am now getting to see all the dungeons I missed, either by being right there in the middle of all the chaos or standing back and observing the quirks of different mobs and bosses as I toss my bubbles around. When the rest of the group is silent, I can take the opportunity to note the music and the beauty of the surroundings. And when they are chatting, I have the chance to joke around with them and meet some interesting people. If there’s someone I don’t like and never want to group with again, it’s a simple matter of putting them on ignore and not giving them a second thought. There is no requirement to be nice to an arsehole simply because they’re on the same server as me and I don’t want to accidentally piss the wrong person off.

Quite a few bloggers have also been dismayed at the fast pace of the dungeons. Me, I revel in it. If I wanted to do something slower, I’d casually quest or go herb picking. A quick dungeon is more exciting to me and provides a little bit of variety. Will I get Zul’Farrak this time, which is quickly turning into one of my favorite instances? Or will it be another Maraudon where those damn oozes will burst my priesty bubbles in a matter of seconds? The speed always keeps me on my toes and teaches me to actually use more of my cooldowns. Yet it doesn’t have the randomness and utter chaos of PvP so I can take a second or two to plan ahead for the next pack of trash mobs. And those particular mobs will always operate the same way so I can hold their strategies in my head for the next time. I’m also better able at gauging the limit of the tank or healer that I’m with, and what classes need breaks for mana here or a little extra help on a particular boss there.

All in all, I think that the LFD system has made me a better player. It’s given me the opportunity to expand my horizons. Before I would only play hunters because they were some of the best at questing solo and that’s what I mostly did. But now I can try out different tanking and healer classes and by queuing for randoms over and over again, I actually am able to practice and learn that particular role. So say what you want about it (and I won’t deny that it could stand to use some improvements) but I am one person that’s enjoying the LFD system as it is. đŸ™‚

How they were and are and could be

Years back, I was going to be heading off to a camp for a couple weeks in the summer and my mom asked me what I thought it would be like and if I was excited to go. I simply looked at her and said “I’m not assuming anything about it, I’m just going to see if I like it or not when it happens.” This may seem a little unemotional and cold but I keep trying to view things that way. Like I said before, I’m perfectly content with the way WoW is now. And I was perfectly content with it back in TBC too. Things change, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst, but I make my best attempt to just go with it. With all these changes happening in Cata, I’m perfectly fine with just waiting to see how they turn out. I’m sure I’ll like some and hate others. I’ll adapt to them as I did before, or I’ll join the other bloggers who talk about the good old days…or maybe I’ll even quit WoW and move onto something else. Change is simply change, folks, whether it’s good or bad is a matter of opinion. I personally am going to keep on trucking until Cata hits and a whole new world of opportunities opens to us. I have too many things I want to do now that there’s barely any room to think of Cata stuff!

And when that time comes, when Azeroth as we know it is torn asunder…I’ll just be living in that moment instead.

Filed in Cataclysm, Musings, PUGs, Random Thoughts, Social, WotLK | | Comments (8) »

Of Death and Rebirth

11-Sep-10

It is often easy to forget about the impact of death, permanent death, in a world filled with resurrection magic and spirit healers. For players, an untimely demise at the hands (or claws, teeth, spells, what have you) of another is merely a brief, annoying setback in the quest for xp or loot, not the final ending it would be in the real world. But unless you’re named Kael’thas, death in the world of Warcraft is still something permanent, to a point. Despite a number of retcons, there are major lore characters, with access to all the magic and spiritual prowess their allies could bring, who have suffered deaths as irreversible as any in the real world. Thus, with no real official word on the subject, it is up to us as players to determine exactly how mechanics and story interact.

Resurrection magic is available to four of the ten classes in Warcraft in a ready manner, with no cooldown or other limitation beyond mana and cast time (and combat). Dismissing this as pure game mechanics is impossible; the Scarlet Crusade (and later Onslaught) have frequent references to to resurrection in quests related to them. However, the aforementioned permanent deaths in-canon mean that there must be some sort of limitation on the use of revives, else there would be no such permanent losses. Though clearly open to interpretation, my personal take is this: reviving spells combine a potent healing effect with a re-anchoring of the soul to the body. Thus, at least /some/ of the deceased’s body must be intact and present, and the spell must be cast relatively soon after the soul leaves the body, before it can find its way to the Twisting Nether and whatever afterlife awaits. Without a body, there is nowhere to house the recalled soul; without a soul, the body is lifeless.

This view of resurrection has support in both mechanics and lore: in-game, you can only stay ‘attached’ to your corpse for a few minutes before the game kicks you out to the spirit healer, and you need to be close to a player’s body to cast the res in any case. In lore, meanwhile, bodies are often burned or otherwise destroyed (by voracious rats in the Forsaken’s case) to prevent such revivification. However, these still provide no compelling case for armies to leave their dead as corpses; many battles would be finished or calmed enough to resurrect before time was up, and there are certainly enough spiritualists around to do so. As such, I would offer this explanation: resurrection demands a heavy toll, either to be channeled (as most holy users might) or bargained for (as a shaman might), which relegates it to something used in extreme circumstances only. The Scarlet’s love of ressing could then be explained by the dreadlord who leads them; it’s entirely possible that his influence can supply the necessary strength to revive soldiers as a matter of course, rather than something extraordinary.

Of course, as I said, this is mostly conjecture on my part, and anything that works for you and those you RP with is fair game. The most important thing is to have an idea of the assumed limitations of such things before someone deflates a dramatic death with an offhand “Why don’t you res them?” or the like. The relative rarity of a player ICly killing off one of their characters makes it potentially an extremely powerful event, worthy of plenty of consideration to make sure it’s an event to remember.

Filed in Random Thoughts, Roleplaying | Tagged | Comments (1) »

The birth of a name

11-Sep-10

LarĂ­sa over at the Pink Pigtail Inn wrote about how difficult it can be to come up with a good character name, especially when one has an army of alts. That got me thinking: I have an army of alts that are more or less named differently from one another (as in I don’t have 5 Niqoras running around on 5 different servers). So I thought this might be the perfect opportunity to show some of the ways that I pick out a new name for my character.

There are a couple things to consider when choosing a name. The obvious one is that you can’t choose a name that is already in use on your server. If I’m already on the character creation screen, I try to avoid getting the “That name is not available” spam by inputting my possible names in the WoW Armory. There’s always the chance that some alt under level 10 will have the name and you won’t know it but it can give you an idea of the name’s general popularity.

Then of course you must consider what nickname others will call you by, usually the first three or four letters of your name. For example, I was thinking of using the name “Yakone” for a tauren druid, an Inuit name that means “red aurora”. I then realized that if I chose this name, I’d be known on that character as “Yak” or “Yako”. Not the most delightful nicknames. River-dark pointed out the same issue with a character nicknamed “Rash” and her own paladin whose full name is “Hardlove”.

The last two are ones that I take in for personal consideration; you might think differently. I for one have never put any accented characters into any of my names. Not only does it make it really hard for people trying to type in my name, but I myself would have an awful time figuring out how to type them in. (Yes, I know there are keyboard shortcuts but I never remember them.)

With characters I create these days, I like their names to be relatively or completely unique. If there’s more than say 30 people with the name I want in the Armory, even if none of them are on my server, I will go in search of a different name.

Couple all that criteria with the desire to have a name that is good for roleplaying and suits the character’s personality and you’d think that I’d have a hell of a time naming my characters. But really, I don’t find it too terribly hard. So, onto my naming strategies.

  1. Use a name generator. Niqo’s original name Nicora was given to me directly from the in-game name generator. Zulrea was taken from my own PANDA WoW Name Generator.
  2. Pick a name from a different culture. This one is fairly easy, you just have to find a good site that gives you names. My personal favorites are Behind the Name and Names by Chinaroad. Yes, I know the second one is for pets but who’s to say you can’t use those for your toons? I tend to give my tauren Inuit or Native American names, while for Alliance characters I lean towards Irish and Celtic names. Some examples are Anuniaq, a tauren, and Aithne, a blood elf.
  3. Change a couple of letters around or add some. Often times, just picking a name is not good enough. Just look at the number of Nicoras listed on the Armory. But by changing  the “c” to a “q”, I now have the only Niqora on the Armory. And the name is said the same way too. Similarly, I wanted to reserve the name “Rahela” for my worgen but I found that it was already taken. No problem, I simply added an “h” on the end to end up with “Rahelah”, same pronunciation and I will probably be the only one on the Armory.
  4. Play around with naming conventions. As I’m sure a lot of you know, Saraku is a netherdrake in the form of a blood elf ICly. When choosing his name, I went to the wowwiki entry on the Netherwing dragonflight and found out that most of their names end in “-aku” or “-us”. Figuring out the rest of his name was just a matter of scribbling down some possible combinations and picking one that seemed right.
  5. Make your own template for the Fantasy Name Generator. This generator has both a simple interface that’s just drop-down options and button clicks, or a more advanced interface that, as they say, is “almost limitless in its flexibility”. If you take the time to read the instructions and work out your own template, you could have some unique names to use for your characters. I’ve used it to come up with the name for Niqo’s warp stalker, Grakoth. I wanted something guttural sounding, a name that an orc would growl before spitting on the ground and taking a swig of his mead. So I made up my own template and tweaked it until I had the perfect name for him.
  6. Make something up. Take the first name that pops into your head. When I had got Niqo’s first epic mount, a black war wolf, I was staring at him when I suddenly realized, “His name is Brakk.” Now I can’t think of him by any other name.
  7. Combine two names. I have an orc called Machalor. Her name is a combination of “Macha”, an Irish goddess of war, and “Balor”, the king of the Fomorians.
  8. When in doubt, try reversing it. This one is self-explanatory. My druid Aroqin got named after I realized that “Niqora” backwards was quite a good name. After I realized that I couldn’t name a character “Yakone” without being shamed, I switched it around and my new druid on Earthen Ring is now called “Enokay”.

If one of those methods doesn’t work for you, try a combination of them. Pull up a baby naming website, find a scrap of paper, and write down anything that piques your interest or springs into your mind. Don’t worry if it sounds silly at the beginning. With a little tweaking, it could become the perfect name for your character.

And remember, the next alt that you make on a whim could be your new main in the future. And you don’t want to be always known as “Lolhax” now do you? đŸ˜‰

Filed in Name Generator, Random Thoughts, Rantings, Roleplaying | | Comments (2) »