Solace

She stood on the branch where she and Raide had often met, the white and purple robes indicating her status as a priestess fluttering in the summer breeze. She’d passed one of Them on her way out here, and was fairly sure she’d recognized the face, but hadn’t bothered with even her standard priestly greeting. She was intent on her destination, and the time for pleasantries was long past.

Her skin flared a shadowy purple at the thought, and she quickly shut down that line of thought.

Her purpose was clear, and the time was now. The dreams had shown her as much, when they’d pushed past her mental barriers and started flashing during the waking hours.

Edesia jumped into the willing arms of the Nether.

At last, solace.

I’m gonna need to see some ID

I get parts of the RealID panic. But the “OMG EVERYONE I FRIEND EVER WILL BE ABLE TO KNOW MY PERSONAL DEETS AND HARASS ME OUT OF GAME!!!ONE!11!” stuff? …Those people just don’t get it (obviously not playing SC2 beta) or are Doing It Wrong (and adding EVERYONE as RealID friend instead of filtering).

My biggest issues with the current setup for RealID is that it’s an “All or Nothing” situation. There are people I’d like to be able to contact me in Battle.Net but that I don’t want to know EVERY character EVERYWHERE, whose rID friends I have zero interest in knowing by first/last name (and vice versa), etc. I think there needs to be ae essentially tri-level system for this to reach maximum effectiveness and keep it safe. We don’t want a fiasco on the scale of Google Buzz, after all.

This is what I’ve come up with–let me know what you think and offer suggestions! I know a lot of people are really worried about this system, but I’ve been using rID in SC2, and as long as you’re SAFE with it then it isn’t that bad.

Level 1—Game-specific friends: Maybe that random PuG you grouped with that was an awesome tank, but not necessarily someone you want to see ALL of your characters and whatnot. Works just like in-game friends now.

Level 2—Game friends + chat: Maybe guildmates or officers you’d like to be able to get in touch with you via chat when you’re not on your guilded characters (or when you’re playing a different BN game), but not someone you want to have ALL of your character, game, or IRL information. It’d basically be a Battle.Net IM client, and responses would appear to them as being from [Character name + game identifier--in my example I used server]

Example:

From: Mallet.NerZhul
To: Ashtoret.Netzhul

Hey, ToC-25 forming, want in?

Level 3—RealID friends of my RealID friends: Would work basically like Level 2. Perhaps the appearance on your list would be something like YourFirstName.FirstNameOfMutualFriend.

Example: I’m RealID friends with Michael, who is rID friends with Chris, but Chris and I aren’t rID friends.

From: Amber.Michael
To: Chris.Michael

Hey, can you pick up the pizza on your way to the gaming session Saturday night?

So you can see your rID connection, but not anything more personal about the other person than a first name. You won’t know what game the person is in, just that they’re logged into Battle.Net.

Level 4—RealID friends: Works exactly the way it works now. People that you add (and that add you back) can see your first and last name. In theory, you’re only going to be adding people you already know in reality, or people that you’re comfortable giving personal contact information to. Parental controls are in the works for this to make it more kid-safe. I’m hoping they do something similar to the pre-programmed cellphones for munchkins that are already on the market.

Actually, I don’t understand why they can’t just show people by first names or a public “display name”. FirstName.PersonalIdentifer, perhaps. (I really love the Starcraft name.name thing, it’s AWESOME.)

I think the entire chat system needs a way to mark yourself as Available/AFK/Busy/Invisible so that if the only thing you want to do is log in and say, check bank alts, then you won’t potentially be inundated with IMs. (**Yes, I know you can set yourself as afk/busy now, I just think Invisible needs to be part of the package.)

Not Enough Minerals

So, Tristan (@TheElitists) was kind enough to give me his spare beta key for Starcraft II.

Holy. Brood Queen.

Confession: I didn’t play original Starcraft (…may have to rectify that this weekend, however). In fact, I thought I hated RTS (because I am, quite frankly, absolutely terrible at strategy).

Starcraft? SUCH A BLAST. Yes, I suck. I’m terrible at RTS. No, really, I’m as bad as you think I am (probably worse). I hate playing Terran. I like Protoss (they’re pretty!), and I think Zerg is really interesting. (Even if it is gross and bugs and squelching noises that make me flinch.)

The game is visually stunning, even with settings on minimum. (Yes, my graphics stuff is turned basically all the way down.) The changes to the battle.net system are really exciting–I can’t wait for it to be implemented in WoW. In fact, I’d love to see it implemented in WoW shortly after Starcraft II officially launches in late July.

CAN’T TALK, CONSTRUCTING ADDITIONAL PYLONS. ♥

Earth Day! /treedance

This isn’t a fully recycled post, but it is a snippet from one of my stories in the dreaded Drafts folder.

Looking back on it, she supposed she’d fallen rather easily to the grasping hands of the Scourge.

Cerys shook her head silently, marvelling that she’d survived as long as she had before finally being captured. Her mind during that time… she’d taken any mission, no matter how suicidal. Others refused to accompany her after the body count started racking up. Harsh whispers and silent accusations followed her path, to the point that she’d practically quit associating in Silvermoon at all. She’d not felt very welcome in the Horde cities at all, actually, save for the Undercity, where she had once felt the most ill at ease. She supposed her wariness about the Royal Apothecary had paid off, albeit too late to save herself. The only missions she’d refused to take…

She glanced around wearily, a loose strand of white hair fluttering in the chill Icecrown wind, a hand tightening involuntarily on the hilt of Heartless as she prepared to re-enter the Citadel.

State of the /waggle

So I’ve been talking a lot about RP stuff lately and kinda completely neglecting talking about any aspect of PvE. Matt and Ophelie cover things better anyways. Still, I’m fairly satisfied with what’s going on most of the time. (even if my wed/fri night rants on twitter paint a picture to the contrary at times…)

N’diayne (So I hear it’s easier to “visualize” pronouncing my name if you see the apostrophe. Y/N/Felnanas?) is… well, somewhat frustrated with what’s been going on in her 10-man guild. Don’t get me wrong–I LOVE the people I raid with in Slave, and I’m eternally grateful to them for taking us in after the … raiding conflict… in Fury. Still, it’s frustrating to know your raid team can do SO much better but still be beating your faces into the same 6 bosses every week, and getting to about the same percentage on Prof P every week… it’s rough. It’s demoralizing. Hopefully our successes this week will revitalize the group and push us solidly over that wall.

This week was actually really fantastic–we killed Blood Princes for the second time, got BQL (referred to as Blood Queen Latifah by the guildies) down, then proceeded to heal Dreamy to success before getting Sindy to about 58% best attempt. Not going to complain–that’s a HUGE chunk of progress in one night, and if we can keep it up we’ll be saying “Sup?” to Arthas pretty soon. Even with the recent split (which I’m not going to talk about right now, because I’m still muddling out how I feel about what’s going on) things have gone up instead of down, so… I’m hopeful. Cautious, but hopeful.

Conquest is facesmashing the Lich King in 25s (and 10s). No kill yet, but as soon as everyone is done vacationing and moving and DCing (sup my at-times terrible internet connection) and other bullshit things will be fine. Also Holydin gear can please start existing again. My ret set is pretty solid at this point, just need to hunt a chest, boots, and trinkets to start retflailing in 5-mans and such. Our 10-man did (imo) really, really well on LK Sunday night–I think our best attempt was around 37%, and then there was an orb and some flying off a platform and WHEE–WAIT THAT IS NOT A VAL’KYIR HOLDING MY THROAT AND TOSSING ME, BOOOOOOOO (wait, what?)… anyways. It’s steadily getting better, and that pleases me.

RP is still ridiculously hard to find or get involved with in-game. I’m actually working on another post about it, but I’m a little bit anxious about posting it… it may just end up in the Abyss known as my Drafts folder…

Children’s Week is soon, and I’m really excited to FINALLY get my Matron title. I’m also planning on working towards it on Spyri (yes, the priest, although she’s not a gnome yet, obviously), so I’ve been leveling her (kinda, lulz) trying to get her high enough.

For the …wait, what?

I realized tonight that making my paladin Alliance means I’ve tipped the balance. (Yes, she’s really Alliance now… Ashtoret the Draenei* Paladin.)

Horde: Ndiayne (priest), Nolona (tree), Irien (mage) (Only do RPish stuff on Dia)

Alliance: Ashtoret (pally), Adelinde (huntress), Edesia (priest), Spyridoula (priest), Bidi (warrior), various babyalts to chat with friends. (RPish stuff on Ash/Lin/Desi (if I can ever wrangle some demon hunters into talking to me, jeeez)/Spyri (tinkerpriest).

There’s going to be a rogue somewhere. Probably Horde, just because I like having people to talk to while I level, and I don’t have that on Sen’Jin-A (where Bidi is).

Anyways.

Mentally, I have tipped the balance. I am starting to (shudder) think like an Alliance. I think. Tore is like two personalities in my mind… because I’ve got so much mentally invested in her as a Blood Knight, I can’t just toss that. As a Draenei… well, she’s growing on me. I’ve got a trio of gnomes in my head, a Night Elf lurking and sulking in the shadowy recesses, and a Dwarven lady knocking back a few pints of stout while she watches everything going on.

And then I’ve got another Blood Elf and a Tauren hanging out in there.

D’you know just how bloody disturbing it is, having a gnome bouncing around and tugging on tails and insulting two sets of elves by insisting on calling them both long ears?

It’s really, really disturbing. Sleep-depriving, story triggering, mind-racingly disturbing.

I actually had almost a full story for Desi a few nights ago, but unfortunately it decided to trigger during a quick pre-dinner and raidtime shower. By the time I was able to start writing, it was mostly gone. This is the way of things for me creatively oft-times, however, so all is normal. (I’m a bit frustrated that I *can’t* get the story back, but it will come… in time.

I leave you with this:

N’diayne nodded at Remulos as he prepared to send her back into the Emerald Dream. Gather acorns, avoid Nightmares. She could do this, she just needed to remember to stick close to the shrine. A cast, and then an unfamiliar green haze filled her vision. She moved forward cautiously, stumbling over the first acorn almost immediately. More cautious steps forward, and then a flower was attacking… no, it was a carbon image of herself. ‘This must be one of the Nightmares, then.’ she thought as she attacked back, her purified flames raining down on the Nightmare until it collapsed back into flower form. Two more acorns and she pinched herself firmly to return to the shrine.

She hoped Remulos would grant her a boon and give her the tools to cleanse the plague from Crusader Bridenbrad. The Argent Crusade was extremely insistent on his cleansing and survival, and she didn’t want her work with the Dawn hampered by this.

“You’ve done well, N’diayne. You and your crusader have my well wishes. Farewell, priestess of the Dawn.”**

*I know, I know, wtf was I thinking making her Draenei… but most of Conquest’s paladins are human, and dwarves just… don’t bring anything useful to raids. /sigh/ Draenei do. Also I may have lost my mind temporarily when “creating” her… can I blame the /waggle/ and get a pardon???

**Based off this quest chain in Icecrown.

Sharing the Sandbox

[This is a response to the latest post over at Too Many Annas that started as a comment and gained a terrifically tl;dr life of its own.]

Being left out occasionally may be part of the RP, but there’s a difference between the ”occasional” and what I perceive as a deliberate “freeze out” that I think needs to be addressed from the eyes of someone new to WoW RP and that greater community, but not to RP in general.

The problem I’ve seen is not people “occasionally” being left out, it’s them being consistently left out.

I have an incredibly limited amount of RP time between my raiding schedules on Ashtoret and Ndiayne. Sometimes, my free time doesn’t end up lining up with other people’s schedules, and some nights by the time I log in people are in the middle of RP and I don’t feel comfortable or well-equipped to step in and interact. I understand I will not be involved in everything, and that’s okay.

But when I do have the time, and I make the effort to branch out, talk to people, and schedule RP with folks, then I expect to be a part of it. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable expectation, either.

My problem with some of the less-open RP threads is this: Jack, Jane, Sarah, and Jill all interact in the same RP Storyline. Bob, a friend of Jack and Jane, does some casual RP, but is not involved in the Storyline. (Perhaps it’s closed, or perhaps Bob just hasn’t found his place in the Story yet.) Bob tells Jack and Jane, “Hey, I’m free from 2-4 PM on Saturday, do you think we could catch up in Ironforge?” They respond positively, and Bob logs in. Sarah and Jill find out about the RP, and head to IF as well, where they pull Jack and Jane into a conversation about the Storyline that Bob isn’t part of. Bob continues trying to interact with his friends and these newcomers, but after a half-hour of little to no response (or only “IC” responses that are rude, short, or otherwise very negative), becomes disheartened and logs off. He schedules RP again at a different point, and something similar happens, or it gets to the point where people just don’t respond to him when he asks if people are available and interested in doing some RP.

Do you see the problem in this?

For a new WoW RPer, it can be extremely difficult to get your feet wet and find your little spot in the wide world of RP. But you’ve got a character, a vague mental or pencil outline of what you want to see happen, some interesting backstory that doesn’t crush under the weight of the Mary Sue litmus test. You’ve picked a server based on friends you know that RP, or from the greater community as a whole. You’re ready, eager, and excited to get your feet wet and explore this new aspect of your online gaming time.

And then something like this happens. Sure, you may be able to brush it off the first time. But it happens again… and again. You get no responses when you DO ask questions about the Storylines your friends are involved in, or you get partial responses that make perfect sense to them but none to you since you aren’t involved. When you ask if people want to RP, you get crickets.

It can be crushing and disheartening. If you’re entirely new to RP, it can put you off to the entire community. I’ve heard people grumble about how “closed-off” the RP community in World of Warcraft can feel. If you’re only new to RP in WoW (or the “real-time” aspect of in-game RP), then you may wonder what you’re doing wrong. “Why don’t these people that seem open and friendly to others like me? Is it my character? Is it something with me, personally?”

Closed RP and some of the long ongoing storylines I’ve seen in WoW aren’t bad things, but I think people in the community (particularly well-established, long-time RPers) need to be aware of how some of their actions may be perceived by newcomers. If you’ve got a newcomer in the group and they take the time to seek out RP, encourage it. Don’t push them out or make them hate WoW RP/RPers by freezing them out when they’ve scheduled time with you. If a newcomer schedules RP with someone you have a Closed (or ongoing/semi-open) RP with, don’t join them and then only talk about things the newcomer isn’t able to be involved with.

DBAD: It applies to people established in the community just as much as it does to newcomers.

Operation: Gnomeregan

Blizzard released some enticing information about the retaking of Gnomeregan this morning! (Confession: I had to stop myself from squealing at my cubicle.)

RETAKING THE HOMELAND. OMG OMG OMG.

There’s also been a movement over on Twitter/the general WoW forums, spearheaded by the fabulous Clay. You can check out the website for The Gnomeregan Offensive here.

Of course, I’m embracing these movements with open arms. I’ve made no secret of my want for Gnome Priests (or a healing-capable class, period), and now that I’m getting my wish, I will definitely be rolling one! I’ve already started working on her, and there’s a bit of fiction about her already up.

[EDIT: HOLY CARP HOW DID I FORGET ABOUT BARON'S FABULOUS MACHINIMA?!! World of Gnomecraft 2.0 GO WATCH IT IMMEDIATELY, THE MAN IS A FRIGGIN GENIUS.]

Home.

It had been so long! The walls of Ironforge were nice, sure. Strong, sturdy, easily able to withstand her tinkering. But it wasn’t home. The workshop she’d fled, half-finished tinkers scattered across the table as she’d hastily packed.

She peered up at Ashtoret, tugging the Draenei’s tail gently. “Tore? The High Tinker says we’ll be going home. Will… will you be there?”

Tore looked down at her with a smile. “I’ll always be there Spyri. Who else would shield you when you go rushing headfirst into danger? I’ll do anything I can to help you reclaim your home, Spyri. Anything.“

She grabbed Tore’s hand as the paladin knelt beside her, and they watched the High Tinker in silence as he assembled the first wave for the assault on Gnomeregan.

It was time to reclaim home.

Quickie Speculation and Questions

Twitter is all abuzz right now with the Blues dropping some VERY interesting hints about some of the changes to stats in Cataclysm.

There are good Blue roundups everywhere–try Wowhead, MMO Champ, or World of Raids to get a good link (there’s also a few posts over at wow.com). I’ll wait while you squee and yell and scratch your head in confusion.

Back now? Great. I’ve got some quick speculation and questions about the upcoming changes, and a few other questions I’ve been dying to ask but keep forgetting about during Twitter dev chats, so feel free to add to the speculation and whatnot in comments.

Spirit is the new (and only) Mp5, and it is basically for Healers Only.*

NO MORE MAGES AND WARLOCKS ROLLING ON MY NON-HIT GEAR, WOOOO. (No, seriously… do you know how freaking hard it is to gear up a priest healer in a 10-man guild? Every piece of cloth that’s dropped has been dripping in +hit. And don’t even get me started on fucking offhands and trinkets…)

(*Balance Druids and Elemental Shamans will convert spirit into hit, but that’s okay because THEY WEAR LEATHER AND MAIL.)

In theory, this will mean that Druids/Shamans should be keeping their branches and totems off my cloth gear. The only group I really see potentially getting boned by this is Shadow Priests–as Fox pointed on Twitter, this effectively means that spriests will definitely be carrying at least two sets of gear if they ever have to take on a healing role.

I’d be interested in seeing if Blizzard has thought of doing the same thing for spriests that they’re doing for the druids/shamans and doing some sort of spirit –> hit conversion for them to make the gearing and hybriding a bit easier. (It seems like that’s what they’re going for with druids and shamans, so it makes sense to do the same thing for priests, imo.)

Blessing of Kings (and I’m assuming Mark/Gift of the Wild) will no longer increase spirit.

To me, this is effectively putting spirit into more of a “secondary stat” category (along with things like Attack Power). Blues have repeatedly said they’d like healers to have to be really thoughtful with their mana/spell use, and limiting the amount of spirit increases we can get via non-gear means is definitely one way of effectively capping our max spirit/regen.

Intellect will give less mana. Spellpower will no longer be on gear. Instead, a percentage of Int will be converted into SP.

This is fairly self-explanatory and falls right into line with “we want healers to have to be thoughtful about spell/mana use.” Don’t panic. Take the tinfoil hat off. Nothing earth-shattering to see here, move along…

MORE STAMINA. Priest tank, bitches. That is all.

Questions:

–How does this change from Mp5 to Spirit-only affect Blessing of Wisdom and Mana Spring totem?

–How will Divine Spirit be affected? Is it going away as a buff, or will it be the only raid buff that’s affecting healer regen and druid/shaman +hit?

–How is Inner Fire going to be affected by spellpower effectively dropping as a visible stat?

Other stuff I’ve been pondering that isn’t really affected by these changes:

–Will casters ever be able to enchant wands/off-hands the way that shield-users, dual-wielders, and bow/gun/crossbow users are currently able to? I’d love to put a crit foci on my wand or something…

–BoA Enchants: Currently we can use the best enchants that original WoW had to offer. Is there any chance we’ll see special “BoA”-only enchants that scale similarily? There would have to be some definite parameters. I’m thinking weapon/chest enchants that “top out” at the same level as the low-end NR enchants (or somewhere between BC/lowest NR equivalent). Shoulder enchants that cap at the same level as the Scryer/Aldor Honored enchants. I’d love some opinions on this!

Dear Media

STOP essentially glorifying murderers.
STOP trying to shove the blame off the person committing crimes and onto other forms of media.
START fact-checking and doing a few minutes of research before writing a bunch of bullshit where even the most basic of “facts” are incorrect.

Amy Bishop does NOT work for “The University of Alabama.” That title belongs to the campus in Tuscaloosa. You know, home of the national championship winning football team?

UAHuntsville != The University of Alabama. UAH does not have football. It is not part of the SEC. It is a science and mathematics-oriented regional public university with what is traditionally an excellent hockey team. It is a school full of nerds–many of whom play Dungeons and Dragons, the same (gasp!) game that former professor Amy Bishop played at some point in her life. Some of those people are also cheerleaders, jocks, members of sororities and fraternities, band nerds, art geeks, language enthusiasts, chess players, video gamers, card sharks, parents, straights, gays, transgenders, whatever.

It’s not uncommon to see a group of people taking over a study room with terrain boards, character sheets, and dice bags, or for a D&D manual to make an appearance in a stack of school or recreational books.

STOP vilifying so-called “nerd culture” because you’re too lazy or stupid to understand it.
STOP sensationalizing tragedies.
STOP giving murderers weeks of fame.

Stare into the abyss: Have you ever thought that maybe the way you treat such tragedies is an encouragement to those who would be willing or desperate enough to perform the crimes associated? Ignoring the victims to dissect a murderer’s life and sensationalize every aspect that you don’t like or understand… that’s not News, that’s a fucking tabloid article.

Talk about the brilliant minds this world has lost–that is FAR more important than what recreational activities Bishop enjoyed.

This non-WoW message brought to you by a former UAH student that is absolutely fucking disgusted with the way american “news” media sensationalizes and glorifies campus murders and was triggered by articles in the Boston Herald.