Shared Topic: WoW Faux Pas (feat. Warlocks & Rainbows)

This week’s Blog Azeroth Shared Topic was suggested by…me! With the release of Mists, I’d nearly forgotten that I had suggested my first ever Shared Topic, and the week’s already nearly over already. *hangs head in shame*

Vervaine: “Only YOU can prevent these fashion faux pas!”

At any rate…for this week’s post my warlock will be sitting in and doing her usual complaining discourse on some transmog faux pas! She’s generally the quiet but cynical one, but this topic was one she just couldn’t resist putting her two copper in. Note: her reflections here are purely for fun, but some people certainly may enjoy the transmogrifications sets previewed below! (Vervaine: *scoff*)

For those indecisive days…

1. The “I Can’t Decide Which Piece is Coolest, Let’s Use Them All” Faux Pas

Yes, we all have those special pieces that we love most. Perhaps it’s a pirate hat. Perhaps it’s a lovely, elegant robe. Maybe it’s a set of gloves we hold on to because they finally dropped and won the roll on. Or it’s our favorite shoulder model. Unfortunately, while each piece on its own is undoubtedly “cool” it’s very rare that they would coincidentally all color-coordinate or match in style. I’m not quite sure what the individual was trying for above. Is she a pirate with tucked-in hair? An elegant lady Pandaren? I suppose it could be likely that every day is Pirate Day for this person…curious, curious. Let us move on to the next model…

I had to do a double-take when I saw this one…

2. The “Which Faction Am I Again?” Faux Pas

While in a Orgrimmar, I happened upon a Stormwind Guard transmog (sans tabard). It was recognizable as an impressive transmog at first, but I soon realized I couldn’t attack said “Alliance” character. Alas, it was a fellow Horde. Understandably, this individual may have made a faction change while wearing said attire. But have some faction pride, madam! Sure, you are a mercurial Blood Elf with outfits changing per whim. Perhaps their motive was to confuse folks like myself. But you’re in Horde territory now. Traitors shall not be taken lightly! Change, you fool, before I cast my Chaos Bolt!

What is this monstrosity…

3. The “USE ALL THE TIERS!” Faux Pas

While tier sets (and tier look-alikes) of some classes blend well in a mixture, the poor soul above seems a tad confused. This faux pas has similar ties to the “I Can’t Decide…” model. Perhaps he had so much of a liking of each of the tier/set models and only had singularly pieces from each. Or maybe it is the misfortune of our class to which our gear sets are hard to mix and match. But repeat with me, folks…”WARLOCKS ARE NOT RAINBOWS.” I repeat, WARLOCKS ARE NOT RAINBOWS. Any warlock with a smidgen of pride wouldn’t dare walk about in public looking like a Rainbow Generator! This one gave me quite the headache.

And there you have it, three of the transmogrification faux pas most memorable to me. Perhaps you have stories of some fashion faux pas as well of your own to share?

These lovely folks below also took part in this week’s Shared Topic, discussing some other WoW faux pas (including ones regarding in-game etiquette, and more.) Please check out their interesting posts as well!

– Devee’s post @ Kor’kron 501st

– Malkshake’s post @ Holy Nova

– Eva’s post @ Image Heavy

– Prinnie’s post @ That Was An Accident

Of Griefing, Oddities, and Pyllgarr’s Mighty Banhammer

With the changes to LFR that came with patch 5.0.4, I’m pretty sure most people were as excited as I was to finally be rid of the constant loot drama and whining that came with every random raid group! But as I started running through with my various alts, I started noticing more and more griefers that just made groups (particularly on Fall of Deathwing) completely miserable. Many others have noticed the same, even mentioning that there are entire groups of people streaming griefing sessions on TwitchTV and the like. Navimie’s fictional story this weekend, Diary of a WoW Griefer, reminded me of a recent horrible-yet-bizarre LFR experience. In general, I usually drop group if there’s more than one wipe, and I’m never much for getting angry over pixels. Especially with random strangers! But this one time was like none other…

Our fancily mogged and H DS-geared (lol?) tank just WOULDN’T STOP BOUNCING…

Everything looked fine when Cyrelle (my shadow priest) zoned into the second half of LFR. There weren’t any flames flooding the platform, nobody was dead, and Ultraxion went down like a breeze. As the corpse was looted, the fanciful tanks dropped group and were replaced with less fanciful tanks, but all seemed to be ready to go for the next encounter. And away everyone went to board the lootship!

Ysera knew better than to stay on the Failboat…

The fight began without too much trouble, but halfway through the trash the tanks started dropping like flies and with them any aggro went flying out the window! Half the raid was dead within a minute, and it was a wipe. An eager shaman popped up and mass ressurrected everyone, but suddenly the DBM timers were showing on-screen and Twilight Barrages began again! With nobody ready, it was another wipe and many of the group released and ran back in since the whole group had the mass res debuff. As we zoned into Ultraxion’s platform, some ported onto the ship quickly, and about half of the raid sat on the platform to eat/drink and buff before going in. Before we knew it, the DBM timers went off again. Half of the raid (including the main tank) stood on the round platform, watching the portal shrink. Before we knew it I was watching all the little bars on my raid frames drop like flies, and soon half of my Grid was speckled with dead indicators everywhere!

Dash, dash, dash!

The main tank was super frustrated, and took the lead of the raid by saying that nobody should port onto the ship until everyone was resurrected and that the griefers were kicked. Names were thrown out and kicks were initiated, and we thought we were good to go. But before everyone got on board and was buffed, someone started again and it was another wipe! This happened at least five other times afterwards, and in the meantime a good half of the raid ended up spending 30-40 minutes on the Ultrax platform just messing around and waiting to identify the culprit(s). People dropped in and out of raid, and only a handful boarded the boat. Everyone else hung back with our tank before the portal. Looking back, I don’t know why I bothered to stay that long to do nothing but wait since I had such a long queue. But I guess a bunch of us were waiting patiently while goofing off and doing silly things: my priest was life gripping random, unsuspecting people and we were all dashing around the platforms with her angelic feathers. A couple other people took out archaeology toys and trinkets! I guess when it comes to silly fun stuff, my patience can be tested…

The raid group finally filled up, and we all buffed and started porting into the ship. And guess what? Before the main tank ported in, someone started again! But at least this sometime, many people in the raid identified a jerkwad of a paladin who kept doing it. Even more annoyingly, he was purposefully wearing all heirloom gear and started taunting people in raid chat with “ooh report me, I’m soooo scared!”  He was quickly kicked, but to our amazement LFR had dropped him back in our group a minute later! How weird is that? But by that time, I was kind of done and had things to do IRL, so I finally left group. Probably should have done that an hour ago! Before I logged, I filed a ticket about the situation with some chat log time frames. Many people from the LFR group were planning to file tickets, but I figured another one wouldn’t hurt and that hopefully some response would come about from them.

And indeed, when I logged on the next day there was a reply!

Greetings Cyrelle!

Thank you for contacting the World of Warcraft Game Master Department regarding the inappropriate behavior of the player _____________.

*Swoosh*

I heard there were shenanigans afoot and I came skipping as fast as possible! With no time to waste, I made sure I knew exactly what you were reporting and immediately sprang into action! Here’s what I did to ensure your report was handled accurately and completely.

Kapow!  *Polishes the Mighty Bann Hammer of Justice*

That’s the sound of digital justice, my friend. I have many fearsome tools at my disposal, but what separates me from the rest is how I use them. I can read over logs quicker than you can spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, there’s no place that the violating actions can hide from my watchful eye. I scoured the logs for this person’s reported actions and swiftly set their pants aflame! =O

I have to keep my heroic abilities a secret though, so any specific details about how I handled this situation were burned along with those pants. Despite how awesome my powers are, I’m still held to lawful standards.

*Listens intently*

Harassment in progress? I must go, my people need me! Before I fly off again I wanted to tell you something – We do appreciate you taking the time to make this report. We want to make sure that your experience has as little disruptions as possible, so rest easy knowing that your report was fully investigated into and that all actions regarding the situation were reviewed.

If you still need to contact us, please feel free to do so! I want to make sure that everything has been resolved properly. I hope you continue to enjoy your Adventures in Azeroth and beyond!
<(^_^<)  ^(^_^)^  (>^_^)>  ^(^_^)^   *Pyllgarr Dances Away!*

Regards,

Pyllgarr
Specialist Game Master
Blizzard Entertainment

Too funny. This was quite a surprise in the little ticket answered box, as I haven’t been particularly impressed by my previous GM encounters — the last one I spoke with directly through in-game conversation was ridden with typos and spelling errors, and took 10 minutes between each of my simple questions regarding fixing my Sons of Hodir reputation issues, only to give me answers straight from WoWWiki. So this speedy and quirky response was quite a welcome sight in my inbox! But regardless of whether or not Pyllgarr’s Mighty Ban Hammer were true or just something they say to make us feel better, it sure made me smile. Plus, evil Cyrelle was only too amused by the mental images of setting said person’s pants aflame… ;)

But anyhow, I’ve been pretty happy with the changes to LFR, but I sure hope these kinds of instances don’t continue on into MoP. For people like me who don’t have time to adhere to a regular raid schedule, LFR has been a very fun (at times) opportunity to see some epic battles. And especially for those of us who have many alts, it’s an incredibly simple way to get some decent gear. It would sure be disappointing if people still ruin the fun come expansion release, because I honestly think the griefing is multitudes worse than any old loot system. Hopefully people are just bored by DS and are just antsy waiting for the launch of Mists. Just two weeks away…

Edit: Look at this neat item Navimie made me! Thanks, Navi! :D

*Kapow!*

Silverwing in the Mogolympics Pt. 2 and Wrap-Up

The Transmogolympics ended with a special closing ceremony this week, and I finally got around to catching up on some of the events that I hadn’t yet watched. In the grand finale, JD even announced the opening of the Transmogolympic Games’ very own official homepage! Every faction’s outfits are displayed together with specific scores. How cool is that?! Now if only I knew the exact pieces of some of those winning outfits… :)

What an exciting occasion it has been! Just from reading and watching all the fantastic commentary, slide shows, videos, and compilations of outfits shows how much time and work all of the judges have put into looking at each and every submission. And then the submissions themselves have all been excellent — everyone who entered has put a lot of work into the outfits, too! Congratulations to all of the winners!! But most of all, I think it was most exciting to see how energized everyone was about the events! It was my first time participating in a large-scale community event, and it was SO MUCH FUN. I definitely look forward to joining in on the fun stuff like this in the future!

To wrap up my outfits posts, here are the last round of my submissions:

Javelin shmavalin

Shoulders: Spaulders of Egotism // Chest: Tunic of Indulgence // Wrist: Vicious Leather Bracers // Hands: Pirate Sinker’s Gloves // Waist: Dusty Lasso // Legs: Shady Dealer’s Pantaloons // Feet: Grease-Covered Boots // Weapon: Oathbinder, Charge of the Ranger-General

For the Javelin event, I knew I wanted a strong troll lady to be the model. It was hard to find a polearm model that I actually liked and much less a decent outfit. Plus, trolls have peculiar feet that seemed to make all the boots/shoes I picked invisible! I guess this was probably my least favorite outfit of them all. At least she was able to throw the javelin to 365ft, though!

Fencing with Bloodsail Admiral Caprice

Helm: Rifle Commander’s Eyepatch // Shoulders: Defiant Spire Shoulderguard // Chest: Mixologist’s Tunic // Hands: Heavy Earthen Gloves // Waist: Expedition Girdle // Legs: X-52 Pilot’s Leggings // Feet: Trogg Kickers // Main-Hand & Off-Hand: Electrocutioner Leg

My silly rogue, Caprice, was only too excited to model for the fencing event! I think she may like this leather outfit even more than the cycling one because it has pointy objects and PIRATES! ARRR, YE MATEYS!

Equestrian Event

Shoulders: Green Silken Shoulders // Shirt: White Common Shirt // Chest: Ivycloth Tunic // Wrist: Ironwood Bindings // Hands: Ruthless Gladiator’s Felweave Handguards // Waist: Keyton’s Sash // Legs: Duskwoven Pants // Feet: Saltarello Shoes

My lock, on the other hand, was none too excited to be modeling next to her despised Felsteed for the equestrian event. “Why are we doing this? Why am I wearing pants? Do Humans really wear this kind of stuff and ride around on horses??” I guess if I went a more warlock-y route, she may not have hated the more classic rider look I was going for. But never fear, she mogged back to her blue-purplish Tier 10 right after the event, faster than she can cast Incinerate…

Freestyle: Archaeology Professor M. Leakey

Helm: Eye of Flame // Shoulders: Necropile Mantle // Chest: Shadow Council Tunic // Wrist: Krom’gar Legionnaire’s Linen Bracer // Hands: Farshire Gloves // Waist: Sash of Arcane Visions // Legs: Legwork Trousers // Feet: Jormungar Galoshes // 1-H Mace: Shovel of Mercy // Off-Hand: Mistyreed Torch

Last but not least was perhaps the outfit I had most fun making — the freestyle event! Archaeology is my favorite profession in-game, and I wanted to make a fun NPC for it. I named her after a famous British archaeologist and anthropologist, Mary Leakey, who discovered some of the first humanoid fossils in Africa. As an in-game NPC, I imagine that she would be a higher-level Archaeology trainer that provides tidbits of archaeology lore when a player talks to her! :)

– – –

So that’s it, and we’re finished! Everybody should definitely check out the Closing Ceremonies if you haven’t already and congratulations once again to all of the winners throughout the events! A big congrats to Draynee over at Pretty Fly for a Draenei for being the champion of the 2012 Mogolympics! :D I hope more people will post their outfits and the different pieces they used — there were so many neat sets that I would love to farm or try out on my various toons. And last but not least, definitely check out all of the factions’ entries over at the Official Transmog Games webpage!

Silverwing in the Mogolympics Pt.1

With the Mogolympics well on their way, we’ve seen our share of entries for the Opening Ceremony, Cycling, Hammer Throw, Discus, Wrestling, and Archery. Not only has it been truly incredible to see all the neat outfits submitted by everyone via slideshows, videos, and galleries, but the commentary from JD, Tome, Matty, and Khizzara has just been superb and incredibly fun!

Like many fellow contestants, I just wanted to go ahead and make a compilation post of my outfits that’ve competed so far. Maybe I’ll have to make a blog page of it all at the end of the whole event just for memories. Especially since this was my first time joining in such a huge transmog challenge, and I still feel like a newbie to putting together outfits! :P

For Silverwing!

Shoulders: Burden of Mortality // Chest: Breastplate of Many Graces // Hands: Reaver Gloves // Waist: Guardian’s Ornamented Belt // Legs: Doomplate Legguards // Feet: Heavy Mithril Boots

For the Opening Ceremony, I was representing the Silverwing Sentinels! Poor old Ninevi was still a Night Elf back when I had her model the plate gear in MogIt for this outfit! Kind of eerie looking back on this picture, really!

Vroooooooooom!

Helm: Rohan’s Mask // Shoulders: Gahrron’s Shoulderguard // Back: Blackmetal Cape // Chest: Wicked Leather Armor // Wrist: Cuffs of the Decapitator // Hands: Inscribed Leather Gloves // Waist: Taut Dragonhide Belt // Legs: Cadaverous Leggings // Feet: Chop Chop Boots

Next up is one of my silly blood elves sporting her rugged gear for the Cycling event. And here I kind of failed with Photoshop and forgot to add a shadow for the chopper, but shhh! Pretend like I didn’t mention that! Hoping to actually use this leather mog for my rogue so she’s not stuck with the Slayer’s T6 set forever, but I dunno how the sleek biker look would appear on her more muscular worgen frame…

Dwarf ladies are cool!

Helm: Justicebringer 3000 Specs // Shoulders: Pauldrons of Abyssal Fury // Chest: Valorous Aegis Tunic // Hands: Gauntlets of the Iron Tower // Waist: Girdle of Valorous Deeds // Legs: Legguards of the Peaceful Covenant // Feet: Exalted Sabatons // 2H Mace: Stormwind Maul

For the Hammer Throw event, I knew right off the bat that I wanted a lovely Dwarf lady as my model! :D I was attempting a steampunk-ish look, but I’m not really sure if it really came out at all. But going through the pieces in this set reminded me how much I love the designs of gear from Ulduar.

Mooooooo…I mean, boo!

Helm: Formidable Circlet // Shoulders: Skeletal Shoulders // Back: Blackmetal Cape // Chest: Black Dragonscale Breastplate // Hands: Impenetrable Gauntlets // Waist: Nerubian Belt // Legs: Black Dragonscale Leggings // Feet: Black Dragonscale Boots // Main-Hand: Blood Weeper // Shield: Husk of Nerub’enkan

Yay, a female Tauren model for the Discus event. :D Not much to say about this one because couple of the main pieces went together, but I was surprised there was mail stuff that looked a lot like plate! Maybe I should get on finally leveling my shaman so she can have neat looking gear…

Lok’tar ogar! For the Horde!

Shoulders: Consortium Mantle // Chest: Red Linen Vest // Wrist: Crystalline Cuffs // Hands: Imperial Red Gloves // Waist: Belt of Biting Cold // Legs: Aboriginal Loincloth // Feet: Aboriginal Footwraps

Oh gosh, the Wrestling event! Well, I really don’t know much about wrestling at all, but I figured a strong lady Orc might do the trick…even if she might be a bit revealing in a form-fitting fighting suit! But I knew for sure I wanted a big faction pride belt!

I would love to have Arcturis as a pet! :D

Shoulders: Shoulders of Lightning Reflexes // Back: Sentinel’s Winter Cloak // Chest: Conqueror’s Scourgestalker Tunic // Hands: Runeshaper’s Gloves // Waist: Naturalist’s Preserving Cinch // Legs: Leggings of Dubious Charms // Feet: Boots of the Forgotten Depths // Bow: Avalanche

Hunter is the only class I don’t have an alt of right now, so it was super fun to look through all the different bow models for the Archery event! So many of the contest entries really made me want to level a hunter. I may just have to abandon the Ironman Challenge idea on my hunter and just level her like normal to get to transmog fun!

– – – –

We still have yet to see the contestants for the following events: Javelin, Equestrian, Fencing, and Freestyle. I’m sure they will all be just as amazing as the entries from the first two weeks! :D And looks like JD will be hosting a Closing Ceremony too, woot! Looking forward to what kind of fun stuff is in store for us!!

Shared Topic: How WoW Has Changed My Life

This week’s Blog Azeroth Shared Topic is by Effy from Effraeti’s RP: How has WoW changed your life?

Such a simple question, but there’s so, so much to it. I think during the six years I’ve played, the game’s done a lot of growing up and changing…and so have I! And of course, WoW has played a very large part in how I think and feel about many different things.

More than anything, WoW has definitely changed my perspective and attitude towards people and life as a whole. In last month’s Battlechicken Monthly Challenge, I posted about entering the field of teaching. When looking at what I’ve learned from WoW, all of my experiences from the game and interacting with the community have really built on important characteristics that I think I’ll need and highly value as an upcoming school teacher. From my WoW experiences, my views and perceptions of many things have adapted and changed…which I think are good, as I start working more with students! So here are some of the key qualities that WoW has made me value highly and aspire to get better at myself:

“You’ll never believe what crazies I ran into in that last dungeon, Cubby! They were all cursing like sailors!”

Believe it or not, I think WoW was a great avenue for me to be more outgoing (which I didn’t use to be), even if it was with strangers online. In doing so, I definitely learned to have thicker skin — whether it was through dealing with asshats in the dungeon finder, or being able to take constructive criticism as a part of a core raid member. Through watching the in-game community change dynamically through expansions, I’ve noticed how easily derogatory slurs and insults are thrown everywhere. It’s commonplace!But also because I can always expect to see that kind of behavior everywhere I go (sad reality that may be), I’ve learned to stop taking things too personally, and to keep in mind that it is just a game in the end. Even if it’s become a very consistent form of stress-relief for the past few years and what some may call a lifestyle! ;) And hey, sometimes you just can’t help but bite back a little, too.

What is this, I don’t even…

Being able to step up and take the lead is something that after having played WoW, I’m a lot less scared and tentative about doing. This has to do with my feeling comfortable and familiar enough with the game now, as I sure wouldn’t have the guts to even suggest ideas to people if this were back in TBC! In the above picture, I’d zoned into an LFR on my warlock alt and saw the entire platform covered in purple flames. I’d died even before I finished the loading screen! Then Ultraxion landed and snuffed out the handful of people still alive. Everyone jumped right in and started pointing fingers and calling names — but what good is that? I didn’t want to wait in another 30 minute DPS queue again. I went ahead and asked the two tanks if they knew what they were doing, and they had never even been there. After a few other group members chimed in to explain the fight, the boss was down in the next try. And all it took was someone to push the group towards the correct strategy and working together!

Children from the Stormwind Orphanage

We run into so many interesting (and sometimes just downright terrible) people in the game, but I think WoW has taught me to be so much more tolerant and patient. Maybe these people have a hard life outside of the game and use the pixels as a vehicle to steam off their stress. Maybe they in fact really just are immature, rude, or arrogant as a person, and it’s hard to completely change an individual’s personality. While these definitely aren’t excuses for offensive behavior, I’m more understanding that there might be some outlying issue making that person the way they are. That’s the way they will be. They’ll crave for attention, be annoying, whine a lot, and point fingers everywhere, but in the end, they’re just children. And sometimes you have to point them in the right direction and give them a talking to, and sometimes you just have to let them be themselves and leave them alone…

One, two, three, eleventy wooly mammoths!

Finally, I think the biggest changes and things I’ve learned from WoW have to do with time management. Nobody teaches you how to manage a schedule or keep up with tasks or prioritize in life. Hardly do you ever see anyone learn that from a class. Having played WoW from both semi-hardcore raider as well as very casual perspectives, I’ve noticed my priorities (both in-game and IRL) changing more and more with each expansion. In TBC/WotLK, I regularly raided as a holy paladin and was extremely active as an officer of my guild. Now in Cata (and I expect the same for Mists), I’m incredibly casual but have an embarrassingly large army of alts. Back then, my paladin was my “main” and I did absolutely everything on her — achievements, pets, mounts, you name it! Now, I’m incredibly attached to all of my alts, and don’t really have a main. And even though I don’t raid anymore, I still make sure to gear up all of my characters as best I can through non-“raiding” means (LFR/Valor).

I think much of the time management portion goes hand in hand with “growing up” and just taking on so many more responsibilities, especially now that I’m going into teaching. Instead of the long-houred sessions of play time I had during college, I sometimes even have nights where I hardly log in but to check mail/AH…and even nights where I won’t log in at all. (/gasp!) And while I do sometimes terribly miss what I consider “real” raiding and being on a core raid group, I’ve learned to really enjoy the small and fun stuff that I can enjoy without devoting all of my time to a guild and raid team. I’m always still on the lookout for silly things like giant mammoth parades in Dalaran… :)