Swimming on a Sunday

Pretty, pretty seahorses!

This past week in WoW, I’ve been keeping busy by working some on my pre-MoP bucket list. I’ve finally gotten around to cleaning out banks for a couple characters, but I still have yet to sort through either of my bank guilds (I have one on each faction and they’re both so messy! *hangs head in shame*) Going right along on my bucket list, I’ve made some nice progress in leveling my priest and she finally made it out to the Cata zones! :D

The first time I went through Vashj’ir, I remember hating it all because it rudely reminded me that one of my least liked things in any video games is being underwater! I did most of the quests including going through the Visions of Vashj’ir Past and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea achievements on my main, but for my other three level-capped characters, I definitely made it out to skip Vashj’ir and go right ahead to Mount Hyjal and avoid sea-sickness again! But this time with my priest, I decided I should give Vashj’ir a try again and maybe slow down and enjoy the scenery. It’s been actually pretty fun, and my priest even ran into a certain special rare elite while questing! Here are some silly screenshots of her underwater adventures thus far…

Priests are friends, not food!

I guess after blowing out his teeth with dynamite, this giant shark’s bite was a little…gummy? This wasn’t part of the plan!

Hah, take that!

Ewww…the dead orca rotting behind him! Gross! I wanted to take a picture of all the live orcas swimming around, but they were all unfriendly! :(

First you were all like “whoa”, and we were like “whoa”, and you were like “whoa…”

The sea turtles are probably my favorite of all the creatures there! :D Well, and also maybe the silly puffer fish…

Whale, whale, whale…what have we got here…?

Giant whale shark! :D He had kind of a cute face! I was scared to get too close before he’d eat me in one gulp!

Why trust a shark, right?

Oh my…just look at his grin! Is he happy to see me? Or does he have some other evil plan?!

Caught in a Briny Romance

My NPC Scan went off while questing, and it took me forever to find Lady La-La because I didn’t know she spawned in her little gazebo area! And then my priest was a little too starstruck and dazzled by Lady La-La’s performance of Briny Romance that she stood there painfully in awe…

Summertime, summertime…

And finally, I snapped this picturesque view on Erunak Stonespeaker’s vision trip quest! Almost like a lovely tropical postcard, as we near the end of the summer season… :)

Shared Topic: Introducing RL Friends

Just two bear buddies on a zeppelin :D

This week’s Blog Azeroth Shared Topic brings back some very happy memories for me! Frinka from Warcraft Street asks:

Have you ever tried to introduce real life friends to WoW? If yes, how did it go? If you never have, why not?

There’s been a couple of times where I’ve introduced WoW to real life friends. The best memory of introducing people from outside of Azeroth was when I recruited my younger sister to play. At first, I let her try out a couple of characters on my own account, but then she enjoyed it so much that I just bought her an account of her own along with Burning Crusade so we could level together quickly and enjoy the fun of Recruit-A-Friend! We tried out a couple of cute Tauren druids at first and had fun rolling around the Barrens as two silly bears, but she decided on being a Tauren hunter in the end because she enjoyed the pets and Tauren lore/story.

It was really nice bringing her to share adventures in Azeroth with me. In real-life, she’s like a best friend to me (even though we have a seven-year age difference!) and it was interesting getting to talk to her about the game and having someone to talk to about the game even out of game. When she started playing, I was at a small break in between raiding guilds and was pretty close to burning out due to the end-of-expansion humdrum. It was very relieving to have someone familiar (outside of the game) to come into a world I knew well and for the two of us to spend time exploring, finding amusement in the smallest things in-game, and overall just being carefree and having fun.

Here’s just a couple more screenshots of some of the fun times!

Halloween silliness!

Just some silly mask and floating time with my sister and another close Tauren friend! :)

“What’s that thing floating in the moats?” “Boats!!? Cool!!!”

My sister’s been on WoW-hiatus for a very long time now, since she’s been busy with school. Even though I don’t have as much play time nowadays, I hope that we might have time to mess around in-game again in the future. She always had her eye out for the small, interesting things in-game that I would otherwise miss and always reminded me that “it’s just a game!!” and kept me sane if I were to stress out about something. :P

Fun times, fun times. Maybe again someday…

Tell Me a Story: Overheard in the Desert

When the MMO NBI month ended in May, Ambermist from Tastes Like Battle Chicken was kind enough to continue her challenges with monthly themes! This month’s topic was Tell Me a Story, where we were to write about something that’s happened to us or that we’ve witnessed in the games that we play. So let me tell you a couple very random and silly snippets of my adventures in Azeroth’s lovely deserts!¹

Looking across just a corner of Uldum…

When I came back from my year-long WoW hiatus last winter and started playing Cataclysm, I immediately knew my favorite “new” zone was Uldum. The desert feel, architecture, and scattered oases were awesome! Not to mention the Tol’vir history was just fascinating. There was something in the sun, sand, and pseudo-Egyptian themes of the area that made me really fond of the place. I’m sure that like many other kids, I had that short-lived obsession or phase with Egyptian gods and goddesses during middle school! But that hardly seemed to answer the question of why I felt so nostalgic and “at home” every time I visited the deserts of Uldum.

Lately, I’ve found myself reminiscing the “good old days” where I used to play a lot more regularly and spent hour upon hour doing the silliest of things. Feeling nostalgic might be my way of feeling burnt out on the expansion, but I know can’t be alone in thinking so. I was browsing through my old journal a couple of days ago in hopes of finding old screenshots to use in upcoming flashback posts on this blog, but they had all been deleted or replaced via Tinypic. Instead, I noticed a lot of my old, happiest memories were of when I had just started playing WoW, especially while leveling in Tanaris! There must have been something about rolling around in the sand and sun that’s stuck with me all this time!

The (Not-So) Great Boat Game

Entrance to the Caverns of Time

Back in Burning Crusade when I was leveling in Tanaris (early 40’s), I was running around exploring and was so curious about the entrance to the Caverns of Time and what laid inside! But my curiosity was quickly buried when a swarm of red names (I played on a pvp server back then) started gathering around the summoning circle, and I hid in one of the boats nearby to just watch as the Horde raiders prepared themselves.

The boat game of doom!

One of my closest friends in-game was kind enough to bring his higher-level gnome rogue, Auto, to sneak around with me in case any of the Horde were to spot and grief me. Like myself, he was easily amused by the silly little things in the game. And so we suddenly found ourselves in a contest to see who could jump from one wooden beam in the derelict, sand-trodden boat to the other end. It was terribly hard, and with me and my track record with stairs and steps and jumping of platforms (I’m looking at you, Thaddius), it did not bode well. Auto gleefully jumped back and forth between the wooden boards, while we both laughed at my failures of getting in the right spot to jump over! (I call cheating with his short gnome-ness and easier maneuverability!)

Suddenly, all I heard over Ventrilo was, “Great…I’m stuck.” I turned around, and dear Auto had somehow gotten himself into a weird glitch where he was pinned between the wooden beams!

Ninevi: Quick, use your Hearthstone!
Auto: It’s on cooldown!!
Ninevi: Use the auto-unstuck tool! (Oh, the irony…!)
Auto: I did! It moved me a whole 2 inches and turned me in a different direction! And now it’s on cooldown…

Running around the boat to look for an escape!

A great few minutes elapsed, as he frantically wiggled his short gnomish legs around the wood beams in desperation to set himself free. It was hilarious. I wish I had pictures. Thank goodness the Horde had gone into the Caverns by then, because they would have taken the chance to roast us sitting ducks for sure! Or maybe they would have stopped dead in their tracks and laughed at the strange sight. Half of Auto’s head (fully pink-bearded and all) was visible, and from in between the beam, two short little legs were seen running furiously in place and in vain. It was too hard for me to keep from laughing out loud!

Auto: I don’t know what to do!
Ninevi: Me neither…hmm, wait! Maybe you can duel me! And it’ll let you Shadowstep out of the spot?
Auto: Okay, let’s try it…maybe it’ll work.

…it didn’t work. And somehow, I’d lost much of my health (just one accidental swing from him was ouch!) and to make matters worse, I was also stuck in the boat.

Ninevi: Oh no, now I’m stuck too…!
Auto: Great…I’m still stuck in a boat.

Soon enough, we had another guildmate (Val) who was in a nearby zone, and he wanted to see what all the fuss was about and why we were making such a ruckus in the chat channel. We invited him to group and waited patiently for him to come by and join in the fun, but it must have been at least 15-20 minutes or so of silence and more frantic wiggling in place before we finally heard something from him.

Val: Guys, I still don’t see you…
Ninevi: ………(lol)
Auto: VAL. YOU. ARE. AN. IDIOT!

The tone of Val’s voice was so innocently lost that it didn’t help me and my nonstop laughing about the terrible situation, and although Auto was laughing as well, I’m sure he was actually very worried about possibly having to submit a ticket to get us moved. Val finally did find us, and thankfully he and his rowdy imp didn’t get caught in the boat as well, or it would have been a snug crowd in between those planks! But unfortunately for an increasingly cranky gnome and four furry paws, it was getting late in the hour, and we were still stuck and without a useful cooldown. So we decided to part ways for the night and return in the day to hearth back home and out of the deathgrip of the abandoned boat!

And we’ve never tried to play another jumping game since…

Of Bagels & Ogres

Being distracted by jokes while sneaking around ogres is dangerous! The probably sensed my ROFL-ing…

Bagel you say…? Me no likey dead pink fish on bagel…

And finally, a very random conversation I found saved in my old journal from when I was doing the ogres questline in Tanaris…

Guildmate: Found breakfast! Apparently they have bagels in Bladespire…that’ll go well with my coffee! :D
Ninevi: What, they have bagels??! I want one…
Guildmate: Bagels are weird, lol. They annoy me! O_O
Ninevi: LOL Why?! Bagels are omnomnom…
Guildmate: COMPACTED BREAD!
Ninevi: WHAT
Guildmate: NO…RUBBER BREAD.

I…I don’t really know. But since then, whenever I run across ogres anywhere in-game, I always imagine them hiding lox and bagels in their pockets! (And secretly hope that they’ll drop some as loot one day, and I can eat it…omnomnom!)

Randomness aside, I guess I really am a bit notorious amongst my guildmates for digging around the deserts for archaeology fragments and spamming Archaeology nodes in Gatherer in hopes of finally finding just the right canopic jar one day! I’m sure they’ve called me out on playing in the sand when I should be doing something more productive like fishing for feast mats or working on other professions, but I usually just continue digging around, goofing off, and soaking up sun… :P

¹ I realized after writing this post that it was kind of a terrible idea to think about sun and heat, after a week of weather in the 100+’s (and devastating wildfires throughout many places!) If only the blazing heat and sunshine were as lovely and nice as they are in-game. Sending hopes & prayers to the families affected by the fires recently! :(

Ninevi’s WoW Ironman Challenge

I’ve thought about starting my own WoW Ironman Challenge character before, but finally got on the move and created the toon today. For those unfamiliar to the challenge, here it is in a nutshell: it’s a personal challenge where you level a character 1-85 wearing grey/white gear with no talent points, no help from party/guild, no professions, no dungeons, and more. Most importantly? No deaths. If you die, you’re disqualified, but you can re-roll your character back to level 1 to retry. Back in February, the world-wide first WoW Ironman was announced — Kripparrian (Lv85 Troll Hunter) from my very own home realm, US-Turalyon! Woo-hoo! And so here I am today, giving my own try at the challenge.

Despite wanting to roll a character on Turalyon, my character space was all filled due to altoholism. I decided to roll on one of my previous homes, Greymane. It’s PvE (yay, no ganking!) and medium population (unless it’s changed much since ’09!) so not too  many people who I’d have to encounter or compete against in leveling areas. Choosing a realm was relatively easy. Here came the hard part — picking a class. By far, the most commonly picked Ironman Challenge class is hunter. It’s completely understandable, as they’re a ranged class with high survivability to begin with…and a pet to boot! I considered a hunter, but it’s one of the last classes (besides warrior) I’ve yet to level as an alt. I’d like to level one for fun another time.

I noticed there weren’t too many cloth-wearing classes on the challengers list, but the only clothie I’d want to challenge as would be a priest. And I have two of those already. In the end, I decided on a paladin since I’m so familiar with the class but still enjoy playing. Plus, after having race changed my 85 paladin again (my pally has somewhat of an identity disorder), I kind of miss playing as Tauren. So here’s to a new baby cowadin for the Challenge! Feel free to come by and say hello to Ninevi on Greymane!

For now, I won’t really set any deadlines that I want to meet, but maybe hoping to get to at least Lv10 this weekend so I’ll actually show up on the challengers list. The Ironman Challenge won’t be of high priority for me, but it’s definitely something I’ll work on gradually and hope to finish at some point. I’ll update once I reach leveling milestones and such.  And if I happen to die then well…we’ll see when that happens and go from there! :P