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

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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!*

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! :(