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

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… :)

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…

Starstruck: a bit of fangirling and a lot of realm pride

<Kumpania>’s 6th year anniversary few months back — enjoying fireworks w/ friends in the guild!

Seems like I’m a bit late in joining the popular topic! It is a fantastic one, and I’ve wanted to dabble into the subject since I saw it posted on Blog Azeroth. In this week’s Shared Topic was suggested by Dragonray, who asked:

Are you starstruck by anyone? Does someone in the community respond to a post or a tweet and get you all speechless because they actually responded? Is there anyone you are waiting to have respond directly to you? Is there someone that you would like to chat to, but are too chicken? Am I the only one who puts other bloggers on a pedestal?

I’m still a newbie to the WoW blogosphere and have only just begun to engage more with the community outside of the game, so I’m definitely starstruck by everyone I meet and get to talk to! It’s a pervasive feeling for me, since I feel incredibly humbled (in a good way!) by all the interesting and neat people I find, whether it’s here on my journal, on other people’s journals, in forums, through Twitter, and more. I jump up and down whenever I get a tweet or a follow, and I smile myself giddy like a fool whenever I get a comment or like or an RT or discover I’m on someone’s blogroll. From other newbie bloggers and veterans alike! To have people actually reading my ramblings? Whoa…! To get to talk directly to some of the people I really admire and am constantly amazed by? Awesome!!

When I joined in the MMONBI in May, I’d set out decidedly that the main purpose of this blog would be mostly self-reflection and a place to jot down memories of my adventures. I’ve mentioned before about having moments of introversion and skepticism, especially when it comes to gaming communities. Starting out this blog, I wasn’t sure how much I’d actually throw myself out there and be able to engage with other people. Well…it’s now July, and my standpoint couldn’t possibly be any more different! The WoW community outside of the game is incredibly contrasting from within the game — the people I’ve been lucky to meet and talk to have been so thoughtful, funny, clever, insightful, and all around friendly and approachable. Sure, I’m still tentative about commenting at times, but I think that’s inevitable considering all the amazing people I’m surrounded by in the community. There’s too many people to link and mention, so I’ve (finally!!!11eleven) gotten around to making a proper blogroll of just a few of the blogs I try to keep up with the most as of now. Yay! :)

I think it’s important for me to mention that I’m often starstruck when I’m on my server, too. Having been on Turalyon for the past four years, there’s been a fair share of neat things happening and moments where I’ve said, “Whoa!! That was on Turalyon!” or “Hey, he or she is from my server! That’s awesome!” It’s little stuff like these that make me feel at home here and reluctant to roll alts on other realms (despite having a full page of characters — ack!!) And while they may not be super “internet famous” or anything, I sure do feel a bit starstruck knowing that they’re from my home realm and are players among all of us. So I’d like to introduce a few of my hometown idols to you all! (While trying not to feel too stalker-ish, of course…! And um, on the unlikelihood that any of these people would ever stumble upon my blog…I’d might die of embarrassment and hope they wouldn’t find this creepy and fangirlish! *shuffles away*)

Kripparrian, World 1st WoW Ironman!

One such Turalyonite is Kripparrian, a troll hunter who was the first to reach level 85 on the WoW Ironman Challenge! When I first heard about the challenge, I didn’t give it much thought besides thinking to myself that it would be incredibly hard and patience draining. I’d forgotten about it soon afterwards, until I saw on my Twitter feed some time much later with a tweet from The Daily Blink asking if anyone knew how to get in touch with the world first WoW Ironman so they could make a poster featuring him. And lo and behold, Kripp had rolled on our realm to grind out the challenge! It was pretty cool to discover that he’d been doing the challenge right there on Turalyon while I’d been playing and I didn’t even know it. It also spurred my own interest in going after the challenge too. Although, I’ve had to reroll once already and haven’t had much progress since…*cough* Moving on……..

Scarab Lord Grayson!

Next is Grayson, from <Fusion>! I think Fusion had quite a reputation back in TBC/WotLK when they hit several World Top 10/20’s and realm firsts. They and their Alliance rivals from were known by everybody on the server and with many other hardcore realms/guilds worldwide! To me (since I don’t raid anymore), they were like hometown teams we all rooted for, you know? :P In Cata, many from the previous two top guilds retired and some remaining people transferred over to Ally to form , which still kept in the US Top 10. But I mention Grayson specifically because I actually got to talk to him a couple times! He is the Scarab Lord of Turalyon, showing that he’s been on the realm since back in the day of opening the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj. So cool! I got the off-chance of talking to him when he had advertised on the realm forums for specific class/race combinations to flesh out his Stay Classy achievement on his level 25 bank guild to get the last bank slot. It just so happened that undead warlock was one of the last few combos he needed and I had a lv 80 one I wanted to level cap, so it went from there! Well, I didn’t really get a lot of time to talk with him since he wasn’t often on and I was just there to leech guild perks while doing the job…but it was still pretty cool and to know that he’s just a regular player too! (Albeit insanely wealthy and has a level-capped guild bank full of mysterious stuff and rides a Black Qiraji Battle Tank to boot! Ha!)

Nadina’s Diablo 3 Monk Cosplay, Picture by FiveRings Photography

And finally is also another old member of Fusion, Nadina! :D Not only was she kind of a hero in my eyes because she played a hardcore, competitively raiding holy paladin (my main spec/class back then), but she was also the winner of the 2010 Blizzcon Costume Contest for her Diablo 3 Female Monk cosplay (and multiple times as runner-up in previous years)! There was a ton of celebration on the realm forums when she was announced a winner. Everyone was so proud!! Since then, she’s continued cosplay and even has a cosplay facebook page. There are lots of neat costumes that she’s been working on, some most recent ones being Vanessa Vancleef and Riven from League of Legends! One of the pictures in her “Future cosplay ideas…” album is Nausicaä from the Miyazaki film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Boy, if she were to cosplay Nausicaä, I might die of happiness! (It was my favorite film as a child and even now!) I believe she is now a team member of Cryptozoic (the company behind the WoW TCG). Her in-game paladin was also made into an actual card for the TCG named Nadina the Red — pretty awesome, huh? Now if I could only stop buying TCG packs for collecting and actually start playing…

But there you have it — all my fangirling for now and quite a bit of realm pride. :P I really do recommend checking out Nadina’s cosplay page though, Zerina Cosplay, because not only are her costumes extremely gorgeous and detailed, but you can see how dedicated she is to the games and gaming community as well! She sometimes does little raffles for WoW TCG loot codes on her fan page, so that may be something to look out for if you like those kinds of things! :)

Top Three Most Loved Items

For this week’s Blog Azeroth Shared Topic, Cymre from Bubbles of Mischief suggested:

What are the top three items on your main that you just love for sentimental, fun or silly reasons and would hate to lose? Tell us a story, what makes them so special and as always illustrate with screenshots.

My characters generally don’t have too much in their bags, aside having MS/OS/PvP gear already takes up most of the space. But with what room is left, I have a terrible habit of hoarding all sorts of trinkets (see: Rainbow Generator and Gus’ First Aid Kit to even old raid trinkets that I have a hard time tossing out like Grim Toll.) along with all the miscellaneous artifacts I’ve solved from Archaeology. (I like all the little toys in the game…it’s a growing problem!)

Here are the top three things that I’d hate to ever lose:

Landslide makes them even shinier…!

1. Fang of Oblivion – Yes, I know. The shiniest, sparkliest dagger of all. The first time I got to do the Algalon the Observer fight was during a PuG transmog run, and I swear by it when I say my rogue is my luckiest toon. The dagger dropped, and I won with a 94, beating out about 4-5 others. Offers were made to trade for it, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything! What’s strange is that I kept having it in my head that it was the spell dagger, Starshard Edge, but on closer glance at the stats, it was indeed the Agi one. Not that the stats mattered at that point, but it made me feel even more tingly with joy! Aside from me probably using this dagger model for a long while or until I tire of the shininess, I think the Algalon fight is one of my favorites in the game, and I only wish I could revisit it again. Reading this post from WoW Insider’s Know Your Lore really had me in even more awe.

Chalice of the Mountain Kings

2. Archaeology Toys – Okay, okay, I know this isn’t just one item. But it’s so hard for me to choose, and at times I’ll pop all of their cooldowns while standing around in a raid or dungeon, or even just waiting around. I’m not sure what’s more fun — having people ask where the sword-dancing dwarven ladies came from, or having another Archaeologist pop their Bones of Transformation at the same time! There was even once when I was in a random Hour of Twilight dungeon where a shaman and I would pop random artifacts in a kind of “go-fish” fashion while waiting for the RP events. Ancient Amber? Nope, go fish! Fun times, fun times.

Maybe one too many…

3. Hallowed Wands – Halloween is my favorite holiday, and my love for it stems in-game to Hallow’s End. I’m not sure when I decided it was a good idea, but I have a good assortment of all of the wands available (Bat, Leper Gnome, Ghost, Ninja, Pirate, Skeleton, Wisp) across my characters. It’s kind of embarassing. While my bank doesn’t look exactly like the screenshot over there, I’m sure it’d be similar if I combined the bank slots from all my alts. I have a few that have a couple charges used, so I really should take them out and use them. But I’m too sentimental and just don’t want to use them up…!

So there you have it! Now if only we had additional Void Storage or toy chest that would accommodate all of my trinkets and toys…