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! :)

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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