Category Archives: characters

Top Ten Reasons Why Lady Liadrin is My Favorite Woman in Warcraft

When people talk about the women of Warcraft, they tend to go with old standbys like Jaina or Sylvanas, or new favorites like Yrel.  But I rarely see Liadrin getting much attention from either Blizzard or the fanbase.  And that, my friends, is a crying shame, because she is freaking amazing.

Here’s why Lady Liadrin is my #1 fave:

(WARNING: Contains serious spoilers from the novella “Blood of the Highborne.”  If you haven’t read that yet, and want to be surprised when reading it, then hold off on reading this article!)

LadyLiadrin
The Lady herself!

1. She survived the Scourge invasion of Quel’Thalas.

Reminder that 90% of the elven population died during this thing.  Not Liadrin, a priestess at the time, who spent her time valiantly working to keep her injured allies alive even as they all fell around her.  She did this almost right up until the very end, when some old friends teleported her to safety (against her will, I might add.)

2. She decided to get revenge.

Because if there’s anyone who doesn’t sit around, it’s Liadrin.  Concluding pretty much immediately that it was time to take action that was more decisive than just healing (she was angry at the Light for failing her people, anyway), she strolled on up to Lor’themar about five seconds after returning to Silvermoon, grabbed a nearby club, and said “I am sure one of your men can show me how to use this.”  Then she went directly to Quel’Danas to decapitate trolls and undead, without stopping to pass Go or collect $200.

3. If her people are at stake, then she wants results.  Now.  No matter what.

One day, Grand Magister Rommath and Magister Astalor Bloodsworn came up with a great idea: what if you could channel the Light through a weapon like paladins did, but by force?  They had a pet Naaru (gifted by Kael) to practice on, so they asked Liadrin if she wanted to try it out.

She said yes pretty much immediately.  Why?  Because the Ghostlands was under constant siege from the remnants of the Scourge, which were still running amok due to the meddling of one Dar’khan Drathir.  If channeling the Light through a Naaru was going to be their ticket to the safety of Quel’Thalas, you’d better believe Liadrin wasn’t going to turn it down.

4. She founded the Blood Knight Order and trained new Blood Knights just because she could.

Liadrin wanted the Blood Knights to be the best damn fighting force on Azeroth and, welp, if you want something done, you’d better do it yourself.

I don't actually know if this is Liadrin but it looks like her, so it works.
I don’t actually know if this is Liadrin but it looks like her, so it works.

5. All the Blood Knights looked up to her and respected her immensely…

…including Mehlar Dawnblade, who had previously been a paladin (of the Silver Hand) and had trained under Uther the Lightbringer him-fecking-self.  And he still answered to Liadrin because, like, you don’t NOT answer to Liadrin.  She is that good at what she does, and has that forceful of a personality.

6. She will never turn her back on a friend.

Unless that friend happens to be Dar’khan, in which case screw him for being the biggest traitor in the elves’ long and storied history.

…but that aside, one of Liadrin’s longtime friends was a fellow priest named Galell.  After the fall of the Sunwell his condition quickly deteriorated and before long he was giving in to his addictions and eventually became Wretched.  But Liadrin never gave up on trying to save him and was even there in his few last moments, right up until she was forced to kill him in self-defense.  After that she held his lifeless body and cried for hours, because she had failed him.

True.  Friendship.

Blood_of_the_Highborne
Clockwise from top: Dar’khan (disgusting traitor!), Galell, Liadrin, and Lor’themar

7. She will change her opinion based on facts, without hesitation

One of my very favorite things about Liadrin is that if someone, or something, successfully changes her mind on something she doesn’t let pride get in the way of her opinion – she immediately adapts her position.

She turned away from the Light with no qualms when she felt it had failed her home.

She turned away from Kael’thas with no qualms when she realized what he was really doing.

She joined the Shattered Sun Offensive after talking to A’dal for like thirty seconds, and she even changes her tabard, in an in-game event, to reflect this.

Liadrin_OfficialAnd once the Sunwell was restored, she wholeheartedly opted to embrace the Light again.

Wishy washy?  Heck no, just damn intelligent.  Intelligent enough to know that sometimes things change, and you just gotta go with it.  As she has said frequently: “Times change.  People change.”

8. Basically if she decides she doesn’t like you, it’s game over for you

Liadrin has a really strong sense of justice.  You know why she’s in Warlords of Draenor?  Because “Liadrin is sickened by the depravity of the Iron Horde and aims to wipe them off the face of Draenor.”  Like, that’s her reason.  The Iron Horde is terrible and once Liadrin got wind of this she marched off to a distant world to feckin’ dispose of them herself.  This is what I love about Liadrin.  No nonsense, no messing around.

9. She wields Quel’Delar

Check it out:

Liadrin_ShattQuel’Delar, for the record, was the sword of the katana used by Thalorien Dawnseeker to make a last stand against Arthas on Quel’Danas.  Liadrin’s got it now because come on, is anyone else going to make better use of it?  (The answer is no.)

10. Liadrin and Yrel are totally girlfriends.

…okay, maybe not.  (But they so are.)

Guess where THYE'RE goin'?
Guess where THEY’RE goin’?

So yeah.  Long story short Liadrin is 100000% my favorite Warcraft lady.  She’s smart, she’s strong, she takes no BS from anyone or anything, and I’m REALLY EXCITED THAT SHE’S GOING TO BE IN THE PALADIN HALL IN LEGION, I’M SO GLAD THAT I’M LEVELING A PALADIN SDK578A;LFGKHAS;DG

Lady Liadrin! <3


(For more of Pike fangirling about elves, be sure to read Top Ten Reasons Why Lor’themar Theron is the Best Leader and Let’s Talk About Felo’melorn For Two Minutes.)

“Connecting” to a Character – aka Yep, Pike Is Still an RP Nerd

Today’s writing prompt comes by way of Jaedia, who asks:

What is most important to you when it comes down to ‘connecting’ to a character you play? If you don’t tend to connect to your characters, tell us about the things that tend to carry over between your characters. Certain names/stories/personalities/appearance features?

I’m sure I have talked about this before, but I am definitely one of those people who puts a lot of thought into my characters.  Sometimes I already have a story and character idea in mind when I roll said character; other times it comes naturally as I play them.  But characters with a background that I can’t get into usually tend to get dropped after a while.

A picture of me, wondering when my MMO character will get interesting.
A picture of me, wondering when my MMO character will get interesting.

This may come as a shock to some of you (…like, one of you, maybe), but at the moment I’m, uh… kind of into blood elves.  This is because I feel like their story, as a race, is filled with copious amounts of pathos.  This makes it both easy and also a delight to make blood elf characters, because they come standard with loads of baggage.  Even a freshly rolled blood elf character is carrying around some serious backstory simply by virtue of being a blood elf.  I like this a great deal because it gives me a blueprint, if you will, for more character-specific stories and personality traits.

Because in case you forgot, every level one blood elf starts with this little event fresh in their memory.
Because in case you forgot, every level one blood elf starts with this little event from Warcraft 3 fresh in their memory.

I also like characters with traits that I can identify with (the techno-loving gnomes and goblins, for example, or my goggles-wearing-tauren) which similarly allows me to connect with a character.

Eventually I get to the point where I get really attached to my characters and, as I’ve mentioned before, they become the reason that I log in.  Other people may log in for their guild or raiding friends… I log in for my characters, who feel to me like friends.  It’s a silly thing, but it’s true.

Gimme fuel!  Gimme fire!  Gimme lore!  Gimme worldbuilding! …okay, that didn’t work out as well as I wanted it to, but hey, I tried.

Cause I Just Gotta Get Into It: The #1 Thing That Makes Me Stick With a Character

Anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time probably knows that I’m kind of a big nerd who comes up with stories and backgrounds and personalities for each of her WoW characters.  That’s just how I’ve always been, and in fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret: it’s often one of the major things that keeps me playing a game.  Perhaps even the #1 thing.

Yes, it’s true!  Oftentimes long after I’ve found a certain game satisfying from a gameplay standpoint I’ll continue to return to it, again and again, because there’s something nice about seeing a character again.  It’s like seeing an old friend.  Like going back to a book that you’re emotionally invested in.  Without that connection to a character, I’m usually not inspired to play said character – or game – very often.

I frequently hear people talk about how they’re in WoW because of their friends.  I’m in WoW because of my friends, too.  My friends are polygons, though.  And I love ’em.

Even if they're huge friggin' nerds.
Even if they’re huge friggin’ nerds.

Selfies are the best thing Blizz has introduced in basically forever

Regardless of your thoughts on current WoD content, I honestly think that the selfie camera is the best thing Blizzard has done in years.  100% serious.

Look at these pics

WoWScrnShot_040215_121254

And tell me that this stuff

WoWScrnShot_040215_123302

Isn’t absolutely

WoWScrnShot_040215_123550

Friggin amazing

WoWScrnShot_040215_123844

Because guess what, it is

WoWScrnShot_040215_124111

So yeah.  SELFIE camera.  Giving your characters character since 2015.

Also known as “Thalassian Ear-Warmers”

althalor scarf 3It’s a bit nippy at the garrison in Frostfire Ridge.  How’s a young blood elf supposed to keep his ears warm?  Althalor has hit upon the answer, and the answer, my friends, is socks.

Seriously though, has anyone ever thought about the logistical problems caused by elf ears?  Stuffing them in a helmet has got to be awfully uncomfortable, but otherwise they are at the mercy of both the elements and the enemy.

Clearly socks are the answer.  Ratchets, my up’n’coming goblin hunter, is already planning to bring a whole crate of them to Silvermoon and market them as Thalassian Ear-Warmers.  Stay tuned.

Sometimes I Draw Dumb Pictures

althalor smugfaceAlthalor only wishes that he could be this smugface in real life.  In reality he’d rather not deal with most people.  All he really wanted was to stay home and hide with lynx cubs and dragonhawk hatchlings.  Unfortunately extenuating circumstances made that prospect rather unlikely.  Thanks Arthas.

Actually probably what happened is that he was giving his squirrel Nuts an “I told you so” look during a pet battle, at which point Nuts turned around and lobbed an acorn at his head.  (This has actually happened in game.)

Anyways, yes.  A smugface.  Heh.

Top Five Characters I Should Have Kept Playing, But Didn’t

Hello! I’m all settled into my new place, albeit jobless (though if worse comes to worse there’s always K-Mart… u_u ) so I’m back to pester you all! Exciting, no?

Let’s get down to business. 4.0 is coming out today. Don’t come to me for any guides or anything, at least for a bit. I’m no good at explaining things if I haven’t actually sat down and done said things (I’m a “learning by doing” person, 100%), and since I never got into the Beta and I’m not really a PTR kinda girl I have no idea how the new gameplay is going to be. Nor am I overly concerned. I’ll figure it out as it comes. *shrug*

So instead, have a list of awesome characters I started but then abandoned.

Tanfarr the Level 27 Draenei Paladin
I had a great RP for Tanfarr. The idea was that he was a very devout and just Paladin who was horrible at speaking Common. Thus, everything he attempted to say would come out very very wrong. (“The hand of the light touches you in a very special way!”) The joke is that poor Tanfarr would never dream of saying this stuff in his native tongue but has no idea how racy it all is.

So I was really excited about this character and paladin’ing was actually pretty fun for a while. Then I just, I dunno, got bored. I guess I got tired about only having like two attacks. It’s been about a year and a half since I logged into him, I think (not counting the time I stripped him of his BoAs to send them to other characters). Sorry ol’ buddy. I keep him around just in case.

Skybinder: aka Goggles Bear: Level 29 Feral Druid
Hey remember when I quit WoW? Yeah, I was actually gone for a good few months. Then I decided to come back, but for a while, I still didn’t want anything to do with my 80s or endgame and I didn’t want to be tempted by them, either. So I activated a second account and spent a really fun month and a half playing from scratch as a feral druid engineer. I had no BoA items and no help from any level 80s and it was honestly a really good time. I successfully tanked a couple instances (my first attempt at doing so) but then a bad SFK run turned me off of it for a while and I opted to kitty my way through dozens of Arathi Basins instead. Good times. Really good times.

So what happened? Well, long story short I finally decided to reactivate my original account. Then I wanted to save money by not having two accounts running at once, so Skybinder has been stuck on an inactive account since then.

Goggles Bear lives on, though; recently rerolled as a tauren druid who I’m excited about. Engineer, of course.

I drew it :3

Any Death Knight I’ve Ever Rolled
I dunno about you guys but I really do think the DK starter quests are a tour de force. It’s always an experience when I go through them, and I always come out of them really excited about my Death Knight. The first time I did it I remember I’d see other DKs running around afterward and feel an odd kinship with them… they know what I’ve been through. Props to Blizzard for making an emotional connection like that.

Of course then you’re kicked out into Hellfire Peninsula (a zone that I hate) with no idea how to play your class.

No Death Knight I’ve ever played has gotten beyond level 58. I try. And I fail. I always get really close to 59, but it just never happens.

RIP, Pike’s Death Knights.

Any Mage I’ve Ever Rolled
I have this really bad habit of rolling mages, getting them up to the mid-10s or early-20s, and then getting distracted.

I don’t know what it is. I like mages. I just… I dunno.

The highest level mage I have is… huh, can’t check at the moment. I wanna say level 27. I turned her into one of my bank alts some time during Burning Crusade. Oh well.

McDuff, the Level 13/14(?) Undead Mage
He falls into the above “Any Mage I’ve Ever Rolled” category as well, but I wanna give him his own section. I had a really fun backstory for this guy. Geeky sciency farmkid who goes to Lordaeron to study geeky sciencey things and gets undead-ified by the Scourge. Bad timing and all that. Of course, that doesn’t faze our hero, who just wants to blow things up.

I had a lot of fun thinking about this backstory and playing this character but I guess he was never just very high on my priorities list. Too bad, because last year I spent days farming Brewfest tokens for him so he could have a purple hat. Hey, you gotta have a geeky hat for a geeky character. True facts.

I have tons of others I could ramble about but I’d rather not crit you with the text. What are some characters that you were excited about that you wound up abandoning?

To All The Characters I've Loved Before

As a wannabe cartoonist, one of my personal heroes is Chuck Jones. The mastermind behind Looney Tunes who brought Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and all their friends to life. There is a story that is frequently told regarding him, wherein he introduced himself to a small boy as “The person who draws Bugs Bunny”. The boy promptly corrected him, “No, you’re the person who draws pictures of Bugs Bunny.”

See, that’s how I feel about my characters in WoW. I am not Tawyn. I just play her in a video game.

tawyn14

Tawyn’s path to life has been a long and windy one. There were some parts of her character that I knew from the beginning: for example, that she lived in Stormwind instead of Darnassus. But most of the other aspects of her character wouldn’t manifest themselves right away. In the beginning, largely influenced by the night elf voice acting I think, she was a much nicer and more serene and overall “elfy” individual. It was my first ever Brewfest at level 50 or so where the guild running joke of Tawyn being an alcoholic surfaced, and I later decided to tie this into her personality. After that, it was just a snowball effect, with my character leaping unbidden from “neutral good” to a much more chaotic persona. She became misanthropic; a cowgirl and a mercenary. A Beast Master because beasts were the only thing she could trust. Time and all the changes it has brought to WoW had an effect on her as well, and I tend to say that she has since fled Stormwind due to the political goings-on and now wanders around Northrend as a vagabond.

When I think of her, I don’t think of her as a character in WoW. I think of her as this living, breathing individual. She is of course, not real, but it sure feels that way sometimes.

I think this may effect the way I play the game. For example, the idea of a faction- or race-change seems almost like a crime to me. Sure, there are races I like more than night elves, but the whole idea of Tawyn’s identity as a night elf and the internal struggles she has with this fact is bound tightly to her character. To change her into something different and rip that integral part of her story away is unspeakable. I don’t even like thinking about it.

At this point you may be thinking “Wow, you are superbig into roleplay, aren’t you?” to which my reply is, actually, I almost never roleplay in game. I was never comfortable with it. Primarily because I didn’t want to step into the shoes of this character who I knew I could never do justice. I always approached roleplaying with trepidation, the way an actor might approach playing some historical figure in a film. I don’t much like roleplaying because I know I am not Tawyn and am afraid I’ll play her all wrong. You’re laughing at me, telling me I invented her, but in truth it feels more like she came to me. I don’t fully know her yet. I’m still learning about her.

tawyn1

So it is that I have this character that popped into my head and I also play her in a video game. The video game aspect of it is a large part of it, and that’s why I never quite understood the “I don’t roleplay in WoW because stuff like spirit rez’ing is too unrealistic” thing. That doesn’t make sense to me because what’s happening is just that, a game adaptation of your character’s life. Stuff that happened in game doesn’t necessarily have to be stuff that happened to your character’s backstory. Tawyn didn’t actually murder thousands of the Defias Brotherhood. Tawyn didn’t actually wipe on Sapphiron or Curator billions of times. Tawyn didn’t actually do that infamous “torture quest”. The game is a loose roadmap for Tawyn’s life, but it’s not a home movie. Most World War 2 video games aren’t exactly how it happened either.

No, the Real Tawyn lives in my head and manifests herself to me in stories and in her little personal piece of lore that has been cooking in my head since day one.

All my other characters feel very real to me as well, of course– heck, I’ve been known to level characters only because I like their backstory— but none of them is quite as real as Tawyn is, and I think that’s why after all these years, Tawyn is still my main. Cause how can you shelf a character that real?

I gotta say, in the end, this is why I play World of Warcraft. I mean, the huntering is great. Obviously I love the huntering. But if you shoved Generic Hunter #13458 in my face and told me to play it, I’d lose interest. Very fast. Because in the end, the biggest reason I love WoW is because it’s a gateway for letting some really interesting imaginary people into my brain.

NewFeedPet

And that’s awesome.

Back On The Treadmill

After much hem’ing and haw’ing…

wow_lunapike71

Lunapike starts to work her way up the leveling ladder!

Now, I’m one of those psychos that actually really enjoys leveling. I love the quests and the lore and the world and seeing it all through the eyes of a character with a different personality than last time. Why do you think I have so many alts that are hunters and druids? Because my strain of altism is unique in that I enjoy the questing more than the “learning to play a completely new class” thing. For the most part I stick to what I know I’m already comfortable with and enjoy, and do more leveling. (And tame more pets, my other favorite part of the game).

Lunapike’s spec is a little interesting, so I’ll preemptively explain before anyone asks (cause I have been asked about spec discrepancies between my characters before)… her spec is meant firstly for making her pet more of a tank for more efficient leveling, and secondly for the fact that she’s on an RP-PvP server and may have to scuffle every once and a while. Those two types of specs seem to coincide quite well if you are a Beast Master hunter, just nab all the talents like Endurance Training, Thick Hide, and Spirit Bond. I’ll probably respec her at 80 but for now, this is what she is, and it works well.

I have no idea how fast or slow Lunapike’s journey to 80 is gonna be or whether she’ll even be my second 80 (Tamaryn is closing in fast in a surprise run from the outside! And down the stretch they come! Now taking bets!) but I’m gonna enjoy it. I was always disappointed that I got her to 70 a little too late last time and never even got her into Karazhan because WotLK came out before I could finish getting her geared up for it. I want to make sure that doesn’t happen this time; my taureness is at least gonna see Naxx, and hopefully a lot more too. Because I maintain my stance that tauren females* are the best playable models in the game and deserve to be seen in all that epic armor. *nods*

* Female tauren hunter is probably my favorite gender/race/class combination in all of WoW. I just love it. And it makes me really happy that there are a pretty decent number of us in the blog world!