This is a post that was inspired by two things. First, a video that was sent to me by my boyfriend. Secondly, a post over at HoTs & DoTs.

You may be wondering what those two things have in common, but the way I see it, they’re both about the road that you took to get somewhere. In the case of the LoadingReadyRun video, it’s a comedy about how it’s not just “one thing” that makes something what it is, and in the case of the HoTs & DoTs post, it’s about how something little, like logging on at juuust the right time, can change your WoW life.

I look back at my first WoW character ever and see a lot of weird little things that all conspired together that brought me to where I am now. Rolling on the server I rolled on, cause a friend had characters there and decided we’d prefer to start out on that carebear RP server than on his other server, a PvP one. Rolling hunter cause a friend told me to. Learning herbalism because I wanted to pick a Peacebloom. Learning alchemy because seriously, as if I would have any other profession. The fact that I then had both herbalism and alchemy? Beginner’s luck.

There are a lot of what-ifs, too. What if the WoW free trial hadn’t worked on my Linux install? I was using Linux fulltime when I installed it. If it hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t have even tried to make it work. My personal reasons for using Linux were– are– more important than a game.

What if the friend that got the boyfriend and I into WoW had us roll Horde on his PvP server instead? Would I still be inventing stories and backstories for my characters the way I do now that I’m spoiled with the RP server mindset?

What if the person who told me to roll a hunter, told me to roll something else?

What if I’d never stumbled across the WoWWiki “fansites” page that introduced me to the (at that time, much smaller) WoW blogosphere?

And then what if I’d never decided to bite the bullet and make my own little blog? I put off doing it for a long time, you know. “Why use up valuable internet space that I can’t even put to good use? I’m no BRK,” was my reasoning. And yet for some reason I finally did it anyway.

My latest little “what if” comes in the form of joining my new guild. All I did for that was go to the official forums (where I never go) for my realm, found the first “Recruiting!” thread that I could find, went to the website, liked what I saw, and applied. A few weeks later I was in Ulduar, and now not only is my main in ToC25 but my alt is, as well (though I admit she is probably not geared for it, but it’s fun anyway.) You gotta understand, prior to joining that guild I’d been puttering around in PuGs and Naxx10. I figured I’d seen all the WotLK content I’d ever see. But the WoW gods apparently disagreed with me.

Where am I going with this? Truthfully at this point I think I’m just rambling; I’m trying to write a book, see, one that’s been stewing in my brain for thirteen years and I’m just now trying to get serious about it, and because I’ve been writing that all day, my brain is fried. x_x

BUT! The moral of the story, maybe, is don’t be afraid to take risks, like I did when I joined my new guild. It might be really good, or it might be really bad, but you’ll never know if you don’t try.

The other moral of the story is that alchemy is clearly the superior profession because our flasks last twice as long. I miss four hour flasks though. /cry

If you are anything like me, if you see a low level character running around, you instantly assume it’s an alt. Oh, now there are heirloom items that are a dead giveaway, but even the characters without said items still convince me. They don’t have to say anything. They just instantly register in my head as “alt”.

You can’t blame me, really. And I’ll bet a large portion of you do the exact same thing. And there’s nothing wrong with that– you just sort of get into that mindset.

Back in the day when I was leveling Tawyn, my first character, people assumed I was an alt as well. I’d get people telling me about what they were doing in Eastern Plaguelands, sprinkled with phrases like “as you know…” and I’d nod my head and smile even though I’d never stepped foot in Eastern Plaguelands because I was level 40. It amused me that people assumed this about me, but it never bothered me, because I felt terribly new to the game.

Things first started to change when I did have a max level character, and my alt, the druid Tamaryn, was level 50ish and healing BRD. This was about, oh, a year ago. I was in a group for BRD and it didn’t take long before the truth came out that not only was I was the only person there who had been in the instance before, but I was the only alt. All four other people were people’s first characters, discovering WoW for the first time and seeing this amazing, sprawling dungeon that is Blackrock Depths for the first time. Suddenly I felt very… old.

Things would, of course, continue to change as Wrath of the Lich King came out not long after that. Months went by and as they did, I found myself more and more in that position I’d been in when I was healing BRD. Suddenly, people didn’t understand when I said “This fight is like Romulo and Julianne” or “This fight is like Gruul”. Suddenly, people didn’t laugh at my “HOLY FIRE ON TAWYN” jokes anymore when we got to the chick that looks like Maiden in Halls of Stone. Because suddenly I wasn’t the token WoW newbie anymore. Suddenly I was a veteran who had done raids “back n’ the day” that other people hadn’t.

I’ve had people on Twitter were tell me they’d never tried Beast Mastery before because it had never been raid viable in the time that they’ve played the game. Now, Beast Mastery didn’t stop being “viable” (quotes because I could go off on a giant tangent on this, but I won’t) until a good chunk of time after people were clearing Naxx. There are people who started playing after that? I mean, it’s obvious when you put it like that and think about it– of course there are new players– but this absolutely blew my mind.

You may be wondering where I’m going with this little ramble. I suppose where I’m going is a sort of– ponder that has been on my mind for a while. I don’t like to think it’s a rant or a QQ, just a ponder.

Namely, I can’t help but think that where the game is at this point, WoW newbies are being rushed into content too fast. And I’m not talking about a “skill” thing here, so much as I’m talking about a “skipped content” thing.

We have all this shiny new badge gear and shiny new heroics that drop stuff that has completely obsoleted Naxx, OS, Malygos, and a good chunk of Ulduar. Now I don’t know, maybe this is just the servers I play on, but nobody runs Naxx anymore. Ever. Remember back in Burning Crusade, those of you who were there– people were running Karazhan up until the night before Wrath of the Lich King launched. And yet Naxx is already dead. I’ve tried putting characters in LFG for Naxx and there’s nothing. People aren’t even doing badge farms of it, because everyone has all the Conquest badge gear by now. There are nights where I’ll do a /who Naxxramas just to doublecheck and make sure I’m not crazy, but I’m not– “0 players found.”

And so I find myself wondering– in Blizz’s bold attempt to get “everyone to see content” in this expansion, did they forget about the people who are just hitting 80?

Or the people like me who were late in the “join a raiding guild” game, and who are now toting around level 232 and 245 gear and yet have never cleared Naxx25?

No, I’m serious. I’ve never cleared more than two wings of Naxx25. And at this rate, I don’t know if I ever will. And I love Naxx.

The badge gear and the stepping stool into higher content is great for those of us who will finally get to “see it all” or for our alts, but not everyone is an alt, and not everyone got to 80 the same time that everyone else did. And I worry that those people are missing some really great content because as soon as they hit 80, it’s “get the badge gear and get into ToC”. You know?

The impending “weekly raid quests” are a step in the right direction, but think about it, how many people are going to stick around for a Naxx full clear after killing Anub’rekhan or Patchwerk? Yeah.

Aaaaanyways, I guess that is just what’s been on my mind lately. As I was saying, this isn’t a rant or a QQ or anything. This isn’t something I’m particularly angry or emo about, nor is it something that would make me ragequit. No, this is just food for thought. Something that’s been on my mind that I’d like to toss out there into the “thinking ring”. I’d love to hear your thoughts as well (or hear that your servers are awesomer than mine and are still doing Naxx >_>)… I’d especially love to hear from you newer people; do you feel rushed into endgame, or am I just completely nuts? (It’s okay if I’m completely nuts; it wouldn’t surprise me =P)

But even if you disagree with me or come to a different conclusion, what I suppose I ultimately want you to take away from this is to look around and realize that some of those newbies running around actually aren’t alts. Feels weird, doesn’t it…?

Is it possible to love something too much? Perhaps. I’ll tell you my story…

I have this tendency to crash and burn on things, and WoW is no exception. I pretty much hit rock bottom the other day. See, I love raiding with my guild. A loooot. But because I wanted to be able to contribute, I probably went way overboard. Suddenly, my days were concerned with stuffing them full of heroics on both my hunter and druid so I could get badges for gear. Suddenly I was doing tons of dailies every day on two characters, to be able to fund flasks, repairs, new gems and enchants and the like. Suddenly I was an unwilling slave to Recount, not because of outside pressures so much as because of my own impossibly high standards for myself.

And suddenly I snapped.

I logged on to grudgingly do dailies the other day and was invited to Onyxia 10. My DPS was absolutely atrocious. Later I found out it was because my pet’s special attacks all decided to turn themselves off, but it took me a while to realize that, and I felt useless.

I had this growing desire to just shut the game off and not worry about it anymore, but I was scared to accept this, because I’m a blogger right? And I love hunters right? It terrified me to think that I wasn’t having fun anymore.

In desperation I threw a bunch of gold at the hunter trainers in the Dwarven District for a respec. Contrary to popular belief, I actually like all the hunter specs (not just Beast Mastery), and I have this secret dream to become really good at all of them. So, hoping a change of pace would fix things, I spec’d Survival, went to the training dummies, and discovered that I still stink at it. It just feels relentlessly clunky and there’s no rhythm to it. Frustrated that there is some aspect of hunters that I am not good at, since I am a perfectionist, I switched over to Marksmanship, which is as fun as ever, but even that couldn’t salvage anything. I spec’d back to Beast Mastery and then logged off as fast as I could, terrified by that feeling growing inside of me…

“This isn’t fun.”

I went and read a book for a while. Then I played Nintendo DS. Then I played Megaman 2. Comfort food. I didn’t let myself think about WoW. I was scared of what it might mean.

Then I went out to buy some ice cream. See, I am basically to ice cream what a foodie is to cuisine. Unfortunately my freezer doesn’t work very well at the moment, which is torture and means that I cannot keep my own ice cream unless I want it to turn into a soggy melted mess. But I really needed some ice cream, so I went out and bought some. The plan was to watch a movie while I ate when I got back.

But something was calling me…

See, a couple weeks back, I randomly made this gnome warlock. I’m not sure why. I’d made warlocks in the past and always quit when I discovered that they weren’t anything like hunters. I’d find out my imp was a failure tank, and so I’d quit. But something had me making a warlock, and I lavished her with gifts like the heirloom shoulders my druid had used for so long, plus an heirloom trinket and an heirloom staff enchanted with +30 spellpower.

And once I’d realized and accepted from the start that Warlock does not equal Hunter, running her around Elwynn Forest and Westfall had been… the most refreshingly fun thing I’d done in WoW in a really long time.

So I thought about it a little.

Then logged into her.

Suddenly, I didn’t have to worry about Recount anymore. Suddenly I didn’t have to worry about dailies. Suddenly I didn’t have to worry about badges. I didn’t have to worry about being a perfectionist with talents and rotation, since I had no idea what I was doing, and that was okay. All I had to worry about was how long I could /dance before Curse of Agony, Immolate, Corruption, and my voidwalker destroyed all the Defias in Moonbrook. This was followed by /giggles, because the gnome giggle is adorable. It was really fun. It was me and my blueberry vs. the world, discovering things at our own pace, the same way it had been with Tawyn and Tux two and a half years ago.

You’re wondering why I’m posting this, perhaps. It’s probably more for my sake than for yours. For a while, I was denying that I could even have fun playing anything else other than my hunter(s) and then my tree druid(s). But mostly, I think I wouldn’t let myself. Well… screw that.

I’m Pike, and I’m a gnome warlock. So there.

To those of you wondering if this is the End of the Blog as We Know It… no, I don’t think it is. I still have huntery stuff in Drafts, and I still plan on raiding on my hunter (though I think a break is in store, shortly), and writing about that, although I no longer want it to consume my WoW life, simply because “I’m a hunter blogger”.

So we’ll see how things go…

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.

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.

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.

And that’s awesome.

Couples who play WoW together is not an uncommon thing. I can think of at least a few in every guild I’ve been in thus far, and the combinations I’ve encountered are endless: married couples, engaged couples, boyfriend/girlfriend, boyfriend/boyfriend, couples who actually met each other in game, couples who play on entirely different factions and servers from each other… yeah, I can think of good friends who fall into each of those categories.

Still, not everyone who is currently involved in a relationship has a significant other who plays, and I’ve seen various opinions on this ranging from “Aaagh I wish my girlfriend played!” to “I’m so glad my boyfriend doesn’t play!” and everything in between. What’s it really like, though?

Well obviously this differs from couple to couple, but lemme tell you my story and what I’ve learned.

As of this fall, The Boy and I will have been together for five years. …huh. Now that I think about it we started dating the month WoW came out. o.O Anyways, neither of played at first. Most of our friends did, though, and eventually one of them talked us into trying it out a couple years later. Thus it was that we began our journeys through Azeroth on the same day. Those were the days. Once we figured out how to be in the same area as each other, we started questing together frequently, although we played by ourselves as well. By the time we hit level 45ish we’d encountered most of the little group of people that would become our collective friends-base, and we started doing instances and stuff too.

I got to level 58 before he did, but waited several hours to go through the Dark Portal so the two of us could go through it together. I also hit 70 a few days before he did– though he would riposte several months later by getting to 80 a few days before me (it’s not my fault I can’t do what he does and scoop up every quest in the zone and do them all and turn them all in within a few hours /grumble).

We’ve done a lot together; raiding, heroics, several quests, the occasional battleground. Until recently we were always in the same guild. Suffice to say, we’ve shared a lot of experiences in this game.

It has, of course, not always been a bed of roses. Let’s talk about scheduling issues, for one. I mostly work afternoons and evenings at the moment, whereas The Boy attends school and does his equivalent stuff during the day. It’s difficult enough to sneak in time with each other with that sort of schedule, but let me take you back to a rather unpleasant period earlier this year where we were raiding on different nights. He was raiding Naxx on Saturday because that was the best time for him, but I work most Saturdays, so I found myself doing my raiding on Fridays (and occasionally Sundays as well).

While we were both understanding about this issue, it was hard as well. Hard enough that it discouraged me from raiding for a long time, because as much as I love raiding– I didn’t like that I was doing it on one of the rare nights where I could be spending time with The Boy. Ya know?

It didn’t help that The Boy was doing it with all my friends and guildies and they would just breeze right through Naxx in a couple hours, whereas I was doing it with a group of unknown faces and we would struggle on bosses that should’ve been easy. After any of The Boy’s Naxx clears I’d inevitably find out a bunch of hunter gear had dropped. I was super jealous of The Boy at that point, and I think it caused some tension. Oh, don’t get me wrong– I came to really love my impromptu little raid group, and it was quite a rush when our ragtag fellowship finally got to a point where we were breezing through Naxx too, and chalking up a lot of achievements in the process. But in the beginning, it was hard.

Here’s another thing I always say is difficult about having a significant other who plays: Ever had those days where one person just wants to chatter on and on about WoW and the other person… doesn’t? I dunno, I think I’ve been on both sides of that coin– I think the both of us have.

But as difficult as it is sometimes… on the other hand, it’s so nice to have a built-in support system. In a world where only a few people out there would understand all the gaming jargon you’re spewing at them… who else but your best friend and partner to babble it all to? Who else but that shoulder to cry on when your PuG raid is terrible or when there’s weird guild drama going on? Who else to send funny forum links and WoW-related YouTube movies to? Who else to read Warcraft novels with and make horrible jokes with at the expense of various lore characters? Who else isn’t going to inwardly laugh or think you’re crazy when something in game moves you to tears? Who else understands?

Awesome to have that person right there, lemme tell ya.

Oh, and honestly, I’m such an addiction-driven soul that without having someone there to balance me out– someone to say “Let’s go watch House” sometimes or recommend me new Star Wars books to read– I’d probably have really crashed and burned in-game by now. I might be raiding more and have shinier gear, but the tradeoff wouldn’t be worth it.

The Boy quit playing WoW a little while ago; his subscription ran out and he hasn’t resubscribed. He may or may not be back. Either way, he lets me go off and feed my hunger for raiding (or alt’ing) when I need to and he is more supportive of my blogging than anyone else I know. Oh, and he laughs at my “What does Kel’Thuzad eat between meals? SNAXX!” joke.

So, while having a significant other who plays is not always as easy and fun as it might look on the outset…

…in the end, it’s worked out pretty well, I think.

DON’T WORRY, I’M NEVER GOING TO BE ALL SAPPY AGAIN! COME BACK! /frantically waves audience back D=

I’ve got a lot of thoughts running around in my head right now regarding my first visit to Ulduar and some of the things I’ve come to realize, but I’m not sure how well I’ll be able to sort and present them. I can always try, though!

Last week, I wrote a piece on “the soullessness of badge epics“. A post I threw together in twenty minutes and tossed up before running out the door has rather unintentionally become one of my most viewed posts ever and generated several good comments. I’m not entirely happy with that post, though. I kind of wish I’d let it simmer in drafts for a while before publishing it. Mainly because I think it gave off a different vibe than I wanted it to.

Now, I am rather emotionally invested in WoW, as I’m sure most of us who have been playing for a while are to some degree, whether or not we like to admit it. Thinking back to all the stories behind the gear I’d acquired through the years got my in an emotional mind-set while writing the post and as such it came off as a bit over-the-top, and I think it possibly confused some people into thinking that I was either a.) stubbornly refusing to ever buy badge epics even if they were an upgrade, or b.) anti-badge-system… neither of which are at all true.

Here is Attempt Two at trying to put my feelings into words:

In a big way, I don’t play WoW for the loot. If you put some instance in the game that had super awesome loot but which was simply a boring instance to me, you’d be hard-pressed to get me in there. On the other hand, I’ll totally do an instance I’ve done a million times that has no gear for me, just because I like it. Naxx10 is an example. I’ve done this more times than I can count and it has like… two things out of there that are side-grades and/or arguably slight upgrades (KT’s gun is one of them), and that’s it. But gosh if I wouldn’t love to go back there sometime soon. That place was awesome. Visually stunning, awesome sound design, fun encounters, etc. I don’t understand the people that are bored with it, but hey, maybe I’m just “special”.

I love when a great story happens behind gear… see my “Karma and the Naxx PuG” post for an example. Those shoulders are in my bank ’cause they have such a good story behind them.

This was sort of my mindset when I wrote that badge epics post, although the timing for my publishing of it was admittedly bad– the time when I was really feeling sort of “meh” about the new epics was when I figured I wouldn’t be doing any more progression in WotLK and thus acquiring epics beyond what Naxx had to offer seemed utterly pointless to me. I would rather have my epics that told a story, thankyouverymuch.

But now let’s move on. Because in another big way, especially now, I do play WoW for the loot, and this is why:

When I went to Ulduar-25 on Saturday, it wasn’t just “going to a raid”, no, it was an entirely different creature that I haven’t encountered very often in my WoW experience. It was a “Progression Raid”.

“Progression Raid” means everybody is bringing their mains (unless their alt is pretty much a main itself).

“Progression Raid” means everybody has to perform at their peak.

“Progression Raid” means wiping when the boss is at 2% if somebody messes up.

“Progression Raid” means yours truly went in there wearing three blues and a Heroics-level ranged weapon, and was pretty much demolished on Recount. It was embarrassing. I was all proud of myself for scraping up 4000 DPS and then I realized pretty much everybody else was doing closer to 5000.

Thus, “Progression Raid” means suddenly, gear is important. Because I don’t want to be a hindrance to the team. I don’t want to be the reason we wipe at 2%.

And I have absolutely, 100% no qualms about replacing “gear with a story behind it” with “gear without a story behind it” if the end result is going to be “helping out the guild so we can collectively have more awesome stories”. No, I don’t have an issue with it at all. I am super glad the badge gear is there right now, otherwise it would take even longer for me to catch up.

Ultimately, that means I have an issue with getting pointless gear for the sake of getting pointless gear. If I wasn’t in Ulduar right now, I’d have a hard time convincing myself to get the badge gear, because I wouldn’t need it. Now that I am raiding, I do need it, and thus most of the initial misgivings I had with the idea have melted away.

…does that make sense? o.O If it doesn’t, no worries, this post was kind of rambly anyway.

I really hope I never lose my mindset of enjoying older content though. I like that mindset. Gosh I wanna do Naxx10 right now. I also want to go back in time to level 70 and do Karazhan. Having this video open in a Firefox tab doesn’t help. /nostalgic~

P.S. Because I know people are going to go look at my Armory and give me gear upgrading hints: most of the gear that I’m wearing right now that is sub-par, I’m wearing because of hit rating issues. I am well aware of upgrades to my cloak and ring. =P

P.P.S. Super-grats to my guild for “of the Nightfall”! =D

No really, I mean, I’ve been watching the Live Stream and I’ve thinking about what to blog about regarding it, and I’ve got nothin’. Pretty much everything has been reported elsewhere and it seems silly to me to talk about what I “like” and “dislike” about the expansion when it’s so far away at this point that a.) things could change entirely and b.) who knows, I may not even be playing by then– not in a “ragequit” or “anti-expac” fashion, but simply because it’s a long time from now, and I may have simply and logically stopped playing by then. /shrug

I suppose I can say that leveling a new hunter to see the revamped content (and give me the needed background to provide updated guides for new hunters) is a given, and I’m goin’ 100% pure Goblin. Oh yeah.

Also: Heroic Deadmines and Heroic SFK pretty much made my year.

Another thing I noticed is that Cataclysm’s version of the WoW logo does not sit well with me on some deep, subconscious level, because the little globe in the logo has a big crack in it and doesn’t look very happy. And I don’t like to see my little virtual world in danger like that. >.> It’d be like if someone wanted you to buy their product so they stuck a big picture of your homeland being torn asunder on it. …yeah. Disaster movies are pretty much the only thing that can get away with it, and that’s what Blizz is going for, but it still makes me uneasy. WoW isn’t my disaster movie, it’s my escape. Ya know? >.>

Dang, it just occurred to me that a logo has got me more emotionally invested than anything else that was announced at BlizzCon so far. Freud would have a field day with me, wouldn’t he?

Anyways, other than that… yeah, I got nothin’.

Just figured I’d make this post since I know some people would probably be checking here for my input. My apologies if I didn’t provide much.

It’s just that I’ve got a lot to do between now and then, and the whole “lame duck” period right before an impending expansion pack tends to suck in my experience because everyone is panicky over it and/or bored with the current stuff, so I’m fine with pushing said lame duck period off as long as I can =P

Guys. I have a confession.

You know all the new badge gear? The stuff that is really really good? The stuff that is a godsend and is gonna let me catch up to my guildies in Ulduar?

Yeah, I don’t have any of it yet.

Because none of it has a story behind it the way the stuff I’m wearing right now does. The stuff I’m wearing right now is mostly from Naxx10, with a sprinkling of stuff from Naxx25, and dropped from raid bosses, some of whom took weeks to see, and when I wore it, I wore it very proudly.

I am having a really hard time convincing myself to replace it with stuff that is being held in sterile confinement in Dalaran and that I earned by doing “chain Heroics”. I feel like there would be no soul in said gear.

“Soul? You’ve lost it, Pike.”

Yeah, perhaps I have. That’s why I put the word “insane” in the title of the post. =P

This issue plagued me before; in Burning Crusade when they introduced all the stuff with the Shattered Sun dailies and Sunwell, remember? Suddenly there was all this gear that you could get with badges that far out-stripped my Karazhan stuff. I waffled on this new gear for a while, too, for the same reason. It had no soul. But eventually I caved and bought it all, topping it off with that infamous “Chocobow”, Crossbow of Relentless Strikes.

But when I got my Figureprint it was with the gear that all had stories behind it… Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle being the crowning piece. Aside from just looking better, it simply meant more to me than the badge bow did.

At some point before Ulduar25 this weekend, I’ll bite the bullet and snag some badge epics. And in the end, I’m glad they are there, because otherwise I’d just end up embarrassing myself in my new guild. And I don’t really have any moral problem with the way “welfare epics” are implemented.

But gosh if there isn’t gonna be a tear in my eye as one by one, all the names of raid bosses that you currently see when mousing over my items turns on Armory turn into simply “Vendor”. =/

Maybe I’ll get something from Ulduar to make up for it…

(Closing Note: I know this is a touchy subject for some people, and as such I feel driven to add a quick reminder that while discussion in the comments would be quite encouraged, be sure to play nice. <3)

I recently wrote up a post over at my LiveJournal where I listed and posted movies of the top ten video game moments that gave me goosebumps. Anyways, I had a lot of fun writing that post, and I figured I’d go ahead and make a similar post, except focusing on World of Warcraft, which would let me get away with posting it here! I also figured I’d make it more of a “Top Ten WoW Memories” post to broaden the criteria a bit… oh, and add commentary in lieu of having a video for everything.

And so, I present Pike’s Personal Top Ten WoW Moments…

10. The Gnome Rogue: You can read the full story here if you haven’t already; this is one of my favorite memories of PvP, period. To this day, I swear to you that you could see the shock on the poor guy’s face.

9. Ice Barbed Spear: For days I lived in Alterac Valley. For days we lost. For days I would push back dinner if it looked like we were in a winning game, which always turned out to be false, of course. And, then, one day… we won. I went from completely Neutral with Stormpike to halfway through Friendly by the time it happened. But we won. I have never seen a battleground chat so filled with shock and cheers. And I, at long last, had My Shiny.

8. The Safety Dance: Most of you who have been reading my blog in its WotLK incarnation for a while know about how Heigan was my Ultimate Nemesis for weeks. Every time I would go doggedly into Heigan, and every time, I would die on pretty much the first glimpse of green fire. Dead. Kaput. Tawyn Flatbread. It got worse as before long, most people I knew were talking about how easy it was. Not for me. And to add insult to injury, “The Safety Dance” is seriously one of my favorite songs of all time. How embarrassing.

Then, one day, in there with a PuG, a friend of mine gave me some brief last minute advice before I headed in. “Just keep moving.” Five minutes later…

The achievement. And the first time I survived. At the same time. I was on a high for days.

Since then I’ve only died on that fight if the disease on me isn’t cleansed fast enough. My druid even got the achievement on her first sojourn into Naxx. What was once my Fail Fight has become my speciality. Miracles can happen.

7. “We’re Going For the Epics. Epiiiiiiics!”: The boy and I were level 40ish, questing in Hinterlands, when my comrade-in-arms let out a gasp. I asked him what had happened, and he said, “I just got my first purple drop… and… I think… I am going to give it to you.”

It was called Bow of Searing Arrows, and it was my very first purple. I used it with pride for a very long time.

6. Home Sweet Home: I know I’ve written before about the feeling of flying into Elwynn and immediately feeling that very cozy “home” feeling so I’ll keep it brief; suffice to say it was one of the major motivators behind upgrading my Trial Account to a full-blown paid account. Because no video game had ever made me feel like that before.

5. My Kingdom for a Horse: The other big motivator behind upgrading my Trial Account was access to a mount. I decided early on that I wanted a horse rather than the typical Night Elf Cat, largely because of Tawyn’s RP backstory but also partially because I just really dislike the look of the cat mount. And so I began my long climb up the mountain that is Stormwind rep. Fortunately for me, Stormwind is arguably the easiest faction OF ALL TIME to gain rep for, so I was exalted at level 37– this was back when mounts were at 40, remember.

The boy and I were smack in the middle of Stranglethorn Vale quests when the big 4-0 happened for both of us; he got his special fiery warlock mount and I got my Chestnut Mare, which I promptly “named” Buckles. Then, the two of us rode up and down the entire southern half of Eastern Kingdoms together, simply out of the sheer joy of being able to do so.

4. Healing Naxx: This PuG Naxx10 was basically the culmination of a project involving my only non-hunter character to ever get anywhere near endgame– the final exam, so to speak, of my decision to doggedly level a druid as 100%-pure-Resto. I’d never healed a raid before (that wasn’t “Kara with 80s”, anyway) so I was ridiculously nervous, and then I found out that this group wanted to do it with only two healers: a trade of faster boss kills at the cost of less room for healer error, which absolutely terrified me.

And yet, one by one, all the bosses that I was afraid of as a healer… Patchwerk, Razuvious, Loatheb… went down to the healy might of a scrub tree druid in blues and the nice holy paladin who coached her and whispered her tips. At the climax of it all was a Kel’Thuzad kill during which, after a few false starts, not a single person died to one of my worst fears: Ice Blocks.

Most of the memories in this post are of my hunter(s), and naturally and understandably so, however, my healing alter-ego is very proud of what thus far is probably her finest hour.

3. “ENTELECHY GLORIAM!”: I have no doubt my fellow Silver Handers will recognize the guild that is involved in this story: a Paladins-only super-hardcore RP guild that focuses on, well– zealous paladins. They’re pretty well-known on our server, and as frequently happens with really well-known RP guilds, everybody starts tying in their RP with them. Our guild was really no different at the time; although we made a pretty conscious effort to have “our own RP” it was hard to not have tie-ins with the biggest RP guild on the server.

So it was that we held our weekly in-character guild meeting on the steps of the Stormwind Cathedral, against the in-character wishes of the Paladin guild. It wasn’t long before several members of said guild showed up and demanded that our little group of ragamuffins left; we countered that the Cathedral was for everybody. Now our guild meeting had had a rather impressive turnout that day, and it wasn’t long before, a good fifteen- or twenty- strong, we all marched right into that Cathedral. Paladins were yelling at us left and right to get out, and we were /yelling “ENTELECHY GLORIAM” which was actually sort of a spoof of the paladins themselves (hey, you can have some fun when you RP!) and we had a little gnome making “Myek!” noises and Trade Chat was hating on us and it was all around one of the greatest things of all time.

ENTELECHY GLORIAM, NEVER FORGET.

2. The Gift: This one was the mastermind of one of my bestest-WoW-friends. He had a level 80 hunter long before I did, and I idolized him for it, but he eventually perma-switched mains to Tanky Warrior and that’s how we all leveled up together. Anyways, one day, when I was level 65 or so, he asked me to meet him out in Blasted Lands. Mystified, I did, and when I got there, he traded me a present, all wrapped up. I opened it and inside was The Gunblade– it would be Tawyn’s very first gun.

He proceeded to show me how to level up my gun skill (from zero) on those mobs that never die, and as I did this, he performed a little mini-ceremony that was half-RP and half-not, about how he was proud to present to me the same ranged weapon he’d used to get his hunter to 70 (and how he liked to pretend it was the same gun), and how I was the best hunter he’d ever played with.

That gun is in my bank, and it is never going anywhere. <3

1. Karazhan: I’m sure you all saw this coming. The raid that is all at once the mystical awesome-land that I only heard about in hushed whispers on Trade Chat as a nubling, and the setting for my favorite Warcraft novel of all time, and the weekly watering hole and training grounds of a bunch of friends who were having the time of their lives in Ventrilo.

Not long after that guild gave up the ghost, I pulled together a montage of the things we did in there together and made a eulogy video of sorts, one I can’t watch without my eyes getting misty…

And that, well, sums that up better than any words I say ever could.

Well, that and the Outtakes, of course…

Phew! That was a tough list to write. Seriously, I had so many things I wanted to put on this list, and trimming down to what would make the final ten was tough. And ya know what, that’s really the point. I dare you all to think about your top ten best memories in game– write ‘em down if that’s your thing, or just think about them otherwise. I sorta hate to be the stereotypical “count your blessings” guy, but really, I think you’ll find that there’s more of those memories than you thought there were. Don’t forget that…

There are a lot of posts about PvP and stuff on the blogosphere lately and while I have no intention to touch on the “balance” debate, it has got me thinking a little about PvP in general and how my personal feelings towards it have sort of changed.

When I was leveling my first character, I liked battlegrounds, a lot. Anytime I got to a level that ended in 7, 8, or 9, I would effectively stop leveling for a good few weeks so I could spend lots of quality time in battlegrounds. It was fun. Alliance always lost. I loved it anyway. I did Alterac Valley over and over and over again for Ice Barbed Spear, it took like twelve games before Alliance actually won. It was exhilarating.

I got to 70 and while I was mostly doing instances at this point, I decided that I was sick of staring at Valanos’ Longbow and decided to grind honor and marks for a super shiny PvP bow. Later I found out that the bow didn’t have particularly good stats for PvE, but no matter, it was pretty and I was a noob, and I wanted it.

This is where my experience with PvP started to sour. See, not only does Alliance on Bloodlust absolutely suck at BGs (or did, back then, I dunno if they still do), but premades were rampant. 99% of the time you got into a game, you were against a premade, being camped in the graveyard or the little floaty island in Eye of the Storm. Now, because I was super stubborn and thought premades ruined the PvP experience, I never participated in them. Unfortunately, everybody else, well, did.

I got that bow. I got it after weeks of drearily being graveyard camped by premades. Weeks of dreading queuing up for another resounding AV loss that consisted of me repeatedly being demolished by people that were decked out in five million resilience. Weeks of queuing in and randomly winding up as the sole Silver Hand player in an otherwise “hardcore PvP server” premade and being taunted and spammed the entire time with “LOL RP SERVAR” which would often even segue into sexist remarks. It was an awful experience. I longed for the days of pre-70 battlegrounds which were fun and exciting. I actually did a lot of battlegrounds on low-level characters to make up for it, but it wasn’t the same somehow, because I knew that those characters would eventually hit level 70 and battlegrounds would die again.

I can’t remember when the new anti-premade change (aka BEST CHANGE EVER) came about. But I’m pretty sure it encouraged me to do enough PvP that I wound up with some Merciless Gladiator gear, for the express purpose of having PvP gear when I wanted to PvP. I figured, hey, if you can’t beat the people with five million resilience, join ‘em! But by that point it was sorta too late. I was tired of PvP. My friends and I were having a blast in heroics and Kara and that sort of eclipsed battlegrounds as “my thing”. Once I had all my PvP gear, I actually PvP’d, like… twice, maybe. Once was in an arena and I hated it so never went back. But yeah, it was silly. All dressed up and no interest in going anywhere.

So then we get this expansion. I get to 80. I do a ton of Heroics and Naxx a million times. My “PvP gear set” was woefully outdated but I had absolutely zero motivation to grind for PvP gear again. But one day, I realized that I had tons of extra badges. I pondered what to do with them. Then, on a lark, I bought some entry level PvP gear, donned them and some pants I’d won out of VoA, and headed into Alterac Valley.

Much to my surprise, in the long, long months it’d been since I’d been in AV on that battlegroup… Alliance had figured out how to win. Back when I had been into Battlegrounds, this would have been the happiest day ever. But no… it was just “meh” to me. The magic had somehow gone out of AV. It was actually quite a tragic realization… it depressed me a little. Healing it on my druid was a little more fun and kept my interest for a few hours but then it just became “meh” again.

I’ve never been into Wintergrasp (other than for VoA) or any of the new battlegrounds; I’ve no interest. I know I’m going to get the overwhelming “OMG WINTERGRASP IS SO DIFFERENT, YOU’LL LOVE IT” comments, and it’s probably true, but… I dunno. I just can’t motivate myself to get in there.

Now I want to make one thing very clear, I don’t have anything against PvP, or people who are primarily PvP players, or anything like that. I respect good PvPers and wish I was among them, cause I’m not. And ya know what, the occasional battleground on my lowbie is still fun, especially now that you can get XP for it. World PvP I’m iffy on– I enjoy it if it’s a fair fight, and the whole “contested territory” thing is fun in a prickly-feeling-on-the-back-of-your-neck kind of way, but I don’t and never will understand “ganking”.

But yeah, I figured you all deserved an explanation on why I used to talk about PvP a lot back in the day on this blog, and don’t really anymore.

Someday, though, I maintain hope that battlegrounds will get that “spark” back. I have very fond memories of Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley… and lots of lessons that helped shape me into the hunter I am today. Someday I’m going to go back and they’ll all be just as fun as they were the first time a scrappy little band of underdogs won AV. The first time we had 0/3 flags capped in WSG and Horde had 2/3, and somehow, an hour later, we’d won. The first time an AB game went down to the wire.

I’m eagerly awaiting that day…