New Main!

That's it. I have had it with healing the ungrateful, rude masses. I will no longer toss a renew to someone out of combat to help them regen faster. I will no longer worry if the greater heal that I trinketed and used all my specials on will hit the tank before he dies. I won't bother giving people fortitude and spirit buffs. Nope. I refuse to carry candles.

No, I'm not going to switch out to Carlotta. She needs too much. Damned arrows and food for the beast, not to mention bandages and potions she makes for everyone else but her.

Shawndra is out as well. Her gear costs too much to repair. And people expect her to tank. Bleah. I want none of that responsibility.

Not even Gwenna the mage. Nope. She has about 3 too many reagents to carry around, and they cost money. Not to mention that people expect her to make them food and water, and focus magic, and sometimes sheep/rabbit things. Forget that!

I am even going to forsake the Horde. Yep. Horde is too hardcore for me. I'm thinking I want the easy life of hanging out in places like Goldshire and Stormwind and Ironforge, where the only attacks I have to dodge are the X rated RP offers.

Here is my new main. Her name is Muppsey. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid. And healers? Yeah, I'm going to life tap myself down to the bone. You'll heal me and like it.

Oh, I thought I'd change it up a bit and join a real raiding guild, too. So, I'm rolling her on the US-Sentinels server, where Premagon (or is it Paranition?) is going to get ready for Cataclysm and the new raid content it contains. I'm sure once they see her shadow bolt spam they will fall in love with her and beg her to join. Even if she can't heal. Or cook. Did I mention there will be no small eggs cooked by her? Nope, no eggs at all. No cooking, no fishing, no first aid. Just tailoring and enchanting, which I will have my minions (read:children) level for me.

Muppsey is all about the selfish desire to do absolutely nothing that benefits anyone but my selfish need to only dps, and sponge off of everyone I can possibly manage to. Expect a lot of posts about how I wiped groups and pissed off healers and tanks in the next several weeks. It will be such a change from the bad groups and awful people posts I have grown accustomed to reading in my feed reader!

Oh, and Happy April First. :)

Immersed?

Have you seen Yesterday's News, a short machinima by Slashdance? It was a contest entry for the "Rise to Power" sweepstakes and was featured on WoW.com's Moviewatch today. If you haven't seen it, I'll wait for you to watch it. Here it is.



Good, wasn't it? Then I read the article, and the comments. This comment, near the top of the second page, affected me the most.

Siorra (from the comments after the post)

Just goes to show how much of the game's immersion has been removed over the years. It's not a world of exploration any more, it's a city you wait around in until you 'magically' appear in a dungeon.

Is it true? Has this game I have chosen to lose myself in become less of a story and more of a time filling habit? I admit to spending many of the last several days of game time with my characters hanging around in a town, fiddling with gear or browsing the auction house for deals while they wait for the Looking for Group tool to whisk them away to their next adventure. BUT...

Delgada is my main Horde character. It is with her that I live the story, weaving her adventures in with questing and discovery. The other characters find a path, get to eighty, and become a bit like the "red shirt" in an old Trek episode, there to take the bullet, and sit out the juicy parts of the series. They might get a call back (if they weren't killed), but they never rise to the fame of the main characters. They're just there to help the main character's story advance. Delgada couldn't successfully go into Icecrown Citadel without her supporting crew of Carlotta, the elixir master, Shawndra, keeper of the exalted Hodir reputation, or even Rowena, all but forgotten 19 forever peddler of junk and keeper of the purse. Delgada would get no rest if it weren't for the playful flirtation of Niranjani, Maiera and Gwenna. Sorry, Maura and Lulubelle, though you are part of the team, you really are the red shirts right now. And space number ten? That is for when I either decide to immerse myself in the goblin culture when Cataclysm comes out, or for infiltrating the Alliance side of Smolderthorn with a worgen.

I think I am still plenty immersed. It is a choice. It is what I escape to WoW to do. Tonight, I choose to immerse myself with 9 other heroes in a quest to rid Icecrown Citadel of as many of the Lich King's lieutenants as will fall to our might. For the Horde!

After that maybe I'll put in a couple of hours hitting the random dungeons with Maiera, so that she can join the rest of my crew in Northrend. She's been hanging out in Nagrand, blowing up talbuk and clefthoof packs in between summons. Everyone needs twiddle time, right? I still think the random dungeon finder (and more recently the random battleground finder) are excellent ideas. I would never recommend them to a new player, especially now, when everything is on the verge of change. But for those of us who have seen about everything the game has to offer, there is no harm in it. Azeroth is a big world, and I have yet to see it all. I'm not leaving until I have exhausted every possibility it has to offer.

Carpets and Buffs, Oh My!

Look at that neat-o carpet! It's fast and pretty. In order to make it, I had to have a piece each of Spellweave, Ebonweave, and Moonshroud, and then 4 frozen orbs. Note to the left of my character bar, all three buffs from the cloth are present. Could these be necessary raid buffs for tailors, now? There is no location requirement or cool down on the cloth, and frozen orbs drop left and right, making the reagents for these buffs fairly easy to get. If this is intentional, then I may have to make sure to have at least 6 each of eternal fire, eternal life, and eternal shadow with the cloth required to whip up a piece of each every time the thirty minutes are up on all raid days.

What do you think?

Pamper Me More!

Michelle from the Warcraft Outsiders Podcast wrote about this in a post on their blog today, and instead of visiting the forums for my response, I decided to post it here. I know she has been pimping their forums, because, let's face it, they're a great place to get together for the guild and for the community surrounding their casts. Don't worry, Michelle, I promise to post a link to my response there, and to go lurk a little, and find a way to comment on some of the topics there, right after I say my piece.

Anyhow, back to my response. Are we too pampered in WoW? Personally, I think we could use some more pampering. A closet for all my designer robes when I get a new one would be nice. They already have a laundry service in Dalaran, why not an armor storage? The storage is really only there as an additional bag to your bank. Each outfit would take up a slot, with room for ten outfits. The shirt slot would become a costume slot, changing the look of your gear from what you chose from your armor storage.

How about a hot tub for after that long night fighting the Scourge in Icecrown Citadel? They could make it exclusive, say maybe up in that private get away Archmage Vargoth keeps at the tippy top of Dalaran. He has room up there for a half dozen hot tubbers. If they made it instanced, they would only really need to build one. Maybe we could even petition for an olympic sized pool with diving board (driven by the newest blizzard vehicle technology). There's room in the Underbelly, just move the arena out and the pool in. Leave this non instanced, for that public pool feel. You could remake Segacedi into a blow up floaty shark toy, or leave him toothy and in the deep end for some excitement.

Strangelethorn Vale is full of sandy beaches that are infested with nasty pirates. Why not transform a length of beach into a resort area, complete with tiki bars and firepits? It could be a short hop from Booty Bay, accessible by a short goblin powered rickshaw ride. A few lounges, beach chairs, and umbrellas could be permanently placed, but with room left for those still hooked on their romantic picnic baskets to set up a cozy day at the beach for two.

Blood elves have such pretty pedicured feet. Could Blizzard expand on the idea for our hooved and three toed friends? Shawndra would love to coat her troll toenails with some ghoulish purple paint. Niranjani would love some feminine hearts or some leafy green healing symbols on her hooves. Maybe Delgada couldn't get her toenails done (she can't find more than half of them anyway), but a nice clear coat on her toe bones would sure keep them from chipping so badly. As for the Alliance races, the treatments the blood elves receive would work fine on all but the Draenei, and they would probably enjoy the same treatment the Tauren do.

I'm sure I could dream up a jillion more things I'd like to do in game with my characters, but there is only one that I place at the top of my list. I would love them to have a home. Maybe one for each faction, decorated with little trophies of my character's achievements. It need not reside on Blizzards servers, but as a side area on my own. I should be able to invite people over if I wanted, limited only by my own systems capacity. Just a little place to hang their hat when their day is done, with no other functionality than chat and displayed storage, and maybe a place or two to sit, like the houses SWG still hosts for their players.

That's all I have for this edition of "Blizzard, Pamper Me More!" If there comes another edition, be ready to explore the seedier side of pampering. Hubby has some wild ideas of his own. Comments? Leave them below, or better yet, add to the thread that was started here.

Moooo!

I got a letter today, and though it wasn't addressed to my blog specifically, I wanted to post it and my response, edited to protect the innocent, of course.

Hello Shawndra...It is I...your favorite cow shaman ever.
Just thought I would kick out a hello to you since I haven't spoken
with you in forever. Let me know how things are going in your world.
Iraq is boring as hell, which I am sure none of you can complain about
:-P
Hope to hear from you soon.

---JJ

I had wondered where my favorite cow had got off to! I would hope that the most Iraq throws at you is boredom. Here, not much has changed. It is still, for the most part, twiddling with alts and the occasional important run. Our favorite pally tank got antsy and, with two kinda new(I've been hanging out with them for months now!) members (his roomies) we are raiding Icecrown at least once a week, sometimes twice when we have the people. Getting 10 KNR on at the same time is a feat in and of itself. This past week was kinda fun, in that we got one wing of the citadel done, but got stuck in the next wing (our dps needs some help). So, two days of ICC in(pictured below us just walking in on Lady Deathwhisper), and the next night we did Trial of the Crusader. We got all the way to the Twin Valkyrs before we called it a night...they're a fight we're gonna need to practice!


In the times that KNR is not raiding (Mr. Pally tank's roomie, the hunter, found a new meaning for KNR; Krap! No Raiding!), I have been raising a druid in the looking for group random dungeon tool. Healers are second only to tanks in getting fast groups, so I made her a healer, and it is sooo fun! Our pally tank ran my druid and his roomies and our discipline priest's alt through Maraudon today, but it wasn't as fun, because, really, the pally did all the work. In the randoms, at least you feel like you are doing something! The last group I was in, while I was typing to you, one of the members pulled Scarlet Champion Mograine before we finished clearing, and if not for my astounding feats of healing and innervating, we would not have lived. Of course,by then, all the mobs were green to me, too, so I had better have been able to pull it off! Right after that, with about a 5 minute queue time, I was back in Maraudon, on the purple side. I even helped a new shadow priest. Go me! I am a contributing member of the blog-o-sphere now, actually helping people with mana issues. How exciting :) (For those that care, I suggested the glyph of Shadow Word:Pain, and that hope was in the discipline tree under Meditation and Mental Agility, when she had the talent points to go into that tree.)



I also decided I was going to take my two that were hanging out in Thrallmar and get them to Northrend. Gwenna, my troll mage, is sitting in Warsong Hold, waiting further instructions, with some auction house Northrend gear to help her along. Maiera, my only blood elf that hasn't been axed, got to 63 tonight with the loan of Gwenna's heirloom shoulders, and expects to blow the dust of Outland off her pretty pedicured toenails by the end of this week. Then, it will be Niranjani the druid's turn. After that, I guess the game will be to level all my toons that are in Northrend. Maybe I'll start with Lulubelle, in honor of my favorite bovine shaman(yeah, that is you!). She's been sitting idly by, making inscriptions in Dalaran. I believe she is second in level order behind my 80's (Shawndra finally got there) after Maura, the rogue. I honestly can say that, unless they make pick pocketing gain experience, she may never get past where she is. I'm a terrible dps rogue, but I love seeing what they have in their pockets. Shiny things, dirty handkerchiefs, a loaf of bread (how did that fit in there?), naughty romance novels, whatever, I just get excited when I see a bunch of humanoid mobs with room to sneak in between them. Those Chill Nymphs in Howling Fjord even let you walk up, say hello, stealth, pick their pocket, and then goon your merry way to the next. I know they are supposed to be allies, but they asked for it! They have pockets!!


Hubby and his buds have me trying out Star Trek Online. I could spend hours in the character creation screen alone. I settled for 20 minutes, and started playing, because the hubby and his buds wanted to make a fleet("You are now part of Old Geek Fleet."). The game itself is alright, it just doesn't seem very multi-player, even though you can see the other ships. And speaking of ships, I cannot turn one quickly enough to save my shields or my crew. I have not been a big fan of space combat ever since SWG when they put it in. I would like to choose to be a desk pilot in the colony of my choice, assisting in research and away team duties, but leave the flying to someone else. No emotes when you are in ground mode, what? Loot's about the same. My character got herself a nice bit of armor makes her look soo hot! But most of the loot is ship loot. I'm not sure if dressing myself and my crew is enough Barbie time for me, if the only times I get to see them in person is if I a) go to the bridge, or b) have one of those seemingly rare away missions. I need to have a closet full of useless dressies, and for other people to see me in them. Stardock in the Sol Sector didn't seem like the social hub I had hoped the entertainment deck would be. I miss the days of dancing in the cantina to the sounds of slitherhorns played by aspiring musicians, where everyone would clamor for just a few seconds of my attention, and they weren't NPC's. No, having a tribble just isn't enough. Damnit, I wanna play Tri-Con, or Dam-Jat, or match up with someone in some holo sports. Even if all I could do at the bar on Stardock was buy some synthohol, I would be happy. You can't even sit in the chairs! To me, there seems to be almost nothing but imagination and a stage for any role players. No props makes for some sad players, at least I think that way.


You caught me at a good time in my home life. I'm on Spring Break, but my children are not. This is leaving me all sorts of time to try new and old games, go out to eat, buy things at Wal Mart I don't need (okay, I really needed that shirt, and the magazine with the codes for the free in game sword for my Wizard 101 in the picture below, but the rest I didn't need), and do some spring cleaning, and write back to you, of course! I admit to being a gamer first and a housewife second, and that you have seen if you login at raid time (which falls during our dinner), and me yelling,"I'm almost done. Go ahead and start the trash without me!", as I am slinging something unimaginative at the kids to eat. They get the shaft so often for dinner, this week has been a little different. Corned Beef and Cabbage, Breakfast for Dinner, Fajitas, Steak and veggies and baked potatoes, Pork Chops and mashed potatoes, and Tacos have actually been served here in the span of two weeks. That is pretty good for me. They are usually lucky to get one during the week and one on the weekend from me. That, and I have done some spring cleaning. I can find my towels now, I am doing mass amounts of laundry that has been hiding in a kids closet and mascarading as carpet, and I have straightened out my kitchen. Tomorrow, I may even tackle my bedroom, as this is week two of my vacation, and I hope to spend at least one day in a perfectly clean house. Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?


Miss you bunches! How long will you be gone? When will you be back? Does anyone who loves you send you goodie boxes? Because, this can be arranged, if you are being slighted :) Send me a list of things you'd love to have to much on and to keep you comfortable, and the family will pitch in and send it.'

Write back often, or as often as you can. I'm looking forward to hearing from you again! If typing is a burden, we have a phone, too. xxx-xxx-xxxx (it's a Skype number).


Jen(hiding behind food and plushies since 2008)
(you know I'll answer to whichever silly game name you know me by!)