TAUREN CHAIR NINJA

Musical Chairs in Karazhan

This is the stuff I love about the game; not the videos of mages WTFPWNING 100 mobs, not sneak previews of T6. I like watching a bunch of Orcs and Tauren lumber around playing muscial chairs in one of the higher instances in BC. Also: Vent laughter.


(In other news, my comic project isn't so screwed anymore, but I'm going to have to push back my return to WoW about another week. Guess I'll continue lurking in the forums during comic down time and listening to The Instance while I ink. Y halo there various and sundry placebos.)

Buh.

Haven't logged in a week. Can't honestly say I'm ambivalent about it; I miss running around, I miss some of the people on my friends list and I miss instancing. I miss forgettng myself for a few hours at a time and I miss sitting around in Vent, listening to the dudes laughing while I'm dodging Fel Reavers. Boo to this. I'm going to safely conclude that I'm not really addicted (which I was afraid of), since I haven't caved and asked my boyfriend for the password back. Although I won't deny that I'll be really happy when this project is over and I can kick back in Azeroth again. (Attunements! Dreadsteed! Finishing up EPL/WPL quests because of lore! Get fishing back up to speed!)

I'm in no rush, but it'll be nice to hit the cap and then begin to hang out with the friends who were 60 when I was 40, and hit 70 when I was in my 50's. Finally get to play together, as opposed to whispering to each about how crappy our respective PUGs are.


Another week or two to go, not logging until this is done (and it looks like I won't be done on time, cause I am AWESOME.)

My second life is on hold.

I need to finish this comic up, so I'm not going to log until the 29th. I gave my boyfriend access to my parental controls for good measure. If I log "just to check the AH and my mail" during the weekend, I'll end up getting pulled into Blood Furnace, or everyone I need to complete the Dreadsteed quest will be logged on. And there would go 5 precious inking hours. I suspect most of the people I've been grouping with will be near 70 at that point. Ah well. Real life/actual accomplishment before the World of Warcraft. It's pretty ridiculous that I had to take the extra step with the parental controls. I am well stuck on this game WHOOPS.

ALSO:

MY KINGDOM FOR A ROBE


I've been waering a tunic for about 12 levels now. Nobody wants to see my lack of knees or my goofy welcome-to-outland-good-stats-heinous-clown-aura pants for so long.

Man.

The new guild now knows I'm a girl. This doesn't change anything, really. I'm used to everyone assuming the person behind the char is male, because girls don't play video games at all. And I don't bother correcting people with they call me "dude" or "man" or "bro", especially if they're not somebody I interact with on a normal WoW basis. I don't see the point, they're just terms of familiarity people toss around. But in guild chat, somebody specifically referred to me as "he", and I stared at the little chat log for a few seconds. I could not decide whether to correct or just let it be. I was bemused by my real indecision about speaking up. For one, I don't want to be perceived as a player who HAS to bring up their gender at every turn. I see that in general, saw it in my old guild, will probably see it in future guilds or raids or whatever. It bugs me when a player gets referred to as the aforementioned "dude", and they have a fit: "I AM A LADY I HAVE BREASTS OKAY". So there is that (admittedly irrational) fear, since I'd just say it once.

Secondly, you just get treated differently as a girl in game. Certainly not by all players, but it happens. One in game friend of mine is constantly referred to as "sweetie" by her guild leader on runs. My old guild (whom I loved dearly, by the way. I miss them, and I keep bring them up since they make up most of my WoW experience. I've got no other examples to draw on at the moment.) ..well, my guild knew I was a "real girl", we had Vent. One of the dudes would also refer to me with pet names, help me out all the time, and would generally flirt. Did that REALLY bother me? God, no...I'm not going to call out somebody on being nice over a MMO. But I know he was nice based on my gender, which is strange. Not the end of the world, didn't make me incredibly uncomfortable, but it's weird knowing that if I were another 18-year-old boy, my experience would be just a little different. I prefer being friendly, cracking jokes, and just being another person playing the game. As a girl, you don't get the easy boy's club familiarity right away. You gotta ignore "LOL THERE'S A GIRL HERE" comments for a while before they forget. I've never experienced anything quite like this before. I've never been in the Army, or trained to be a police officer or firefighter, where the majority of your peers are men. Also, gender is usually immediately apparent in the real world, so people respond to you for who you are right off the bat. In WoW, you might talk in guild chat and run instances for months (or weeks in my case), before you figure out that hulking Tauren is not, in fact, another dude. My char is actually female, so I found my new guild's assumption that i was a boy doubly funny.


As for what happened?

me: "oh...not 'he'. she."
dude: "wow, two girls in the guild."
me: "yeah wtf. everyone knows girls don't play wow."
dude: "lol i know."

Heh.

61 nubbin

Spent another day bouncing between Azeroth and Outland. This dreadsteed quest is ridiculous, but I'm determined to have the LOLFIERY mount. Finished gathering up all the mats today, so I can go cajole people into helping me out with Scholo and DM sometime later this weekend (or week, honestly...I have a fair bit of real life work to do).

So, my old guild flew apart a few weeks ago due to inactivity and lack of leadership. I'm presently in a newish guild founded by a group of real life friends, myself not included. I'd had fun questign with the guy who sent me the invite, so I accepted. (Much to the chagrin of RL friends who wanted me to join either their guild or go for a more well-established one on the server. Eh. Their guild is for their alts, their mains are in one of the more hard core raiding guilds. Maybe if it wasn't an alt guild.).This new guild is about as quiet as the guild I left, but there are active people at my level, so I've not been wanting for company on quests and instance runs. Today 2 of the dudes in the guild asked me to come along on a Blood Furnace run. We blasted through it with an awesome warrior and rogue they'd picked up. (Rest of the group was a shammy, hunter, and myself). They tell me I can go nuts with the demons in there, so I grab myself a true Felguard (not the mino demo version!) and proceed to smash things with him. As we move on to the next group of mobs, they ask me to dismiss so he doesn't break midfight.

Me; Okay! ........ :D
Fellow: He must really like you.

Shithell, I'd somehow completely forgotten how to manually dismiss a pet. My normal minions I tend never to dismiss unless I'm jumping down places (which I somehow haven't had to do for 9 levels or so), and whenever I enslave, I tell them to stay and then just leave them until it breaks. So I fiddled with everything but the things portrait for about 2 minutes. Nub moments are hilarious at 61. Nobody seemed to really care, but I felt foolish for the rest of the run. Replaced my Dreadmist belt though. I'm starting to care just a bit about gear. That spells trouble. Stupid game.

Cheering from my corpse

Downed Omar the Unscarred with a pretty good PUG today. Crystalfire Staff dropped...and lo, I won the roll. Wiped twice at Naz, but it was late and we were tired. I gotta say, all the PUGs I've been in so far have been surprisingly awesome, everyone knows what their roles in the group is, tries to compensate for weak spots in our make-up. I've also been grouping for quests with random people in Outland, and that's been (somehow) a joy. I guess most wilful nubbins get phased out somewhere between 35 and 70? The worst runs I've had have been SM runs. Ninjas, warriors who didn't know what sunder was, melee warlocks (I have a firestone equipped, it's cool!), huntards. It's funny, my levelling buddy up until 40 was a hunter, but I can't stand to play with them these days. I also don't see very many in Outland, dunno what's up with that.

The thrill I get from downing a boss (even one as simple as this dude) makes me think maybe I will go for raiding once the char hits 70. It may be a terrible idea...should probably just leave the game. But we'll see.

Regardless....a good night! Tomorrow we're going to try Naz and his goddamn dragon again. (After I do a whole bunch of comic work, har.)

Oh, fail.

Tried doing Ramparts last night with a 60 shadow priest, 61 shammy, 64 warrior, and 2 affliction specced locks (one of them being me). We did okay on trash mobs, died a few times, but no total wipes. People weren't kidding when they said Outland instances will test your mettle; seems like you need a really solid tank and healer to do these smoothly. Crowd control is essential too, I was tossing CoR around like it was my job, charming extra mobs, trying to yank aggro off the healer when the MT was otherwise occupied. I wish there was a mage in the group, though. We couldn't down Omar the Unscarred. Too low levels, not enough DPS. Will be trying again at 61 and 62. The group was pretty fun, though and everybody tried their best. I like running with people who know how to tank, but aren't above pulling out their Blue Moth during the run.

I require mats that nobody farms anymore for my Dreadsteed quest, this whole quest line is going to be a bit of an ordeal. Unlike locks pre-BC, I will have the option of having level 70 friends help me out in Scholo and DM.


And now to bed.

DING

60. Forgot to take a screenshot, dinged on one of those massive Legionnaires north of Thrallmar. I'd be more excited if BC didn't steal my thunder and if I hadn't lost my favorite levelling buddy 15 levels back.


Regardless, hurray. Curse of Doom on everything.