Reflections From The Pond

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Lately, on the few occasions that I play and not are raiding with ze shaman, I have been mostly tidying up things that should have been done already.

Getting my gnome warlock her pretty spotted apricot-coloured mechanostrider - 2 more Champion’s Seal and it is hers.

Levelling Engineering and Mining on my gnome warrior -- she exhausted Howling Fjord’s Cobalt mines and then ventured carefully into the Storm Peaks to mine Saronite to get her those last five elusive skillups needed to learn to smelt Titanium for her shiny new goggles. Just too bad her old ones look better.

And of course I’m levelling my darling rogue Tessye. She is currently level 74 and has been merrily ambling her way through Dragonblight.

I don’t have that much of a clue anymore on how to play a rogue very good, but somehow playing her feels a bit like slipping into a  comfy old shirt and sweatpants after a busy day at work. It feels a bit like coming home.

And because I still use my old skills and macros, it takes a pretty long time to kill mobs and I don’t want to bring her into any dungeons where her dps output will be questioned. I like questing around on my own, stealthing up and sneaking past mobs, sapping them, pickpocketing them, vanish into thin air after I’ve looted what I want.

Anyways, her questing had finally brought her to the Wrathgate and eventually to Undercity where she was to assist King Varian to bring Apothecary Putress to justice.

The king is standing outside the UC sewer exit and he stays there for five minutes after you have told him you are ready to go. So I stand around and wait for him to get moving, alt-tabbing out a lot to pass the time, before the party gets started and we move into the sewers, the king and his men killing Scourge and me mostly standing around.

A bit into the sewers I see there is this night elf hunter who have joined the party. The hunter participates in the fight, assisting the king. I don’t.

We move along, me still alt-tabbing out during the fights. I have been through this fight five times before, there is nothing I can do to affect the outcome of it.

In Putress’ hideout the hunter tells me “Don’t strain yourself”. I think I do kill one of the little slimes who have started to attack me, otherwise I watch the fight from atop a book case, and when the fight is over the hunter pats me a lot.

As the king run after Thrall I ask “Show’s over?” and he replies “Not thanks to you, but what would one expect from a former twink”.

Somehow, this struck me as hilarious. Me, a former twink? Why would anyone think my rogue is a former twink?

She is a rogue -- but not all rogues have been twinks.

She actually has an old pvp title on display, she is Sergeant Major Tessye. Sergeant Major was rank 5 out of 14 possible in the old pre-TBC pvp honor system.

That system was painful and you needed to play insanely much to get the higher ranks, and just as much to keep your title as the honor you had earned decayed away over time. BUT, just prior to the release of TBC the honor system was changed so that the honor did not decay away so you could get those higher ranks (and their associated rewards of course) rather quickly without spending all day and night in front of the computer. So, no, not all players with pvp titles are twinks.

She doesn’t even have any pvp gear equipped -- she has some Karazhan raid gear from the one time she was there at lvl 70 when a couple of lvl 8o friends wanted to grind rep, and she has the lvl 70 epic leatherworking set that she made herself.

But perhaps I am thinking too narrow? To me, a twink is strictly pvp oriented, but perhaps the concept has widened a bit and includes all sorts of toons that you dress up extensively and expensively?

She still doesn’t fit the bill, nothing she is wearing has been extensively expensive. Maybe I just don’t get it.

Anyways, as I asked the hunter “You think I used to be a twink?” he replied “I don’t really give a flying toss about what you are or what you were -- but Blizz should not give the achievement to people who just stand around with their thumb up their arse.”

I tell him “Interesting to hear your opinion on this”, to which he replies “I bet…” and as we finish the quest he emotes looking down upon me with pity and whispers “I hope you enjoyed the “show”".

Somehow the entire conversation left me feeling a bit sad and confused.

The hunter was obviously rather upset with me for not engaging in the fight, but he just jumped to conclusions about me and how I was playing my game and why.

My standing and watching did nothing to affect his game in a bad way. I didn’t steal his mobs, I did not slow his gameplay down, I did not hinder him getting the quest done.

Yet he felt it was ok to be rude and sarcastic to me and call me names, just because I did not play the game the way he did. Like he had the manual on How To Do It and I was Doin’ It Wrong.

I whispered back “I don’t understand what your problem is, I let you play your way without being rude to you.”

I got no reply, but then, I didn’t expect any.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that so many people seem to always interpret things for the worst, how they jump to conclusions and have no patience and understanding whatsoever for things and people that are not themselves. I can only hope they will learn to take themselves less seriously and look at life from the bright side someday.

When you screenshot something in WoW the shot gets saved in your Screenshot Folder, and it gets an auto-generated name.

The name will have the prefix WoWScrnShot followed by the date it was taken and a six-digit number, possibly denoting the exact time of the shooting.

In your Screenshot Folder, all your screenshots will be handily placed in order, so you can easily find them when you want to go back and reminisce about the good old days, right?

Wrong.

Well, right in so far that they are placed in order, but wrong wrong wrong in that you can easily find them, because you can’t!

You see, the date stamp of the screenshot is not the convenient year-month-day-variety every sane person uses, but some ancient month-day-year variety. This means that your last shots will not be last in the file list but squished in somewhere at the residing place of the current month. You browse shots from January 2009 when you suddenly find yourself looking at Festergut kill shots from a week ago, and then you are back in February 2009. Aargh!

My folder currently have 460 shots from the last year and it is a pain to look through to find a particular one because of this inane filing system. How hard can it be to make sure images are saved in a logical, chronological order? Wake up and smell the 10’s please!

Oh, and you think 460 shots are a lot? It would have been at least 2000 more but last time my laptop kicked the bucket the workshop decided that formatting the hard drive would help resurrect it and promptly wiped all my screenies :-(

Do you ever get the feeling when you open your closet door and look at all your clothes stuffed in there that you have nothing to wear? Or when you are out shopping that you find nothing at all you would like to wear – a whole bloody city full of nothing but bloody clothes boutiques and there is not one bloody piece of garb that you find interesting enough to buy?

Happens to me a lot. My clothes – the ones I do manage to buy – are nice, good-looking and comfortable, yet when I stand there in my dressing room in my underwear looking at them I often find nothing in there I really want to put on, and I generally hate going shopping. Total outfit paralysis.

Usually ends up with me grabbing something I know I will find comfortable wearing, which explains why I am always dressed the same and the hot little dresses I for some reason keeps buying usually languishes away at the back of the closet.

It’s like that for me in WoW as well sometimes.

My shammy has her bags crammed full of shiny gear and yet she usually wears the same stuff. She has a lot of jewellery but same thing applies here, she usually wears the same necklace and rings.

She is now standing before the Triumphant Vendor with some brand new Crusade Trophys burning in her purse and she has total outfit paralysis.

I was going to replace her helm and shoulders since they are ilvl 232, but Elitist Jerks with their Best in Slot list seems to find that the Elemental helm and shoulders of the t9 are actually much better for a resto shaman than the resto ones, while looking a bit further ahead it seems the Resto head and shoulders of the t10 is the ones to go for and EJ suggest wearing the tunic and the gloves of the t9.

So what should I get? I don’t want to spend a lot of gems and enchants on gear I will replace real soon, and I don’t want to miss out on the t9 2-set bonus. And I don’t want to spend too much dkp on buying the t9 tokens now that the t10 marks are in stock. So t9 ilvl 245 helm and shoulders? Tunic and gloves? I already have very nive ilvl 245 tunic and gloves  (althought not tier stuff) and which gear will actually last me the longest if I should lose the set bonus?

And – most importantly – will I look fat in it?

Ze warlock has similar problems.

She has gathered up a nice bunch of Triumph emblems but there is actually nothing in the shop she wants to wear. Or rather, she is very attached to her current gear since it is things that has dropped for her in raids with her friends and it has a lot of sentimental value to her. Nothing like winning a roll and picking up a lovely silk dress from the innards of a dead mob to form a real bond with your gear.

Also, the fact that the Iceshear mantle and Raiments of the Corrupted looks absolutely hawt on a dark-haired green-eyed gnome while the t9 looks, well, let’s just say that sloping shoulders starting at your ears does not look good on anyone, this fact does not make her very inclined to buy them.

The t9 set bonus, the increased damage of her pets, is very alluring though since she is a real warlock and a real warlock uses pets, so I guess she will eventually overcome her dithering and buy the legs and gloves.

Anyways, who said it was easy to gear up with this new badge system?!?

When it is only slightly epic? Not-quite-epic? Epic light?

I’ve always thought epic was, you know, epic. I hear that word and my head fills with images of grandeur and awesomeness, of fantastic tales of love and terror and marvellous adventures affecting a whole world. Epicness, simple as that.

In WoW and according to Blizzard, Epic denotes a certain level of item rarity.

You can find poor items all over, common ones too, uncommon items are (surprise!) slightly less common than common ones, rare items are rare, epic items are rarer and legendary items are rarest of them all.

After having played this game for some three years I am still rooted in the belief that epic actually is epic, that once I get an epic item I need never look further, I can sit back and relax and treasure my own, my beloved, my preciousss rings with matching preciousss jewellery and assssorted garments.

I guess my never getting past tier 4 raiding in TBC can partially explain this, I never actually got the chance to regularly replace my epic items because the ones I wore were the absolute top of the line for me, the best that I could attain. Sure, I had my share of badge gear as well but most of what I was wearing actually dropped for me from some boss or other and I had wrested it from a still-warm dead body after having made a lucky roll. In a very Tam-like way.

Enter WotLK.

I actually wore most of my sssweet and preciousss things until level 80. I still wear some of them, my durids tank rings for example, her well-earned Violet Signet and her Shermanar Great-Ring, both from Karazhan.

Now that is epic to me. Those things were so good, so awesome, so grand and wonderful that I did not need to replace them during all my Northrend adventures while levelling, and yet they were only from the first tier of raiding in TBC.

I could totally live with the fact that the Northrend level 80 epics would be even more grand and awesome than my level 70 epics and that I had to replace my well-worn gear when I hit 80 and started adventuring with the big boys and girls. I mean, it’s a whole whopping ten levels difference.

But then I realised that the level 80 epics I started accruing during my Naxx10 runs and through various crafting friends and reputation aquiantances, they were not really epics at all. They were slightly less than epic, apparently.

Even Blizzard themselves say so as the Naxx10 gear and similar does not count as epics in the (infamous) Epic achievement. Apparently, the real epic gear is being handed out in Naxx25 or in raiding instances a tad more respectable than Naxx10.

It seems that although all epics are epic, some epics are more epic than others.