In-Game Character Relationships and Quasi-RP

I don't play on an RP server and the notion has always appealed to me. Yet, when I tired rolling a toon on a serious RP server once I failed miserably at it. Like a lot of players I do make up backgrounds and personas for my characters as I find it helps me get to know and understand my characters better and I feel it helps me play them better. If you know the character's M.O., then you understand why you play them the way you do. This quasi-RP as I call it had lead to some interesting things as I've gotten to know Mirax and she helps me understand my own motives.

I've struggled to make a background for her, though thankfully Blizzard did that already as she's a Draenei and crash landing in Azuremyst Isle was one of the most profound experiences I had when I first started playing WoW. The land was breathtakingly gorgeous and the environment was so surreal that I was captivated as soon as I got away form the level 6 striders that kept killing me after I had deleted my hearthstone. That experience of running around Azuremyst and later Bloodmyst Isles shaped who Mirax is and why she does the things she does. There have been few in-game experiences that have affected me like this and most of the subsequent ones all had to do with a single player, Mirax's partner in most crimes: Mälik.

Like Mirax, Mälik crash landed on the Exodar and took in everything that Azeroth had to offer. Since sometime during Wrath, after Ulduar was no longer top raiding tier, Mir and Mal have been stomping it up all over Azeroth and Outland. We got out Hero of the Zandalar Tribe together, helped each other finish quests and get dungeon achievements. And we've done a bit of play RP together. I could argue that Mälik is Mirax's in-game soulmate as the nature of our RP does tend to devolve into more adult themes and thankfully I'm female in real life and Mälik is male. Makes for a bit less on the awkward side, except I'm not sure Mal considers Mir his in-game partner the way I do.

The only issue with a relationship like ours is how our situations outside of game affect the in-game one. When we do get into the RP part, we are projecting part of ourselves onto out characters and that's the sticky part. How does one deal with the fact that their in-game mate/date/lover/etc deal with the fact that they have a girlfriend outside of game and how does that affect their gameplay with you? Yes, WoW and everything that happens in the digital world of Azeroth is just a game, but the people and personalities are real. I actually met up with Mälik in real life this year and he is exactly the same person in the real world as he is over the Ventrillo server. So it makes you wonder what's going on in a person's offline life that makes them do the things they do online and how comfortable they are with the actions you take in-game regarding them.

Mälik and Mirax in a secluded room in Stormwind.

Drawing the Line on Guild Raid Performance

My guild has a BIG problem. Our players are constantly getting outshined by the PUGs we bring in to fill out our 10-man raiding team. Last week in the first official guild-sponsored Firelands run one of our 3 dps was constantly lower than the tanks on the meters and the undergeared PUG was outshining our fully geared out in Tier 11 enhancement shaman. Had our dps been pulling the numbers we needed them to we would have had Shannox down no questions asked. Many times we got him to 3% but then everyone started taking too much damage and the raid wiped or we were too slow on the dps and he hit enrange. At 3%.

Our officers, who coincidentally are our regular raiders, had an impromptu meeting after the raid to discuss the issue. Sadly the meeting didn't result in much except our low dpsers saying their dps was low "because we're melee and have to run around a lot." This kinda pissed me off because the main spec on my paladin is retribution and earlier in the day I had been pulling 14k dps without thinking about while running around like an idiot trying to heal the tank while do ranged dps in a ZG because the healer and dps kept dying. And I'm just as geared as the enhancement shaman. Hell my under geared enhancement shaman pulls the same dps as the other raider. Back to the issue at hand, being melee dps isn't a good excuse for low dps in a raid. I think I was so pissed off about the comment because I had been asked to heal for that raid due to the fact that we have too much melee dps and the only other melee with a heal offspec is the guild lead who pulls the trump card. And this issue has come up before--forcing one of the best dps in guild to go heals.

So last night a few of the officers were talking about the raid dps issue once again since our previous meeting had not produced anything other than excuses. We realized that our guild is in the EXACT same position it was in when Trial of the Crusader came out--our guild dps and overall player performance is lacking and Zeffra and Mohrrgun are not in the picture currently--and the guild needs a gimmick to re-invigorate it. (Zeff and Moh are two of the guild founders who happen to be the glue that holds us together.) And just like when TotC came out we decided that we are going to start running 25-man PUG raids on Saturdays that are not guild sponsored and thus we are not obliged to take under-performing guild members along with us. This also means that any PUG we bring in has to pull at least 15k dps or they will be kicked from group. Granted leading 25-man raids makes out main tank and primary raid leader go batty, but he was the one who suggested it. However, unlike TotC he's not running the 25-mans on his own. He has both myself and his co-raid lead to help with group formation and raid execution.

I will always hold out hope that our guild can regain the glory days of our 10-man Ulduar raid team that made our guild 9th on server for 10-man progression. Maybe this is what's needed. Maybe we need to stop walking on eggshells around guild members feelings and be straight up asses about the raid performance. Maybe we should just start our own new guild or go join another. But I don't want to leave a guild I have worked so hard to make a great place to play WoW that it is.

Time for a Main Spec Change?

I'm seriously considering changing my paladin's main spec from retribution to holy. Don't get wrong, I love ret and am one of the few people in game who can still play it well. (There is a perceived notion that ret pallies are "broken" and unplayable by all the former facerollers.) I've already gotten her her up to honored with the Avengers of Hyjal, have her decked out in her new belt and cloak and managed to get my hands on the Apparatus of Khaz'goroth on the first night of release. I'm starting off on a great foot as a raiding ret paladin in 4.2. Yet, I keep getting asked to heal and well, my healing set isn't too shabby either plus I'm not totally failing at it.

I always considered my paladin to not be the greatest healer due to the fact that I didn't really play a holy pally the way you were intended to. Until now. With the changes to holy pallies that came out with 4.2, holy paladins now play the way I play mine. Thus I'm not failing as badly as I could. that and it makes playing a holy pally that much more fun. I have a tough decision ahead of me.

I think my decision to switch up the main spec on Mirax is going to come down to the fight mechanics of the Firelands itself--how much melee dps do we need? My guild currently has only a handful of active raidiers which include a feral druid tank, a rogue, an enhancment shaman, a restoration druid, occasionally an elemental shaman and me the ret paladin. With this makeup I've gotten stuck healing more often than not when we pug out to fill the spots of our 10 man raids. I don't mind too much because I'd rather be playing my off-spec than sitting the raid out. Both of the shaman have resto as their offspec although the enhancement shaman has been talking about picking up elemental as an offspec to help with our low amount of ranged dps. Firelands should be interesting in terms of our raid group make-up and the changes to it that are coming.

The Law of Alts

First off this post has nothing to do with Paladins. Just getting it out there.

As Patch 4.2 started looming closer and now that it's hit, I've been working on my resto shaman to get her up to snuff and do a bit more raiding on her than I did during the previous tier of raiding content. This is a similar pattern to the days of Wrath for me as I focused only on the paladin until she was BiS geared out for non-heroic raid content. Well, that's starting to happen again, although this time I didn't have to get both the paladin and Shaman up to max level from scratch so the whole process is going faster. That and some days I really feel like playing a badass resto shaman as opposed to a face rolling ret paladin.

So in an effort to not get burnt out on Mirax, I took Rhysati to a Bastion of Twilight run today. Her tier shoulders did drop, but I lost on them to a hunter. However, Rhys did get an upgrade for her enhancement set in the form of a new helm. (Which I felt really bad because our guild's main enhancement shaman was there on his prot pally and needed the helm for his main toon.) I feel like my shaman is stuck in the law of alts, but a twisted version as the only raid drops she's gotten in Cataclysm so far have both been for her off-spec. So the main sees gear for the alt and the alt only sees gear for the wrong spec. I love it. Someday I'll be a tiered out shaman again. Blizz just needs to leave a raiding tier in place for a full year so everyone gets bored of it and starts gearing out their alts.

It's Patch Day! Now What?

As I write, Patch 4.2 is going live on servers and I along with everyone else is patiently waiting for the servers to come back up so we can all go check out the new quest hub. The main issue with patch day is what the hell do you do while you're waiting for servers to come back up? I've already read up about the patch on both WoW Insider and MMO-Champion. I even posted to my guild's website with places for guildies to read up about the patch. Then being that there was still three and a half hours left until the scheduled time for the realms to come back up I went grocery shopping which sadly only took me an hour. So now I still have time to kill while waiting.

I think it's the aniticipation of new content that has me bated and dying to jump on and play. I know I'm going to play the new content and probably get burnt out on it quickly, but I still want to play it.

Bittersweet Victory

Yesterday the main tank in my guild ran an ICC 25 doing achievement for the mount as well as to get us our Kingslayer 25 so we can go do a Light of Dawn run next week. However, a a big part of his motivation for doing these runs is to get me my Shadowmourne and our guild the 'We Are Legendary' achievement. For the most part everything went great during the run. We cleared everything, wipes were only caused by people screwing up achievements and thus wipes had to be called. The only downside really to the whole night was me and my silly quest. I'm still on the infusions portion of the questline and am the person in our guild who is farthest along. (We never downed Putricide 25 during ICC's heyday so I could never progress with them until a post-Cataclysm ICC 25 run.) I had already done my plauge infusion a few months ago and thus was on Blood Queen. Everyone held back dps so I could be the first one bitten and so that I could get all three bites in and then we killed her. To may dismay, my quest wasn't complete.

I had read up on the quests months if not a year or more ago when it was looking like we were gonna push for the orange and before the raid lockout was shared between 10 man and 25 man. Due to how long it had been since I had read up on the quest I didn't realize that the buff I needed I got by standing infront of the BQ with the tanks. I also don't play a tank so I didn't even know what the extra debuff they get was callled. So to my dismay I have to do it all again next week when we do heroic mode and have to do the Sindragosa one on heroic as well. Ugh. I feel like such an idiot.

Priestly Ways

I have been having a ton of fun playing on my Level 72 BC dugeon twink Priest, Elscol. She's done Sunwell more than all of my Level 85s combined. She's almost to revered already with the Ashtounge Deathsworn. She has almost as many hit points as the tanks she heals if not more than they have. All in all, she is a little badass and I love playing on her to death. This being said, it sometimes makes me sad that I level capped her and can't (well won't) finish leveling her to 85. Thus I want to make a new priest and level them all the way to 85.

A couple things make the possibility of a new priest a little silly if not hard to do. First off, I have ten characters on my server so I don't have any open slots for a new one. I don't really want to get rid of a character because I have one of each class and I think that's kinda cool. Except I don't play most of them. I think I really only seriously play the Paladin, Shaman and existing Priest at the moment. The Druid and Warlock also get a bit of love, just not as much. The hunter is up at 65 so I probably won't do anything with her and the Level 61 Death Knight is slated to become my farm-bot as soon as I get around to leveling her so that the Paladin can pick up a profession that's a little more beneficial than mining (I don't tank on Mirax so the extra stamina is useless.) My Rogue is my only Worgen and as the newest to the bunch she's not gonna get deleted. Plus if I ever go to level Mirax's Ravenholdt rep I'm gonna need a toon that can pick-pocket. Periodically I get curious about playing a Warrior and I'll admit Victory Rush and quest grinding go hand in hand. Plus Ayrl is supposed to be leveling with Mälik's Warrior, Grizz. This only leaves the Mage, who coincidentally is my only Horde character on this server. Mälik moved his Horde Druid, Moocat, to a different server where we all had rolled Horde alts. I broke up with my boyfriend and his unplayed Troll Rogue is the only character still left in the guild we have on the Horde side. But I don't just want to delete the Mage. I spent way too much gold on her giving in to my desire to know every single pattern that I can on each of my crafting toons. That and she has a ton of patterns in her bank and bags as well as some nice gear that I have no way of transferring to a different character. So I think I'm gonna follow Mälik and transfer her over to our Horde server.

That was the first issues with a new Priest.

The second issue is that I didn't always love playing Elscol. When I first rolled her she was a Dwarf named Escol, though still a Priest, and I had no issues playing her as long as I didn't have to kill things. Oh god, just leveling to 20 was painful. I first started playing her when my ex, his friend and I all decided to start toons together. They both rolled Gnomes and myself a Dwarf. The ex was a Warrior tank and the friend was a Warlock. We had a perfect little leveling party. But after we initially started them all we never played them again together. The friend eventually leveled his lock and the ex eventually deleted his warrior, and Escol was left sitting there gathering dust. I tried to level her several times, always to the same painful conclusion. Then, Mälik rolled a Paladin tank and suddenly I had a buddy to go run Gnomergan with. Except he made fun of how ugly Escol was and a quick trip to the Battle.net site later she was reborn as Elscol, the Human Priest, whose name was finally spelt right. Then the ex and his friend rolled Dwarf Shaman and Duel Spec was lowered to Level 30 and only 10 gold and Elscol now had a Shadow spec for dealing damage. However, this resurgence was short lived as Cataclysm was released and leveling the Paladin, Shaman and Druid from 80 to 85 became more of the priority. However, the mystique of the Priest remained as an alluring thought and once that was accomplished and Mirax was geared for raiding I picked up healing on Elscol again and the rest is history.

So yeah, I'm not sure I want to lose my only Mage on the server and I'm not sure I want to relive the pain of being a low-level Priest. Heck, I'm not even sure what race I would be. My guild needs a Gnome Priest for our Stay Classy achievement, but I can't stand being that low to the ground. I like the spirit bonus that humans get which as a raiding toon will be quite handy. However, I have a human priest already and I don't like having too many characters of the same race. Currently I have 3 Humans, 3 Draenei, 2 Night Elves, a Worgen and a Blood Elf. Also, being a girl I like my characters to look hot or at least pretty. So I have some things to think about. But in the mean time I think I'm going to transfer that Mage.