Identity

Blog Azeroth – Shared Topic for the week of August 1st, 2011
Shared Topic Idea: Identity and Affiliations

How does your character define themself? What part of their identity is most important to their personality and self-presentation?

In meatspace, we have so many affiliations, it’s anyone’s guess whether we consider ourselves a tuba player first, or a student, a Gators fan, a New Yorker, a mother, a nerd, a liberal. Our identities are comprised of so many different aspects of life that it’s hard to tell which parts different people will choose to define themselves.

In game, there are less game-related ways to identify. You can identify as:

your class – your spec
your race – a particular subgroup (Mag’har, Wildhammer)
your faction – a faction other than Horde/Alliance

– Akabeko

Aliera is in many ways a reflection of myself. I imbue her with my drive to collect and complete, my aspirations for conquest, my quiet love of crafting and creating… lots of c-words. As Akabeko so sagely indicated, it is difficult to say just by looking at someone which particular facet they call their core.

Outside of the game world, I am a gamer, a boyfriend, grandson, brother, uncle, a baker, a tennis player, a mathematician, a brand new engineer-in-training, all in parts. But behind all of it, the piece that makes me me, the core that centers my essence is music. I am at all times and in all things a musician.

In this particular way, Aliera does not have much of a chance at mirroring my real-world self. Music is not a part of the game in a way that translates. I cannot run into Orgrimmar, head to the bardic vendor and pick up a lute in order to train the minstrelsy profession (though I wish I could!). I cannot, during a boss battle, pull out a simple recorder and play a tune to encourage my party (or drive them to such anger that they destroy our foes if only to attack me afterward).

So Aliera takes other parts of my being in greater part. My love of stories and adventures is high on the list. I completed Loremaster prior to Cataclysm and have it in mind to go through again in the first few months of the autumn this year.

Along the way, I have displayed my love of collecting. Items, pets, mounts, and reputations are all fair game when I play. 62 little followers and 97 bigger ones (ride-able ones) tag along on my journeys. I have collected 370-some patterns for Tailoring and have every possible recipe for Inscription. 42 organizations, groups, and species hold me in the highest regard. I have united disparate and warring groups and honored all manner of festival and holiday. There are 31 special titles associated with my name and I have championed 29 causes by displaying their banner proudly across my chest.

Through all of this, however, Aliera has maintained a sure and defined core much like my real self. Aliera is, in all things and times, devoted to and empowered by the art of affliction.

I return to this story often when thinking about Aliera, so I am certainly repeating myself, but back when Aliera first shimmered into existence in Eversong I knew absolutely nothing about what I was getting into. My friend hooked me on the game and helped my pick out a class by giving brief descriptions.

Warlock immediately grabbed me. And not just any warlock, but Affliction. I was entranced by instant-cast DOTs and shadow, by sucking the life out of my enemies to empower myself, by enslaving demons to be my deathly companions. Over the past few years I have dabbled in Demonology and Destruction, but never really cared for the playstyle of either. To be perfectly honest, I felt a little dirty playing as Destruction, like I was betraying myself in some way.

And so, Aff has been the core of my Warlockian identity since the start. In boom or bust, Haunt remains my top talent and Sruuzhem the felpup has stayed faithfully at my side. After Cataclysm passes by and the next expansion looms, so long as shadow and fel has a place in the Warlock community I will check the box labelled Affliction.

Meaty

Blog Azeroth – Shared Topic for the week of July 25th, 2011
Shared Topic Idea: Making a WoW Cooking Recipe IRL

Have you ever attempted a WoW cooking recipe IRL? Have you found someone else’s recipe and tried to follow it? There have been folks that have used their own Unidentified Cooking Utensils to produced recipes and some have worked better than others. Share yours! Or perhaps you can follow a recipe. but not create one and there is this fascinating recipe that you need created for you by someone with the right skills? The reverse might also be a consideration: What IRL foods are missing in Azeroth?

– Kallixta

*sounds of clicking keyboard* Let’s see. Ok, food this week. Off to Wowhead for some inspiration. *clickity click* Hmmm, that looks pretty tasty… that too. Wait a second. *click clack* Oh dear. I think I need to lie down.

15 minutes later

Alright so my introduction was a bit dramatic. I did discover something interesting about World of Warcraft from this shared topic though. WoW has a grand total of about 200 recipes (some of which are Alliance/Horde overlaps). Assuming the Alliance and Horde recipes are slightly different due to local ingredients, an Azerothian cook could have each saved in their compendium for just the right occasions. Now, out of those couple hundred recipes, some take more ingredients than others, some require exotic alcohols, and some even require elemental substances. But almost every single one requires meat.

Looking back at my history with cooking (Aliera has gathered nearly every single one of these recipes and lacks only those available to Alliance from quests), I am sure that hundreds of stacks of meat have been turned into tasty, grilled meals. And, being a strongly omnivorous individual in the mortal world outside Azeroth, I am just fine with depictions of meaty goodness in my game.

But there is a gotcha. For the past eight months I have been sharing my life with a wonderful girl who has the unfortunate situation of being vegan by necessity (she has been vegetarian for the majority of her life and recently has developed issues with milk making her quite ill). As a result, my eating habits have changed somewhat.

Now I am fortunate that she understands my love of the fleshy bits of animals and how good they taste when pan fried so I am able to continue eating meat. However, we do cook together and so I am much more conscious of the ingredients entering our food than in previous years.

So in looking through the list on Wowhead, I was somewhat startled by the obvious truth that Azerothians love their meat. I decided to look through the list and pull out all the recipes that I could make with my lady that we could share together.

There are nine of them, two of which are drinks, another three are dessert items, and of the remaining four, three are seasonal items and only last for short periods of time (no preservatives!). There is one main dish that serves as the year-round go-to for Azeroth’s vegan population. Runn Tum Tuber Surprise.

I have a knack for putting up with repetition. Filing papers doesn’t bother me, I am happy to slap stamps and labels on envelopes, and eating the same thing often is no big deal. But every meal of every day is just too much. So it seems I have found a facet of the game that Blizzard could expand upon. Please, Blizz, for those of us who are unable to eat meats and dairies due to dietary restrictions, can we get a main course salad or a pasta with tomato sauce? Anything but more tubers.

(As an aside, my girl and I are still thinking about opening up a little blog regarding our cooking and finding or making recipes that are vegan or vegetarian yet still appeal to meat and milk lovers. When that gets off the ground, a little segment on creating Azerothian delights might not be out of the question…)

Game Balance

Azeroth – Shared Topic for the week of July 18th, 2011
Shared Topic Idea: Game Balance

Ghostcrawler recently said that, in his estimation, the game is the most balanced it’s ever been. Agree? Disagree? And if it’s the most balanced, does that mean it’s enjoyable for you at the moment — have there, in other words, been more enjoyable, if less balanced, moments in the past?

– Ringo Flinthammer

So I went back and reread Ghostcrawler’s discussion of game balance and the victories and defeats of Cataclysm’s design. If you don’t recall his words particularly well, you can go back and read it for yourself here.

The short version is that Blizzard has been happy with the feeling of uniqueness that each class and spec is getting from much nearer the start of the leveling process than before. Additionally, the talent trees have been streamlined pretty nicely with some good choices required, and a few talents being truly optional or play-style preference choices. Overall, the choice of class and spec is much less of an issue nowadays than before where dps, tanking, or healing differences might swing wildly between different spec-of-the-moments.

On the bad side, Ghostcrawler indicates a wish to continue to add more choice and clean up some of the clunkier talents that still remain. (I would also point at the couple of mastery effects that are still being radically redesigned.)

Personally, Cataclysm has been about exploring a new realm, messing around with my crafting empire, and making copious amounts of gold from leveling alts and playing a bit on the AH. When I have settled down to run heroics, I have been mostly pleased with my own performance, but still occasionally feel the sting of being slow on startup as Affliction (and nothing will make me change to Destruction… Nothing!).

Across my alts, I have an Unholy Death Knight, a Fire Mage, an Assassination Rogue, and a Retribution Paladin. As I leveled, I noted some irregularities in power between them in certain situations, but overall was pleased with the relative powers that I had. None of the alts felt as good as my Warlock, but I chalk that up to experience and familiarity.

If I were asked to jump into a raiding guild and learn to tank as a Blood DK, or start healing as a Holy Pally, I feel like it would not take much time to gear myself and get running at speed. Any of my alts could easily morph into a main and hit up the dps charts and I would guess that I could manage approximately as well with any of them.

I tend to agree with Mr. Street. Cataclysm has brought monumental destruction to the face of Azeroth, and some wonderful reconstruction in the underpinning mechanics that make the game fun. There are still things that need some work, but the makeovers have made a difference. The critical success from my end is that although I feel I could manage equally well with a Paladin, Warlock, Mage or Rogue, each feels different for me.

My Paladin definitely gives me the feeling of powerful plate brick, doling out damage and taking some serious punishment in turn. My Rogue feels like a rocket, ready to burst in a blaze of glory and then vanish in the wind. The DK exudes vile power and the disease play stands out against the other melees I just mentioned. The Warlock and Mage have their own rotations and priorities and give unique look-and-feels.

Another little point before I wrap up. I still glance through most of the patch notes as they come out just to have a passing familiarity with the things going on in the game. I recall the myriad balance tweaks that came out during Wrath and I feel like they are coming fewer and further between these days. That tells me that Blizzard is doing less cranking on the knobs controlling class damage and balance. Less cranking means less need means the numbers from top to bottom are looking more even. That spells balance to me.

As I continue to push toward my goal of max level on each class, I will continue to explore the class balance issue up close and personal. Granted, most of my experience is in the leveling process and not in the raiding scene, but it might not be too long before I start to hit that content too. Maybe my eyes will be opened and my innocence shattered as the harsh realities of class imbalance become apparent. Maybe things are actually as good as they look. I really hope it is the latter. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

These Tangled Webs

Well, it seems that Ophelie over at The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon, who moderates the Blog Azeroth shared topic selection has at last settled somewhat into a new place and new job (grats!). I wish her the very best of luck. Since she has been traveling and internet-less for a little while, there was a bit of a lag in scheduling topics. That has now been resolved through mid August or so, but this week is getting a bye. I might get ambitious and chitter about something tomorrow evening, but look for a renewed sense of purpose next Tuesday morning. Have a lovely weekend everyone!

WoW Update!

I’m changing my mind this week and changing up the schedule. Blog Azeroth still has not solidified the schedule of topics for the next few weeks (it’s ok, we all get busy!), so today you get a little off-the-cuff Scribe and hopefully a shared topic will be scheduled for later in the week.

Instead, I’m going to just ramble a bit and give a bit of an update on where I am in my game and what has been happening lately. Real life has been a bit rambunctious the past few weeks with holidays (scheduled and impromptu) as well as some hefty work-related things. As a result, my game time has been a bit more limited than I would like, although I have managed to squirrel away time enough to stay on top of my Firelands daily runs.

And, on that topic, let me say that I chose the Shadow Wardens first. Why? Because of the name. Shadow Warden is a much more intimidating moniker than Druid of the Talon (at least for me). Furthermore, they look cool, albeit a touch strange in the face area. Anywho, those dailies are going well, the Firelands are still rockin’ it, and I am getting sucked into the game at least a little bit each day.

On the more serious WoW side, a friend of mine has been murmuring the word ‘raid’ in my ear. He has made some sort of connection with a larger guild that needs a few bodies and has thrown out the possibility of dragging me along. With my strange real-world schedule for the next few months I am not sure whether or not I am going to commit to Tuesday/Saturday raid nights. If you want, you can pipe up with your opinion or encouragement one way or the other in a comment.

Meanwhile, the other evening I hit a fairly notable milestone in my casual play: my fifth character reached 85! Where Aliera, Kieron, Sethra, and Gorynel have gone before, so now has travelled Linict the Rogue. I have been feverishly putting time in with Linict, partially to get him finished up and off my to-do list and partially because I had a distinct lack of Skinning and Leatherworking at max level. The only thing between me and profession victory is my 73 Shaman and Engineering/Blacksmithing.

But setting aside the professions, I have now achieved half of a long-term goal that I set for myself nearly the instant I started playing WoW. One of each class at max level is my ultimate intent sometime down the road. I want to be at least basically conversant in each class so that I can fully understand and participate in the various communities in and around Warcraft. 5/10 after two and a half years is pretty good in my book. Here’s to the next two and a half.

I also have been spending a (not nearly large enough) bit of time with my writing for this very location. As I was looking back last week, I noticed my posts about Insane in the Membrane. I also noticed that it has been a long, long time since I looked at that monstrosity. A year ago, I was frantically at work on the project and had not yet started to write about it or anything else. My goodness how a year can change you. I am definitely going to get my butt back in gear on getting the Insane title though.

Speaking of titles, I did manage to hook my way up to 40 exalted reputations with Aliera, so I am now Aliera the Exalted. (Boy I really am rambling fast today. I was quite the Chatty Cathy this evening after getting home from rehearsal…)

Long story short, I am still around, still kickin’ it, still travelling the wide world of Azeroth. And I had better get this ready to post and go to bed otherwise I will be sleeping through my alarm. Sweet dreams!