Ideale sat at the end of the dock at Moa'ki Harbor, idly scratching Cinnamon behind his ears as he purred. So much had happened in the war against the Scourge the past few months, but a broken arm had taken her out of commission for weeks just days after she arrived in Northrend. Now she was stuck cleaning up little messes while others spent their time on the front lines.
"What's wrong, hunter?" One of the Kalu'ak guards took a seat next to her.
"I don't feel particularly useful. I came here to fight the Scourge, but it seems like all I've done is break mammoth traps, retrieve crab traps, play matchmaker to sea cows, pick flowers. Not that those things aren't important," she said hastily, "except maybe the flower thing, but they aren't what I came here to do."
"You came to cover yourself with glory? Be a hero?" he asked with a slight smile. Or she thought it was a smile, anyway. Hard to tell with those tusks.
"No. But ..."
"Ah. Revenge." Ideale nodded, then shrugged. "Vengeance isn't a path one takes lightly, shaloshka."
"I know," she said. "But it's the path I chose, and this waiting is driving me mad."
"If that's really what you seek, then I suggest you ask the goblin for passage to Venomspite. But there's value in what you are doing here as well. The Kalu'ak are grateful for all of the help the Horde has given us."
Ideale stood, her cat following suit. "You're welcome." She hesitated for a moment, then forced a smile. "And thank you for the shelter for these past few days, and the advice." Moments later, she was flying over the guard, waving as she left the village.
Finally, she would get to fight the Scourge. Finally, she would get to do what she came here to do. And maybe she'd find some sign of her family. Ideale pushed the last thought away; it wouldn't do to get her hopes up.
Below, the guard shook his head. "That one's going to get herself into trouble. What's wrong with trapping crabs?"
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Haven't played
Too tired. Not sure why.
Going to log into the hunter now, but don't know how long I will last.
Alliance characters are on hold (or maybe retired?) due to BFF's new schedule not meshing with my old/current one. Not renewing Recruit-A-Second-Account until we figure out what we're doing. Poor Tshaya. Three servers and I still never play her.
I did, however, play lots of Arathi Basin on Saturday. Healed until I hit that point where I couldn't actually react anymore and had fun the whole time.
Next goal: Ideale to 77 so I can get Cold Weather Flying and tame a Spirit Kitty. And then hunter PVP. Oh, I've missed you, hunter PVP. Healer PVP is fun, but sometimes I want to kill people, and taking the lowbies for a whirl is just not as fun.
The end.
EPILOGUE: I really wish my guild were way less awesome sometimes. Because they are way too cool for me to even entertain the thought of transferring my mains to an Oceanic server, thus dashing all of my hopes of doing anything fun in the game. Like get an ugly, ugly warbear.
REVISED SEQUEL OF EPILOGUE: So now I'm organizing stuff for my nights off. And it scares me! More on this later.
Going to log into the hunter now, but don't know how long I will last.
Alliance characters are on hold (or maybe retired?) due to BFF's new schedule not meshing with my old/current one. Not renewing Recruit-A-Second-Account until we figure out what we're doing. Poor Tshaya. Three servers and I still never play her.
I did, however, play lots of Arathi Basin on Saturday. Healed until I hit that point where I couldn't actually react anymore and had fun the whole time.
Next goal: Ideale to 77 so I can get Cold Weather Flying and tame a Spirit Kitty. And then hunter PVP. Oh, I've missed you, hunter PVP. Healer PVP is fun, but sometimes I want to kill people, and taking the lowbies for a whirl is just not as fun.
The end.
EPILOGUE: I really wish my guild were way less awesome sometimes. Because they are way too cool for me to even entertain the thought of transferring my mains to an Oceanic server, thus dashing all of my hopes of doing anything fun in the game. Like get an ugly, ugly warbear.
REVISED SEQUEL OF EPILOGUE: So now I'm organizing stuff for my nights off. And it scares me! More on this later.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
My new favorite
I should make this an ongoing thing, because I have a "new favorite" in this game like every week.
Anyway, this one brings me back to when I first hopped into Arathi Basin on Ahami: I like to get a melee class on me, then just heal myself while my pocket rogue or DK destroys them as they focus all their fire on me. I'm not sure if it's because I switched out a couple of instance drops for pieces with resilience or if I'm just getting the hang of endgame PVP again, but I sat and healed myself through two warriors and a ret pally in AV last night — a RET PALLY — while the rogue I'd been focusing all my heals on wiped them out. Granted, the pally at least could not have been well-geared because I get two-shotted by the geared ones, but still.
Melee classes get tunnel vision too! And I love it. <3
I missed you, battlegrounds. I'll never leave you for PVE again!
Anyway, this one brings me back to when I first hopped into Arathi Basin on Ahami: I like to get a melee class on me, then just heal myself while my pocket rogue or DK destroys them as they focus all their fire on me. I'm not sure if it's because I switched out a couple of instance drops for pieces with resilience or if I'm just getting the hang of endgame PVP again, but I sat and healed myself through two warriors and a ret pally in AV last night — a RET PALLY — while the rogue I'd been focusing all my heals on wiped them out. Granted, the pally at least could not have been well-geared because I get two-shotted by the geared ones, but still.
Melee classes get tunnel vision too! And I love it. <3
I missed you, battlegrounds. I'll never leave you for PVE again!
Battleground rep by the numbers
So you're eyeing that shiny Conqueror or Justicar title for the battlegrounds, and you need rep. Chances are if you PVP at all, you're already Exalted or close with Frostwolf or Stormpike, and heck, that was easy, so gaining exalted with your respective Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin faction should be cake, right?
Yeah, not so much.
Because you get a little reputation for every enemy NPC killed in Alterac Valley, or a lot if you take out Balinda and Vann or Galv and Drek, and there are so many quests in AV, it's pretty easy to get Exalted before you can even complete some of the other achievements (in fact, while I'm not sure due to my head start on both my mains, I believe that if you do all the quests and kill at least Balinda or Galv every match, you could probably hit Exalted before you even get the Alterac Valley Veteran achievement).
Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch, however, have no NPCs, so you have to be at least partly successful to gain any reputation.
So here's an expanded version of the little guide I wrote for myself, since I am shooting for Conqueror on Ideale and maybe Ahami as well. At least it'll get me out of Alterac Valley for a bit!
Arathi Basin
Arathi Basin has one bonus that Warsong Gulch does not: quests. Completing and turning in the quests grants 500 reputation each. In addition, you gain 10 rep for every 200 resources gathered (or 10 for every 150 on battleground weekends). That's 100-130 rep per win, and the battles go much more quickly so even if you lose, you're not spending too much time futilely. If you do the available quests, you'll need to win 312-405 battles to hit Exalted. If you lose but still put in a good show in most of the battles, that's about 500-600 games played.
Ideale needs 367 wins at 100 rep per win, plus one quest.
Ahami needs 397 wins at 100 rep per win, plus all quests.
Game Plan: Run two matches per day, every day, on at least one toon.
Warsong Gulch
Warsong Gulch is definitely the harder of the two. WSG matches can go on for a fair amount of time, and even if you win, you only gain 105 rep per game (or 135 on WSG weekends). This means that if you only play on WSG weekends, you need 934 flag captures to reach Exalted; if you miss the weekends, you need 1200. Ouch. That's 312-405 games if you win every game.
Ideale needs 1144 flag captures.
Ahami needs 1181 flag captures.
Game Plan: Cry. Just kidding. Try and shoehorn in a win a day so I don't get stuck at Friendly or something horrible when I finish up AB.
Can you tell I sort of hate Warsong Gulch?
That's a lot of time in both battlegrounds, but I think I can do it. I really want the title for Ideale, which means my best bet may be doing as many of the two battlegrounds before she hits 80 as possible. Horde in the pre-level cap brackets in Nightfall tend to be those who actually enjoy PVP, thus we work together better and have a higher success rate. End-game drops down to a 50-50 proposition. I don't intend to stop questing or anything, but I could spend half an hour in the battlegrounds before heading off to quest easily.
Ahami is already 80 and since PVE healing kind of bores me, I've pretty much just been doing dailies. So I will ditch a couple dailies and hit the battlegrounds with her more often (she's just barely Revered in AV, too, so I can keep running that; Ideale is already Exalted with Frostwolf).
Ideas to Keep It From Sucking
- Take advantage of the battleground weekends. If it's AB or WSG weekend, ignore the other battlegrounds (even the daily, if your time is limited!) and cram as many games as you can in.
- Find friends to run with. Chances are there are others on your server going for the title (and other achievements) as well, and if nothing else you can commiserate between matches. Team up with them as much as possible if you work well together, and this has the added bonus of improving your success rate. I watched a five-man premade in Alterac Valley defend and recap all four towers against the 15 or so Alliance who slipped past our front lines today. A few folks got their Frostwolf Perfection achievement that match. Ran into a priest and mage in AB who defended the Lumber Mill alone the entire game without losing it once, despite groups of 5 or so Alliance heading up there every few minutes.
- Get guildmates involved. One of VeCo's Alliance PVPers got the Battlemaster title (world fifth, world first paladin) with the help of his two guilds and in-game friends. Many of them got a bunch of the PVP achievements in the course of helping him out, and they all said it was a lot more fun that way.
- Even if you don't find friends from your own realm, work as a team with whoever you end up with. If nothing else, the exercise in strategy will give you something to do. And if you get a cooperative group (you know, the kind who doesn't type insults and cursing in all-caps while trying to singlehandedly cap the stables), you might be able to work on some of the more difficult defense achievements. In fact, if you're on around the same time every day, you might start running into familiar faces; when Ahami was 59, I spent a couple of weeks in Alterac Valley with her before leveling for some reason (I forget why). Because I usually queue up between 1:30-4 a.m., I was running into the same group every day, from several different realms in the battlegroup, and we won about 95 percent of our matches because we had a strategy and just trusted each other to listen and respond when someone said, "We could use some more defense at Galv" or "We're short healers on offense."
- Work on the other achievements. Ignore the rep at first, and work on stuff like Disgracin' the Basin and Supreme Defender and, of course, the Veteran achievements you get for 100 wins. By the time you've exhausted those, you'll be much closer to your goal (hopefully, anyway!).
- Spend your Marks of Honor. I have no idea if they stack past 100 now, because every time I get close, I go shopping. Ideale has several tabards. Ahami just got herself the Frostwolf Howler (and another achievement!). You can get six mounts via Marks of Honor, the five faction mounts and your respective AV mount; work toward the Albino Drake. I'm going to turn in Marks for honor on both of them as well until they both have the blue PVP set and the off-set pieces, which could take a while since each piece is 50k-60k honor. These are goals that can be worked on a bit here and there, so (like with the achievements) you feel like you're accomplishing something.
- Don't push it. If you keep working toward it, it'll happen, but don't burn yourself out. Take time out for exploring, professions, RP, world PVP/Wintergrasp, heroics/raiding, arenas, or whatever else floats your boat. What's the point of having a fancy title if you burn yourself out on PVP or even the game getting it?
Yeah, not so much.
Because you get a little reputation for every enemy NPC killed in Alterac Valley, or a lot if you take out Balinda and Vann or Galv and Drek, and there are so many quests in AV, it's pretty easy to get Exalted before you can even complete some of the other achievements (in fact, while I'm not sure due to my head start on both my mains, I believe that if you do all the quests and kill at least Balinda or Galv every match, you could probably hit Exalted before you even get the Alterac Valley Veteran achievement).
Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch, however, have no NPCs, so you have to be at least partly successful to gain any reputation.
So here's an expanded version of the little guide I wrote for myself, since I am shooting for Conqueror on Ideale and maybe Ahami as well. At least it'll get me out of Alterac Valley for a bit!
Arathi Basin
Arathi Basin has one bonus that Warsong Gulch does not: quests. Completing and turning in the quests grants 500 reputation each. In addition, you gain 10 rep for every 200 resources gathered (or 10 for every 150 on battleground weekends). That's 100-130 rep per win, and the battles go much more quickly so even if you lose, you're not spending too much time futilely. If you do the available quests, you'll need to win 312-405 battles to hit Exalted. If you lose but still put in a good show in most of the battles, that's about 500-600 games played.
Ideale needs 367 wins at 100 rep per win, plus one quest.
Ahami needs 397 wins at 100 rep per win, plus all quests.
Game Plan: Run two matches per day, every day, on at least one toon.
Warsong Gulch
Warsong Gulch is definitely the harder of the two. WSG matches can go on for a fair amount of time, and even if you win, you only gain 105 rep per game (or 135 on WSG weekends). This means that if you only play on WSG weekends, you need 934 flag captures to reach Exalted; if you miss the weekends, you need 1200. Ouch. That's 312-405 games if you win every game.
Ideale needs 1144 flag captures.
Ahami needs 1181 flag captures.
Game Plan: Cry. Just kidding. Try and shoehorn in a win a day so I don't get stuck at Friendly or something horrible when I finish up AB.
Can you tell I sort of hate Warsong Gulch?
That's a lot of time in both battlegrounds, but I think I can do it. I really want the title for Ideale, which means my best bet may be doing as many of the two battlegrounds before she hits 80 as possible. Horde in the pre-level cap brackets in Nightfall tend to be those who actually enjoy PVP, thus we work together better and have a higher success rate. End-game drops down to a 50-50 proposition. I don't intend to stop questing or anything, but I could spend half an hour in the battlegrounds before heading off to quest easily.
Ahami is already 80 and since PVE healing kind of bores me, I've pretty much just been doing dailies. So I will ditch a couple dailies and hit the battlegrounds with her more often (she's just barely Revered in AV, too, so I can keep running that; Ideale is already Exalted with Frostwolf).
Ideas to Keep It From Sucking
- Take advantage of the battleground weekends. If it's AB or WSG weekend, ignore the other battlegrounds (even the daily, if your time is limited!) and cram as many games as you can in.
- Find friends to run with. Chances are there are others on your server going for the title (and other achievements) as well, and if nothing else you can commiserate between matches. Team up with them as much as possible if you work well together, and this has the added bonus of improving your success rate. I watched a five-man premade in Alterac Valley defend and recap all four towers against the 15 or so Alliance who slipped past our front lines today. A few folks got their Frostwolf Perfection achievement that match. Ran into a priest and mage in AB who defended the Lumber Mill alone the entire game without losing it once, despite groups of 5 or so Alliance heading up there every few minutes.
- Get guildmates involved. One of VeCo's Alliance PVPers got the Battlemaster title (world fifth, world first paladin) with the help of his two guilds and in-game friends. Many of them got a bunch of the PVP achievements in the course of helping him out, and they all said it was a lot more fun that way.
- Even if you don't find friends from your own realm, work as a team with whoever you end up with. If nothing else, the exercise in strategy will give you something to do. And if you get a cooperative group (you know, the kind who doesn't type insults and cursing in all-caps while trying to singlehandedly cap the stables), you might be able to work on some of the more difficult defense achievements. In fact, if you're on around the same time every day, you might start running into familiar faces; when Ahami was 59, I spent a couple of weeks in Alterac Valley with her before leveling for some reason (I forget why). Because I usually queue up between 1:30-4 a.m., I was running into the same group every day, from several different realms in the battlegroup, and we won about 95 percent of our matches because we had a strategy and just trusted each other to listen and respond when someone said, "We could use some more defense at Galv" or "We're short healers on offense."
- Work on the other achievements. Ignore the rep at first, and work on stuff like Disgracin' the Basin and Supreme Defender and, of course, the Veteran achievements you get for 100 wins. By the time you've exhausted those, you'll be much closer to your goal (hopefully, anyway!).
- Spend your Marks of Honor. I have no idea if they stack past 100 now, because every time I get close, I go shopping. Ideale has several tabards. Ahami just got herself the Frostwolf Howler (and another achievement!). You can get six mounts via Marks of Honor, the five faction mounts and your respective AV mount; work toward the Albino Drake. I'm going to turn in Marks for honor on both of them as well until they both have the blue PVP set and the off-set pieces, which could take a while since each piece is 50k-60k honor. These are goals that can be worked on a bit here and there, so (like with the achievements) you feel like you're accomplishing something.
- Don't push it. If you keep working toward it, it'll happen, but don't burn yourself out. Take time out for exploring, professions, RP, world PVP/Wintergrasp, heroics/raiding, arenas, or whatever else floats your boat. What's the point of having a fancy title if you burn yourself out on PVP or even the game getting it?
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Northrend in pictures
Ahami got all dressed up and made some new friends. She wants one of those icicled helms for herself, by the way.
Ideale's favorite part of the new Aspect of the Hawk: the ability to fly.
Ideale to the mammoth calf: "You're cute and all, but I'm more of a cat elf. Now shoo. Oh no, don't look at me like that."
Ideale's favorite part of the new Aspect of the Hawk: the ability to fly.
Ideale to the mammoth calf: "You're cute and all, but I'm more of a cat elf. Now shoo. Oh no, don't look at me like that."
Now what?
So a few minutes ago, a level 18 warrior whispers me and asks for 10g. Being a generous troll, I stole BRK's trick and said I'd give him 40g if he farmed me 99 Light Feathers.
"Great," he says, "I have over 100." And I get a group invite.
So I gave him his 40g, and now I have 100 Light Feathers and no idea what to do with them.
EDIT: Also, I was meant to be flying to Dalaran from K3 while writing this post, but forgot to actually do it, so now I have nothing to do for 30 seconds and that is way longer than my attention span.
"Great," he says, "I have over 100." And I get a group invite.
So I gave him his 40g, and now I have 100 Light Feathers and no idea what to do with them.
EDIT: Also, I was meant to be flying to Dalaran from K3 while writing this post, but forgot to actually do it, so now I have nothing to do for 30 seconds and that is way longer than my attention span.
Secret identities
So we have a new software system at work that we've been training on, and this guy from Training Co LTD (I have no idea what the software company's called, but he works for it) has been coming in to go over all the features and whatever other random crap that he feels we need to know. He's been training us in groups, and my group went yesterday.
So we're putting pages here, and moving PostScript files there, and trying to figure out why this is working on one page and not another, and my coworker, who's on his laptop, accidentally closes the whole system, meaning that those of us sitting at the slaved monitors get to sit and look at his desktop for a few minutes while he opens it back up.
And he plays WoW.
I desperately wanted to ask what server/faction he plays, but I think that's kind of weird to ask some guy you don't even know the name of. Plus I had asked a whole ton of questions about servers and crap and felt like enough of a geek. (After we got back to the bat cave, I was all, "See!? It's totally normal!" and my boss was like, "Okay, so two whole people play that game." Thanks, boss, thanks.)
So we're putting pages here, and moving PostScript files there, and trying to figure out why this is working on one page and not another, and my coworker, who's on his laptop, accidentally closes the whole system, meaning that those of us sitting at the slaved monitors get to sit and look at his desktop for a few minutes while he opens it back up.
And he plays WoW.
I desperately wanted to ask what server/faction he plays, but I think that's kind of weird to ask some guy you don't even know the name of. Plus I had asked a whole ton of questions about servers and crap and felt like enough of a geek. (After we got back to the bat cave, I was all, "See!? It's totally normal!" and my boss was like, "Okay, so two whole people play that game." Thanks, boss, thanks.)
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Personality in perspective
I didn't really intend to roll Kamai, my troll mage. I was playing around with the character creation screen and really liked her hair (you have no idea how much gold I've blown in the barber shops of Azeroth, people). And then she was level 14.
So unlike Ahami and Silang, she didn't have a rudimentary backstory in place when I started playing her. And unlike Ideale, she did not even have a personality.
But now that I'm actually leveling her, I found I was having some trouble distinguishing her personality from Ahami's and it was really making playing her a bit odd. The backstory and personalities of my characters has always driven my enjoyment of the game. I have an eidetic memory, so once I've been through a zone, I remember all of the quests I completed down to the text (not word for word, but close enough for horseshoes and handgrenades), and if I'm not figuring out how a character would react to the lore and the quests, I get bored superfast.
The first thing I did was get her to another zone. Ahami leveled almost entirely in troll, orc and shaman zones — she did perhaps a handful of quests in the Ghostlands, and I think two in the Plaguelands. As a shaman, it made sense; as a burgeoning member of the Earthen Ring, of course she would be questing in areas where elementals were particularly active, and as a healer, of course she would be working in areas where there were other shamans and even druids who worked with nature rather than the Light to heal.
Kamai, as a mage, was particularly suited to go to the Forsaken and blood elf zones, to "learn more about magecraft," so off she went. That way, while I got to know her, at least she would be doing something different.
Nonetheless, there are similarities between the two, and knowing that Ahami had siblings, it only seems natural that Kamai would be her younger sister. Both are a bit eccentric in their intellectual pursuits for trolls; Ahami is a big reader, particularly of texts that describe healing and cleansing techniques and histories, and Kamai is an engineer and always poring over schematics. Both seem to have a deep-seated loyalty to the Horde. But that made developing a separate personality for Kamai a bit more of a challenge; I keep wanting to play her as I did Ahami.
So I sat down with some of the RP Friday Five questions from Too Many Annas. Really, for developing a character, they're fantastic. Answering some of them for Ide really helped me to get brave enough to actually roleplay with her! So if you're struggling, they're a wonderful resource.
Here's what I learned (well, Ahami I already know fairly well, but I am writing some out for comparison purposes):
AHAMI
Ahami is the more practical and grounded of the two, because she is the older, because she works with Earth and Water, or because of the nature of practicing the healing arts, or maybe some combination of all three. Because she's a healer, she tends to be patient and think logically; while she regrets every life she cannot save, as a soldier she does have to weigh who is most necessary to the fight and where to best spend her energies. She also has to think of herself, because if she burns out or uses her mana impetuously, then she's of no use to anyone.
This practicality extends to how she works with other classes; while she doesn't care much for those classes who work against nature instead of going with the flow, and particularly has a distaste for warlocks and death knights, she recognizes that they are another tool against the Horde's enemies, so she works with them. (On a side note, she realizes that death is a part of life. She also sees banning cannibalism as wasteful — people ARE made out of meat, after all, and if they're already dead ... — and often finds herself exchanging recipes for gnome with her Forsaken guildmates.)
She dreams, but they tend to be abstract and deeply rooted in the natural world around her. Sholazar Basin was a welcome relief after the snows of Howling Fjord and Dragonblight, for the dreams of waterfalls and trees alone. She likes to explore the world, but not necessarily for the sake of tourism so much as because she feels very connected to Azeroth and wants to know every nook and cranny of it. Sometimes she dreams of storms or earthquakes in completely other parts of the world.
She doesn't "get" fashion, and she hates most cities for the way that they destroy the natural world rather than working around it (though she likes Thunder Bluff and would love Darnassus if it weren't full of pesky night elves). She mostly travels, staying wherever she ends up for the night, whether in Orgrimmar or camped out in Un'Goro Crater.
Ahami's favorite holidays are the Midsummer Fire Festival and, to a lesser extent, the Lunar Festival.
She's fiercely independent — while she likes to feel as if she is useful and contributing to any group with similar goals, she has her own goals and she's not going to abridge them for anyone else, and she is quite happy spending weeks without human contact out in the wilderness.
Her philosophy? Go with the flow, work to keep balance, and stay away from da voodoo, and you'll be fine.
KAMAI
Kamai is the younger of the two, and much more of a social creature. She loves cities and can sit and talk shop with her colleagues for hours, something that would drive Ahami crazy. She's impetuous and, because of this, often gets into trouble over her head. Like her sister, she's fiercely loyal to her friends.
She's not a big reader — she learned how, because she's a mage after all, but she sees books as an annoyance that stand between her and what she needs to know. She prefers tailoring patterns and engineering schematics, because she can use them to get immediate results (by making them).
I don't think she'll ever be much of an arcane mage, since she seems to be pretty drawn to frost and fire. Arcane magic would probably require too much stuffy studying in libraries and not enough pyromania and shooting shards of frost at things. Plus, frost and fire remind her a bit of shamanism, and while she's studying magery on a whole other continent, she's still a troll and it reminds her of home.
She's far more energetic than her sister. Ahami is content to let things happen and react here, give a nudge there, until they're going the right way, then she goes with them, and what's past is past and cannot be changed. Kamai is much more hands-on, and always has to be doing something. She gets very upset in situations where she's helpless to change things, and has a tendency to obsess over them later.
One thing she does love about Silvermoon City is all of the parties. Kamai loves parties, and people, and while she recognizes that it's frivolous, she is a bit of a clotheshorse. (She has more dresses than Ideale.)
She's an inventor — while she's much less practical than her older sister, she's more cunning. She runs off of instinct, but somehow it all ends up working out, even if half of the stuff she dreams up shouldn't work. Unfortunately, Kamai also has her head in the clouds a lot, and sometimes she fails to account for reality in her schemes, with disastrous results.
She dreams, but mostly her dreams simply reflect her actual life, or she dreams of home. She's a bit of a follower, and while she recognizes that what she's doing will soon be important, she still misses her home (her childhood home, not the apartment she keeps in Silvermoon City). Trips home can be somewhat uncomfortable, though; she doesn't feel she's at all lived up to the expectation of what a Darkspear woman is supposed to be.
Her favorite holidays are Winter Veil and Children's Week — she might be an adult now herself, but she loves children.
And if she empties her pockets, there would be thread and a cloth stuck with needles (no thimble, though, because who needs them?) in one, and a handful of assorted bolts and springs in the other. She always has something in her pockets to keep her hands busy.
THEIR RELATIONSHIP
If they are sisters, they have to have some sort of relationship. My thoughts are that, as children, they were closer to each other than their other siblings because both had a deep love of learning. However, they grew apart as they grew older, since Ahami was drawn to the healing arts and shamanism, while Kamai found herself chasing more arcane pursuits. However, as Kamai follows in her sister's footsteps in serving the Horde, they are starting to regrow that connection and find common ground again.
Even so, I think Ahami is probably often exasperated with Kamai's head in the clouds personality, while Kamai probably loves to annoy her practical older sister with frivolous things. (That's what younger sisters do, right?)
So unlike Ahami and Silang, she didn't have a rudimentary backstory in place when I started playing her. And unlike Ideale, she did not even have a personality.
But now that I'm actually leveling her, I found I was having some trouble distinguishing her personality from Ahami's and it was really making playing her a bit odd. The backstory and personalities of my characters has always driven my enjoyment of the game. I have an eidetic memory, so once I've been through a zone, I remember all of the quests I completed down to the text (not word for word, but close enough for horseshoes and handgrenades), and if I'm not figuring out how a character would react to the lore and the quests, I get bored superfast.
The first thing I did was get her to another zone. Ahami leveled almost entirely in troll, orc and shaman zones — she did perhaps a handful of quests in the Ghostlands, and I think two in the Plaguelands. As a shaman, it made sense; as a burgeoning member of the Earthen Ring, of course she would be questing in areas where elementals were particularly active, and as a healer, of course she would be working in areas where there were other shamans and even druids who worked with nature rather than the Light to heal.
Kamai, as a mage, was particularly suited to go to the Forsaken and blood elf zones, to "learn more about magecraft," so off she went. That way, while I got to know her, at least she would be doing something different.
Nonetheless, there are similarities between the two, and knowing that Ahami had siblings, it only seems natural that Kamai would be her younger sister. Both are a bit eccentric in their intellectual pursuits for trolls; Ahami is a big reader, particularly of texts that describe healing and cleansing techniques and histories, and Kamai is an engineer and always poring over schematics. Both seem to have a deep-seated loyalty to the Horde. But that made developing a separate personality for Kamai a bit more of a challenge; I keep wanting to play her as I did Ahami.
So I sat down with some of the RP Friday Five questions from Too Many Annas. Really, for developing a character, they're fantastic. Answering some of them for Ide really helped me to get brave enough to actually roleplay with her! So if you're struggling, they're a wonderful resource.
Here's what I learned (well, Ahami I already know fairly well, but I am writing some out for comparison purposes):
AHAMI
Ahami is the more practical and grounded of the two, because she is the older, because she works with Earth and Water, or because of the nature of practicing the healing arts, or maybe some combination of all three. Because she's a healer, she tends to be patient and think logically; while she regrets every life she cannot save, as a soldier she does have to weigh who is most necessary to the fight and where to best spend her energies. She also has to think of herself, because if she burns out or uses her mana impetuously, then she's of no use to anyone.
This practicality extends to how she works with other classes; while she doesn't care much for those classes who work against nature instead of going with the flow, and particularly has a distaste for warlocks and death knights, she recognizes that they are another tool against the Horde's enemies, so she works with them. (On a side note, she realizes that death is a part of life. She also sees banning cannibalism as wasteful — people ARE made out of meat, after all, and if they're already dead ... — and often finds herself exchanging recipes for gnome with her Forsaken guildmates.)
She dreams, but they tend to be abstract and deeply rooted in the natural world around her. Sholazar Basin was a welcome relief after the snows of Howling Fjord and Dragonblight, for the dreams of waterfalls and trees alone. She likes to explore the world, but not necessarily for the sake of tourism so much as because she feels very connected to Azeroth and wants to know every nook and cranny of it. Sometimes she dreams of storms or earthquakes in completely other parts of the world.
She doesn't "get" fashion, and she hates most cities for the way that they destroy the natural world rather than working around it (though she likes Thunder Bluff and would love Darnassus if it weren't full of pesky night elves). She mostly travels, staying wherever she ends up for the night, whether in Orgrimmar or camped out in Un'Goro Crater.
Ahami's favorite holidays are the Midsummer Fire Festival and, to a lesser extent, the Lunar Festival.
She's fiercely independent — while she likes to feel as if she is useful and contributing to any group with similar goals, she has her own goals and she's not going to abridge them for anyone else, and she is quite happy spending weeks without human contact out in the wilderness.
Her philosophy? Go with the flow, work to keep balance, and stay away from da voodoo, and you'll be fine.
KAMAI
Kamai is the younger of the two, and much more of a social creature. She loves cities and can sit and talk shop with her colleagues for hours, something that would drive Ahami crazy. She's impetuous and, because of this, often gets into trouble over her head. Like her sister, she's fiercely loyal to her friends.
She's not a big reader — she learned how, because she's a mage after all, but she sees books as an annoyance that stand between her and what she needs to know. She prefers tailoring patterns and engineering schematics, because she can use them to get immediate results (by making them).
I don't think she'll ever be much of an arcane mage, since she seems to be pretty drawn to frost and fire. Arcane magic would probably require too much stuffy studying in libraries and not enough pyromania and shooting shards of frost at things. Plus, frost and fire remind her a bit of shamanism, and while she's studying magery on a whole other continent, she's still a troll and it reminds her of home.
She's far more energetic than her sister. Ahami is content to let things happen and react here, give a nudge there, until they're going the right way, then she goes with them, and what's past is past and cannot be changed. Kamai is much more hands-on, and always has to be doing something. She gets very upset in situations where she's helpless to change things, and has a tendency to obsess over them later.
One thing she does love about Silvermoon City is all of the parties. Kamai loves parties, and people, and while she recognizes that it's frivolous, she is a bit of a clotheshorse. (She has more dresses than Ideale.)
She's an inventor — while she's much less practical than her older sister, she's more cunning. She runs off of instinct, but somehow it all ends up working out, even if half of the stuff she dreams up shouldn't work. Unfortunately, Kamai also has her head in the clouds a lot, and sometimes she fails to account for reality in her schemes, with disastrous results.
She dreams, but mostly her dreams simply reflect her actual life, or she dreams of home. She's a bit of a follower, and while she recognizes that what she's doing will soon be important, she still misses her home (her childhood home, not the apartment she keeps in Silvermoon City). Trips home can be somewhat uncomfortable, though; she doesn't feel she's at all lived up to the expectation of what a Darkspear woman is supposed to be.
Her favorite holidays are Winter Veil and Children's Week — she might be an adult now herself, but she loves children.
And if she empties her pockets, there would be thread and a cloth stuck with needles (no thimble, though, because who needs them?) in one, and a handful of assorted bolts and springs in the other. She always has something in her pockets to keep her hands busy.
THEIR RELATIONSHIP
If they are sisters, they have to have some sort of relationship. My thoughts are that, as children, they were closer to each other than their other siblings because both had a deep love of learning. However, they grew apart as they grew older, since Ahami was drawn to the healing arts and shamanism, while Kamai found herself chasing more arcane pursuits. However, as Kamai follows in her sister's footsteps in serving the Horde, they are starting to regrow that connection and find common ground again.
Even so, I think Ahami is probably often exasperated with Kamai's head in the clouds personality, while Kamai probably loves to annoy her practical older sister with frivolous things. (That's what younger sisters do, right?)
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Stupid PVP tricks
I cannot help it. Every single time I see someone blow their trinket in PVP when I'm on Ahami, I Hex them. Even if they are one good shot from death. The only time I can resist is if my chosen target for heals is taking large amounts of damage.
Second to this is the Fire Elemental. I will wait until we are at the Stormpike Graveyard, usually, but oh, I love dropping him and then watching everyone run around trying to figure out what shaman did it or fighting him. If you can't kill the shaman, kill the totem, dummies.
It's like Disengage on Ideale. Do I need to use it? Most of the time, no. Do I use it anyway? Hell yes, it makes me fly through the air! I mean, I don't use it in situations where it's completely pointless or I might need it in a few seconds — I'll wait until after a warrior Intercepts or a death knight Death Grips, and I always am in a melee situation and need to get out when I hit Shift + D, but ... flying through the air!
Silang's Death Grip is getting there. Someone going after the flag runner? Death Grip! Someone on the flag at the Blacksmith? Death Grip! See that player over there, running innocently through the Field of Strife? Wave. Then Death Grip!
I really hope I'm not the only person who has skills or spells that are just so much fun that I use them every time I can make a case for it/every time the CD's up, squealing with glee the whole time.
Second to this is the Fire Elemental. I will wait until we are at the Stormpike Graveyard, usually, but oh, I love dropping him and then watching everyone run around trying to figure out what shaman did it or fighting him. If you can't kill the shaman, kill the totem, dummies.
It's like Disengage on Ideale. Do I need to use it? Most of the time, no. Do I use it anyway? Hell yes, it makes me fly through the air! I mean, I don't use it in situations where it's completely pointless or I might need it in a few seconds — I'll wait until after a warrior Intercepts or a death knight Death Grips, and I always am in a melee situation and need to get out when I hit Shift + D, but ... flying through the air!
Silang's Death Grip is getting there. Someone going after the flag runner? Death Grip! Someone on the flag at the Blacksmith? Death Grip! See that player over there, running innocently through the Field of Strife? Wave. Then Death Grip!
I really hope I'm not the only person who has skills or spells that are just so much fun that I use them every time I can make a case for it/every time the CD's up, squealing with glee the whole time.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Titles
I have to admit, I'm kind of addicted to titles. I wasn't for a long time, but with the achievements system offering a bunch of new ones, I'm kind of hooked, especially given the wide variety. I already know certain ones I want.
For example, one of Ideale's faults is that she tries way too hard to do everything for everyone. She was short of Exalted with the Darkspear Trolls by only 300 rep when the Achievements system hit, and already Exalted with the other four Horde factions, so she's Ambassador Ideale now.
Ahami is naturally going to go for both the "Elder" and "Flame Keeper" holiday titles (Lunar Festival and Midsummer, respectively).
Silang is a bit harder, but I could aim for "Argent Champion" for now, and next year for "the Hallowed."
Kamai, my mage, who I've pretty much decided will be the next toon I level to 80 after Ideale*, will be Kamai the Loremaster and maybe Kamai the Seeker as well. That just seems appropriate for a mage.
I want to get the "Explorer" title on all of my toons who can get it, too — the twinks are probably out, though I've heard of one very determined level 21 on another server who has the title, so who knows? I might go for some of the holiday titles for them, though. I'd also like to have Conqueror Ideale and Ahami of the Horde eventually, but that will take a very long time, if I can do it at all.
Any other title junkies out there?
* I'm not going to put any serious effort into leveling Kamai until Ideale dings 80 and Ahami is exalted at least with the Wyrmrest Accord for my fancy gloves and head enchant. And probably with the Knights of the Ebon Blade, too, for the pants or kilt or whatever it is. While I've pretty much decided the PVE thing is still not for me, I would like to have a passable PVE set just in case I ever need it.
For example, one of Ideale's faults is that she tries way too hard to do everything for everyone. She was short of Exalted with the Darkspear Trolls by only 300 rep when the Achievements system hit, and already Exalted with the other four Horde factions, so she's Ambassador Ideale now.
Ahami is naturally going to go for both the "Elder" and "Flame Keeper" holiday titles (Lunar Festival and Midsummer, respectively).
Silang is a bit harder, but I could aim for "Argent Champion" for now, and next year for "the Hallowed."
Kamai, my mage, who I've pretty much decided will be the next toon I level to 80 after Ideale*, will be Kamai the Loremaster and maybe Kamai the Seeker as well. That just seems appropriate for a mage.
I want to get the "Explorer" title on all of my toons who can get it, too — the twinks are probably out, though I've heard of one very determined level 21 on another server who has the title, so who knows? I might go for some of the holiday titles for them, though. I'd also like to have Conqueror Ideale and Ahami of the Horde eventually, but that will take a very long time, if I can do it at all.
Any other title junkies out there?
* I'm not going to put any serious effort into leveling Kamai until Ideale dings 80 and Ahami is exalted at least with the Wyrmrest Accord for my fancy gloves and head enchant. And probably with the Knights of the Ebon Blade, too, for the pants or kilt or whatever it is. While I've pretty much decided the PVE thing is still not for me, I would like to have a passable PVE set just in case I ever need it.
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