I’m kicking around the idea of a little old lady Pandaren – nosy, busybodyish, and constantly peddling all kinds of (probably disturbing) folk remedies. I have this image in my head of her wandering around with a big jar of 4 Thieves Vinegar with a dead bird foot in it, forcing it on anyone that even hints at getting sick.

I haven’t decided what class she’ll be (which probably means she’ll be one of the multitude of Pandaren Monks come Mists release). But I like the idea of having a slightly… unorthodox character, and that concept won’t require that she have any semblance of quick leveling to be successful in RP. In fact, it’ll be fun to do low level pick up RP with her. She’d peddle those remedies all through Stormwind (or whatever the major city of the next expansion turns out to be).

I’d love to hear what your Pandaren character concepts are though – brag on them (or just brainstorm ideas) in comments!

***Thanks for reading this post from Too Many Annas. May the Loot-Fu be with you***

Introduce Your Pandaren

Part and parcel of starting a new blog is, quite simply, deciding how you’re going to set up what you want to write about, and then naming your blog. Do you want to write about PVP? Maybe how to make tons of gold? Passionate about high-level raiding?

That’s all pretty easy to think about, but when you’re just getting started, quite honestly, you don’t know for sure what you’ll be writing about in three or six months. You also don’t know how limited you’ll find your chosen topic. Those things just come with time and practice.

So be careful, and don’t fence yourself in with a name.

Don’t pick a name like Pete’s Priestly Ponderings unless you are REALLY sure that in 6 months you’ll still have a priest as a main and not have run out of priestly things to say.

If you are even remotely tempted by alts, a class (or role) name may turn out to be too restricting. While some restriction is good, because it helps you focus what you want to write about, overly restricting yourself can set you up for the dreaded blogger’s block!

While it’s good to give yourself a focus, it’s not always good to name your blog after that focus.

We’ll take the example of Pete and his Priestly Ponderings. Say Pete really likes his priest right now, and has a list of 10 or so posts he thinks he could write about priests. So he queues up a new wordpress.com or blogspot.com blog and gets started. He manages to keep from being too enthusiastic and posting all 10 ideas in two days, and sets himself up on a posting schedule. In a few weeks, between his comments on other blogs and posts on twitter and other social media, he’s getting a few comments every week and his pageviews are going up. Then he writes a really excellent guide to Priestly Thingies just before a major patch, and his traffic skyrockets.*

That sounds pretty awesome right? Pete’s effectively set up an audience of other priests to create his blogging community.

But then… then Pete rolls a mage on a night when his usual raid is canceled. All of a sudden, mageing is really, really fun. It’s different! And new!

And his blog is all about priests!

What to do? Well, certainly for a few posts as a side project, there’s nothing wrong with posting about his mage alt on his Previously Primarily Priests blog. Most people have alts, after all.

But what happens when, after he gets his mage to 85, Pete decides to switch mains? That happens all the time – especially at expansion switches. (I know I’ve had a main switch with every expansion, though I was a shaman for both BC and Cataclysm)

Pete now feels kind of pinched by his Priestly Ponderings blog title. (Admittedly, if Pete doesn’t care, this doesn’t matter as much.) So he’s left to either write about mages all the time on a blog that labels itself about priests, or he has to switch blogs.

And switching blogs is, essentially, starting over – while some readers will follow you, you lose the continuity of community.

Of course this is a simplistic example. There are plenty of bloggers who picked a class and stuck with it, and other bloggers who picked a class name and are writing about whatever they feel like. But most bloggers go through some wandering before they settle on their true “calling” as writers.

It took me almost two years to get to writing much about RP, and that’s been my primary niche  (or was, but getting back into it is a topic for another post). It also took me two tries to come up with the name Too Many Annas, but the flexibility of the name has let me switch mains, switch topics, and even (for a little while) switch games.

There are plenty of guides out there about how to name a blog. (Google!)

MMO blogging has a lot of the same concerns, but if you want to set up for the long haul, be careful not to pick a name that you’re going to wish you could change in a month or two. You can pick things like factions, or a character naming trend. A favorite passion in game, a profession you like, or even a favorite item. While you CAN change your name (I did, after my first month of blogging), you take a setback in the form of readers and community.

So be careful, as you get started.

Don’t fence yourself in!

*These are all good tips for new bloggers as well!

***Thanks for reading this post from Too Many Annas. May the Loot-Fu be with you***

Names: Don’t Fence Me In

Right now I’m working 9 hour shifts, with a one hour commute each way (plus traffic), so while the job is definitely a big step up from what I’d previously been doing (retail), it’s also a big step down in available gaming time. Especially when you consider my preferred 9 hour shift is 6:30am to 3:30pm, so as to avoid as much traffic as possible. And still occasionally see daylight. *

Anyway – I’m doing a lot of drive, work, drive, cook, eat, clean up, sleep sort of days. I’ve logged on to WoW a few times, but it seems that Mass Effect 3 has sort of taken my community by storm, so there’s been little going on. (Also, my raid has ceased to be. More on that another time; for now, all I have to say is /sadface.)

It’s hard to do much when you only have an hour, so I guess I’m going the route of the super-casual for awhile, both in game and on the blog.

*Basically, I get up at the ass-crack of dawn, and I go to bed at little old lady hours.

***Thanks for reading this post from Too Many Annas. May the Loot-Fu be with you***

(Re) Adjustment

Which is sad, because this little corner of the internet has been such a staple of my video gaming for the last four years that I’m not sure really how to measure the effect.

I am a better raider for writing guides, a better roleplayer for writing guides and ficlets, a better writer in general for all the posts I’ve written. This blog got me a job with the Azeroth Advisor (which is sadly no longer in effect, but that’s OK, it was very very fun while it lasted) and has made me a number of friends – the kind of friends who bridge the gap between “internet friend” and “real life friend”.

Right now, though, I’m not sure what the eventual direction of Too Many Annas will be. It’s a time of transition for me (new job, changing game, expansion soon, Diablo III, Star Wars), and that’s always been when I’ve had trouble figuring out what to write about.

I’m not playing Star Wars much anymore – there are a number of factors at play there, but the short version is that I’m finding it hard to connect to the world and to feel sucked in by the quests. When I log in and play, it’s fun enough, but I don’t have any burning drive to log in and find out what’s next. I am playing WoW quite a bit, from leveling Annie Mae, Annalira (which is probably a post, my priest is back to her oldest name, with a new haircut and a new spec), and Annata… and possibly Annylais too. I’ve been fishing and cooking, working on Angoleth’s gear.

There’s still a lot to do in WoW, and a lot of people I really like to do things with, I’m just not sure what to write about it. It feels like so much of that has already been done, if only because I’ve been doing this for four years!

So I figured now’s as good a time as any to ask YOU GUYS what you think. You’re the ones doing the reading and commenting, so I’d love your input.

What kind of posts do you like best? What would you like to see more of? Is there anything you’d like me to revisit or start doing again?

Let me know in comments or via email (toomanyannas at gmail) – I promise to read all of them, and I’ll do my best to incorporate what you guys like into the future of this space.

***Thanks for reading this post from Too Many Annas. May the Loot-Fu be with you***

In which we turn 4

Linear questing is not my favorite. While I’m not going to say I love being trekked around the world every five minutes, I like it when there’s a feeling of connectedness between zones (though that’s more a criticism of WoW, where the zones are actually next to each other, than it is of Star Wars, where the zones are actually PLANETS, and as such don’t really have a lot in common).

And while the linear style of questing does add a lot to the “big hero” style of play, it’s rough on replay value and rough on RP. Not everyone can be a big damn hero, and not everyone wants to be. If I have to suspend my immersion to be part of a great heroic quest chain, that’s time I’m not feeling lost in the atmosphere of the game and the mind of my character.

And frankly? That gets boring, fast. I don’t think you have to be a big hero to be connected to a zone or a world, or to feel immersed in a game.

I generally think Blizzard did a good job with Northrend’s zones. There were several hubs within each zone, and you could progress through them one at a time if you wanted. You didn’t need to go to Borean Tundra to finish quests in Howling Fjord. You could also skip areas you hated (the undead part of Zul’Drak comes to mind) or entire zones altogether. I’m pretty sure you can level without setting foot in Zul’Drak or even Sholazar Basin… or Icecrown, for that matter. There’s enough duplicate leveling content that you can pick and choose what makes sense for each character.

While the Cataclysm zones are somewhat like that, in that there’s enough content to be able to skip certain zones, the zones themselves are entirely linear. You can’t skip ahead and do only the Harrison Jones quests in Uldum or just the second half of Hyjal. The zones are linear, and they’re setting you up to be the big hero every time.

The new leveling zones have this same model, so it’s hard to skip areas or pick and choose. They’re also geared towards fewer levels per zone, meaning you get to see more zones as you level, but there are fewer to choose from (unless you’re leveling in heirlooms and with guild XP bonuses, where you’ll outlevel almost all the content very quickly). Combine that with the chronology issues that WoW currently struggles with in their leveling progression, and it makes even a die-hard altoholic like myself struggle with leveling new characters.

Star Wars is very similar to this model so far, and I’m told it doesn’t change much. While each character has their own class quests, which is nice, Coruscant goes from Merchant’s Gang to Black Sun to Justicar, no matter what class you are. I can’t speak to upper level areas that overlap, but I’m pretty sure the progression from planet to planet is pretty well secured.

And the Big Damn Hero complex is there too. It’s a little disconcerting, to be THE BEST at everything, instead of just part of a group. My Jedi Knight is THE MOST SKILLED Padawan, not just a skilled one. She’s also the second character I’ve pathed through Tython, and I can’t say it felt all that new and exciting, beyond the class quests.

So the jury is still out, for me, on the replay value of Star Wars. I like immersive rather than linear style questing – and I’ve always seen two as mutually exclusive. The use of class quests will hopefully help with replay value, but there are 4 sets of class quests and 8 classes, so perhaps I’ll have to explore the Empire side of things.

(I didn’t intend to be playing Empire side, but I do somewhat have an idea for a Sith Sorceror rattling around in my head.)

***Thanks for reading this post from Too Many Annas. May the Loot-Fu be with you***

Questing in Steps