Too Many Annas

*fizzle* *sizzle* *pop*

1 Written by Anna on November 1, 2010 – 2:18 pm

No Post today. On Fire! Elementals Everywhere! YEEEEEEE!

The Return of the Beast(s)

10 Written by Anna on October 31, 2010 – 12:06 am

So, I’ve not had a whole lot of time to play WoW lately – and when I do, it’s usually after work, when I am le tired, and not really looking to spend a bunch of time in PUGs.

As such, most of my characters still don’t have a new spec, and NOBODY has all their glyphs yet (Aely is mostly done for her holy spec, but not her ret spec, Annylais has a kitty-DPS spec but no glyphs, and Angoleth has a beastmastery spec and maybe 2 of her glyphs? (more on that in a minute)).

I’m not really going to say much about classes or balance or wrath heroics jumping the shark or any of that stuff.

I will, however, say that hands down, my favorite change in 4.0?

The stable.

Thanks to the new pet stabling system, Angoleth has been able to go back and re-tame all of the pets she’s let go over the last almost 5 years (yikes!) because of limited stable space. At least, all the pets I can remember… ( way back in my noobpie days, I didn’t realize you could teach your pets new levels of skills, so I just retamed a new pet every 8-10 levels or so. I figured it out around level 45.)

Anyway, thanks to the stabling changes, I can now say happily that the following pets are back in action:

• Karakum the Scorpid
• Litha the Black Stranglethorn Panther
• Rinna the Zulian Bat
• Ishura the Windserpent
• Talia the Owl
• Tim… the Ravager **

And that they have been joined by:

• Sriracha the Corehound
• Squitterwit the Red Fuzzy Spider
• and an unnamed red hyena, red raptor, and red silithid pets

I’m totally tickled, even though it means I have a metric ton of pets to level (probably literally, if you weighed them all… that Corehound is large). I couldn’t be happier with how things have turned out. I’ve always been a sentimental hunter, taking pets back to where they were tamed if I have to let them go. Being able to go back and “find” them there again? Totally awesome.

However, Pebbles the Devilsaur, Arsaelan the White Lion, Shan’re the Wolf, and Russ the Bear are none too pleased.

Because now?

I can’t pick which pets to have out when I wander around anymore.

**there are some who call him… Tim…

PS: If anyone sees Skoll or Loque’nahak, let them know I’ve got a business proposition to make them…

Ask Anna: RSP Websites

12 Written by Anna on October 29, 2010 – 8:46 am

(Rumors of my death have been premature. Rumors of my return may or may not be premature. But I’m ready to give this a whirl again. Dunno if I’ll ever get back to daily posting, but things have calmed down enough that I think I can manage something once or twice a week. We’ll see how it goes!)

A question from a reader:

Hey Anna!

Lately, there seems to be a trend of sites popping up that make fun of bad RSP flags. What are your opinions on sites like these that ridicule the rsp for either graphic content or minor nitpicking.

- A Nonny Mouse

To be quite honest, Nonny (I hope it’s alright that I call you Nonny), I’m not fond of sites devoted to making fun of RSP flags. For one thing, I don’t think they do anything productive, or offer any kind of help to any of the people that are “offending”. I also don’t think they’re all that useful, given that you can get everything from  the nitpicky “OMG Stormwind was destroyed and rebuilt, how could they not know that!!?!!eleventy1″ to the more egregious examples of erotic content in RSP flags, posted for either shock value or validation.

Are there some really bad RSP flags? Absolutely. They’re often full of purple prose, gravity defying sexual organs, robotic body parts, and “I’m not really a …” types of silliness. But you really can’t tell much about a character – or how well that character is played – from an RSP tag.

Here’s why.

Aely, my main, whom you’ve all read about and who I’m quite confident is not a “mary sue”, is a 6 foot tall, red-headed warrior goddess built like a professional beach volleyball player. If you read her RSP, you could come away with that, and I could show up on a website getting made fun of for playing such a stereotypical “mary sue” character.  Except that Aely is more than just her appearance, and I’ve never had anyone tell me that she’s a hollow shell of a character created for my own self aggrandizement.

Bricu, who writes for WTT:RP (and who has given me permission to do this), plays a stereotypical “not your typical paladin” character. He’s gruff and unusual, and could easily show up on a website getting made fun of for not playing paladins “properly”. Except that if you’ve ever interacted with Bricu, you know that he’s a bastard AND a paladin, and he manages to wear both hats very well. The character fits and works and isn’t a shallow RSP tag.

Seylon, one of Yva’s characters (who also knows about this post), is a tall, totally hawt night elf warrior with a gorgeous body, who wears really skimpy armor, flirts with anything that moves (of either gender) and drinks hard. If all you ever saw of Seylon was a brief encounter in the bar, you’d probably think she was worth writing up for one of those websites. Except Seylon is also a hard working single mom, an incredibly well developed character, and not at all a shallow RSP tag.

Yes, sometimes it’s incredibly frustrating to try to RP with people and get yet another “I’m not really a death knight and my boobs are so huge they’re like watermelons but gravity doesn’t apply to me and I sparkle and smell like jasmine” encounter. I’ve laughed those situations off with friends, in private, because there’s not really any other way to deal with the frustration. But, as I’ve mentioned before, not everyone starts out good at RP, and public humiliation doesn’t help anyone.

The best reaction, when confronted with something that makes you want to roll your eyes, is to either gently approach the person about it, or – if you don’t think it’s worth trying or don’t have the patience to try – to ignore it and move on. If the person is actively griefing YOU (and I have seen situations of extremely off-kilter RP turn into table dancing), then it’s time to get a GM involved.

If reading RSP tags makes you think that every roleplayer you encounter is going to be a terrible one?

Stop reading RSP tags.

You can turn the addon off, or just turn off “mouseover pop ups”, and then all the people passing by that you don’t actually interact with will never intrude on your screen.

You can’t judge a book by its cover, and you really can’t judge every roleplayer by his or her RSP tag.

For full disclosure, I’m not even running an RSP addon right now. I love them for their naming abilities, but I find that the description boxes aren’t that helpful. And besides, I’d much rather interact with people than have to read their RSP first!

Chugging Along

1 Written by Anna on September 24, 2010 – 9:05 am

As mentioned, things are still crazy – my job schedule isn’t settling into anything “scheduled” (I work different hours on different days every week right now), so I’m feeling a little lost at times, trying to continue doing things that I like doing. Like, say, play WoW.

Fortunately, my Cataclysm “list of things to do” is pretty short – I’ve got a monetary goal for my banker which I’m getting close to reaching, and Annylais is 71 and not 80, but that’s really it. I’m not going for Loremaster, and I’m certainly not looking to have Annata fully leveled by then. I’d like to have her to Outlands, but we’ll see how that goes. Otherwise I’m pretty much out of the loop on Cataclysm stuff, since I barely have time to be playing on live, let alone doing much research into what’s coming. I figure we’ll get there when we get there.

Annata reached level 40 last night, and has her new speedy pony (yay!) Leveling without heirlooms is quite a bit longer – so I’m definitely trying to only level her when she’s rested.

My next leveling milestones for her will be finishing the Nesingwary quests in Stranglethorn Vale and then going out to Theramore to do the Defias quest line there. Her investigation of the Syndicate has mostly turned up dead ends with a few very interesting tidbits that she wants to see if there’s a Defias connection for as well.

I had a really awesome random RP moment last night too.

I was up in Alterac doing some of the Syndicate quests with Annata, when I accidentally ended up with a few more baddies than I could really handle. As I prepared myself for a corpse run and looted the quest mob mid-combat, a level 80 Night Elf rogue ambushed the mobs that were beating me up, polishing them off. He then said “Sorry to interrupt!” /bowed, and vanished again. I said something to the effect of “It’s much appreciated, those guys got the jump on me” only to have him say from the shadows “Ravenholdt is nearby”.

I have no idea who he is, but it totally made my evening. Thank you, Random Rogue!

What have you guys been up to?

I’ve got houseguests coming this evening who will be here until mid next week, so probably no posts until then again.