11 Written by
Anna on
July 24, 2009 – 10:08 am
As I’m sure my regular Friday Five folks have noticed, there haven’t been many Friday Fives lately. This is largely due to me running out of interesting ideas – it’s hard to come up with five questions that are applicable to warcraft every week, and after nearly a year (!) my “question cheat sheets” are running thin.
Technically, this isn’t a case of the same Writer’s Blah that Ila talks about on Binary Colors (on a post I can’t find, because the search function isn’t working, dammit!) – I’m not defeating myself before I start. It’s just fighting the ups and downs of writing daily, and trying to be consistently creative, engaging, funny, and entertaining on a subject. Especially difficult when I’ve been on vacation for awhile, and don’t want to write “what I did in game” posts!
I’ve hit a similar low-spot with regards to RP, where I have a few ideas about stories… and just can’t seem to get them written.
So – in lieu of a Friday Five today, I’m asking for some ideas. What do you do to break the creative or writing doldrums?
12 Written by
Anna on
July 23, 2009 – 11:35 am
One of the ways that RP gets “expanded” is through the use of personal NPCs; characters that you create with a bit of story and personality, whose sole function is to work in or with your major characters inside of a plot or story. Villains are often of this variety, as are assorted family members/friends from the days before your character was an adventuring sort.
Occasionally, if you have the need for in-game interaction, you or a friend can roll up a level 1 alt to “play” that character, but in most cases they don’t get leveled. They’re there for a function – either to advance a plot or complicate things or just be an innocent bystander for the bad guys to murder. (Most recently Bertrand was one such NPC)
I’ve got quite a few NPCs in various places that get used for different things:
- Mrs Elizabeth (Lizzy) Cross, the wife of Bryan Cross, and co-proprietor of The Silver Shield. Mrs Cross is a big, buxom woman that can swing a blacksmith’s hammer as well as a frying pan. Aely and Phileas rent the walk-down apartment under their shop, and she’s taken quite a liking to the two Northerners. She also has adopted “Lady”, the mother of the puppies that Aely was trying to get rid of a few months back.
- Randolf Crebain, one very bored, very grumpy Argent Crusade member who has been “temporarily stationed” in Stormwind for the last 9 months. He’s losing some of his hair, has an unruly beard, and is utterly fastidious about the two messengers in his employ, holding frequent inspections. He’s basically a glorified errand boy, and he knows it.
- Amber Brightraven, an elf who rents a room in the Cantrips and Crows in Dalaran’s underbelly. She doesn’t look like a whore, but it’s hard to tell with the folks she’s constantly bringing in and out. She’s too clean and too blonde to really fit in at the Cantrips, but doesn’t seem to ever leave. Always accompanied by a powerful looking, wolfish dog. They say she spends a lot of time betting on the Arena matches.
The Riders also have a full component of Underbelly and Pig and Whistle NPCs that get used in various guild events, particularly the Langston family.
Do you have any NPCs? How do they interact with your character or other characters in your guild/RP group? Do you have shared NPCs that anyone has dibs on?
4 Written by
Anna on
July 21, 2009 – 1:02 pm
Back when she was still actively blogging, the lovely Bre introduced me to a concept that I like quite a lot.
Loot Unicorns.
“That elusive piece of loot, that one single object that if you finally, finally receive, will make all your in-game dreams come true. That item that turns you from a nice, loving individual to a raving lunatic. That item that when won will wipe frustrations and disappointments to nothing. All those runs, and countless wipes will disappear the moment that illustrious item makes its way into your bags.”
For me, it’s rarely been a single item (though Hakkar’s main hand axe was definitely one). In fact, it’s not even been a single instance. For me, the loot unicorn which taunts me, peeks at me through the trees and then disappears whenever I try to get a better look?
Shields.
I ran Karazhan for close to a year, got myself a PVP shield (since you BUY those, they don’t DROP), and was happily hurtling towards Mount Hyjal before I saw the Triptych Shield of the Ancients drop from the Chess event. I figured I’d just gotten supremely unlucky, until my Paladin had similar (though not quite as extended) trouble getting that shield to drop.
Enter Game Reboot Lich King
I level the Paladin to 80 and start running Naxx, scraping together enough Badges of Heroism to buy the spellpower shield. And until yesterday, the only other shield I have ever seen drop with spellpower on it would’ve been a downgrade (and thus got passed to our lovely Resto Shaman). Months of Naxx, and TRI did not get a single Voice of Reason drop. And now three months of running Ulduar 10, and though some affiliated raids have been passing out Pulsing Spellshields like candy, my 10 man has never seen it drop.
Until very recently, even my Shaman was healing with a spellhit offhand fob instead of a spellpower shield (though I finally got her enough badges to wear the same one, in her Naxx10/25 mishmash as my full Ulduar paladin was wearing).
And then yesterday I get invited to tag along to the tail end of a short-handed Naxx 25 run, just to clear out the last four bosses. I figure, why not – chances are chances, right?
It dropped.
And I love it. Cement skulls, glowy eyeballs, creepy teeth and all.
