Placeholder for future amazing blog post

Hai, guys. If you haven't already noticed, I've been MIA lately in the RP Your Life! world though, make no mistake, life is an everyday roleplaying campaign as usual. I've just been really busy lately with finals coming up, and I also spent all of spring break in Myrtle Beach. Not that I was at the beach. I was playing WoW and Skyrim in my boyfriend's apartment.

Anyway, I have major school projects occupying my time for the next couple weeks. I'll try to make some time to update the blog whenever I can, but until then, here is a picture of the best new ability in MoP, edited by yours truly to emphasize its awesomeness.

-Avia.

Computer dead. MoP beta live. Completely unrelated topics.

This week, I woke up early(ish) on my day off to get my 85s valor capped and attempt for the 50th time to acquire a Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps for my pally only to find that my goddamn motherboard had died.

It was like the universe was laughing at me. Or telling me to use my time more wisely during midterms. It's debatable.

In World of Warcraft news, the Mists of Pandaria beta is now live, and anyone who signed up for an annual pass can expect access in the near future as Blizzard sends out invites in waves. For some reason, I also signed up for the annual pass, justifying it in my mind that I get all these super awesome perquisites just by promising to play for as long as I already planned on playing. In actuality, what I received was a mount that I never use, a free copy of Diablo 3 in which I have minimal interest, and access to a beta that I can't even install on my ancient computer with no free disk space or even a working motherboard.

Currently, I'm awaiting the delivery of parts and must resort to blogging from my school library's computer lab until a new motherboard arrives on Tuesday. I had to spend all Saturday installing WoW and setting up addons on my dad's computer so I could do an alt raid. For the entire weekend, I was stuck browsing the internet on my phone and watching a hundred channels of cable television rather than sitting alt-tabbed in Stormwind while creeping people on Facebook. I had to make my new boyfriend valor cap for me!

Someone save me from my first world problems, please.

-Avia.

Mists of Pandaria Press Event "Highlights"

Now that I've abandoned progression raiding for the rest of Cataclysm, I'm becoming increasingly excited for Mists, and the bundle of news that came out with the NDA lift of last week's press event is making pandas look pretty badass. Being a vanilla baby who was at one point obsessed with a particular staff with an infamous drop rate, I was the most interested in the revamp of Scholomance into a level 90 heroic. I'm looking forward to spending many more hours of my life in what was my favorite instance in classic WoW, working my way through room after room of different types of undead and defeating unique mini-bosses for coveted blues. Plus, there will be new items for which I can get reacquainted with my old buddy Darkmaster Gandling, like an upgraded Headmaster's Charge that I can mog... to my original Headmaster's Charge. >:)

Despite everyone's glee that MoP's end-boss will be Garrosh and we can finally kick his self-important ass, I'm actually disappointed. It's not because I ever particularly liked him; I was just as surprised as everyone else when the peace-loving and earth-hugging Thrall appointed as Warchief some douchebag that insults the player first thing after s/he steps into Northrend. But then I spent the entire expansion doing exactly what Blizz asked me to do: give him the benefit of the doubt that he's grown older and wiser and is no longer the immature asshole with daddy issues who once accidentally killed the Horde racial leader that never bothered anybody. What the fuck happened to all that, Blizz? What am I supposed to think now?

I might seem a little hard to please with the way I'm waffling about Garrosh, but remember in Harry Potter when everyone originally thought that Snape was evil? And for the next six books, Harry had Hermione reminding him that Dumbledore said Snape was good and that he had to trust in his word? And then, at the end, it turned out that that Dumbledore was right all along and the reader made the correct choice in having faith in Snape for all that time? It felt so. relieving.

Well, yea. The end of Mists is going to be the exact opposite of that.

-Avia.

End of expansion blues (or how I quit progression raiding to take a break and still not have a life)

It's the end of an era, friends. After over a year of wipes, kills, and watching people come and go due to RL or ragequits, I officially left my raid team to go casual until Mists of Pandaria.

How I feel right now.

I know. I know. Only baddies are casuals. But in all honesty, this decision was in the best interest of my mental health. For most of the past year, I have always been able to stay unphased by the raid leader with narcissistic personality disorder, an overwhelming majority of the team being so incompetent that they can't be helped, and boss kills that tend to feel more like happy accidents than the products of strategy and hard work. However, as of late, I've found that all of these negative factors have been slowly chipping away at my sanity, and for ten hours a week, I turn into someone so angry that the thought of strangling kittens arises way more frequently than should be considered normal. Yes, we admit that the sassy female raider on vent that calls out people who die stupidly only to make excuses is always a turn-on in that psychosexual way of people who like fiery make-up sex. But when did I become that jerk who calls people out? I'd guess right about the eighth time that hunter died because of her "cat."

Anyway, due to harassment and drama, I went back to my Wrath guild to hang out with my perennial buddies while waiting for pandas. In a totally unrelated mutiny, a large chunk of the old raid team took the opportunity to jump on the /gquit bandwagon and subsequently formed their own guild. Sadly, this means that after I finally freed myself of the necrotic limb that was my old guild, I have all my former raid members badgering me to start progression raiding again in their fabulous new guild with a terrible new name.

Just let me gear my alts in peace!

-Avia.

That wasn't that hard. Oh wait... it kind of was.

It was an arduous journey, my friends, but I finally reached my goal of 12k achievement points... and then some. O_o In reaching far into the depths of my achievements tab for time-consuming and soul-crushing 10 point gains, I went a little overboard and found that my 12000th point felt like a major victory while the 50 points after were so effortless, I practically pulled them from my felhunter's ass. This leads me to believe that as impressive as my guild master's 13345 points are, a massive amount of nerd points is relatively easy to acquire; it just depends on what a player is willing to do/willing to invest time in/willing to call in favors from the past six years for.

For example, I never thought that I would ever be the owner of an "of the Four Winds" title. On normal, Al'Akir was the biggest cockblock of tier 11 that made me want to throw myself off a literal platform to my RL death rather than subject myself to it. But then one day, I finally sucked it up, the guild let itself be led by a competent strategist, and five other DPS carried me through phase 3 after I inevitably died to a lightning cloud. Suddenly, I was thinking to myself, "Hey! It's ok if people find out I'm a noob at 360° motion. Swallow your pride and thank people profusely!" Bam. 12k achieve points.

My friend says I should try for more to reach #2 in the guild, but there are obstacles, i.e. achieves that I, for many reasons, will not touch. For carebears like me, a major bottleneck is in PVP. Those achieves aren't even difficult, but for someone who /cries while a Horde ganks my alt, the thought of carrying a flag in Warsong Gulch makes me want to curl up into a fetal position and protect my core. I already harbor bad memories of all six mobs in the PVP encounter of Trial of the Crusader turning on me at once. Even in fake PvP, the lock dies first.

And then there are the RP roadblocks. The same friend suggested I switch from Frenzyheart to Oracles so I could get the questing and rep achieves, but I outright said no. In my humble leveling journeys of Northrend, I met the Frenzyheart first and then had to listen to the Oracles bash my new-found friends. Yes, they're a little brusque in their demeanor, but that's just their personalities, and you accept people for who they are. Then, when I had to choose between the two factions and saved Zepik's life, he told me he was so grateful, that he knew he could count on me, and that he'd tell his village to be nice to me from then on. He gave me a vote of confidence! How could I betray that?

There are some things in life that are worth more than a few nerd points. Like being true to your alignment.

-Avia.

This is why I barred myself from the internet to read Harry Potter 6.

So I've been waiting since July of last year to read Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects because I'm too cheap to buy a hardcover, and one month before the paperback is finally going to be released, I happened to browse through Wowpedia only to get smacked in the face with a goddamn spoiler. I'm assuming that all of you either disregarded the seven dollar difference in price and read the book promptly, are smart enough to have read it for free by sitting in Barnes & Noble, or don't give a damn about esoteric game lore. Stop reading here if you're just a dumbass like me.

...

They fucking killed Krasus!

Admittedly, he was never a very important character. The only time the player really interacts with him is when s/he flies up to the to of Wyrmrest Temple for the first time to ogle the Dragon Queen and realizes that the stoically quiet "elf" standing next to her is her boy toy. But he seemed like a cool guy. He didn't have a problem being second-in-command to a powerful woman. He was progressive like that. Plus, he must have been amazing in bed to be an Aspect's consort. It doesn't matter now though because Blizzard killed him. What did he ever do to you, Christie Golden?!

And the worst part is that now I feel really REALLY bad for Alexstrasza. I've already written about how I think she's a warmongering bitch who is playing the Horde and Alliance as pawns in her grand murderous schemes, but now that Blizzard has finally succeeded in killing off all of her lovers, I just want to give her a tissue and a hug. Like... damn. She had four consorts, life partners and fathers to her children, and now they're all dead. Blizz, you are just a bunch of heartless bastards. Give the girl a break.

By the way, I still haven't read the book. I already waited this long; might as well stick it out another two weeks. Like a dumbass.

-Avia.

I'm a liberal flower-picking hippie. Of course I have to care about this stuff.

The "Love is in the Air" holiday is so
gayovertly effeminate.

Oddly masculine...

Having played an MMO for five years, I've found that lately my vocabulary has been not so politically correct. Yes, "gay" does not necessarily denote a derogatory reference to homosexuals, and using the word to describe an in-game holiday that involves presenting faction leaders charm bracelets to receive pink cards does not make me a bigot. But as any post-structuralist will purport, language not only expresses what people feel, it also actively affects how they think until "just kidding, I know women don't exist to make me sammiches" turns into someone with a "make me a sammich" mentality for reals.

Unfortunately, certain words and phrases have become key elements in our, the MMO geeks', vocabulary, and we do need them to function and communicate our thoughts effectively. Lucky for you, my dear reader, I have taken the liberty of egalitarianizing common expressions to be more PC. I hope you will find these useful in your everyday dealings as a modern gamer.

Situation: Complaining about the nerfed state of WoW.
Not this: "And I was like hurrdurr move out of fire."
But this: "The game is so casual now that the mechanics are nothing but simple things like moving out of fire."

Situation: Gold farmers spamming trade.
Not this: "DIAF Chinaman."
But this: "Though we recognize that it is your livelihood to sell gold, it is inconvenient for us that you spam multiple chat channels and /yell concurrently."

Situation: Pugging with Latin American servers.
Not this: "Is everyone on Quel'Thalas fucking bad?!"
But this: "Because of the language barrier, I do not enjoy playing with people from Quel'Thalas since I cannot instruct them on how to prevent the adds on Corla from evolving. Repeatedly."

Situation: Interacting with girl gamers.
Not this: "Tits or GTFO."
But this: "I understand that you as a female will not gratify me by showing me your breasts, but I will be content in appreciating you as a player for your leet deeps."

Yea, they're kind of lengthy. Make macros.

-Avia.

The proof of a very productive winter break.

Just in time for back-to-school, I got my fucking legendary yeaaaahhhhh!!!

I know I'm months behind, but by the time it was my turn for final stage quest items, it was already patch 4.3, and my guild needed to move onto wiping in a new instance. For the past month, I had to organize 10-man normals on the weekends and carry people's alts to victory while collecting smouldering essences at an agonizingly slow pace. But after calling in a bunch of favors and perhaps doing some things that I'm not too proud of, I finally own one of the ugliest staves in the game, and I can't even transmog it. T_T Oh my first world problems.

However, I did manage to build a pretty sweet outfit around it. Though it's a rather stark contrast to my priest look-alike set, it is now blatantly obvious what class I am when I step into an arena for nerd points. I'm hoping that in my quest to break 12k achievement points, it won't matter too much that I only have 2k resilience and use a PVE rotation as I work through the only achieves that I have left and have been ignoring as Eredar-US's carebear #1 since 2005.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that the "if you give me what I want, I'll stop killing you" argument will be less effective when I'm talking to another player. On the other hand, it never really worked on any mob either. Oh well.

-Avia.

Mature Language Filter and the most fun I've had all patch.

When patch 4.3 broke the Mature Language Filter to make it constantly turn itself back on, I moved quickly past the initial irritation of not being able to understand half of what my potty-mouth friends say to amusement and amazement at the everyday discoveries of what Blizzard considers "offensive" language. Even though a blue post has since given us a way to keep it from switching on again once we log off, I have yet to implement the little self-hotfix in favor of the enlightening glimpses into the mind of Blizz, who apparently thinks the word "porn" is so dangerous to the internet-savvy little eyes of WoW youth that they even filter the words "p0rn" and "pr0n." Whoever was leading the MLF team, give him/her a gold star for thoroughness.

Some of their choices for filtered words are either confusing or just nonsensical. For some reason, a small percentage of players, including myself, can see the name "Hitler" while it's filtered for everyone else. Ignoring the fact that it's just someone's name and not an actual racial slur, why the fuck does Blizz think that I should be able to see it and not the majority of others? Either they think I'm a Nazi or they are absolutely certain that I'm not a Nazi. Also, I'm genuinely annoyed and slightly peeved that words like "penis" and "vagina" are censored while "dick" and "pussy" are not. Come on, Blizz. "Penis" and "vagina" are medical terms. They're what people would call genitalia when they're not being vulgar. You can't even use them while cybering without sounding like a creeper.

"I put my penis in your vagina."
"... what?"
"Um... I mean... I put on my robe and wizard hat?"
"Hot."

Anyway, my guild and I found an awesome game to play with the MLF. Everyone leave it on, one person type a word into gchat, and have everyone else guess what it is. Four-letter words are plentiful but easy to guess, so try longer ones. I stumped one of my guildies for twenty minutes before he finally guessed "masturbation." Good clean fun, all thanks to Blizz. <333

-Avia.

I'm either really good at bragging or just really bad at flirting.

Besides my widely-popular and world-famous WoW blog that you are reading right now, Ms. rhymes with Moldavia a.k.a. Avia a.k.a. "the lag lock" is also a New York City creative writer who happens to have a reading tomorrow January 20th at Happy Ending Lounge. Yes, it's a bar called Happy Ending in Chinatown. People used to get happy endings there, but now they just get drunk while listening to up-and-coming fiction writers and watching burlesque dancers take their clothes off. That might have been a little redundant, but I wanted to emphasize the fact that if you come to see me read, you will also get a strip tease while drinking in a former massage+ parlor. Details here.

A new officer in my guild is now posting WorldofLogs for us. Admittedly, I never really cared about logs and rankings before since I consider it a job well done if the boss dies and I did an adequate job at dealing damage and staying alive. Don't get me wrong; I'm no casual. I research the theorycrafting as much as the next loser with a skewed conception of priorities, but I'm pretty satisfied with my performance as long as I'm not getting outDPS'd by mages or dying to easysauce mechanics like every tunnel-visioning idiot on Ultraxion. However, our poor performance in Dragon Soul has prompted guild management to perform an audit on all the DPS to ensure we're not doing anything stupid like forgetting cooldowns or using the wrong spells, and it has led to an increase in the already rampant epeen swinging among the classic epeen swingers, the raid DPS.

Apparently, it is necessary after every boss kill for someone to whisper me and talk about how he beat someone else in the meter, to which I casually reply something along the lines of "I don't give a fuck." Except... lately, I'm starting to do the exact same thing. When I'm in the top 3, my usual sense of accomplishment also possesses an inlaid feeling of conquest over others, and when I do terrible damage, I find myself feeling wholly unattractive and inadequate. Somehow, my performance according to Skada has merged itself with my self-concept of sexual prowess to the point where I was on a date this week and I tried to impress the guy by telling him that I was 90th in the world. He was really confused.

Someone save me from my own psyche. Plzkthx.

-Avia.

2011: The Year in Cataclysm!

2011 is over, and your girl at RP Your Life!, the ultimate source for obliquely relevant WoW news, has the rundown of all the biggest trends and most important highlights of the Year in Cataclysm!

The award for "Biggest Pain in the Ass Boss Encounter" goes to... Al'Akir. You thought I was going to say Alysrazor, but no amount of time can erase the early Cata memories of trying to get the "Defender of a Shattered World" title and having some asshole elemental with shit loot standing in my way. Not since C'Thun did a raid need to position each player so precisely, and after thirty minutes of running around a platform and placing Tol Barad Searchlights and lock portals as markers, some idiot would die to a tornado in the second phase anyway. It was such a time-consuming ordeal to even get to the point where one could ascertain that the group is incompetent that I eventually stopped actively looking for groups, and thus I haven't even wiped to him very much at all. Bragging rights for boss that has killed me the most this year goes to heroic Halfus since fail kicks are fail. My most beloved boss is Yor'sahj because the random color-changing that forces the raid to adapt reminds me of Chromaggus.

2011's most mispronounced words for my guild: Alysrazor, fieroblast, Chimaeron, preemptively.
Grand total of ragequits: 4.5 (one stopped hearthing midway).

My #1 most hilarious moment of WoW 2011 happened right at the end of the year. While watching the highly anticlimactic cutscene after the defeat of Deathwing, I realized that Blizzard randomly changed Alexstrasza's voice, which isn't weird per se since voice actors can switch around. The odd part was that they completely threw out the wizened "grandmother of the world" persona that she sported during the quest chain in Twilight Highlands and made her into a lower-pitched, stoic, Arwen-type instead. Blizzard must have realized they were ruining people's fantasies when they put the Dragon Queen in Azeroth's slinkiest outfit and then gave her a voice to match her actual age of many millenia. Obviously, the customer and his erection is more important than continuity. Thanks for the lesson, Blizz!

Stay tuned for 2012!

-Avia.