Putting a little extra effort into your AFK

Parking one's main in the middle of a capital city with all of its raid gear on has been the traditional way to idle since Vanilla, but today I am going to divulge my very secret favorite spots to semi-AFK while waiting in a DPS queue or watching Netflix. I encourage everyone to explore Azeroth in a similar fashion so they can find their ideal home bases that satisfy various individual needs and make their guilds wonder why they are always sitting in the middle of nowhere. Plus, I don't need everyone cramping my spots.

1. Right outside of Shrine

Nothing beats Shrine for meeting all the necessary criteria like city portals, banking, and vendors. However, there's also that annoying trade chat, and I don't need to be lowering my IQ with idiotic arguments and anal chat all day. Thus, here is my favorite place to idle: the now sha-corrupted lake with the forlorn crab right outside of the two Shrines. All the convenience of a capital city is a short flight away whenever I need to find a group hire a crafter check on idiotic arguments, and in the meantime, I can enjoy the relative quiet of my perch like retreating to a suburb on the outskirts of a metropolis.

2. Sunsong Ranch

I did buy it from Farmer Yoon, after all, so it's technically my house. Where else in the world (of Warcraft) can one say that? As a hero of the Alliance, I spend most of my time raiding dangerous dungeons or setting up in inns and sleeping in beds that thousands of warriors have slept in before, and who knows how often they change the sheets? But Tina Mudclaw comes by the ranch house every once in a while to sweep the floor and feed the pigs, and I can relax on MY own personal bed and pet MY unnamed dog while watching the fireflies on MY table. It's enough to make me want to sell my imaginary RP house in South Desolace; that goblin caravan hates delivering supplies to my demon-infested part of the neighborhood.

3. Pride Rock

4. Moonglade

Especially confusing if I'm not on my druid, even the lowbies that randomly stumble upon this zone because they got lost on the way to Winterspring are surprised that I'm there moonbathing by the lake.

Level 45 rogue: What do I do here?
Me, meditating at Lake Elune'ara: Nothing.
Level 45 rogue: No, seriously. Is there a quest?
Me, the serene hermit: Continue on, my son. This is not the place you seek.

5. Guard duty in various low-level zones

If a full set of heroic raid gear is going to be good for anything, it's definitely world PVP, and as anyone who has leveled with CRZ knows, both the Alliance and Horde are rife with rogue soldiers going on killing sprees of quest-giving civilians in towns 70 levels beneath them. Do not fear, citizens, for if I'm going to idle in one place, it might as well be in the skies over Darkshire, ready to swoop down on any unsuspecting no-lifer with nothing to do while their arena partner is out getting laid. Sure, you still have to wait for your NPCs to respawn, but with any hope, my massive epeen will have shot demonic flames so violently that it burned their tiny giblets into fel dust that I can use to power my warlock rituals, and they will crawl away back to Orgrimmar whimpering and holding their singed groins.

As long as they're as terrible at PVP as I am.

-Avia.

Spoiler Alert: Watch the cutscene after Garrosh's defeat before reading.

Yesterday, my guild cleared Normal Siege of Orgrimmar, and after watching that final cutscene (for Alliance), I feel this needs to be said...

Jaina is such a bitch lately.

I understand that she got friend-zoned by her "BFF" Thrall. Then Garrosh destroyed the entire city of Theramore, which was both her home and her charge as a ruler. Plus, I'm sure she's pretty tired of always being the level-headed one who reaches out to the Horde with peaceable ways of settling their problems only to see all of her work get manabombed into the ground. But seriously, manage your anger, Lady.

It's disappointing to see her descend into such pettiness after all of those years of admiring her diplomacy. This entire expansion has been about controlling one's emotions and not letting anger and hatred consume one's soul, something that King Wrynn has finally learned and now exemplifies. It is the truly redeeming aspect of this entire ordeal in Pandaria, and as much as I'm dreading further development of Jaina's new hardened personality, I'm looking forward to serving under a king who may have vanquished the wolf within at last.

By the way, it was sooo satisfying watching Wrathion's hissy fit. Finally, I am DONE doing that little twit's bidding, and I definitely stayed behind to help Tong fix up his shop. He's awesome.

-Avia.

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.

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.

TRANSMOG SHOWCASE!

How does this match?

Patch 4.3 is finally live, and many players (including myself T_T) are finding out that what they had thought were amazing outfits for mogging are actually hideous to others. On Tuesday's raid, I got to see what my teammates considered high Azerothian fashion, and it led me to believe that much more than 8% of the human population is colorblind. Of course, fashion is subjective, and one can say that currently the whole WoW community is pushing the boundaries of avant-garde wearable art. Then again, some individuals are just in dire need of some womanly/metro assistance, like the "female" human mage who was trying desperately to wear Robes of the Guardian Saint in his main set but ended up the eyesore of Dragon Soul (see right). A member of Team Tits later helped him match his outfit appropriately, and now he looks pretty cute... or as cute as one can look in teal.

Unfortunately, I was not immune to the derision of such critics or, as I like to call them, "haters." A common comment that many moggers hear is that we look like low-level n00bs, but personally, I think my pally looks pretty "classic" in her recolored Valor. Besides, I would imagine this has high utility in a battleground since the enemy is unaware that the player coming at him/her in full Tier 1 is actually hiding full Vicious gear. That is... until s/he gets mysteriously roflpwn'd with what looks like an Arcanite Reaper.

For my druid's outfits, which I spent the last four months farming BC raids and 2-manning Ulduar to assemble, I received mixed reviews. My friend saw my "family-friendly" set and called me "Sailor Moon," which I took as a compliment. But then I showed him my "free-spirited/liberation of the female form" set, and he said I looked like a night elf hussy! I had to run BT every single week since news of transmog came out for that damn blindfold to even drop once, goddamnit!

So far, the only outfit that has gotten popular approval is my lock's "yup. that's a lock." set, complete with an actual Headmaster's Charge, the original "warlock" weapon! As my main, she has multiple outfits, which I'm a little hesitant to show off now that people have universally complimented the first one. I mean... my fragile ego might not be able to take a 25-man raid team making fun of the way I dress. I already get enough of that in real life...

For the record, I think I dress fine. >: (

-Avia.

The Plight of the ERPer

I'd fit in perfectly!

Despite how trendy it is nowadays to roll a level 1 on Moon Guard and laugh at the batshit crazy RPers in Goldshire, my friend was so bored the other night that he convinced me to go on an excursion with him. Now, I can attest that all the horror stories that people tell about this server's ERP epicenter are true.

First off, it was 4am and it was as crowded as my server's Stormwind is on a Tuesday night. It was obviously prime time for WoWers looking to "camp an instance portal," if you know what I mean. Also, the anonymity was prompting some of these guys (and you know they're guys) to say some of the most off-color/offensive/nowhere near subtle sexual utterances that I never imagined I would encounter, much less be exposed to in a public space. It makes me wonder what percentage of the Goldshire crowd is seriously looking to cyber and how much of it is just trolls from other servers doing as the Romans do.

Yes, there are definitely people looking to find someone of supposedly the opposite sex with which they can type one-handed. I even found some guy wanting to Skype-sex a daddy/daughter scenario, which IMO was a pretty smart way of guaranteeing the gender of the person with which he's touching himself. I said no thanks, by the way.

And then there are people like my friend, who was getting way into the spirit of the festivities and walking up to any and all naked players, propositioning them by walking into them repeatedly from behind. How is an honest sexual deviant supposed to find a good time with assholes like that floating around his hangout?

Poor Moon Guard. I feel your pain.

-Avia.

RNG never fails to displease.

A couple weeks ago (yea, I've been a bit truant lately), I played my first ever game of D&D, and it was even geekier than I had imagined it! As a creative writer, I always wondered why I never got into tabletop RPGs. I'm not even sure if people still RP in WoW though I sure as hell try to as much as I can on a PvP server. You'd be surprised how many people in Stormwind are willing to join in on a costume party and (jokingly?) erotic scenarios, but it's usually by the time someone says something disturbingly inappropriate about women/children/orifices that the crowd disperses in a trail of nervous laughter and I fear for the future of our species.

Anyway, during my aforementioned adventures in Hypergeek Land, I found that the things people like the most about tabletop RPGs, i.e. the face-to-face interaction and regular convening of friends in real life, are pretty big turnoffs for someone who has trouble conversing with people outside of a typed environment, i.e. me. I can't even remember the last time I was in a group setting, but I'm certain alcohol was involved. However, my guildies and I got over even the hurdle of having to meet up in person to D&D: we play over vent. Apparently, I'm a druid who shoots things with a bow and can tame animals. Obviously, the graphical interface isn't as sophisticated as WoW, but that's what my imagination is for, right?

Guess which one I am!

After engaging in a few battles, I noticed an important flaw in our setup. All the dice rolls are automated by d20pro's AI, and as anyone who plays WoW knows, all /rolls by a player will suck balls EXCEPT when they're not yours. After the fifth miss on a mob, one of which actually whiffed so badly that I hit my teammate for full damage, I was starting to think that playing a game based on lucky rolls wasn't such an encouraging prospect. Some people might say that it's not luck; it's probability. But after five years of playing WoW, I know that the probability of whiffing a roll and losing your item to a "teammate" is so close to 100% that it defies the laws of statistics.

I'm expecting Morgan Freeman to show up any day now to do a special on the numerical wormhole that was ICC. Stupid Rotface trinket.

-Avia of throttled inequalities.

Patch 4.3 is going to be so fab.

Outfits aren't just for ERP anymore.

Deathwing is coming, but nobody cares because everyone is busy pulling out the RP clothes they denied having all this time. The news of transmogrification has turned everyone in WoW metro, and it is highly amusing, at least for me. The typical vent chatter for my guild has veered away from vulgar yet clever threats on the integrity of people's sphincters to what instances someone has to run to get a matching belt and hat for his maroon robe. If only this was permanent. My GM is way too fond of assholes and vomit.

As for me, I of course already owned several sets of town clothes before the news hit though I do have to go back to BWL for all the Nemesis I vendored in Wrath. Also, since the items need to have some kind of stat to work, I'm on the lookout for a replacement for my Knitted Sandals that don't look like a fashion faux pas.

With my infinitely wise delegation of my free time, I composed a little wishlist of loot with the instances I need. Together with my guildies, I've run every BC raid for the week with moderate success. I'm growing slightly obsessed with the sword that drops off of M'uru because it'd be the perfect weapon for my priestly/Light-wielding, worgen persecutor set, and I want it sooo badly. My friend asked why I don't just buy the Season 4 rogue weapon with the same model for 200 honor, but the colors are all wrong. The COLORS!

I've never felt so in tune with well-groomed twenty-something heterosexual men before.

-Avia.

Everything I Learned in Life, I Learned From Gaming.

After all the years of schooling, careful parenting, and going to (and dozing off in) church, it turns out that all of my life lessons ended up coming from video games. Aside from the usual “don’t stand in fire” and “turtles are jerks,” there have been more than a few jarring epiphanies leading to advice that helped me immensely in academics, work, and social life. Plenty of other people have listed their lessons learned from raiding and gaming. My list is better. It has Magmaw on it.

1. If I want something done and done right, I have to do it myself.

I learned this while raiding. Sure, I had to trust my team and work as a cohesive group from week to week, but when it came to killing an add or fearing it away, I learned not to wait for someone else to do it while the raid lead yelled that we were going to die.

This advice has worked for me IRL too. At a job, all of the employees work together toward a common goal, whether it’s customer service, meeting a deadline, or building something. But if it’s a choice between focusing on my job and letting something important in the office not get done, and taking a few minutes out of my time to ensure the continued smooth operation of the workplace, I tend to choose to take initiative for the good of the team as long as I’m not neglecting my own duties.

2. If I don’t work towards fulfilling dreams and life goals, I will eventually go crazy.

The original The Sims games were great, but when The Sims 2 introduced the aspirations system, it became a work of microcosmic genius. Fulfilling minor wants like kissing a significant other or gaining skills improved one’s mood, which in turn gave the extra boost required to do jobs well. What really spoke to me was the “Lifetime Want,” a life goal that, once achieved, would put a character in a perpetual good mood state for the rest of its virtual life.

And when a Sim went through day after day not fulfilling any of its desires, the poor thing would actually get depressed, sob randomly, and eventually have to see a shrink. It’s like the Sim is me! I could spend the rest of my life getting by with achieving minor wants, or I could set a (realistic) life goal and work towards a more lasting happiness. Oh the choices in the life a Sim… er… human.

Another thing I learned from The Sims was that ordering Chinese takeout and pizza is expensive and fattening (link fat sim), but that was a little less poignant.

3. Some things are more important at certain times than other things.

Despite the confusing wording, this was a pretty harsh lesson for me. I used to WoW like it was my job. Honestly, I still play a lot. It's pretty difficult to be a raider and not play an amount that normal people would consider excessive. But during the last couple years at my first university, video games were trumping every priority I previously had, including class, homework, and hanging out with the friends I used to see every week. It wasn’t until I dropped out of school and had to get a full-time job to support myself that I finally cut out WoW, because I didn’t have the money for it.

Above everything, the big lesson here was to manage my time. Now, I’m back in school, working part-time, and still playing video games a good deal, because I know that at certain points in the week/semester, assignments and exams will have priority, and at other times when I have a little room to slack off, I can jump around Stormwind without guilt.

There are plenty of other things that I learned from raiding, mostly about fire. They'll have to wait for another time. Come back for more silliness!

-Avia.

Lunk: A New Hero for Azeroth’s Carebears

Every WoW player has experienced the moment of clarity at least once. It’s the one time out of a few thousand that you’re killing mobs for a quest when you finally stop and wonder... Why am I always being called on to commit mass murder on everything from wolves to fellow humanoids to ghosts just idly haunting an area no one cares about anyway? By the time the train of thought arrives at wondering what’s the point of all this bloodshed, it becomes apparent that almost every quest mob you’ve ever run into wants you to kill something or other, and if downing a raid boss is acceptable (which it is because they drop LOOT!), then it should be ok to kill everything else in the game. After all, no one wants to be a hypocrite, and there’s nothing more obnoxious than meeting a vegetarian who never eats meat ever except every once in a while, he eats bacon.

Now and always, the honor-hungry and battle-loving RPers have had plenty of leadership characters to support with militant fervor. Any of the faction leaders come to mind with their duties to protect their people with whatever armed force is necessary. Even little Mekkatorque took up arms in his attempt to wrest control of Gnomeregan. And of course, there is Alexstrasza, protector of life and warmonger extraordinaire for two expansions. Personally, I’m getting sick of her bossing around the heroes of the Alliance and Horde in her little vendettas against her former pals, but without her, Malygos might have killed us all way before the Cataclysm ever happened.

However, with the new questlines in the Old Kingdoms comes a brand new hero, one that I can get behind though hopefully not literally. As innocent as a child and probably with the same mental capacity, Lunk the ogre shows the player how to do all of the dirty work that various quest givers require without the usual brute force of slaying mobs. Need to steal some Dark Iron wares? Why kill them for it when you can just sit on them? Though the tactics have moved from dispatch to torture, it’s a small step in a world otherwise full of sheer brutality and “no questions asked” mercenaries.

There’s already popular support for Lunk in the WoW community. His alternative methods made Paddlefoot on Wowhead rethink our methods.

“The funny thing is, while he's obviously meant to be humorous and I was laughing out loud at his antics, I found that reading his text did give me pause for a moment. Why am I doing all this killing? Aren't there other ways of solving Azeroth's problems than non-stop, wholesale slaughter?” [1]

Unfortunately, as much as I’d like for Lunk to keep teaching me the ways of the pacifist ogre, Lunk can’t follow us around through all of Azeroth. Any hero who wants to quest and get phat loot in the World of Warcraft has to slay things unapologetically left and right. But I’ll never forget the short amount of time that I spent running around Searing Gorge with Lunk, exploring new ways to get the old things done, and a lot of other players will remember just as fondly how he showed us the power of good intentions.

-Avia.

Drain Life Hotfix Prompts RP Worthy Debates

In a recent hotfix, Blizzard decided to implement the nerf to Drain Life that was originally slated for Patch 4.2 a bit earlier than the player base expected it. The warlock community was already up in arms when it saw the proposed change and not because it was an unwarranted decrease in overall DPS that would be detrimental to raid performance. Rather, the issue was the replacement of Drain Life in our rotation by Shadow Bolt, a decidedly less “Affliction-y” spell.

This has led to criticism by players who find the complaining ridiculous as the warlocks in question are arguing about what is basically a cosmetic issue, much like the numerous threads of petitioners for green fire that existed before Fel Flame appeared. As a warlock, I have a vested interest in the debates, but even as a general player, I find the arguments valid even outside of an RP immersion-ist context. There are many reasons that players choose the specs that they do. The major one for damage classes is maximizing DPS, and every raider and/or Recount whore has this priority in mind. Another is utility, i.e. PVE vs. PVP or situational advantages for certain abilities like Priests’ Archangel.

But another important factor in choosing specs is play style. No matter how strongly someone believes that spec is irrelevant as long as s/he is pumping out as much DPS as s/he possibly can on a boss, as soon as the raid leader wants a player to try something different, everyone gets defensive at least a little bit about their choices. Whether they use ElitistJerks to justify their talent points or cite special fight mechanics that make a certain spec superior to another, we all want to play how we like.

In such a highly visual game like WoW, cosmetics can play a role in whether or not we enjoy playing by affecting what we have to stare at for hours at a time. If something is bothering us about how we play, it can nag at the psyche like there’s a huge hunter pet’s ass in our field of vision that we wish we could do something about. It isn’t always about being overly resistant to change, though it definitely can be. Sometimes, we just want our characters to fit in with our ideas of our virtual world.

Ultimately, what fits in with the lore and mechanics of WoW are up to Blizzard. If they decide that Affliction locks should use Shadow Bolt as filler instead of Drain Life, it’s a subtle difference we have to accept until they deem our arguments valid. But it doesn’t stop us from putting our arguments out there. Every class has had issues like this, from some druids wanting perma-tree back to the validity of dwarf mages. Despite what all the trolls may think is a ridiculous waste of time, these debates are as serious as the game that we’re arguing about, and that differs for everyone.

-Avia rhymes with Moldavia.