Sandwich Rations

Finally, finally, something dwarves can (mostly) lay claim to! Yes, it's the dwarves who shared Winter Veil with humans -- and elves and gnomes and draenei. So it's time for another five questions! How do you celebrate Winter Veil?

1. Do you celebrate Winter Veil at all? If so, is it a new tradition for you, or one you've been doing for as long as you can remember?
2. How do you feel about the more commercial aspects of Winter Veil? Do the Smokywood Pastures vendors bother you at all?
3. What sort of food do you like to have around Winter Veil time? Are you a fan of Graccu's Mince Meat Fruitcake?
4. What sort of decorations do you put up for Winter Veil, and when do they go up?
5. If you could get anything at all from Greatfather Winter this year, what would it be?

Read more...

I really had fun with the five interview questions I tossed out last week, so I think I'm going to give that another shot this week. If you have interview questions you'd like to toss out, I'd be happy to save 'em for a later post!

Talents and abilities!
1. What's one thing you're particularly good at?
2. What's one thing you're particularly bad at?
3. Do you prefer it when your talents put you in the spotlight, or when you can perform them quietly from the sidelines? Or neither?
4. If you could be instantly great at any one thing, what would it be?
5. What's a talent someone else has that you particularly admire?

Read more...

The other day I took Ovistine -- my shadow priest -- to Oculus. Now, Ovistine's trinkets kinda suck, so when a Pendulum of Telluric Currents dropped, I was pretty psyched. I was the only DPS caster in the group, so I figured it was a no-brainer that I'd get it.

I tried to click the "need" button. I tried again. I tried again, and nothing happened. I had to roll "greed", but of course others had rolled "disenchant". Sorry, Ovi -- now that nice new trinket is a dream shard.

Uh, okay, I thought. I went on to Halls of Stone. This time we lost our healer midway through, and (cover your eyes, RP folks) I went disc in order to get us through the rest of the instance (it was not hard to find another DPS). Well, a Forge Ember dropped. Okay, not the most exciting healing trinket, but not not a healing trinket, right? Everyone else in the group was melee anyway.

I tried to click "need" again. Nothing. Another shard; another disappointed dwarf.

Valinar pointed out, today, this post:

The "need" option is only available for both armor and weapons that are designed for your class. Caster classes and hybrid caster classes can roll "need" on items with intellect and/or spell power while melee classes cannot. Melee classes and hybrid melee classes can roll "need" on the items without intellect and/or spell power.

What do you notice about Forge Ember and Pendulum of Telluric Currents? Forge Ember's base stat is crit. Pendulum's is haste.

Not Int. Not spellpower. Crit and haste.

Hot damn, guys, those are melee trinkets. Or at least the Need-Before-Greed system sure thinks they are.

Until this is fixed -- and I hope it gets fixed soon; the GM ticket I submitted got a response that said "we know it's an issue and we're working on it" -- please, for Muradin's beard's sake, pass on caster trinkets that don't have int or spellpower. You may get shafted once or twice on this; you may lose out rolling on a shard. Greediboi-NotYourServer the nelf rogue may walk away with a shard unopposed (except by the desperate druid rolling "greed" instead of "disenchant").

But right now, rolling greed on trinkets is the only thing those of us with shitty caster trinkets can do. And we're doing it. Give us a hand, if you can.

(( "Perhaps we can't, Mr. Data. But at least we can give it a try." Another Ovistine story. ))

Read more...

I've been reading the Aely and Arrens story with all kinds of interest -- it's always neat to see how characters' relationships start out. (Also, I can't help but think the fallout from Arrens going all neanderthal and telling Tarquin to keep his paws off Aely must have been awesome.)

Romance seems to be the driving plot behind a lot of characters -- or if not the driving one, certainly one that lasts through other major plot elements. I think it might actually be more unusual for characters in my circle to be single than attached.

Which makes me wonder, and inspired a set of five questions to be posed to any characters interested in answering them:

1. If you're attached, how did it happen? (If not, are you interested in dating?)
2. Have you been "lucky in love" in the past?
3. What's the number-one thing you need from a potential mate?
4. Is there friction in your relationship? Big, small, none at all?  (If you're not in a relationship, how much friction would you like?)
5. Do your friends and family like the person you're dating?  (If you're not dating anyone, how important is your friends' and family's approval?)

Read more...

I hadn't pugged an instance in more than four years. I stopped pugging when I finally fell in with a bunch of folks in WoW, and I still play with those people, plus I've got a raid now, and I often group with them. There's been no need to pug, plus I just generally had a fear of terrible pug members.

But the LFG tool actually got me pretty excited about this whole pugging idea. It's not just the title (although I think "Ovistine the Patient" and "Teuthida the Patient" will eventually be pretty rad), and it's certainly not the pet (I'm not overly fond of pugs), but the ability to get a group pretty much any time I want, for any character I want, run a quick heroic, and get scads of rewards? It's shiny.

Read more...

(( Another post in the Val-and-Ovi series, picking up from Pilgrim's Bounty: The Invitation. ))

Read more...

The disadvantage to dragging my heels on things like, say, writing out the Lighthammers at the Wrathgate story is -- well, in the end, the game itself moves on, and while characters on their own may not have continuity issues, when your characters are interacting with other characters, continuity in an MMO becomes a whole pile of confusing glitchy problems.

So at the moment I feel like I've got two choices:

* Retcon, retcon, retcon: Write out the Wrathgate story as I've always wanted to have it happen, and accept the fact that it fails several continuity checks. Rework anything I've written that contradicts it, and start RPing the Lighthammers as they'd be after the Wrathgate right now.

* Move the timeline: Wrathgate has happened, the Lighthammers made it through okay, and shift the Lighthammer events from Wrathgate to the opening of Icecrown Citadel.

Much as I loved the idea of setting it at Wrathgate, I think the continuity problems are going to bother me too much to do it there and then, and I think the major events of the Lighthammer storyline can be picked up and moved. Which means I should probably go ahead and let them both get their Wrathgate achievement, and this time around, stop dragging my heels.

(( First in a series of short glimpses of Ovistine and Valinar around the holiday season... ))

Read more...

I've been meaning to respond to the WTT:RP post about Pilgrim's Bounty, and what our characters are thinking about all week, but am only just now getting to it. Oh, well -- the day's appropriate! For those of you celebrating, Happy Thanksgiving!

Recapping the quest text for Pilgrim's Bounty:

Won't you celebrate Pilgrim's Bounty with us, <name>? It's a time for reflecting on your journeys and your good fortune, sharing plentiful food and stories with friends.

Teuthida is grateful to have such strong and generous and wonderful friends -- with particular /hugs and /squees to Alishe, Alonora, Prydion, Israia, and of course Valyrie, who is a bit puzzled at the many, many pies Teu has been baking, but not so puzzled she won't eat them! The one thing that's giving Teu pause these days is that she's been feeling like her "job" -- and adventuring really has become a job for her -- keeps her away from Valyrie and Shattrath a lot more than she'd like. She misses spending time at home, at the orphanage, and she especially misses getting to sing and read to the tiny baby draenei. You may be hearing a loud ticking sound these days if you're standing too close to Teu, and it ain't a gyrochromaton.

Nancie finally got in touch with Ovistine and demanded requested Ovistine join her, Geoffar, Brandur, and the Ironhammer parents in Ironforge for Pilgrim's Bounty. Nancie is grateful that her family is still in one piece -- her father, a retired mountaineer, still spends a lot of time fishing at Loch Modan, and her mother's still working at the forge, turning out battle hammers, blades, and making the occasional pair of mithril spurs. Her brother has a good job training paladins at the Mystic Ward. Ovistine is, more or less, safe. Nancie and Geoffar have a hard, struggling job out at Wintergarde, but they're managing. (And this is where I apologize for being slightly out of phase -- ha! -- with most people, because Wrathgate still hasn't happened for the Lighthammers. Sigh.)

Ovistine has returned from Darnassus, and this year she's incredibly grateful that, despite all the trials and tribulations the Boomsticks have been going through, they've got Homrend back and things look safer now than they have for a while. She's trying to focus on that, and not the way it feels to be cut off from the Light, because that's something she just can't deal with right now. She is also grateful for a certain elf, whom she's planning to invite to Pilgrim's Bounty with the Ironhammers. ("An' may the Light have mercy on his ears.")

Agness is grateful for her wonderful husband, her warm, comfy house in Northshire ("Kobold-Free For 13 days!"), her yarn stash, her new friends at the Shadoweave Knitting Circle, and the fact that Bizpit seems to have been too preoccupied with sulking lately to show up very often or chew on much of her yarn. She's not sure where little demons go for Pilgrim's Bounty, but hopefully he'll stay out of trouble.