Feeling Blah

Haven't been around the web in a while.  I think I'm in one my ruts.

I haven't even really felt like playing WoW much.  I logged on to my characters when I realized it was a holiday, plus WoW's 7th anniversary, but I haven't really felt like playing.  Thanksgiving has been a bit of a distraction, too.

I'm aware that I'm coming to the end of the month and I haven't been composing any music, either.  Blah.

Blah, blah, blag, blarg. That's what I feel like right now.

IMOHO: How to create vices

Here I am, not working again. Instead, I'll write up some thoughts I have on how I characterize and differentiate between my characters, specifically how I deal with giving characters unique flaws and vices.

Please note this is all "in my own humble opinion" and you should feel free to discard or outright disagree with anything I write.

I am an altoholic.  It helps that I am now on an RP server and feel the need to create an actual character for every toon before I roll a new one, and yet I'm already up to 6 toons.  Three Alliance, three Horde.  I think I've reached a limit for the time being, until I can find a new "niche" for a character to exist in.

Besides, I need to save a slot for the Pandaren and the monk I'm going to roll...

NaNoWriMo Aspirations

Okay, I confess:  I've always wanted to do NaNoWriMo.

It doesn't help these days that I regularly go on vacation the first week of November.  Silly wedding anniversary!

I like to write.  I have been writing since elementary school, before I started composing music. As you can imagine, they were very bad stories.  I have improved, however.  I hope.

Need for Simplicity

Got back yesterday from a trip with Hubby.  Spent today mostly avoiding work by reading up on all the WoW stuff I missed and logging in to do a few dailies.  I did do a little bit of straightening around the office...

My office is very distracting.

A Hallow Ending (short story)

((This is a story I just posted on CC's forums about Ketlan's first days on the realm.))

“A Hallow Ending”

Her hands moved in a set rhythm, inured against both the chill and the occasional prick of the needle.  Ketlan was no master tailor, but repairing her own robes was a familiar task.  The once pristine robe was riddled with a series of mends and patches.  It was mismatched, pieced together from different sources.  Each stitch was memory, as was every faint stain, which no scrubbing could remove.  

Ketlan's First Day

I spent today giving my neglect main some much needed love.  I bought her some gear, and let her attend an RP event.

Oh, and I died surprisingly less often that I thought I would.

Welcome to Cenarion Circle

Well, I gave it a lot of thought, and last night I made a decision.

I transferred my main to Cenarion Circle.

Welcome, Ketlan Jancis, to your new home.

Monking Around

Sooo...

Monking Around

Something many people thought would never happened occurred yesterday: Blizzard announced a new class for World of Warcraft, the Monk. 

We're looking at a leather-wearing, agility based fighter who can tank, dps, and melee heal!  The last one has me very excited as a healer.  It's a brand new dynamic, and one I can't wait to try out. 

There are three specs:

• Brewmaster (Tank) 
• Mistweaver (Melee Healer)
• Windwalker (DPS)

One of the monk's distinctive features will be its lack of auto attack.  Every attack you do will be generated by a button press, giving you much more involved, "twitchy" feel.  The animations on the monks seem very expressive and fluid and are based off martial arts.  Of course, we've only seen the Pandaren animations; who knows what a gnome or night elf would look like?  (Or a Tauren!)

Monks will wear cloth and leather armor, and their resource is chi.  In the case of the Mistweaver, when you switch to a healing stance, your chi will convert to mana.  The healing model will be based on proximity: you can heal those who are standing close to you in melee, or you can heal via statues that can be strategically placed near ranged DPS.  This reminds me a bit of atonement healing in disc priests; I hope there is some way to target your heals more effectively that what my priest currently does. 

 

I haven't heard yet how the other two play styles will work out.  They will be using the same leather gear as a druid.  There is a possibility that Brewmaster will work like feral tanking- which I guess we should start calling guardian tanking- or might be a form of agility tanking.  Windwalker is likely to be similar to a rogue.

I'm already thinking about what to name my future monk, and what class she should be.  My main's a 85 disc priest, and my favorite alts are a resto shammy and resto druid, so I'm definitely trying out the mistweaver spec.  I will have to roll a pandaren - how can you not? - but I would like to see how the class feels on classic races, as well.

There hasn't been any new news on updated character models, but if all the BC-era classes are getting a whole new set of animations, there has to be some improvements made, if only in the skeletal system. 

It saddens me that it will likely be months before we get to try out the new class.  People at Blizzcon get to play a demo, but in the everyday world, the PTR is still working on Patch 4.3.  It would be nothing short of miraculous if the next PTR is for MoP. 

As soon as that Beta hits, though- I will be there!

BLIZZCON

I just finished watching the first day of Blizzcon coverage via livestream. Wow!

Or should I say WoW?

Vashj'ir still bugged

Dear Blizzard,

I am posting this here as this is not an actual “bug report” per se, as this concerns a known issue.  I would just like someplace to share my feelings on this problem, as it has left me very frustrated.

I consider myself a casual player.  I take my time playing through the game.  I like to explore, take breaks, and read every quest.   I don’t look up information on quests or zones unless I’m stumped, although I can’t help hearing some spoilers. It took me two years to reach level cap.   What keeps me playing is the community, and the story.

How I Wound Up in Cenarion Circle and My Current Guilds

It's time for another late-night post, fictional readers.  This one's a long one.

I've been thinking a lot about guilds lately.  Y'know: which ones to join, keep, what to name my future bank guild.  Stuff like that.  Up until now, I haven't really been all that picky about what guild I join, except that they must be casual.  I don't have the schedule the commit to raid times or required events. 

I think it's time I got more serious about guilds.

Sleep? What's that?

The nightmare is over.  Dreams may begin.

I notice I've tended to write late night entries.  Well, right now doesn't feel very late, as I've only been awake for a few hours. The night shifts at work are over.  Inventory was yesterday... or day before?.... Tuesday night. Whatever.

Roleplaying is like music. Also, what time is it? ...*hic*

My sense of time is completely thrown off right now.

It's also Brewfest!

And those two facts have nothing to connect them. Really.

Bear with me, fictional reader, for this post is a bit rambling.

Songs of Warcraft

I can now update my "last song written" from "one year ago" to "one day ago."

I've been working on a song in my head for one of my potential roleplaying characters on WoW.   She's a paladin, so I though it was appropriate to write a song about the Light.  It's a short little hymn-like song wishing the blessings of Light. You don't have to be a Warcraft fan to appreciate it. 

And it begins...

Okay, I'm not much for writing personal things, and I'm not much of a diary keeper.

I've had one diary since I was in second grade.  I've written maybe twenty entries in it, ever. And even those pages are very hush-hush, generic, 'I'm not saying anything too personal' entries.

However, I do love talking to people, even fictional people, about the projects and hobbies I have.  And maybe one day those people won't be fictional.  They'll be you.

And maybe knowing I'm being followed by fictional people will motivate me to finish some of my projects, hmm?  It's all about peer pressure.  Support groups.  I need it.

I occurs to me that I must actually write what projects I'm working on if I'm to be held accountable.

First, my music.  I'm a musician.  I'm a pretty mediocre singer and a poor pianist, but I love writing music.  I love it enough that I spent a lot of money getting a Bachelor's Degree in Music Composition.  But the truth is, once I was out of school and weekly student 'show and tell' groups,  I stopped writing.  I have exactly one piece of music I've written, start to finish, since college, and a lot of music stubs I've begun and haven't followed through on.  I sing and hum to myself all the time- I just to need to buckle down and write it out.  My goal is write one piece of music per month, no matter how big or small it is.  It doesn't even need to be "perfect."  That's what editing is for, and nothing is ever truly finished until I'm dead.

Second, my biggest distraction.  World of Warcraft.  I hate WoW because it's such a huge time sink.  It's such a huge time sink because I love WoW.  I love the lore, I love the game, and I love the people I play with.  I love group activities, whether it's being a music group or a dungeon pug.

I have an 85 Disc Priest on a PvE server that I rolled on with my friends, but my internet connection is so horrible that I rarely get to run dungeons and have never been in a raid.  It's just not a good idea when even fishing requires sacrifices to the server gods.  My friends have all either quit or moved since then.  I have recently rolled on a couple of RP servers instead, as in the past year I've started reading the books and feel a lot more comfortable with the world of Azeroth.  I'd like someplace to document my character's growth.  I used to be a RPer when I was in highschool on a text MUD called Harper's Tale.  I made good friends there, and hope to do the same on WoW.

Plus, I've noticed that the last few songs I've written (in my head) are based on Warcraft.  So my immediate goal is to write them out, and share them with you, my fictional readers.