Project Lore

Most of us have never had a legendary item as defined by the WoW community. Nope, those elusive oranges are prizes for a very select few. Sure they are cool and have sexy stats, but for the most part they succeed in only making their owner happy. The good news is, there is a different kind of legendary item that is much more prominent among players. Have you ever had an item that you named? Did your guild ever talk about a piece of your equipment as though it was an actual person? Does the story behind how you got your gear mean more to you than its stats? If so, then you know how awesome these real legendary items are. The first time I experienced this was in the Burning Crusade. At the time, I was playing a night elf hunter and we had recently taken down Al'ar. I was awarded a Netherbane axe and while it was amazing statistically, I was disappointed by how it looked. It's hard enough protecting your masculinity as a night elf, but try doing so while walking around with a glowing pink axe! Well rather than fight the jeers from my guildmates, I embraced my new weapon and named it Scott Baio. Some people thought it was humorous and began talking about it during the next raid. It quickly started to feel like my friends were more excited to see Scott Baio at the raid than they were to see me. A few weeks later, another Netherbane dropped and as I won the DKP auction, everyone laughed and wondered what I would name this one. My offhand axe was dubbed Pink Lover and I bought myself a pink mageweave shirt to complete the ensemble. Most people got a big kick out of it and of course there were those that did a /facepalm every time Scott Baio and Pink Lover were mentioned. My dad, who is also in my guild, was not a huge fan of the twin fuchsia blades. Eventually, another one of our hunters won a Netherbane and he didn't disappoint when he named his John Stamos. It was a bitter sweet when I finally got an upgrade and had to replace those axes. I hated how they looked, but they will probably be one of the few items I'll remember long after I'm done playing this game. They were my legendaries. A similar phenomenon has occurred recently in Ulduar. Our guild's tanks have had horrible luck upgrading their shields in WotLK. They just don't drop for us, especially in the heroic raids. A group of us were running Ulduar 10, when our luck finally seemed to be taking a turn for the better. Auriaya dropped the Shieldwall of the Breaker and it was claimed by one of our paladin tanks, Beomaire. We were so excited for him, that is, until he put it on. We stared at the graphic for a few seconds in silence and then all at once started telling him how ugly it was. One person thought it looked like Grizzly Adam's head was chopped off and slapped on the shield. Another guy said, "Actually, it looks like my mother." We chuckled a bit and then moved on. The rest of that raid things went downhill. We were wiping and not making much progress. When we finally ended the raid, we blamed Beo's shield for the bad luck. The next night we were in heroic Ulduar and even though we had beaten Ignis before, we kept dying. Then someone said, "You know, we haven't been able to beat Ignis, since Beo got that heinously ugly shield." In that moment, that homely shield had become legendary. Now, every time we're struggling during a raid, Beo's shield is blamed. It's been weeks and we've still yet to have a shield upgrade drop. so the hilarity continues. I even asked a GM, while they were working on another issue for me, if they could change the graphic on Beomaire's shield to change our luck. I'm still waiting to hear back. So who else has had an item attain legendary status in your guild? Please share your stories with us.

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Like many others, I've been playing WoW since the original beta. My first son, Richie, was barely six months old at the time. A year and some change later, I joined my first, and only, raiding guild. When my second son, Logan, was born, I was slaying Ragnaros. When my kids got older, WoW became a spectator sport for them. Much of my time in the Outlands was spent with one or more children on my lap. I had been promoted to GM of the guild and became their main raid leader. In fact, I fondly recall setting up the assignments for Void Reaver with my son beside me. I keyed into vent to say something to the raid and at that exact moment my son blurted out, "When are you going to fight the wobot?" Hilarity ensued and to this day some guild members still refer to that boss as "The Wobot." So now we're in Northrend and my children are ages 5 and 3. They are no longer content to merely sit on my lap and watch me play. I used to be able to pad my coffers with gold by doing dailies while also entertaining my children. Those days are over. Now they want to participate. They want to click stuff. They want to loot, click on herbs and mines and even fight the bad guys. Both kids are surprisingly effective at playing my toons. Logan can manipulate the interface, find my pets and mounts and click on his favorites. Richie is so advanced that if he could read quests, he could pretty much play solo. After seeing what my eldest could do, the light bulb went off. At least it seemed like a light bulb, but in retrospect it was just the Bad Idea Bears doing what they do best. So I can't farm and do dailies with my kids watching anymore, but my kids are decent at the game by themselves. It started off innocently enough: "Hey Richie, you need to knock down 30 ogres to beat this quest." I would run and make lunch for the kids and come back and the quest was complete! Brilliant! What I forgot to factor in is how quickly small children can grow bored and how creative they are at finding ways to entertain themselves. The end result was the birth of...The Tales of Kindercraft. All-You-Can-Eat Seafood Buffet I was leveling up my fishing in Azshara. I was gathering darkclaw lobster so I could improve my cooking skills at the same time. I had over five stacks of the crustaceans in my backpack when Richie bounded over and asked if he could help. I took the bait. (/pun) I was all pleased with myself. I was doing chores around the house while my son leveled my fishing and cooking for me. I felt like the modern age Tom Sawyer getting others to whitewash my fence. I came back fifteen minutes later to see how he was progressing. My fishing skill had only been leveled a point or two so I asked my son what he was doing. His reply was, "Eating yummy lobster." Over one hundred lobster vanished in fifteen minutes. Did I learn my lesson? Nope. The Fruit, the Milk And the Pachyderm Got Milk? Yes plenty. There have been three occasions where my son has stumbled upon a vacant desk chair with one of my characters already logged into WoW. The first time this happened, I returned to see my son sitting there with an impish grin on his face. I immediately opened my bags and discovered every single bag slot was filled with various fruits from Applebough, the Dalaran fruit vendor. I actually laughed at that one as the damage added up to a few gold pieces, but in retrospect, that only made him think that buying stuff on my toons would illicit a positive reaction. I was playing an alt one Saturday morning when I got up to use the bathroom. I returned to find my son in my seat and I knew there was trouble when he said, "Look in your bags." This time it was milk, ice-cold milk. However, it was a bit more severe as he had deleted all the items in all of my bags in order to cram as much milk as he could on the toon. I didn't even have my hearthstone. I was just so glad that I was playing a low-level alt that I didn't really care about it. The final incident unfortunately concerned my death knight. My son was helping me with my Sons of Hodir dailies and I got up to take a phone call. Upon my return, I was 800g poorer but I had a nice new ice mammoth mount to match the one that I already had. So I sold it back and recouped what little I could. That one stung a bit. Keep in mind that in between these events comes weeks of playing without incident. He learns and in general it is a very positive experience for us both. I just have come to accept that every once in a while my toons will be plummeted from the top of Dalaran to their death or have all their gear unequipped in exchange for trash grays. What I'm really worried about is when they are able to actually spell and type the word Delete. Stay tuned for more Tales of Kindercraft! In the meantime, do any of you have any misadventures to share about things that happened to your character when you weren't in control? How about any other stories about playing WoW with children?

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