Project Lore

Thanks to a lovely excursion to Anaheim, California for something, an enjoyable trip to plague ridden Seattle, and the recovery time from said plague, I've missed a fair bit of raiding.  Actually, I have missed almost a month's worth of raiding.  I've never missed a full month of raiding unless I was still leveling, or not playing the game at all.  Coming back to raiding is a new experience to me, one that makes me feel incredibly dirty. You know that feeling when you haven't showered for a few days; your hair is oily and shaggy, your skin feels like it has an extra layer to it, and your feet have begun to grow a new breed of penicillin?  I've felt like that, disgusting, dingy, dirty, during this week of raiding. I've misplaced Tricks of the Trade (be faster on that Feign Death next time!), dropped Slice'n'Dice, blown openers, allowed Hunger for Blood to dissipate and mistimed Envenom after Envenom.  In short, I've been a total n00b the last few play sessions.  As if completely dropping off of the "good" side of the DPS chart wasn't bad enough, I even did something I haven't done as long as I could remember.  I failed at the same thing in an encounter not once, but twice.   You better believe that was a night filled with /facepalm. My utter failings came as a complete shock to me.  Sure, I've take a week or two off here or there for vacations, I've had friendly rogues come back from excursions only to complain about ruining their spell rotation, but I never thought it was this bad.  I never thought it could happen to me!  I never dreamed I could be this bad again!  But the proof is in the pudding, I've absolutely blown chunks in every possible way since returning. Other than raiding - simply brute forcing my way back to nimble fingers and high DPS - I have no idea what to do.  There's nothing I can easily correct.  As far as I can tell the only remedy is to simply get back into the rhythm, get playing and get focused.  If you guys have any bright ideas on clearing the cobwebs and knocking off the rust of vacation I'd love to hear them. Please, for the sake of my ego, tell me I am not the only person to ever experience a total lack of skill after an extended break.  Lie to me if you must.

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At first, I didn't give it much thought when a WoW acquaintance asked me to join his 3v3 arena team for the tournament. "Sure," I said. "Sounds like fun." Actually, I didn't think it was a serious request. I mean, really - he was asking me, of all people? I'm still working to ding level 80 for the first time, and haven't ventured much into the realm of PvP. Back in the pre-BC days when my main was a warrior, I played a bit of Battlegrounds in Warsong Gulch. Even then, I never dared walk into an arena. And since I switched to my rogue, I've been focused more on leveling and only try out a battleground here and there when bored. So it seemed like an odd request. But the idea grew on me. I kept thinking about how fun it would be to play a super-beefed-up version of my rogue. A nice change of pace, I thought. And it turned out the guy was both serious and persistent in asking me to join. I explained my lack of experience, and he didn't seem to mind. So I caved. I paid my $20 fee. Rolled Pixiestixy. Signed the team charter. Decided on a 41/5/25 mutilate spec. Set up my action bars. And spent a couple hours figuring out the best gear, enchants and gems to use. All I needed was confirmation that the team had been formed so we could start playing toward 200 matches (and a glorious, golden-armored pet murloc) before the April 6 deadline to qualify for the next round. So I waited. And waited. Played around with some macros. Admired my glowing-red berserking Deadly Gladiator's Shankers. Waited some more. A couple days later, I got an e-mail. My friend decided to play with a couple of his other (and, as it were, more experienced) friends, instead. I sighed in exasperation. I saw it coming, but had been hoping that wasn't the case. So I started with the obligatory search for a PuG. It seemed no one wanted a PvP noobie in their group. I don't blame them - most people who sign up probably have at least some clue what they are doing. I got no responses, not even to "BElf rogue LF a good time." I started asking RL friends (I had my husband convinced at one point, but we still needed a third). I saw several PuG requests from people saying they would just play 200 matches and lose each one to get the murloc. Pet collectors, I guess. But, somehow, that feels like cheating to me. If I'm going to do this, I oughta at least try, even if those attempts are futile. So I made a final effort to PuG it before the extended deadline to register last Friday. And finally, found a couple of takers. Myself, an affliction warlock (who also said he was no good at PvP) and a hybrid holy/ret paladin (who wanted to make top 1,000 teams to earn the Vanquisher title, but said he'd stick with us even if we lost). We became The Misfits. The first few matches were mayhem. I had absolutely no experience to back up everything I've read about PvP. And let me tell you, the experience is much different. It's way harder to keep track of everything going on than I had expected. We only played 6 matches the first night, with an even 3-3 record, and set a time to play again Saturday. Another 12 games in Saturday, and we had been getting worked. Despite me starting to get a better feel for the hectic arenas, our record was 6-12. Our paladin kept going AFK between matches. And then, the dreaded message. Pally "has left The Misfits." Teamless, again. I'm taking a break to work off the annoyance, then perhaps back to PuG-ing. What have I gotten myself into? So who all's in the tournament? What have your experiences been so far? How should us who are new to PvP find a group willing to stick it out through the 200 matches? And is there still enough time to squeeze in 200 matches before the 6th?

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RL girls or not, they're taking this bear down!

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post exploring the relationship between a WoW player's RL gender and what gender they play in-game. And all you Project Lore readers out there are so great that you provided tons of comments for me to ponder over. Let's take another poke at the subject. One of the things that I didn't address earlier, but that comments certainly did, is whether girl gamers have inferior or superior skills when it comes to playing WoW. Personally, I think it's all about experience no matter what gender you are. I'm sure there are just as many noob guys who play. But regardless, the stereotype is that girls can't play. Or that just because we're girls, we make good targets for taunting and sometimes harassment while playing in a male-dominated setting. And there's a lot of us who don't appreciate being treated differently for any reason, much less such stupid ones. Magradon commented:

I think us girls need to take WoW by storm... I’ve had WoW stalkers and guys who actually profess their love, talk about visiting me…and all I ever did to deserve it was to be nice. /ignore

And Nightwisher elaborated on similar experiences:

i get ALOT of shit for even playing wow and being female...  boys just cant take girl gamers seriously. though im pretty sure my fully epiced resto druid would stomp some faces if i actually liked PVP’ing.

My experiences have been less extreme and more amusing. Like when a guy toon properly positions his /dance so it's right on my chick's ass. Lovely. But my purpose today was not to spread *Girl Power,* even though there are plenty of us who certainly kick butt in game. Really, I just want to have a bit more fun on this topic. So on that note, here's the flip side of the situation. I actually have a lot of fun being the instigator sometimes. One of my favorite things to do when bored? Find a random male toon. /flirt. Wait for a response. /slap. Run away! Makes me laugh hysterically every time! I don't know, maybe doing that sort of thing makes things harder on other girls in game. I hope not. But regardless, it's hilarious. I try not to take things too seriously, and typically my targets don't, either. It appears that there are others roaming here on Project Lore who also use sex appeal to their own advantage. Like AlysiumX:

ok ok i admit it, im a guy playing a girl character but thats only for the +5% chance for grp invites

Way to keep it real. While I previously guessed that girls do not generally play cross-gender toons, it seems that you lovely ladies out there have proved me wrong. So props to brandywine, Hatell, elfennau, Cyan, Wrongway, Halcath and Percolatte, among others for breaking that misconception I (and based on the comments, apparently others) had. But it still seems that guys are a bit more likely to fall into that roll. Whether it's "cuz i dont feel like watching some guys ass when i lvl up" (thanks Marcwaznthere, for your articulate explanation), or if you're like jimbob who admitted, "i just have an ‘affinity’ with female toons, go figure!" I guess we all have our reasons for playing the way we play, even if we don't think about it much. Female toons? That's just how I roll! I thought Alayea phrased it best:

Female players FTW!

So, let's get this discussion going again. Regardless of your RL gender, do the benefits of playing a girl toon outweigh the other crap that some of us put up with because of it? Can you really get away with more when you roll female? And will you silly boys out there ever realize that a girl toon, no matter how hypnotizing she may be, is not your personal play toy?

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You really want to know the secret, the real secret of making gold in World of Warcraft. No more bull$hit, no more hype, no more tricks that will make you a WoW millionaire overnight. Here's the simple straight-forward truth about how to make gold in WoW. It's three parts so be prepared. Are you ready? Here it comes... Rule Number One: Sell Everything Invest in a few high-slot bags, go kill stuff and vendor everything gray, DE ( or get a buddy to DE ) the greens and Auction House the rest. That includes blues and purples. Sell the DE'ed mats or, if your an enchanter, buff your own gear. Okay some greens are worth Auctioning, but don't AH ever one of them. Some just won't sell. Know what each class prefers and sell those greens. And if you really, really need a drop from a mob, keep it. Just DE the rest. Rule Number Two: Buy Low, Sell High Ah the free market economy in action. Finding cheap items and selling them back to people who have no idea what just happened. This takes time and an investment in knowing what people want, where to buy it for cheap and when to list it at the AH. You can do it. Without addons or data lists from web site. Each realm has it's own individual economy. Learn it and use it to your advantage. Rule Number Three: Don't Buy Crap You Don't Need Do not buy that epic sword that will be useless in 10 levels. Do not buy that little, over-priced firefly to scoot around after you. Do not buy a 28-slot engineering bag that will just collect dust in your bank after you've made your little airplane... UNLESS you really, really want to. All that stuff is fine to buy and enjoy in the game, but if you do not have your epic flying mount and your guildies are sick and tired of summoning your slow butt to every freakin' instance 'cuz they have to wait on you to fly from Shatt, then do not buy crap you really, really don't need. Now there are other super obvious ways to make gold in WoW - do quests, do dailies, farm motes, farm mats, kill monsters - but for those of you who do those are still don't have an epic flyer or bitch and moan about not having enough to get 20-slot bags, you either don't play enough to get the gold or you might be violating one or all of the rules above. So if you need gold, don't ask me. Even thought I am sitting on quite a nice pile of earned gold ( never bought even a silver from anyone ), I have no intention of handing out in Shatt just cuz some 70 noob can't make enough gold to buy a 20-slot bag.

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