Race Changing My Main

(I know I haven’t written anything in months, I don’t feel like blogging these days but I’m alive and enjoying BAzeroth!)

I’ve been asking for bigger body shapes in WoW since I started playing so when we first heard we’d get Kul Tirans as a playable race, I knew I’d race change as soon as I could. I want those hips.

I didn’t expect to get emotional about it in the way I did. I’m excited to play a Kul Tiran but I feel like I’m losing my character in a way. And she’s actually a human so the change is not even that big! And it wasn’t until I read Cinder’s great post where she says goodbye to her Pandaren that I realised I needed to do something to give my proper farewell to my character too. So on my last evening with her, I remembered all the things we accomplished together, all the fun we had and took her around the worlds to take our last screenshots.

This is where it all started. Anniy the human mage was my first character. I knew quite a lot about the game before I started playing but there was still plenty noobness and mistakes and general sucking at the game. To be fair, I still suck at the game sometimes but I’ve learnt a lot with Anniy.

Falling off cliffs and mountains happens a lot. Even with Slow Fall, I die often. /facepalm

The first pony I loved! It’s the basic one for 1 gold but it started my obsession with mount farming…

… which led to ponies like this one.

We made it to 288 mounts which is a solid number!

We did a ton of achievements too, like What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been. It was definitely long but worth it.

We did so much older content together! To be fair, I started playing in WoD so most of the game was “older content” but we still had a lot of fun with it.

We built a garrison and then got a bit bored in it. But at least we had enough time for achievements and older content!

I haven’t finished Loremaster and I’m a bit sad about it. It would’ve been a great last thing to do but I ran out of time because I’m still busy with BAzeroth (which is great!). At least the new version of Anniy will experience Wrath too.

The reputation bonus helped us get 98 exalted reputations which is awesome! I’m currently missing only the ones in Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch. I don’t enjoy PvP much and they take a very long time to get so f.ck those. I am very happy I got everything else before race changing. I will miss the bonus but I got A LOT from it.

Other accomplishment I’m proud of was that nine months long PvP grind in Legion for the pretty ponies and “the Unstoppable Force” title. That was so rewarding.

We got all Archeology achievements and most of the rares.

We made a lot of clothes and engineering goggles and even picked some herbs on Kul Tiras and Zandalar.

We had a farm and grew vegetables.

We mostly avoided Goldshire because we’re on Argent Dawn EU and strange things can happen there..

We reformed The Tirisgarde and became Archmage.

We made a headcanon and we’re dating Anduin in it because why wouldn’t we?

We danced,

we flew on our beloved disk,

we laughed,

and enjoyed being a mage.

Seriously, how cool is this spell animation?!

We even raided with Team Easily Amoosed from Girls Gone WoW discord! That’s so much fun!

And now our story ends here, in Boralus. In a few hours, Anniy is going to be reborn with hips and a thick waist and I am going to love her even more.

So let’s have new adventures and make new memories! Now with hips!

Is it worth it?

I try to be optimistic. Even when I don’t like what’s happening in WoW, I try to trust Blizzard that they know what they’re doing. That they have a plan and this will all make sense eventually and we’ll appreciate all that’s happened even if we didn’t like it at the time.

We’re in pre-patch, we’re only seeing a beginning of a much larger story. I know this and I’ve been telling myself this nonstop since I saw Teldrassil burn on my Alliance character and had to participate in that on my Hordie.

But I’m still upset. It sucked. And my home in Azeroth is Stormwind so I don’t even have that very deep connection to Darnassus and Teldrassil which a lot of players have. There’s so much sadness and anger and so many people are feeling bad about the game.

I understand breaking a few eggs to make an omelette/great story. Blizz is definitely not the only one to do that, I recently rewatched Avengers: Infinity War and they smashed many eggs along with my heart to pieces and left us hanging for a year until the next part comes out. I understand this. But I don’t know if it’s worth it. And I won’t know until I see the whole expansion.

I originally didn’t want to make a post about Burning of Teldrassil because I don’t have anything nice to say but I want to do this. I want to publish a post about my feelings to remember the bad times we’re having now. And I will come back to it eventually to say if it was worth it or not.

I try to be optimistic and trust Blizzard. Always. But they made it damn hard with this pre-patch.

So I really hope it will be worth it.

Too Much Adulting to Blog

Hello everyone!

I haven’t published anything for some time now (I’m not even going to look how long it’s been..) because there is a lot of stuff happening IRL.

I was trying to resolve my living situation because I have to leave the place where I live now soon. Right now, it finally looks like I will have a place to live (I won’t have to crush on anyone’s couch, yay!).

I’m playing WoW a little but this whole thing sucks all my energy so this poor blog needs to wait until I get settled and everything calms down a bit. It shouldn’t take more than another month. I’m mostly leveling my army of alts. By the way, I have army of alts now. It’s a long story..

Anyway, this was rambly so have a puppy and a kitten as an apology:

Photo from http://www.weldrickanimalhospital.com/inexpensive-affordable-puppy-kitten-vaccination/

See you (hopefully) soon!

Ann

Too busy adulting to play games

Sorry for being quiet, RL has been demanding so I don’t have much time to play WoW and write about it here.

I’ve been feeling meh about WoW anyway so I could use a break. I don’t know why exactly, I think I got burnt out on WQs and PvP which were the two things I was doing in Legion content the most.

I was grinding Broken Isles reputations for the paragon rewards hoping to get at least one of the mounts soon but it didn’t happen so now I’m unproductively sulking like a child. That will get me a mount or two, right? /sigh

I might play my paladin more or finally continue my vegetarian leveling when I come back. We’ll see.

If I’m not back soon, I’m probably still adulting.

PS: I try to be positive on this blog and this post was whinny so here’s a cute picture to hopefully make you smile.

Tread softly, Blizz, because you tread on my dreams

I was looking forward to the Anduin questline from the moment I saw his disguised model. I love Anduin. In my mage’s RP story, they’re a couple. He’s a very interesting character and I always look forward to seeing him in game. And last week, I even got to go out on an adventure with him! A heartbreaking adventure, but still. It was awesome. Until he picked up his father’s sword.

The reason why I love Anduin so much is that he’s not like Varian. I loved Varian too, very much, but Varian was a huge man with huge muscles and huge weapon/weapons.

I’m tired of huge men with huge muscles and huge weapons. Warlords was full of them. Just look at the art from Blizz site.  It’s all huge men with huge muscles and huge weapons.

I hoped Anduin would be different. He was a tiny disabled priest who was not good in close combat and he believed in peace. He didn’t swing his weapon first as his father would, he wanted to talk. I’m getting tired of unnecessary fighting. I know I play a game called World of Warcraft and sometimes we have to fight (I’m obviously not letting Legion kill us all) but why the hell are we still fighting againts the Horde? Lorewise, it barely makes sense. I share a class hall with undead so why am I killing them in WQs?

I’d like this to stop. And I don’t believe it will stop if we keep huge men with huge muscles and huge weapons in charge. I need Anduin to keep being tiny disabled priest who’s not good in close combat and who believes in peace. I don’t need strong, sexy “Manduin” or whatever people are calling him now. He’d be a man even if was short and skinny. There are different kinds of maskulinity and WoW mostly keeps to the warrior archetype. I want something different. Maybe a king who’s a blond priest in robes with a staff? Please, Blizz?

I understand that he feels like no one believes in him. He hasn’t had a chance to prove himself. And it can’t be easy to be Varian’s successor. People respected Varian because he was strong. Anduin has a different kind of strength. I hope he doesn’t try to change now. I don’t want him to be become a huge man with huge muscles and a huge sword. At least once in my WoW life, I want my king to be wise, diplomatic, sensible and patient. I feel that Anduin has a potential to be all of that. I’d be very disappointed if Blizz ruined my hopes.

I know it’s still early in his story and I’ve only seen a first few quests but I just needed to write this. If Anduin remains Anduin and won’t go all huge Manduin with huge muscles and a huge weapon, I’ll be happy to thanks Blizz for giving me what I wanted. If not, I’ll be disappointed. And probably play my Horde toon more because if all our leaders are bloodthirsty monsters, I might as well serve a Queen instead of a King.

 

 

 

 

Why I love gaming

This was the first version of my Why I love WoW post but I realised it didn’t fit the instructions for the blog challenge. It’s about WoW but it could work for gaming in general, although WoW is my favourite game. 

I’m melancholic. My imagination runs wild. I dream of great adventures. I want to see new places, hear new stories, meet new people. I’m also a complete introvert so all these things need to happen without me having to leave my room.

My real life is stable, some people would (and do) say it’s boring (work, WoW/books/youtube/TV shows, sleep, repeat). I’m basically a hobbit. Not one of the famous ones who saved the world, I’m the one who always stays home because adventures are inconvenient and keep you from dinner and even if exciting things happen around them, they just make a cuppa and have a second breakfast. That’s what my life is and I love it.

In WoW, I can have amazing adventures and still be home for dinner. Actually, I can have dinner while I’m on an adventure! I always roll my eyes when I hear people say things like “why would you spend your time in front of a computer when you can go out and have an adventure?”. In my point of view, why would you go out when you can have an adventure in front of your computer? My room is the best place for adventures. (By the way, going out is healthy and also important, I just don’t need to do it very often and that’s okay.)

And WoW gives me a place where I can have my adventures. I don’t see it as just a game, it’s more of a platform for adventures and fun. I get to choose what I want to do and then do it. It doesn’t even matter if I kill Gul’dan, visit Anduin in Stormwind Keep, catch new pets, earn new mount or do enough for a faction they give me a reward. I’m having adventures and I love it.

And I get to do all of this with Anniy, my beloved mage. She’s my fantasy alter-ego with courage, magic and a creepy talking staff. What more could you want?

Cute march of the cutest cuties ever!

Yesterday was the March of the Tadpoles micro-holiday and it was the cutest, most precious thing ever! You go to the Winterfin area in Borean Tundra and find out that for one day in a year, baby murlocs take over the village and go on a rampage.

There’s a lot of them, different sizes and colours, they have hilarious names and you choose one to have a little adventure with.

This was the one I got:

His name was Berbert (I don’t know much about murlocs’ gender identities but Berbert sounds like a boy, so let’s go with that). I choose him because other murloc babies were walking or running around but Berbert was standing in one place with his friend Birbit. Judging by their size, they were murloc teenagers so maybe they were too cool to behave like children or they were dating and having a little moment. Who knows?

He gave me a quest to get 10 Winterfin Clams (they also work as currency for a vendor in the village) and I apparently had 8 somewhere in my bank so it was quick. Then he wanted me to kill Mrrga, evil orca who was scaring poor murloc babies. Well, not anymore, I took care of it. Someone has to keep those adorable misfits safe and it’s a task I’ll gladly accept any day. Berbert gave me a reward, Tadpole Gift containing Winterfin Pearl which is actually a very nice pearl. Different murloc babies give you a different gift (Half of a Fish, Wet Rock, Winterfin Mud Pie and other great stuff) and it seems like the pearl is the most valuable because you can vendor it for 10g. I’m never selling it though, I will treasure it forever.

After this, I spent about an hour just watching murloc babies and had a great time! Not only were they cute as hell, they were also doing pretty funny stuff.

My favourite was Flops who ran a short distance, very dramatically “died”, laid down for a few seconds, got up and then did the same thing again and again. I have no idea what the hell was that about but it was hilarious!

There was one in the water called Ariel.

And one had something on their head.

The adults didn’t look very happy about this. I can’t really blame them, imagine you’re trying to chop up dead orca and there’s a baby murloc running over it. That’s not a safe work environment!

I wanted to get last picture of us before leaving but I guess Berbert didn’t like selfies. Me neither actually, I just wanted to try different angle that the screenshots. Or he was camera shy.

I loved this micro-holiday. It was a great distraction from all the evil Legion stuff and world on green fire. It was cute and heartwarming.  Look at the adorable little footprints they leave!

I can’t wait to do this again next year and to see other micro-holidays. I’ve been enjoying them a lot so far. More cute babies, Blizz!

Maybe it’s not for you and that’s okay

Disclaimer: this post contains ranting and anger and my frustration over some players. If that’s not something you want to read, feel free to skip this, I understand. The next post will be happy again.

WoW community is usually amazing. I’ve met so many nice, welcoming, positive and smart people. And then there are the others. Those who criticize every single thing in the game without trying to understand the design intent behind it. I read blogs, watch youtube channels and listen to podcasts and the thing that bugs me the most is when people don’t understand that not everything is for them. I’ll give a few examples from recent months.

Pet Battle Dungeon

Not everyone likes pet battles and that’s okay. I do, so I appreciate that they did the dungeon. It’s new and exciting content and so many people enjoy it! If you’re not one of those people, just keep doing what you like doing in game and ignore the dungeon. Don’t say that it’s stupid or that no one asked for it and or that Blizz should do something else instead. The dungeon is not a bad idea, it’s just not for you. And if you change your mind about pet battling, it’s always there if you want to try it.

Developer Q&As

I love the developer Q&As. I found some of them more interesting than the others because not all of them cover the parts of game I’m interested in. The one about itemization was not my favourite because I don’t care about geat much. And that’s okay. But I realise other people want to know about itemization, that’s why they did the Q&A and answered players’ questions. I heard someone criticize it because it didn’t get them excited for the game. That’s not what it was supposed to do! Not every Q&A can have exciting news and gorgeous trailer, some are just information about itemization. If you don’t care about itemization, the Q&A wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t for you.

Mage Tower Challenge

Blizz said this would be hard, almost impossible to do at the start and you’d need great gear and great skill to beat it. It’s available now and people are complaining that it’s hard and they can’t beat it. I’ll give it a try but I know that I might never get the afrtifact appearence, the same way as I might never get the one from Balance of Power quest, because I don’t raid. It’s not for me.

They might change the difficulty or tweak it a bit but unless you’re super awesome at playing <insert your class> and you don’t have BiS gear, you are probably not able to finish it now. And that’s okay. You won’t be able to one-shot mythic Tomb of Sargeras when it comes out, so why do you expect to one-shot this? Maybe it’s not for you now. Maybe you need more gear and learn the strats better or maybe, you won’t ever beat it. And that’s okay. It’s designed that way

 

I understand when players want something that is a reward from part of the game they don’t play and they are frustrated (those PvP mounts I’ll never have because I’m not that good at PvP break my heart!). But you can’t have everything. And that’s okay. It’s also okay to just walk away from part of the game and don’t do it.

I’m definitely not saying you can’t talk about the game or give constructive feedback. Just think about what you’re saying. Is the challenge a bad design or is it something that is not for you right now? Because not everything is for you. And that’s okay.

I’m neat? I’m neat!

Lovely Z nominated me for Real Neat Blog Award! Thanks a lot, Z! 🙂

 

As a part of the award, you get to do 3 things:

• Thank and link the person who nominated you.
• Answer the seven questions your nominator has provided.
• Nominate 7 other bloggers and create 7 questions for them

Let’s get to it, shall we?

If you couldn’t blog about WoW anymore, what would you blog about?

History of feminism and LGBTQA+ rights in my country, the Czech Republic. I listened to Stuff Mom Never Told You podcast and (among other things) they talked about American feminists and LGBTQA+ people and when I was looking for similar sources about people in my country, I didn’t find much. There are theses and research papers but nothing easy to read and access. And it mainly focused on presumably cis gay people, definitely not bisexuals, pansexuals, transgender people and other sexual and gender identities. It’s not like they didn’t exist, no one just talks about them.

For example, there was a painter, Marie Čermínová, also known as Toyen. I first heard about this person at school and teachers always used “she” to refer to Toyen and never mentioned that Toyen asked his friends to use male pronouns and wore men’s clothes. I can’t know what exactly was going on in his head but from everything I’ve read, Toyen was probably transgender. This word didn’t exist then and it took my country much longer to even acknowledge that not everyone is cisgender. It’s also interesting (and telling..) that English version of wikipedia page refers to Toyen as he, Czech version as she.

I was even considering going back to school to study it but that would just create another thesis and wouldn’t really solve my problem with no easy-to-read sources.

What’s the best and worst thing about blogging?

The worst thing is keeping a schedule. I try to write about my week in WoW every Sunday/Monday and Z and Cinder’s Blog Challenge every week but then I come up with another topic or I start doing something else and it’s hard to go back and finish my post. But I want to! I’m also not very good at taking screenshots. Other blogs have such amazing screenshots and mine look quite awful in comparison.

WordPress is also not as easy as I thought it would be, but I think I just need more time to learn it. I’m not very happy with how my blog looks. Also English is hard and I’m sure I’m making mistakes all the time..

The best thing is all the love I’m getting from my fellow bloggers. When I started, I didn’t even expect anyone to read this but people are reading and commenting and nomitating me for awards and it’s awesome! Thank you, kind people 🙂 I especially appreciate it because I don’t always comment on other people’s posts myself. I’m shy even on the internet. I need to work on that.

What’s your favourite achievement in WoW?

Going Down? That feeling when you think you’re going to die but you don’t and you get this achievement instead is priceless.

How long have you been playing computer games?

It’s actually a very interesting question. I even e-mailed my family if anyone remembers when we got our first computer (as far as I know, consoles weren’t really a thing in my country when I was a kid). I’m the youngest so I don’t remember much but apparently, we got our first PC in 1997 so let’s say I’ve been playing computer games for 20 years.

I remember playing old MS-DOS games like Dyna Blaster (it was called Bomberman outside Europe), the Lion King, Prehistorik 2, Prince of Persia, Vlak (Train) and Commander Keen 4. Oh, the memories. Those games suck now but I loved them back then.

If you could have one day to do anything in, what would you do?

Does this mean what would I do if I had a day free, or does it mean what would I do if I had a day to do anything I wanted? Let’s do both.

Answer to the first question is that I would be playing WoW. That’s what I do on weekends and most of my free days from work.

If I could do anything I wanted (without actually getting there and back), I’d want to wander around in London, Rome or Florence. I love those cities. Or I’d want to go to space and watch the Earth. The view must be amazing.

Photo from https://earthspacecircle.blogspot.cz/

What’s your favourite food?

Veggie burgers with chips. I’ve never liked fast food much and since I’m a vegetarian, I’ve been trying to eat healthy. Once in a while, I like to reward myself by eating something that’s not very healthy. But it’s delicious.

Where do you prefer to go, Mountains or Beach?

Definitely mountains. I’m not a very active, adventurous person but I enjoy mountain walking and hiking and especially the view from the top of the mountains. I like to feel small in comparison with the world around me. It’s a reminder that even if I mess up something in my life, it’s not the end of the world and no one really gives a f*ck.

 

Most of the bloogers I follow have already been nominated (reminder to myself – find more blogs!) but there’s a list of neat blogs I enjoy reading (in no particular order):

• Z is for Zeriah
• Cinder says
• Gnomecore
• /ragequit
• Deez Wurds
• Z and Cinder’s Blog Challenge and anyone who ever joined

Go check them out and thanks again to Z for the nomination! 🙂