Mend Pet

So apparently I’m acquiring a backlog of memes, thanks to my dear Fausley at Master’s Call!

Better get them over with and pass them along.

What’s in a Name?

I believe the plan here is to explain the origin and meaning behind my characters names.  I kind of covered this in the previous post (7 Questions) as well as in my Cheesecake post… but there’s always more detail I can cover… repetition FTW!  I’ll go through all four of my currently active characters, from both an in-character and out-of-character perspective if applicable.  Heck, I’ll even provide a pronunciation guide!

Brajana [Brah-jah-nuh] (the j is like Rajah not Jalepeno or Adjacent)

(IC) This name was handed down from Brajana’s grandmother on her father’s side, as is tradition with the Darkspear Trolls.  It means ‘woman of the rain’, which is fitting for her striking blue hair and skin.

(OOC) Honestly, I don’t remember.  It was like… 3 years ago!  I believe it was some combination of messing with the random name generator and making something that sounded nice.  I also wanted to make sure people could shorten it without much trouble (Braj).

Ferguson [Fer-guh-sun]

(IC) Named for his father, who was lost in the war.

(OOC) I wanted a human-ish name that could be used as both a first and last name.  I had one picked out, and it was pretty perfect too… but it was taken and it’s since been expelled from my memory.  I got the name by looking over the last names of authors on my bookshelf – Ian & Ferguson were the exact source.

Alouette [Aloo-et]

(IC) Named so for her playful and trickster-like nature.  Even from a young age, it was clear that this would be a strong part of her personality.

(OOC) Her name was originally Pixxel, which was Pixel from the RNG with an extra x since the other was taken. Then her name was Brajana, for a few short levels when I transferred to Dark Iron.  Then I felt I needed her to develop her own personality, and so I started trying to think of a name.  One day I had the Canadian folk song “Alouette” in my head and I decided to just go with that, hoping it’d get it out of my head.  Of course it did the opposite, and now everytime I log into my Mage I get it once again stuck in my head!

“Alouette” means skylark in French.  skylark is named so for it’s tricksy, playful, frolicky nature.  I think it’s quite appropriate!

Ghugh [Guhh]

(IC/OOC)  Yeah, no.  Don’t ask.  I don’t know where it comes from, it just sounded good at the time for a paladin I never planned on playing past level 12.  But it’s grown on me!

Yes, it’s just pronounced like it looks.  Yes, I put 2 h’s in the pronunciation key, because just 1 didn’t do it justice.

Someone asked me the language of origin once, I said English.  They asked me if I could use it in a sentence.

“Ghugh!  I was just killed by that ret pally again!”

So, who to tag? Tagging is such a froward task for me… I have a nasty habit of tagging those who have already been tagged or already done the meme… so if you have an I somehow missed it… sorry!

Well, I’m gonna tag my GM Pilsner at From Cow to Chicken, just because I kind of already know where her name came from.   Also Cait from One Among Many… I’m sure she’s got some interesting stories for all those characters.  And also Neg/Neggles/Negathle at The Angry Butterfly!

I have a habit of tagging people who have already been tagged or done the meme… so if you have and I somehow missed it, sorry!

As patch 3.1 approaches, many of us are trying to consider our options regarding dual-specs.  Which characters should we get it for, and why?  Well, as I’ve been quite enjoying the Marksman tree lately, I started to consider whether I should get it as a secondary spec, just for fun.  Then I thought, maybe I’ll pick up dual specs on my mage, try some Frost for PvP!  And I’ve already given up on leveling my priest until I can get him his dual specs.

But all this thinking started making my wallet scream at me.  So I defined a few key points which would help me decide whether it’s worth getting or not.

From my humble point of view, there are 3 reasons one would be willing to get dual specs.

1. A likelihood of respecing mid-raid.
   If you are an off-tank and can find yourself often being asked to switch to your DPS gear for some fights, having a dual-spec option would be beneficial to both you and your entire raid.
2. Constant swapping between 10-man and 25-man specs, or PvE and PvP specs, or grinding and raiding/PvP specs.
   If you have two specs you swap between often, you’ll be able to save time and more importantly, money by picking up dual specs.  It isn’t necessary, since you could pretty easily just visit a trainer between your arenas and raids or your 10-man and 25-man, but if you think you’d like to do this more than 20 times between two specific specs (20 x 50g = 1000g), it certainly a worthy investment, and it will allow you to do this much more often than you might be doing now.  Keep in mind though that if you are someone who likes to test out different talents often, this isn’t a ticket to change your talents for free!
3. Convenience.
   Maybe you occasionally change between two specs.  Every few weeks you like to spend a day doing PvP, or once in a while if a healer is nowhere to be found you like to shake your branches or shed your shadowform.  Well, now that change will be much more convenient.  This change won’t make you PvP or change roles more often, but when that situation presents itself you won’t have to make the trip back to the old world and pick your individual points.  It’s only 1000g anyway, right?

I have characters that fall under every point.

My Hunter falls under category 3.  She doesn’t need a trash or farming or PvP spec.  I have never paid more than 35g to respec, and I can probably count the number of times I’ve respec’d on my fingers.  But I wouldn’t mind being able to switch to MM on pet unfriendly fights.  I wouldn’t mind being able to do a bit more damage on the off chance I decide to hit the BGs or arenas. I wouldn’t mind specing for a pet tank should the situation where it’s needed arise.

My Priest falls under both 1 and 2.  I love leveling as Shadow, but I hate grouping as Shadow.  It is the opposite for Holy.  Being able to switch to Shadow easily while I work my way through Northrend would be a huge incentive for me to play him.  And if I ever get to the point where I’m raiding, I know we wouldn’t need all the healers in ever single trash or boss pull, so I could always make myself more useful by switching.

So what’s my decision?  Well, as much as I’m enjoying MM, I don’t mind manually respecing when I feel like switching.  It’s certainly cheaper, since it’s a rare thing.  However, there’s no question for my Priest, he’s going to camp out at the trainer until the patch hits.

The officers of Unemployed had a little meeting last night, and discussed things along the lines of raid morale and attitude and such.  One part of the discussion got me really thinking.

It’s taken me a while to come to terms with the fact that with Wrath of the Lich King, the goals of a raider must change.  My goal can no longer be to work my way week by week through a dungeon, hoping to someday take down the big bad guy at the end.  I’ve taken down all the big bad guys that are available to me, and I’ve had them down a number of times already.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve “beaten the game”.  Yes, there are fewer boss encounters and raid dungeons to see than there were in Burning Crusade or Vanilla.

But achievements are the new encounters.

And this is something that many raiders need to be convinced of, including me.  I may not like it, but it’s the way it is.

Now, people who are playing this game to challenge themselves, rather than because they are fans of the lore and design, would probably have a much easier time coming to grips with this concept.

However, from a lore perspective, it was a lot more compelling to be working towards some big head honcho and killing his lackeys along the way.  To work towards that moment when you finally, after weeks of work, take that evil man/dragon/demon down and teach him a lesson!

There’s no lore-based reason to take Sartharion down with his drakes up.  Whether we walk in there and take the drakes down first, or leave them up, we’re still walking out of there with a dragon and 3 drakes lying on the floor.  And I feel this is one reason why people are having a hard time trying to see what is left for them to see and do in raiding.

I understood their goal with this expansion was to allow everyone to see all of the content rather than restricting it to the top few percentages who had the right combination of skill, time and coordination.  I always thought that they tried to do this with their 10- and 25-man versions of all raids, and I felt it wasn’t working properly because most of the 10- and 25-man fights are identical, you just have more/less people to worry about.

But I was wrong.  The way they’ve allowed everyone to see the content, yet still give something for hardcore players to work towards is through “hard modes”, achievements.

Achievements are usually thought of optional fun little things that you can do as a bit of a challenge to yourself, or as some way to get yourself a shiny new mount.  And some of them are exactly that!  There are many players who just aren’t interested in optional fun little things or new mounts, they want to raid, see new content and to play the game for what they’ve always enjoyed.

But what they fail to see is that encounters like Sartharion with drakes up are not just optional fun ways of changing a fight – they are completely new encounters in themselves.

From a Raid/Guild leader perspective, it’s MUCH more difficult to motivate people to want to kill a boss they’ve already killed just to do it with more difficulty, with some sort of handicap.  This is a froward challenge that all leaders must be prepared to work through, and it’s something we’re dealing with right now.

When a progression guild is recruiting, they say up front if they’ve done 3D, or 2D or 1D.  They don’t just say they’ve killed Sarth (unless, well, they’ve only killed Sarth).

This is because it’s not about just getting a new mount, it’s about the challenge.  It’s about the skill.  The different in difficulty from killing Sartharion to killing Sartharion with all three drakes grows exponentially, and those who are able to get 3D down have what it takes.

And it seems with Ulduar, this will continue as the norm.  You might blow through all of the new raid within the first couple of weeks of the patch release, but you’ll then need to spend months working on getting the “hard mode” achievements.

Like I’ve said, I don’t like it.  But I’ve come to understand that it’s the way things are going to be now.

That might change when Icecrown Citadel comes along and the majority of raiding guild have Arthas down in the first few weeks, and just spend the rest of the game trying to see if they can all do it with their hands tied behind their backs…

But for now, I can accept it.

Last night, about 13 members of Unemployed set out to conquer the two bosses which barely eluded us in our BC raiding days… Kael’thas and Lady Vashj!  We also took out Lurker for good measure.

We weren’t sure we’d be able to manage, because when I formed the group, we had a whole 1 tank and 2 healers.  But our ret paladin offered to respec protection and we found a 3rd healer.

Most of us had never taken Vashj down, and those who did hadn’t done it in quite some time, so our explanation of the fight was still a bit fuzzy.  We forgot to assign someone to kite the Striders so there were fears going off everywhere.  I had also forgotten to set it to Free-for-All before hand so people could loot the Cores.  But we survived and off we went to TK: The Eye.

Here we skipped straight to Kael’thas.  This was a messy fight, and we lost several people.  We couldn’t be bothered to look up what each of the advisors did so we just tanked ‘em.  When Kael went crazy at the end and we started floating in the air, we lost even more people.  But we got him down and…

[Ashes of A'lar]!

So, according to my Kael’thas record… the drop rate on that baby is 100%.  We all rolled on it, and of course my rolling luck landed me with a nice 2.

But congrats to Anduena, our warlock!  It’s her birthday on Tuesday, so I’m glad she could get a pretty sweet birthday present from the guild!

After TK, we still had some time so we ventured into Black Temple.  This place isn’t cake even at 80, in fact even the trash was a bit froward.  We didn’t have time to make it all the way to Illidan… but we’re coming for him next time!

froword

\FROH-werd\, adjective

not easily managed; contrary

Example: Sartharion +3 drakes is quite a froward battle.

WoW Word of the Week is my weekly Sunday post to encourage the expansion of the average WoW player’s vocabulary beyond “noob”, “pwnd” and “FAIL”. The WWOTW will be used in every other post this week, and I urge you to use it as well!