Author Archives: Thyanel

A Hobbit’s Tale

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Today, it occurred to me that I don’t talk about LotRO as much as I probably should. It may seem like a strange realization to come to, but, after all, I hold just as much love for Tolkien’s Middle Earth as I do Azeroth or the galaxy at large. In fact, I probably hold more love in my heart for Middle Earth than I do any other fantasy world currently in existence simply because I grew up with the stories. I remember stumbling upon my uncle’s boxed set of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit and initially thinking they looked interesting. Because of my interest, my uncle would tell me what the books were about, and we’d write stories about what happened after the War of the Ring was ended up in his loft. Once I could actually read, I confiscated the books and read them in the early hours of the morning while I waited for everybody else to get up (he promptly bought me my own boxed set of the books, including the Hobbit, as a Christmas present). When the films came out, I naturally dragged my uncle along with me to go and see them, because, really, I couldn’t imagine anybody else going with me. He even bought me the extended edition DVD sets with their decorative boxes and little statues. To this day, I proudly display the Argonath bookends (though one of them sadly lost its hand) and the Minas Tirith box on my dresser.

Given all that, I’m sure you guys can imagine that when I discovered there was an MMO based on the books that held so many memories for me, I squeed like the dork I was, downloaded it, and played the hell out of it, though altoholism sunk it’s teeth into me very early on and I had a character list full of several characters that I’ve never really touched. They’ve since been deleted. I abandon the game every so often, but, in the end, I always come back to it, and I know that Middle Earth will always be there waiting for me.

It’s strange to think of how things would have been different if LotRO was the game that sunk its claws into me ages before Azeroth ever did. Pen and Shield might not even exist! I’d still be blogging, but the blog might have been titled something different, something hobbity (for I’m a hobbit at heart), and I’d be blogging under the name Anthyllis Greyburrow, the name of my main, a hobbit minstrel on the Landroval server. Speaking of, it occurs to me that I have yet to show off a picture of my girl, so… Meet Anthyllis!

Anthyllis says, "Hello, everybody!"

Anthyllis is, naturally, a hobbit of the Shire, who was fascinated by the stories of Bilbo’s adventures. Curious by nature, Anthyllis wanted to see everything Bilbo had seen, although the rest of the Greyburrows didn’t approve. She, however, was not to be deterred and set forth to Bree. Unfortunately, she didn’t exactly make it there. She got sidetracked by being attacked by brigands, seeing a Black Rider (scary stuff), and then getting sucked into the fate of Middle Earth while more hobbits were off bringing a ring to the elves and beyond. At that point, she was a bit too curious about the rest of the world to turn back. Besides which, all of this might make a good story to tell someday!

Unfortunately, LotRO is one of those “occasional” games for me, so poor Anthyllis only seems to get love from me every so often. It also doesn’t help that the game gets a bit lonely for me sometimes. Anthyllis is kinless and there isn’t random green text to keep me company as I go out and quest in the world. It’s hard finding a guild or group of people who are okay with you disappearing for several days at a time as you try to balance your free time between three different games and they won’t remove you due to inactivity. In spite of all that, though, I’ve been rather dedicated to LotRO over the past few days, putting in several hours worth of time to finally get Anthyllis to level 30 and hit the end of Book 2 of Volume One of the epic storyline. I’m very excited to keep going, though I’m getting little tired of fighting corrupted trees that decide to uproot themselves and attack me. I swear, they’re everywhere…

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

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Now, normally, you guys know I don’t do this sort of thing. I tend to leave all MMO-related news for the various MMO news sites. After all, I’ve always felt that they could do better than I could when it came to reporting said news to the world at large. However, today, Blizzard has released some interesting new information about Mists of Pandaria. The news that interested me the most, at least at first, was how the female pandaren were going to look. After the mess that turned into the female worgen model, I really was worried about how our lady pandas were going to look. And then today, when I went to check out Blizzard’s blog, I was rewarded with this:

Image © Blizzard Entertainment

LOOK AT HER. No, really, just look at her. She looks so happy and properly curvy and not a stick! I was hopeful that the model would be a bit rounder, myself, but considering the lack of bulkier women in this game, I’m happy with it as it stands. Currently, there are only three races that boast a thicker-looking female model: dwarves, orcs, and tauren. Everyone else seems to be more along the lines of a stick-figure model that you’d tend to see in everyday fashion magazines. To add another race to that tiny, tiny list makes me so ridiculously happy. You guys honestly have no idea. I hear that you can choose to be a red panda, as well, and, if you do, you get a tail. While there are screenshots of a female red panda floating around the internet, there are no shots of this mysterious tail, so I don’t know how accurate that is in the long run.

But there’s more! Today was not just about showing us all female pandas! Oh, no, there was much more to today than that. Not only is the Mists of Pandaria website updated with a whole bunch of new information and new screenshots, but today, the NDA on the press tour was finally lifted! You can read the longer version of what everybody discovered at the press tour over at MMO-Champion or check out WoW Insider’s Mists of Pandaria tag, but for those of you who only have a short amount of time, I can tell you that it looks like we have fun things coming, including an additional character slot and… Farmville, if that’s your thing. Don’t believe me? Check it out!

  • The final patch of Mists of Pandaria will be the Siege of Orgrimmar! Both factions lay siege to the city to bring Garrosh down and end his reign of Warchief.
  • The new LFR loot system will allow everyone to roll individually. The highest few rolls will win an item from the boss. Upon winning a roll, if the boss has an item that you can use, you will win it. If not, you will get some amount of gold. It will only be in LFR to begin with, but can be added to other parts of the game later.
  • An 11th character slot has been added.
  • AoE Looting has been added.
  • There will not be an item squish in Mist of Pandaria.
  • No new race models are ready to be added yet.
  • There will be nine level 90 heroics for players as well as three raids with 14 raid bosses and three difficulties. There will be an additional two world bosses.
  • Scenarios will take place at level 90, in an instance, and reward reputation and Valor points. They don’t need a healer, tank, and DPS, just DPS is fine. Each will take 10 to 30 minutes to complete and five or more will be available for launch.
  • In Challenge Modes, the vast majority of players will most likely earn a bronze medal even if they are a relatively unskilled player. After a player earns all the medals at the Bronze level, they will be rewarded with an achievement and title. Completing all of the Silver medals will earn a set of spectacular gear for transmogrification, and completing all of the gold will earn a unique epic flying mount. Challenge modes will be available for the six new dungeons at launch.
  • Cloud Serpents are the Pandaren’s mount of choice. You can raise your own by doing 20 days of daily quests.
  • The Tillers faction will let you run your own farm! The farmer’s market will provide daily quest to improve your farm every day, you will be able to clear plots of land and plant things like cooking ingredients, herbalism nodes, gifts for NPCs to build your reputation… etc.
  • Warlocks got the most class changes in MoP, along with new pets.
  • There will be more mounts and less color swaps for different rewards.
  • They are adding armor to creatures to give them varied appearances, something other than just simple color changes.
  • There are now seven zones, up from five. This was done to add more content to the game and give players a less linear progression path so that leveling for a second or third time isn’t the exact same.
  • There will be one new arena and two new battlegrounds at launch.
  • PvP pet battles are going to be fun and causal, only tracking the number of wins and not the number of losses. When fighting another player, you cannot see the other players name or communicate with them.
  • Currently, every race except Goblin and Worgen can learn the ways of the monk.
  • The pre-Mists of Pandaria Patch will be roughly two weeks before launch and bring simple rewards. It might involve a scenario with Theramore and the Alliance vs Horde theme. Chen Stormstout might also come to the local cities and get players excited about what is coming.

From the look of things, it seems like Blizzard’s trying to bring us back to the days of Vanilla WoW. There’s no Big Bad to fight, which pleases me. The idea of fighting Deathwing seemed much more impressive than the overall story really was. With MoP, there’s just pure conflict between the Alliance and the Horde, and I love the idea of it.

So am I looking forward to the new expansion? Well, if everything I’m reading about it holds true, then yes. Yes, I am. At the very least, I’ll be rolling a wonderful lady pandaren and she will be bouncy and adorable. :D

Not So Scary After All

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I’ll be the first to say that new things can, and often do, terrify me. Change is something that I honestly find scary, even though I know I shouldn’t. After all, change can be good. Unfortunately, if you were to thrust me into something that I knew absolutely nothing about whatsoever, I’d panic. I’ll admit that right now. I’m a panicker. It’s what I do.

And yet, somehow, when a guildmate of mine and I had been talking about warzones (SWTOR’s version of battlegrounds), I thought diving into one without a friend was a good plan. Now, prior to the other night, I had never even touched warzones. Operations and flashpoints are also things I’ve never really touched, but, you know, that’s something for another time. Warzones, however, are infinitely more terrifying. Now, you have to understand that on the Imperial side, I’m a Sith Inquisitor and a healer, besides. My primary goal is healing people and making sure the people who are qualified to take out the opposing team can actually do it. Unfortunately, being a healer in a battleground is the equivalent of being a giant target. See, once the opposing team knows you’re the healer, you might as well have one of those giant flashing neon arrows over your head. They will come after you, and you may wind up a smear on the floor if you can’t heal yourself quickly enough.

Despite the fact that absolutely terrified me, despite not knowing what the hell I was doing, I thought it was a wonderful idea to queue up for a warzone. It was only when the queue popped that I started to panic. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, what warzone I was going to be thrust into, or even what the goal of said warzone was. Despite this, I clicked the button to enter the warzone anyway, and was faced with a loading screen I did not recognize at all. Now, I know I could have asked what we were supposed to do once we all came into the warzone (that I later learned was the Voidstar), but I decided against it. Instead, I plunged in, taking minimal instruction via BG chat. Apparently, Voidstar’s two rounds: one where you attack and another where you defend, all in the span of a few minutes. All in all, I think things went pretty well, since both sides never let the other near the datacore, and there were victories all around.

Emboldened, I plunged in again. At least if I got Voidstar again, I’d know what I was doing! It was not to be, however, as I found myself in Alderaan. This time, someone asked if we had any healers in the group, and I was brave enough to pipe up and tell them that I was. Someone was kind enough to bubble me, and the battleground began. I had the most fun in Alderaan, I think, and I found it to be a much friendlier experience than the Voidstar had been. As the Empire ran out to claim the center turret, I followed, and there I remained throughout the battleground, keeping everybody alive as much as I realistically could. Some were higher in level than I was, others were lower, but, to my surprise, I helped make some of the people around me unbeatable, and, under my watch, most of us were. In Alderaan, I didn’t die nearly as often as I had in the Voidstar, and, in the end, several members of our little band even voted me an MVP!

I’m not certain what an MVP vote does once the warzone is over, mind, but the fact that people had voted for me at all made me all kinds of happy, and gave me the confidence to dive in again. This time, I got Huttball. I was most certainly not a fan of Huttball. I died many times there, mostly due to not knowing what the hell I was doing, but I tried to heal whoever was carrying the ball as quickly as I could. Sure, I died several times doing it, but, you know, that happens.

In the end, when all was said and done and I returned to the Imperial fleet, I realized I was actually enjoying myself. Sure, I had no idea what I was doing and I had died multiple times, but I was having fun nonetheless! And I was earning commendations I could spend on pretty moddable gear once I hit level 40 so I could finally wear something that actually matched. Long story short, I tried something that honestly scared me, and it turned out that I had fun doing it. I encourage everybody to give something like that a try because it really isn’t as scary as you might think it is. You might even have fun.

The Meme of Sixes

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Apparently, there is a meme of sixes going around. A good number of the Warcraft blogging tweeps I follow have apparently been tagged to participate. The rules are simple: you go into your image folder, go to the sixth subfolder, and choose the sixth image in that folder, then tag six other to do the same. Some of us decided to take this a step further and make the whole thing a bit more involved. Even though I hadn’t been tagged to do it, I was incredibly tempted to go and do it anyway. To be honest, I didn’t even think anybody would tag me to do it. Pen and Shield is still in it’s own obscure corner of the internet, after all, and I get maybe a handful of readers here, if that. So I suppose you guys can imagine my surprise when Lilpeanut of Heal Over Time tagged me to do the meme I’d been thinking about doing. It’s always nice to find out more people than I think read this or, at the very least, know about it.

So, since Pen and Shield covers multiple games now, I decided to personally take things a step further. Not only are we going into my Warcraft screenshots folder, but also my SWTOR and LotRO screenshot folders. I guess I like madness? I don’t know. Continue reading →

There’s No Place Like Home…

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In all of the virtual worlds I’ve played in, one thing seems to remain constant. We, as players, want a piece of that virtual world for our own. If you think about it, it makes sense. After all, our characters live within this world. They have to come from somewhere or have somewhere to go when they aren’t out adventuring. However, World of Warcraft seems to be the only MMO I play that doesn’t have some sort of “player housing”. One could argue that The Old Republic doesn’t have one, either, but that’s only if they don’t count the starship every class receives at around level 16 or so. Yes, every player of the same class gets the same ship. There’s no upkeep costs, really, save for fuel costs to get to various planets, but the ship still feels like ours. World of Warcraft, however, has nothing like this. Players (particularly the roleplaying crowd) will tend to take over various unoccupied homes or buildings and unofficially claim them for their own while others might say their character lives out of a room they rent in one of the various inns. There’s no true player housing, per se, despite the various cries for it from the roleplaying player base.

Personally, I don’t know that we’d ever see it in World of Warcraft, despite the leaps Blizzard’s made in their phasing technology. While they could use something similar to the system that Lord of the Rings Online has (and I know there are some who argue that they should), if you take a closer look at LotRO’s system, implementing something that mimics LotRO’s really isn’t practical in WoW. Now, I’ll be one of the first to admit that I love how LotRO’s housing system is set up. However, the scale of it is a bit huge and I’m not certain that Blizzard could implement the same exact model that Turbine used for LotRO, unless they were to make the style of the homes faction-specific and not racial-specific.

Confused? Well, I’ll explain.

LotRO is, of course, under a slightly different model than WoW. We don’t have factions, per se, save for “good” and “evil”. So, on that wonderful day when Turbine chose to give LotRO players player housing, they only had one “faction” to work with (if you can even call it that, really) and only four races to play with. As a result, there are four distinct homesteads you can move into, each based on one of the four playable races of Middle Earth (Men, Dwarves, Elves, and Hobbits). Within each homestead are instanced neighborhoods with a set number of homes in each, including a number of homes for your kinship (or guild) to occupy, providing you meet the requirements and have the gold for it. The best part, though, is that there’s never a shortage of homes. As each neighborhood fills up, new ones are automatically generated by the system. If a home you really want to move into is occupied, hang around by the housing broker. A new neighborhood might appear the next time you log in, and, if you’re quick, you can claim the house you really want.

Honestly, the hardest part is trying to determine where you want to live. You do have choices, and those are wonderful, but it’s the choices themselves that make the whole process much more complicated than it really has to be. Are you a human who loves elven architecture enough to live there or do you just want a tiny little farmhouse out in Bree-land? Will your hobbit stay in the Shire or branch out to live in the land of the dwarves? Or maybe you and your friends all want to live in the same homestead and are just trying to see which you all like best. Even if you aren’t committed to any one homestead, I do recommend visiting each and seeing what appeals to you. The best part is that other players will usually allow random visitors into their home (I do), and you can go in to see what they’ve done with it. Not only will you get decorating ideas for when it comes time to buy your own, but it gives you an idea of what you can do with the space. Homes in the elven homesteads, for example, tend to have notoriously high ceilings and it may be difficult to figure out how best to arrange things on the wall. Taking a look at how other players decorated their elven-style homes gave me ideas for mine should I ever decide to pack up and move into one.

As for me, well, I’m a hobbit at heart. Whether I had a character of another race or not, I’d probably still get a little hobbit house. I can’t afford a deluxe house, sadly. I’m still saving up. I long for the day when I have three rooms and I can turn one of them into a proper library (Anthyllis, my hobbit minstrel, loves her stories and maps, you see). For now, though, I suspect I’ll have to content myself with a standard home. If you’re on the Landroval server, feel free to come and visit the Greyburrow home in the Shire Homesteads. She resides in the Marebourn neighborhood at 2 Wending Way. If she’s at home, she’ll make you some tea. If she’s not, feel free to look through her books. The main room’s a bit covered by them. Just please put them back where you found them.

The main room in Anthyllis' home. Go ahead and curl up by the fire with a good book!

So was this post an excuse to go on about something I love in LotRO? Probably. To be fair, I would like to see actual player housing in World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, however, I can’t see Blizzard implementing it on the above scale. The main problem, of course, being that WoW is split into factions and they have multiple races in each. To implement something like this would probably be incredibly time-consuming, not to mention the headache of trying to figure out where to put the homesteads and how much that would cost for upkeep and whatnot. I can see some players complaining about gold sinks if they do that, too.

To make things simpler on the dev team, I could see Blizzard making player homes faction-specific as opposed to racially specific. The problem with that, though, is that the two iconic races for each faction (in this case, it really seems to be humans and orcs) have very distinct looks, which not everybody would be that into. Someone who plays a blood elf, for example, might not be all right with their character moving into an incredibly primitive-looking house. And then there’s the whole matter of interior decorating. Would they come pre-furnished or would Blizzard implement something like LotRO and let the homeowner decorate it? If it’s the latter, how crazy should Blizzard go trying to come up with unique furniture ideas?

Eventually, I’m sure it could be done, but I’m not sure Blizzard could do it at this very moment. Look at how long it took them to give us something remotely close to the cosmetic system some of us have been wanting….

Breaking Point

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Everybody has a breaking point. Everything can be fine and wonderful until one little thing happens to tip the scale and cause you to snap. It happens all the time in the real world. Sometimes, you can cover it well. Other times you can’t. As always, what can happen in the real world can happen in a virtual one, too. Our characters are no exception to this, and, sometimes, snapping winds up ruining everything. These are their breaking points, something that will cause them to act in ways you as the player might not have been prepared for, and it can yield some very interesting stories in the end.

I’d like to share one such example with you. Now, I’d like to preface the following story by saying that I’m aware it’s SWTOR-specific. However, as everybody has their own personal breaking points, the concept is in no way specific to any one game. From a roleplaying perspective, our characters are people, too, and they will react as they will to certain events. Some will react more dramatically than others.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Sith Inquisitor storyline as dictated by Bioware, you begin life as a slave (made worse for those who choose to play an alien as the Empire dislikes aliens immensely), but are discovered to be Force-sensitive and are raised for a very specific purpose to become Sith. I won’t say what that purpose is because, you know, spoilers. Suffice to say that in your trials, one Sith Lord likes you the best and makes you her apprentice. As you go throughout the galaxy, obtaining various artifacts, a few of the NPCs may make note that you used to be a slave. If you’re an alien that isn’t a pureblood Sith, they’ll make note of that, too. Rather loudly. According to them, you’re inferior whether you like it or not.

Now, my Inquisitor is a twi’lek woman by the name of Bel’neven (or Belne Ven, if you choose to break her name down into it’s core components). I don’t have to use Bioware’s given storyline as a base to work with for IC purposes, and yet I do anyway. Belne is a former slave, and she knows it. She doesn’t particularly try to hide it, either. She is what she is and she’s come to accept that. Since her status has been raised, however, she feels like she owes the Empire, but there’s a part of her that’s still… a bit pure-hearted, I guess you could say. As a result, I opted to make her a healer, and I’ve mostly been choosing the Light-side dialogue options for her. The reason being that I think it’d be interesting. After all, killing everything in sight doesn’t always get you to your end goal. Sometimes, you need to be diplomatic.

Unfortunately, things didn’t quite go as planned. I had broken my Light-side streak once already on Korriban. Once Belne arrived on Balmorra, one quest in the course of the Inquisitor’s class storyline forced me to break my Light-side streak again. An Imperial that she had been dealing with decided she wouldn’t get what she wanted from him unless she found his son, another Sith, who had gone and gotten himself caught by Balmorran rebels. So, after slugging through Balmorra and dealing with all sorts of crap from various people, she grudgingly decided to find the man’s son for him. Once she found him, the human Sith apprentice decided the best course of action was to greet her by calling her a filthy alien.

At that point, Belne snapped. The “filthy alien” had just torn through a number of people and, oh, look at that! She hadn’t been stupid enough to get caught. She was there to save his butt, and he had to start off being ungrateful. So, to her, it made perfect sense to call him an insufferable fool in return. The sniping continued for a good few minutes, and I kept being prompted with a choice to let him go. I could have, but then he made the mistake of mentioning a Sith weapon he had been after, which I thought Belne’s master might want. Power, after all, is very important to the Sith, and the weapon could be an additional edge.

In the end, the jerkiest Sith apprentice Belne had come across since Ffon on Korriban told her he wanted out of the cell he was trapped in and I was prompted with three dialogue choices: I’m sorry (but you have to die), No (the only way you get out of that cell is in a body bag), and let him go (for the… what… fourth time? Fifth? At that point, I lost count). I weighed my options. I could take the insults like a man and let him go. After all, opinions at likes mouths; everybody’s got one. However, she was above letting people call her a filthy alien now. She was Sith, damn it, and that earned her a certain amount of respect from anybody, whether she was an alien or not. She wasn’t about to just let him walk out of there, not after that, especially after she had tried to negotiate and tried to get him to give her the holocron that revealed the location of the Sith weapon. She had tried to be nice, and being nice hadn’t worked so well. The only option was to kill him. She didn’t want to piss off his father, either, but, in the end, I chose the first option, fighting happened, and Belne emerged victorious, complete with a new weapon to show off to her master once she saw her again.

The whole incident, however, got me thinking. Generally, Belne is a nice woman, at least until you insult her. All bets are off at that point. For Belne, that’s her breaking point. Like it or not, she’s Sith now and she will be treated as such. Fail to do it and shit will hit the fan. This, also, was what sadly got the ex-apprentice’s father killed shortly after when he failed to show the proper respect. The fear was nice, though.

So my question to you, dear readers, is this: what is your character’s breaking point? What’s one thing that will cause them to snap?

Melee and Me

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Ages and ages ago, when your beloved author first began gaming, I was very clueless about role types when it came to games. Certainly, I knew that you had your warriors and your casters and people who could heal you, but I knew them by class name, not types. It wasn’t until years later, when I picked up World of Warcraft, joined my very first guild, and began raiding that I learned that class types even really existed. Before then, my only real experience in group combat had been in the form of Dungeons and Dragons, where I preferred to be a sorcerer, standing in the back and quietly shooting at things. This idea of class roles was completely foreign to me.

It didn’t take me very long to fall in love with the paladin class, though. I could hit hard, take damage, and heal myself if I needed to. Because I was so in love with the idea of the armored warrior with a sword and shield, I thought to myself that I’d be a tank (this was after I learned what class roles were, mind). How hard could it really be? So I dove in and it was awesome. Well, for a little while. Unfortunately, I realized being a tank was incredibly intimidating and definitely not for me. Besides which, my guild at the time needed healers, and paladins could spec into a tree that let them heal. It seemed like a good plan, so I switched to a holy spec and never looked back. Eventually, a server switch happened and, when it did, I tried all sorts of other classes. The next class I ever did any sort of raiding with was a rogue (Jinaki before I went and rerolled the poor girl multiple times). However, I soon learned this was also a bad plan. Because the computers I played on were less than optimal, any time I got close enough to a mob where multiple spell effects went off at any given time, lag happened. Sadly, I also couldn’t turn them off because, if I did, I’d be heavily SOL and die more often than any DPS class really should. The lag was so bad that I couldn’t do anything, and that effectively put an end to my melee career.

Since then, I went back to my roots, and stuck with my caster/ranged DPS classes. I love them. I did heal occasionally, but to be honest, no other healing class holds my love like paladin healing does. And yet, when SWTOR came out, I jumped at the chance to be a commando, solely because I could heal. The fact that I can heal at all has saved my butt more than once, I can tell you that. However, the trooper was one of those classes I honestly didn’t think I’d play come launch of the game, and, keeping that in mind and also taking into account that our guild Imperial-side needed healers, I decided I was going to try an Imperial Operative.

Yeah. It wasn’t happening.

You would think it would, because it had pretty much everything I loved about my commando when I first got her. I could heal if things got too bad. I could still attack things, still hide behind cover if I needed to. The problem was that the majority of my abilities required me to be in melee range. This meant I was mostly running up to things and shooting them in the face. You might say I should have stuck it out longer, but after twelve levels of running around and falling in love with cover and then suddenly not really having it as an option and gimping myself unless I refused to use it was just not for me. I couldn’t do it. It makes me sad, because I’ve seen some pretty badass Operatives. I know they can be bamfs. They’re just… not for me.

As a result, I started to think about why that was, and I thought back to Jinaki. I didn’t hate her as a character; I love her to bits. I (sort of) knew what I was doing. I mean, I didn’t top DPS charts or anything, but I like to think I wasn’t being carried. Taking the lag out of the equation (and, in fact, it’s a moot point since I got my new computer), why was I out of love with melee? And then I realized what it was.

I found it boring. I liked being able to pick things off from a distance or sending something else in to take care of it for me while I sat back and slowly picked things off at my own pace. It’s a game for me. How best to survive the encounter? What combination of abilities can I use to pick things off at my own pace? What can I do to ensure I live and they don’t? How much of their health can I take away before they get anywhere near me?

Healing is a bit like that for me, as well, where I can stand back, look at my healing spells, and say, “All right. What can I cast when to make sure my tank/DPS/whatever lives so the enemy can die?” Melee combat, however… where’s the challenge in it? Melee, you rush in head first, and, most of the time, you’re lucky to be alive by the time the thing you’re fighting dies. To me, that isn’t fun. That’s suicide. I can see where other people would find it fun, but, for me, not so much. So, if you want to rush right in, you go right ahead, my dear. I’ll just be back here, shooting at things or keeping you alive.

On Being a Server Hobo

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I think, as much as I am an altoholic, I’m also a server hobo. There are days when I sit and honestly wonder whether or not I’ll ever happen upon a server I like and want to make a permanent home. It’s funny, because I only seem to really have this problem in World of Warcraft. In LotRO, Landroval has been my home for years. Admittedly, yes, I started on a different server than I play on now. However, I’ve never actually moved off of it. My relationship with the game might be heavily on again, off again, but I’ve contemplated moving servers all of once. I played for a little bit on another one after that, but I immediately came back to Landroval. With SWTOR, it’s a bit too early to tell, as the game has only really been out for about a month. However, with World of Warcraft… oh my.

Believe it or not, I wasn’t always a roleplayer in WoW. No, I got my start in WoW on a normal, everyday PvE server with one of my college roommates who was showing me the ropes. From there, I discovered RP servers, and, well, the rest was history. I hung out for a little while on Argent Dawn, then somehow wound up on The Venture Co server for a bit to play with a friend (where I learned RP-PvP was not as bad as I had thought), stopped briefly on Thorium Brotherhood, and then went to Moon Guard. Before Moon Guard, I didn’t really have friends or know anything about a stable RP community. Before then, the concept was kind of foreign to me, as the RPers everywhere else were well-established and, being a noob to the community, I was too nervous to even approach them. But one thing led to another on Moon Guard, and I wound up with a guild and had a good old time on the server. But when the guild started to fragment a year or two later, I realized staying was only contributing to my mental distress, so… off I went to Thorium Brotherhood.

Thorium Brotherhood’s been my “home” for almost three years now. Three years. I honestly can’t believe it’s been that long. Now, I love (most) of the people. The friends I’ve made there have been absolutely wonderful. One would think that, after three years of being on a server, I’d be ready to call it home, right?

Apparently not.

To be honest, I have yet to really get a “home” feeling from any of the servers I’ve been on lately. They’re all wonderful, mind. They’re all great places to go back to, but none of them have felt like “home”. I say differently to other people, but the truth of the matter is that I haven’t actually found a server like that yet. What would it take for me to call one as such in World of Warcraft? I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet. I feel like just as I’m about to start setting down some sort of roots, something happens to completely dig all of those out and then I’m right back to square one. I start setting down a nice rapport with a guild or a group of people, and then suddenly all of that’s gone and then I honestly don’t know what to do. And at that point, when you don’t really have any ties left any more, you pack up and move on again to another server. Sometimes you take your things with you. Other times, you can’t afford to. But you move on, just looking for somewhere you can call home.

I’m jealous of all the people who have stayed on a server for longer than I have. You all have something I’d love to have, but can never seem to find.

The Year in Review

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Well, we’ve had some ups and downs this year, haven’t we? I’ve been quiet for God only knows how long (and, really, I do apologize for that; in the new year, I hope to be blogging so much that you’ll all get sick of me after awhile), I’ve actually obtained a new computer (yay!), but, in the process, lost my graphics programs (boo). However, today marks the close of 2011, and it seems only fitting to do a year in review post, doesn’t it? After all, tomorrow begins the new year.

So, shamelessly borrowing this from Miss Anexxia, today I give you Thyanel’s MMO year in review!

What were you most excited about in the past year?
Too many things to count. Chief amongst them, however, was probably SWTOR. I’ve been waiting impatiently for this game for what honestly seemed like forever, so to finally have the release date and joining the entire fandom in the countdown for it was nothing short of entertaining for me.

Troll druids, and goblin/worgen ladies were also very high up there on the list, and to actually see these things become a reality in World of Warcraft was probably the most fun I’ve had in that game. I was beyond excited to try out the worgen starting area and the redesigned questing zones, and I was most certainly not disappointed.

What was the best thing you bought?
I can’t think of anything major in World of Warcraft, but I can think of numerous things otherwise. Oddly, they’re both mount-related, though. Last night, I finally had enough credits to my name to spring for Vordane’s first speeder and training. I don’t know how I’m going to manage come 40 for the new one, but I suspect I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

In Lord of the Rings online, after driving myself insane trying to get the correct amount of tokens given to us during the various seasonal festivals and failing the race once or twice, I finally was able to obtain a Yule Festival Glittering Pony for Anthyllis, my hobbit minstrel. I love this pony so much that I have no intention of riding anything else ever again, and I’m currently in the process of re-dying most of her wardrobe so she can match it.

What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Characters at the various level caps would be nice. I have yet to get a character anywhere near level cap in LotRO, despite it being out for ages, and I’m eager to get Anthyllis further out into the world and on to Isengard.

Also, once I get back to it and am no longer feeling burnt out, more roleplay for Adaret would be fantastic. The girl has been stuck in the closet for far too long.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Probably having enough money to get Vordane her speeder in SWTOR. I honestly thought I wouldn’t be able to do it. Also having enough gold in LotRO to even think about getting a nice little hobbit hole for Anthyllis.

What was your biggest failure?
Not listening to myself, I think. I wasn’t willing to admit to myself that I was feeling a bit burnt out on World of Warcraft at the beginning of December. I love the game still, but I needed a break. It wasn’t until SWTOR came out and I started playing it that I realized the burnout was there, I just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

What do you wish you’d done less of?
WoW: logging in pretty much daily and ignoring the burnout
LotRO: Hiding from the RPing folks on Landroval. They aren’t scary, I just need to tell myself that.
SWTOR: Queues. Oh, god, waiting in queues is terrible. :( Also getting stuck in Taris and stuck watching an elevator slowly moving up and down wasn’t very fun.

What did you do in your MMOs in 2011 that you’d never done before?
Apart from, at the very end, being able to run them in ridiculously high quality thanks to a new computer, probably explore like a fiend. There’s so much to see and do in all of my games, so much so that I never really got a chance to sit and just explore every inch of every world/zone that was there.

What’s your favorite new place that you’ve visited?
WoW: Mount Hyjal. I love that zone. That and Uldum. Two of my favorite zones because of everything ever in both of them.
LotRO: N/A; anywhere I’m able to get to, I’ve actually been before. It’s still pretty cool seeing Weathertop, though.
SWTOR: Probably Dromund Kaas. You get to see Coruscant, albiet a future version of Coruscant, in pretty much every single Star Wars thing ever. Dromund Kaas, nothing. So it’s pretty cool to see the home of the Empire.

What’s your favorite blog or podcast?
I don’t want to pick and choose and offend anybody, but all the bloggers I’ve met and all the blogs I read for any of my MMOs are amazing. We’re all a great bunch of people.

Before this year, though, I hadn’t really touched podcasting before. I’m now a big fan of A Casual Stroll to Mordor, though, on the LotRO front.

Tell us a valuable lesson you learned in 2011.
Have several.

- Admitting burnout isn’t a bad thing.
- Slicing is an awesome way to bring in the money.
- Every community is going to find something to bitch about; take it in stride.
- Not everything wants to be your friend. In fact, most of them will eat you.
- If all else fails, remember that shooting things in the face is a wonderful way to relieve stress at the end of the day.