Changes

Posted on July 6, 2013 by Thyanel

Some decisions are harder than others to make and are infinitely harder to tell people about once you’ve made them. I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t one of them, and it breaks my heart to have to say this. It really does.

Let me get kind of a personal for a minute. Money has been really tight for me lately. I work a retail job that doesn’t really pay me a hell of a lot; I’ve said that a few times here, I think. Unfortunately, paying for my World of Warcraft account generally takes up most of my paycheck with barely enough left over for gas to get me to my job. I actually made this decision back in March, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything about it here at the time. It was too painful. However, I need to say it now.

As of today, my subscription to World of Warcraft has run out. Until I either get a new job or find some other way of supplementing my income, I might not be back to Azeroth for awhile.

Now, what does this mean for Pen and Shield? Not that much. Nothing is really going to change here. I’ll still be updating with various gaming-related things. There’s just going to be a lot more from my other gaming experiences (LotRO, Neverwinter… maybe some Rift if it turns out I like it) until I can afford WoW again. There may be some Azeroth-related writings here, though, since it’s definitely not goodbye. World of Warcraft was my first MMO experience. It’s still very much a huge part of my life and I have no intention of losing that ever.

So, Azeroth, I’m not saying goodbye to you today. For today, it’s just “see you later.” I’ll be back, and you’d still better kick just as much ass then.

Decisions, Decisions

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Thyanel

Today, ladies and gentlemen, it is with a heavy heart that I must confess something to all of you. This hasn’t been an easy decision for me to make, but, unfortunately, it’s one that has to happen. No, this isn’t as serious of a decision as, say, closing down this blog. That’s just not going to happen. I love gaming and talking about it when I can too much to do something like that. However, your intrepid author is going to have cease coverage of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

It isn’t a problem with the game, it’s mechanics, or the content that I never saw. I want to get that out of the way right now. The game was entertaining, and my guildies are all fantastic. However, I’ve hit a point where I’m just not having fun with it any more. I’ve seriously been coming up with ways to avoid the game because of that. It isn’t anything that anybody’s done, mind; it’s just that I’m not having the fun with it that I thought I would.

Not only that, but finances are a little limited for me right now. In the real world, I work a part-time job that currently does not give me a lot in the way of hours and I consider myself lucky that I get the shifts that I do at all. I’m looking for a second job right now (or at least something better), but until that happens, I’m limited in my funding and can only maintain one game subscription at a time. I figure that subscription should belong to a game I still actively enjoy.

So, as of today, I cancelled my SWTOR subscription. Perhaps I might pick it up again in the future, but, for right now, that’s just not in the cards.

Explanations (or Why Me?)

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Thyanel

On July 22nd, when I went to go mess with the Pen and Shield website, I discovered there was a problem. I had no idea what had happened; however, I was unable to create new posts/pages or even edit existing ones. Further experimentation revealed that, somehow, Pen and Shield’s database got corrupted, and any attempts we’ve made over the past few weeks in an effort to correct this problem have failed miserably. Sadly, folks, I honestly have no idea what happened. As far as I’m aware, it was nothing that I did, but I don’t know for sure. For all I know, the goblins and the gnomes got loose again, had a field day in the database, and tried to put things back together when they were done only to fail miserably as everything is completely borked. However, everything seems to be working as intended now, so I’m still “moving back in”, so to speak, but we are most definitely back!

Unfortunately, the experimentation we did resulted in me losing two years worth of posts. Anybody might be upset about this if it happened to them. I was for a bit, too, but then I realized it was a good thing. I wasn’t completely thrilled with the majority of the posts that were there in the first place, and the few posts that I was proud of could use a significant amount of tweaking.

For that matter, I realized I had lost focus somewhere along the way and Pen and Shield had just fallen by the wayside while I was at a loss as to what I should be blogging about. Pen and Shield has always been, first and foremost, a home for roleplaying for me. This is what I play for. I am not a raider (though I have done it in the past). I am not a hardcore PvPer (extremely casual girl here). I am a roleplayer. For me, it’s all about the characters, and I haven’t really focused enough on them. So you can expect a lot more character focus from me, as well as a lot more screenshots and the occasional meme.

However, while I have your attention, I’d like to make an announcement: Pen and Shield is expanding! That’s right, we’re not just a World of Warcraft blog anymore. WoW is my first love, and shall always be a good chunk of my focus as a result, but since my time will be split between both WoW, Star Wars: The Old Republic when it finally comes out (I’m all preordered and everything; I’m so excited), and Lord of the Rings Online (occasionally), it makes more sense to me to be expanding my focus rather than attempting to maintain five or six different blogs at once.

So, we’re back and I hope I didn’t alarm anybody by my sudden disappearance.