Tag Archives: IRL land

The ‘I’m Still Here’ Ramble

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Hey guys. *sheepish*

I always promised myself that I would never be one of those people that just stopped updating without a word but.. I just haven’t had anything to say. I’ve been focusing a lot on my other blog, which I have renamed Once Upon A Time. The ‘rantpage’ url still works, but it does have a new url and a new name because I’m pretty much using it as a book blog now, so in future if I decide to blog about gaming, it will probably be here. So an apology in advance to those of you who don’t like your wow feed being ‘littered’ with other games.

Just letting you know I’m still here, and I haven’t quit WoW. I’ve been doing dailies on Kalithe though I skipped a few days because BLERGH dailies. And I played Fae a little in the past few days as well. She pretty swiftly got 346 ilvl and I’ve only done maybe 4 heroics. I found the Lava Bolt Crossbow for 25k gold, I couldn’t resist! It’s definitely a sexy weapon :P

And you remember that epic Steam sale? I grabbed Oblivion goty edition for £8, Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword for.. however much that was. Few quid. And the Guild Wars trilogy (*SQUEE!*) which is really what I was keeping my eye open for! I’m desperately looking forward to Guild Wars 2, it looks and sounds amazing. But I’ve never played the first Guild Wars, and £30 for the whole thing, while a good deal, isn’t quite affordable for me so I absolutely had to grab it when it was up for £12.49. Yay! I didn’t manage to yoink Eye of the North sadly, but on its’ own it won’t be quite so bad to get my hands on. So I am very excited for the time when I get a moment to dig in because they were some very good finds. I would have liked a few others (see: the wishlist) but money permitting and all that jazz.

So yus, but I’m still focusing on WoW, my book blog, reading, and all of the IRL-land things I need to do as well. And I may have a slight book buying addiction but you’ll be glad to hear I’ve rediscovered the library and MY GOD libraries have changed. I was very impressed! The main reason I didn’t use libraries (apart from I really like to own my books) is that I have an issue with late fees but now you can renew online I don’t have that problem!

So yes. All is good. We may be moving in a few months but I doubt that affects any of you guys.

I may not have posts for a fair while more because I can’t be arsed to just post filler, but I’m usually blogging somewhere. At the moment I’m at Once Upon A Time, as mentioned, and you know you can always find me on twitter unless I’m away.

Happy Friday!

So, This Is It

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I wanted to go with a cooler title like “Breaking the Bonds” or some such, but I think we can all agree that whatever I would have come up with would be neither cool, nor.. well.. just sounds like I’m breaking off an addiction, doesn’t it? That’s not really the message I want to get across. What I want to say is that after much deliberation and dragging it out, I’m finally quitting World of Warcraft. I’m very sad about it, but I just don’t have the interest to log in any more. I want to level those alts, and hit 300k gold, and do some 10 man raiding with a fun team on my Shadow Priest, finish off all of the new quests, all those things, but I just don’t care enough. What’s the point in doing something for fun that you don’t really enjoy? I’m particularly sad because I’d finally found a guild I was happy in, felt like I’d started making a few friends there, I had a bunch of awesome people on Real ID to chat to (you know who you are), and I think the worst part is the prospect of leaving the WoW blogging community. I’ve been here for over a year, and it is honestly the main thing that kept me playing throughout Wrath when I first found myself getting burnt out. I’ve met some awesome people, read some amazing blog posts, taken part in a bunch of community events that have been so much fun. I still don’t want to leave, but when you’re not playing the game the community is focused around, what can you do? I still think WoW is a brilliant game, I’ve just played it to death and nothing is holding my attention enough now. Perhaps one day in the future I might come back after a long break, but I don’t know at the moment. Never know, I’m missing the game a little just writing this post but I really think it’s time to move on.

I’ve spent a few hours today tidying my blogroll. Admittedly, I wanted to keep note of the blogs that I’d want to read again if I ever did come back (as it stands, I’ll be removing WoW blogs from my reader, as I won’t be reading them any more), but there are a few in there, mostly under the general section, but still, that I’ll still be reading and wanted to share. So please have a look at the list. I know it’s long, but they’re brilliant writers, and fabulous people.

I will not be deleting this blog. I will be renewing the domain as I use it for The Rant Page (which will now be my primary blog if you wish to follow me there, hopefully I’ll vary the topics a little soon, though inspiration is always welcome) as well. Unless my host needs to free up some space, Jaedia’s Menagerie will remain here ready to pick back up if I ever choose to.

I might look into other MMOs at some point this year. There are a couple of fantasy MMOs being released that I might try out, and there’s always LotRO and Champion’s Online (which I tried out and whilst I don’t find it amazing, it’s free and purdy colours) if I don’t fancy paying for the game and/or monthly fees. I’m not expecting anything revolutionary, or anything that I’ll be playing as much as I did with WoW, but perhaps another game to doss around on might be in the picture at some point. If I do find something, it’s most likely that any of those posts will be here. The one thing the Rant Page isn’t is a gaming blog.

In the meantime, I’ll be reading (you can find me on Goodreads), mostly fantasy, though I’m really not overly fussy about what I read as long as it’s weird, funny, or moving, and well written. I’m jotting down ideas for my own novel which won’t be out any time soon, I want to read a lot more, and research, and plan, and write, and edit, and rewrite, and edit, and make more notes, research more, edit, rewrite, and so on until I’m entirely happy to look into taking it anywhere, and that will take me a few years, but it will be nice to get started on that this year. I also have a fair few series, some live action, a fair few anime (you can also find me on MAL – My Anime List), to watch. And I’m still working in the charity shop on Saturdays and Mondays. I’m hoping that this year I’ll finally turn my life around and get a job and a place of our own to live in, and hopefully, without WoW there tempting me to switch off constantly (we won’t go into all of that just now), it will happen.

I’m looking for other blogs to read. Anything that might talk about RPG gaming, preferably of the fantasy MMO type, but I might be persuaded otherwise if it’s a good read. Any good book blogs, writing blogs, personal/other blogs of your own that I might not know about. If you know of any of these, I’d be grateful.

I love you guys, and I’m sorry to be leaving, especially noticing how many are doing so at the moment going through my reader this morning, but I really hope you guys continue enjoying the game, and keep on blogging.

Laters.

A Very Disappointing Release Day

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I spent my birthday waiting for a knock on the door that never came. While everybody else was talking about the realm first level 85s and nearing the max level, I was running around the house like this:

Okay, maybe I was watching TV and creating my pre-raid gear list, but inside, I was most definitely flailing.

What’s worse is the news on the City Link website that our parcel was put in transit at about 12.30 midday in a place that’s a half an hour drive from here. If there was any way of knowing, I could have arranged a pick up. My car might be broked but my dad was around. And I live in the middle of England, we aren’t having the road problems that Scotland are getting. Lucky for us he went out later on so we could steal the living room to eat pizza and watch How To Train Your Dragon (which is still awesome).

I’ve told myself I won’t spend today listening for the knock on the door, but I can’t help it. I don’t like that I’ve missed out on that first day awesomeness, when everybody is running around going, “OMG SO AWESOME LETS DO INSTANCE.” My only real comforts are the ability to wave Little Deathwing in people’s faces when I finally get my sodding game, and that Dan was kind enough to actually wait for me. We don’t level together as such, but it’s nice to be able to do group quests and instances at the same level.

Oh, yeah, I also bought the Moonkin Hatchling to cheer myself up. Couldn’t exactly afford it, but I had a little birthday money so why not. It was so worth it, it worked. He’s so darn cute!

Horde moonkin is better but that's the only screenshot I took yesterday

IRL Ding

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Originally, this post was going to be written for a Blog Azeroth shared topic about how real life interrupts your game life, suggested by dragonray, but when the date was moved to the 13th-19th, I decided it would be best to just post it on the 7th as I had planned.

It’s my birthday, if I want to post a cat, I can post a friggin cat!

I’m not going to talk about my work life. Plain and simple, I don’t have a job. I volunteer in a charity shop around 7 hours a week, which is barely enough to affect anything, really. I’ll do 3 hours on Monday morning, and 4 hours on Saturday afternoon. With Cataclysm released on Tuesday, I’m fairly certain I’m safe to not need any time off for Cataclysm, and if my CE arrives late *cry* it arrives late.

The thing about today is that to you guys, it’s the Cataclysm release date. Woohoo, etc. Back in September, when the release date was announced (during my site’s downtime when I was in Wales, I remember that clearly), I was just a little bit miffed about the date. Out of 365 days in a year, they had to pick my birthday, didn’t they? Today I turn 22. No major milestone, by any mark, but I’ve always made a point of not playing WoW on my birthday. Just turning off the computer and watching a movie, go out for a meal, all that jazz. However, this year, I was met with a dilemma. The first day of the new expansion, do I stick to my guns and not play? Just watch TV and greet family members? Or do I do the birthday celebrations on the Monday, sod the birthday, and go see the new shinies?

Well, I suspect you know the answer already. There’s nothing better than getting on with new things on the expansion release date, it feels like being a child at Christmas again and hell if I’m going to miss out just because of a silly old birthday. We went out for a Chinese last night in my favourite restaurant, I talked to my dad this morning, if anybody pops over later I’ll go and say hello, sure, but the rest of the day is reserved for me. I do wish the release date was on a different day so that I didn’t feel like I couldn’t not log in, but it’s not, so sod it.

And a cat bus, for good measure.

So yes, today is my birthday. I have cookies. Happy Cataclysm!

20 Days of Warcraft – IRL Race/Class

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Day 9 – Which race/class combination are you most like in RL?

Well, I want to say Night Elf Mage but reeeally, no. Tauren Druid.

Night Elves are tall, mysterious, beautiful, and… blue. Okay, so we can’t have everything, but Elves are cool, kay? And I’d rather be a Night Elf than a Blood Elf if we’re talking IRL land here. Mages are great cooks, they can turn people into different animals, set things on fire just by thinking about it, quick transportation what’s not to love?

If I’m honest though, that’s what I’d like to be. The question is which are you ‘most like’, and so I say Tauren Druid. No, I’m not a giant bipedal cow, or hairy, but I’m not thin and slender, so body size I’d say that makes the most sense.. except for the cow part. I couldn’t be a Dwarf because I’m not short. Plus, I’m fairly gentle in nature, so the other Horde races don’t suit me much either. That also rules out Human.

I say Druid because, well, I wouldn’t be too good with weapons, I think the elements would hate me, but I do like nature. Whilst I can’t turn into a bear or a cat on a whim, Druid seems to fit the most. Plus I always wanted to be a cat when I was a kid (I don’t know either).

WoW In The Workplace

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It has come to my attention that I haven’t joined in with shared topics for a while now. I like to get involved, however, I haven’t really thought of any responses recently. I’d actually had the idea to write a post about the things WoW can teach you that would seem great to potential employers, though if they found out where the skills had originated from they perhaps might not be so supportive. Well, I think that slots in quite nicely with this week’s shared topic:

What has the World of Warcraft taught you? Did you learn about economics from playing the Auction House? Or learned the value of household chores from doing dailies? Or maybe WoW has impacted your real life in some other way. Maybe you even met your significant other in Azeroth! Write about something you’ve learned from WoW, or some other way it’s affected you in the real world.

Recommended by Sindei.

I’d first like to mention that employers differ. Some will be quite open to gaming, after all, it’s hardly an activity that requires sacrificing lambs in the name of Beelzebub. On the other hand, some will remain fairly archaic in the sense that gaming is something for children and teenagers, it doesn’t belong in the workplace. Whilst I don’t believe that mentioning that gaming is a favourite pastime, I also don’t believe that going into detail about the following skills being learnt as a result of heavy game playing would be particularly rewarding either. I am going to talk about a few skills, which are widely regarded as excellent skills to take into a job, or anywhere else in life for that matter, and how exactly they relate to the World of Warcraft.

Tolerance

We’ve all been witness to the immaturity present in trade chat, pugs, and sometimes even in guild chat. However, after time, you learn to just deal with it, it’s a part of any multiplayer game. If you want to play the game you enjoy, sometimes you just have to tolerate the stuff you might not otherwise want to. The existence of this immaturity is particularly obvious when it appears within guilds. You enjoy raiding with them, there are some great people, but one or two people might spoil the fun. A lot of people decide that it is worth ignoring the bad stuff to stick around in the guild they like.

Of course, in the real world, we may encounter people whom we find insufferable on a daily basis. It’s a part of being human, but do we attack these people or just smile and tolerate them, for the sake of a job, a friend, family, whatever may be at risk if we choose to act on our dislike. I feel that there are many situations in WoW which help us to tolerate people a bit more.

Patience

Tolerance goes hand in hand with patience. We need patience in order to tolerate the idiots. This skill is especially great if you’re working in customer service, as I’m sure many of us have discovered, the general public can be dicks. If they’re particularly stupid, you may be able to slip in a little sarcasm which will probably go unnoticed but that’s never really recommended. It’s always best to take a deep breath, smile, let them rant, and so on. Keep your cool.

Doing dailies, levelling your 5th level 80 alt through the same zones you’ve now completed repeatedly, grinding just about anything from reputation to herbs, all of these things require an immense amount of patience, and music/podcasts/vent. Not only this, but doing the same mundane tasks day after day must in some way prepare you for a 9 to 5.

Problem Solving

Problem solving is another very important skill for the workplace, and life in general. Often we are met with difficult tasks, whether we choose to flail around in a state of panic, or calmly take things step by step in order to overcome the problem is upto us, but it is possible to learn this skill whilst playing WoW.

Okay, so, this skill is a little more based within the refines of raiding and PvP, perhaps even in RP. In raids, Blizzard have given us a variety of problems to solve, also known as bosses and their strategies. It is mostly the raid leader’s job to think of a tactic to best overcome the boundaries put in front of us, though at some point, any of the raiders can step up. Rogue adds hitting the healers can be misdirected away by a Hunter, the boss standing in bad stuff hurting the melee can be moved away by a tank, there are many examples of problem solving within raiding.

In PvP, particularly in arena, the enemy players become our problem and we have to use our offensive and defensive abilities to best overcome them, perhaps even using the environment around us to make it a little more difficult for them.

Roleplay was also mentioned, and you may be wondering how on earth roleplay and problem solving can mix. Well, occasionally we meet new people, and we have to devise ways to interact with them. Sometimes, they may even force situations on us that we are not comfortable with which we have to find ways to escape from. This will tend to happen much less if you roleplay with friends but it definitely counts.

Teamwork

This skill I think you can work out for yourselves. In fact, I may already have touched upon it in the previous examples. However, I’m not bailing out. Teamwork. Working as a part of a team. This is a term that employers love. They lap it right up along with good customer service and a lot of patience. In fact, there was a great scene in the IT Crowd that summed this up quite well ((chances are this is only viewable in the UK, sadly I couldn’t find another clip on YouTube that wasn’t in Russian)) (just incase you guys outside of the UK can’t view that clip, here‘s a different clip, thankya Mork, completely unrelated but I can’t leave you guys out now can I?)(oh look, another one, more related to teamwork).

I believe I just went off on a footnotes vs. bracketed rant. Right, teamwork. Whenever we group with people ingame, that’s teamwork right there. Raiding, 5 mans, group quests, arena, premades, roleplay. Know what else? Vehicle mounts. You have to put your trust in somebody when they’re riding you around that they won’t eject you in some strange place, like jumping off of Dalaran and watching you fall to your death while they parachute down, or perhaps you’re a passenger in their rocket, they could eject you in midair any time. That takes trust, which is pretty useful when you’re working with other people.

Business

Have you ever put anything up for sale on the auction house, or perhaps advertised it in trade chat? Could be an item, or offering your professions for a fee or tip. Was it a lot of items? Did you undercut the competition by a lot or just a little? Did you use your professions to make things to sell? Buy something for cheap and sell it for more? Whatever you did, you were making gold on your own initiative, rather than just doing dailies and quests which are there, you’ve thought about it a little bit. The more you do it, the more you think of new ways to make gold, different strategies. New skills. Business skills.

Management Experience

I’ve left this one until last because this won’t relate to everybody, but if you’ve ever lead a guild, or been an officer in a guild, or lead a pug, that is giving you a little management experience. Why? You’re leading people! Thinking of the best ways for people to work as a team, hoping they have patience and tolerance for one another, in order for the team to work a lot better, using your problem solving skills and hoping that others step up and use theirs if need be.

Whilst an employer more than likely wouldn’t accept management skills learnt from a game, in leading people within WoW, you have picked up a few tricks, and demonstrated that you have enough patience to work in management.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could put down ‘a few years of MMO playing’ on your CV as a part of your experience?

I Lied A Little Bit

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Well, sort of, about the fact that my next post would be WoW based. It wasn’t after all. This is less a post and more a quick note to clarify something, because I don’t want people to get the wrong idea. The ads are going up to help with RL stuff, I’m lucky to have a friend with some server space, he was kind enough to let me steal a little space. I don’t pay for my hosting, if I ever did I would move to free WordPress. We want to try to move along and get our own place, which for the past couple of years has drastically failed. We can afford food, and we have a roof over our heads but it’s only a temporary roof, it isn’t our roof, so any little thing I can do to help.. because I’m tired of things being static.

I wanted to make sure you guys know precisely why I’m putting ads up, because there’s nothing worse than somebody saying their ads are for one thing, but in reality they’re for something much more selfish. I guess that applies more to a donate button, but even so. I like to be honest.

Right, one WoW post coming up. Just need a topic, you know I spent so long fixing ads, the shop, and tidying and cleaning yesterday (okay and I watched an episode of Elfen Lied followed by an episode of Merlin after I’d cooked) that I didn’t even think about logging into WoW until it got late and I was turning off my PC to go and read my book? I kinda hope I get a little time over the weekend to PUG an Icecrown or two.

Final thing: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAN. He’s an old fart today, leave him insulting comments or nice things if you must ;)

What Am I Doing?

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The first thing I’d like to mention is why I’m not posting very much at the moment. Without going into too much detail, I’ve been having a pretty touch time in IRL land and I haven’t had much passion or creativity floating around, on the worst days my posts would have been half-arsed and horrid to read, so I spared you the trouble of having too much in your reader – aren’t I nice? Anyway, I’m not quitting blogging, just expect it to be a bit less posty than usual while I play some WoW and watch some anime.

Alright, I’ve left this long enough now. The caption contest. If you’d like to see all of the responses check the comments, you all gave me a good laugh, thank you for that! I’m going to give Avatar my favourite vote (see below) but I really did love them all, so if you haven’t already, take a look.

WoW Outside of Azeroth

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I haven’t participated in a Shared Topic in a while, so I’ve browsed the forum, selected a few which are sitting in drafts waiting to be written, and my first is Oath’s idea:

Have you ever been out and about, minding your own business, having a casual conversation with a friend and fellow WoW player about the latest patch or last night’s dungeon, then some random stranger comes up to you and says something like, “Hey, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear, but do you guys play WoW? I’ve got a level XX [race] [class] on [server]“?

I’ve probably had two handfuls of people come up to me in real life, either overhearing I play WoW from conversation, or seeing that I’m wearing my Warlock shirt or Horde sweater, and strike up a conversation with me about the game.

While places of congregation abound, such as a gaming convention, comic book shop, or GameStop, the topic persists more of an unprecedented setting. I ran into an Alliance member at a mall outside of the restrooms and we had a heated debate about Varian Wrynn. A guy started a conversation with my cousin and me at a sushi bar because my cousin and I were discussing ICC. A friend and I were at dinner at an expensive restaurant, and I was telling her about my spec, as she was leveling a warlock, and our waiter chimed in about his warlock.

Have any of you out there in the blogosphere had this happen? If so, what was your experience like? Was it just a pleasant conversation or did you face off with a passionate member of the opposing faction?

Well, I can’t recall any eavesdroppings, from my part or anybody else’s, but I do remember a particularly nasty train journey, or as much as my terribly bad memory allows me to remember…

This was back in TBC, I was playing my shadow priest in Supreme, and my relationship with Dan was at this point long distance. Okay, compared to some I can’t complain, but a 7 hour train journey did suck a fair bit.

I think this particular night it had been snowing in some places, or more possibly raining quite heavily, so when I got to Cardiff the bloke in the orange coat who I asked which platform I was on, or God knows what now, told me the train to Birmingham was cancelled or heavily delayed, or something, so I’d need to get the train to Bristol and change there to get to Birmingham. So, I listened, at this point I just wanted to get home, I was cold and tired and didn’t particularly feel like sitting on trains, I wasn’t in the best of moods. Got to Bristol and the train was cancelled! I broke down, thinking I’d be stuck in sodding Bristol all night with no money or anywhere to stay, not a particularly nice train station either. I was wrong, a train came along to take us to yet another station to get us to Birmingham, I forget which, where I sat waiting rather impatiently for this, by now, doubtful train to Birmingham.

I sat next to a girl who was quite friendly and started talking to me. I’m usually quite a shy person, so it’s probably a good job she spoke to me, else not only would I have gone insane that night but I definitely wouldn’t have a post to write about this topic.

We talked about why we were stuck getting these stupid trains, me on my way home from visiting my boyfriend, her on the way to visit hers. I asked, “Oh, cool, how did you meet?” And she blushed.

“Just some online roleplaying game, heh, bit lame.” I became curious. At this point we had something in common, both meeting our other halves online.

“Really? Which one?”

“World of Warcraft.” She blushed harder.

“Really? Same here! We were in the same guild together! What server are you on?” Suddenly she stopped blushing and we got talking even more.

Sadly, I did finally get to Birmingham, but the last train back to my town had gone, so I had to get a taxi to my dad’s friend’s house to stay the night. That was a stressful night, but bumping into her really helped, it’s a shame we didn’t keep in touch.