Category Archives: Mounts

A Bone to Pick

Posted by Apple Cider in Discussion, Gameplay, Mists of Pandaria, Mounts, Pets, Thoughts and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
My guildies dressed up as dinosaurs.

My guildies dressed up as dinosaurs.

Despite the fact that there’s literally so many things to discuss about Patch 5.2, I feel like it’s a minute topic on a brain wandering idea that I want to focus on. I’ll get into my truly exciting discussion about waves and sea spray later, trust me.

My guildmates, particularly some of the people I play the game with the most, are mount and pet collectors. If there’s a pet out there, we have to have it, as soon as humanly possible. So when Patch 5.2 announced that there would be a giant island just for grinding out pets and mounts, needless to say we had to be there. See, the thing about the Isle of Giants is that it really is better go in a group. The dinosaurs (as well as the troll NPCs) all drop Giant Dinosaur bones, which is the currency used to purchase the Spectral Porcupette and the Bone-White Primal Raptor. The biggest dinosaurs on the island drop the most bones and are almost impossible to solo. So it seemed pretty common sense that we should group up with a proper tank and healer and grind out as many dinosaurs and Dinomancers as we could for a few hours to get possible pets and bones for everyone.

The way the bones work is that they are not shared; each cachet of bones from a mob is looted to one person from the tap group, round robin style. This means that to assure that everyone gets roughly the same amount of bones, you have to kill roughly the same amount of highest health mobs, and so on down the line. This is pretty easy to do if you have an organized group, so no problem there, right? Well while we were waiting for one of our party to get back from AFK, we noticed a curious conversation crop up in General chat. One of the server’s most recognizable farmers (who wasn’t a bot/cheating) was very strongly arguing about how the bones should be a shared loot to all parties involved in a kill. I found this really intriguing because it reminded me of something I had just said earlier when we were discussing the drop function: that Blizzard specifically designed these mobs to be most efficiently killed in a group that is concerned about the eventual fairness of everyone involved. This kind of mechanism hasn’t been seen since really Vanilla, where many tasks were unable to be attained without a huge raid group, much less solo. However, it is possible to solo some of the dinosaurs, but your bones per hour rate isn’t as efficient as a group of five who can tackle the biggest dinos. So it is possible to do this at your own pace. However, this farmer was really mad that all bones weren’t shared equally in a group. We pointed out that maybe his real motivation was less about a “fair share” so much as he wanted to be able to benefit from soloing and one-time grouping mechanics to take down a dinosaur but be fairly unconcerned with a group after that. It was seemingly mercenary to me.

This is how a lot of WoW mechanics work now, and I think that’s fine. I’m not saying that this is decaying WoW’s social space or people’s ability to be nice to eachother. For a lot of things, the potential to grief and content to be unseen was there with the old ways of doing things. The way that rare mobs have shared taps, world bosses have faction taps means a lot more people have a shot at getting something for their time. The fact that the dinosaur bones have two possible ways of proceeding - one is soloing and one is working with a group to ensure that everyone receives the same rewards is fascinating to me. It shows a mixture of both the old and the new. Maybe it was intentional, maybe it wasn’t. The fact that it’s got two settings due to the health and bone drops scaling on mob size is cool to me. I think in a lot of cases, a lot of people do not have a group to do this with (which I noted) and so working towards a group’s equal progress for each individual is either new or something they can’t do. But isn’t this maybe a good time to take initiative and work on one? It doesn’t take more than a forum post or a call in Trade/General to form a rough alliance to assure that everyone gets some bones and pets. But I can see where people’s trust in other random individuals have decayed over time, potentially.

I have hope though.

My group managed to get roughly the same amount of bones for everyone (other than the person who was AFK for an hour) and secured all four raptor pets for everyone in the group, including some extras for significant others. When we all have our shiny Spectral Porcupettes or Bone-White Primal Raptors, it will be nice to think back on all the laughing on Mumble and screams when we aggroed an extra Primal Devilsaur. I’m exceptionally lucky that I have that, and I wonder if that’s what Blizzard is trying to push for again: not only mechanics to give everyone to see the content, but to possibly see it together.

What do you guys think about this?

A Voice From A Warm Place: Dragonwrath Easter Egg in Mists of Pandaria

Posted by Apple Cider in Lore, Mists of Pandaria, Mounts, Patches, Personal, Women in Azeroth and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

A blue dragon roars in Jade Forest.

I admit, I haven’t been using my beta access to its fullest since I got it a couple of months ago. The other night, however, a tweet came across my timeline regarding friending options and so I updated my game and hopped in to test it out. Afterwards, the person I was partied with and myself decided to fuss around with pet battles. I was flying around to look for critters to battle with my Spectral Kitten, listening to dance music very LOUDLY, when I heard it.

It was a woman’s voice saying something.

I blinked and looked around. Since I was still in Stormwind limits, I figured it must be an event with buggy zone sound. I asked in party chat if they had heard what I did and they said no. I wondered what it might be but I looked back in my chat log and saw this:

The warm embrace of Tarecgosa’s presence encircles you.

For anyone that doesn’t have a completed legendary staff, this is the text emote that the staff randomly pops up from time to time. I’ve always really loved that little touch; I saved Tarecgosa’s essence and now it is a part of me. It is there to comfort me when I need it. It’s like a little hug when I’m doing stuff in-game. My question then was, “Does this mean there are voice emotes as part of the staff now?”

Due to the addictiveness of pet battles I was in beta for another three hours. My emote popped up again and then I very distinctly heard her voice.

“Your deeds will live on forever in the memory of the blue dragonflight.”

I admit, I started freaking out (in a good way) at that point. I started doing a little digging and it turns out that according to the two MMO-Champion threads that I found (that only got a couple of responses, what gives?) that the staff has a random choice of 5-6 voice emotes when the staff says something to you. It seems like this little easter egg was added in a content patch at the end of July. I am really stoked about this, obviously, as a staff wielder and a dragon fanatic.

But what does it mean? My boyfriend pointed out that they’ve always done little Easter egg stuff with legendaries even after their relevance. (Remember what happened when you brought Atiesh into Shade of Aran’s room?) I want to think that it might be something significant; some additional lore might be down the road or us Dragonwrath holders might be allowed to keep our staves longer into the expansion. I know that this probably isn’t true and it breaks my heart to think that I will have to put down my wonderful staff in a couple weeks; I won’t hear Tarecgosa’s voice again unless I’m AFKing. This is just another regret along with having to weapon-swap just to turn into a blue dragon as well.

Getting a Dragonwrath was such a game-changing experience for me and not just because I had a piece of lore strapped to my back. My experience getting the staff and all the feelings that went along with was so important to me and validated a lot of things I felt about myself - that I was good enough, that I deserved this.  Add to this the fact that Blizzard finally decided to give a little more story to some of the female characters in their world (even if Tarecgosa’s time in this plane was limited) and I was a part of that? Mind-blowing.

So many times in game, hearing voices has meant that something evil was lurking around the corner, undermining our confidence in ourselves, our friends, our sanity. This is a distinct change from that and I am glad for it. I know this won’t mean much to most people, that it is just a collection of pixels, but it warms my heart. There is a wonderful lady dragon’s spirit watching over my gnome, protecting her. Cheering her on from another realm. I know that I will miss having this constant presence gone from my game after it being part of my everyday life for six months now. Still, I have a feeling she won’t be very far from my thoughts.

When I was flying up to the Skyfire to go to Pandaria this morning, I heard her whisper to me.

“Never give up.”

I won’t.

 

 

Turtles All The Way Down

Posted by Apple Cider in Achievements, Mounts, Personal and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ever had a really shitty night and didn’t really feel like doing much in WoW? Last night was one of those nights. I was in a kinda anxious, sadbrains sort of mood. This sort of stuff happens to me frequently as I suffer from anxiety and mood swings. Warcraft is one of those places where I can forget about my problems for a while and last night was no exception. Trying to avoid Twitter and whatnot, I headed up to Shattrath to work on my Accomplished Angler achievement. The last achievement I had left for my meta was fishing up a dang Mr. Pinchy and getting the pet. I dropped my line, flew around ponds and chatted with my guild-mates on Mumble about wrestling and sundries. After an astonishing 45 minutes, the Magical Crawdad leapt into my bags on Pinchy’s first wish! I screamed and became “Salty.”

I headed back to my standing spot in Stormwind to preen with my new pet and my Pinchy twin guild-mate urged me to sit on my turtle and humblebrag with the cuteness. Suddenly without warning, it became some sort of weird turtle flashmob as all of my guild-mates and random players crowded around us to jump with turtles, making a cacaphonus pop! orchestra.

It was then that one of our hunters suggested that we rove around Stormwind like a bike gang. On turtles.

What followed was an hour and a half of the most spontaneous and hilarious slow-moving mount chains ever. My best friend in-game (aforementioned Pinchy twin) remarked that “everyone loves a mount train” and I feel that this was truest last night. We did loops of every district and canal street and more and more people kept following us. Some of us on turtles, some people on mounts. When we turtled through the training dummies in Old Town, we gained at least six people moving on regular mounts and stretched from one end of the district to the other. We had people running along to salute us, cheer, and tell us how “dope” we were. I feel that many people’s moods were lifted last night, either by participating or watching us trundle along slowly. I know my mood was. Even after 6 years and spending a great deal of time bored or AFK, there’s still little things in WOW that make me smile. One of them is that when it comes down to it, a lot of us are random, weird nerds. We feel awkward. We feel left out and not a part of something. Even something as simple as a little sea turtle parade through Stormwind is a moment in time when you feel like you can belong.

After a while it was just down to my guildmates. I didn’t mind so much. They are some of the weirdest, nerdy people I know but they make me feel not so alone, especially on my “bad days.” They are always there to go along with whatever random, crazy idea I come up with at the spur of the moment and they always have my back. I don’t know what I’d do without them.

So, moral of the story: sometimes it doesn’t hurt to acknowledge that you’ll have bad days and need a pick up. Don’t be afraid to be a little weird and nerdy. It might just make you feel better. I hope everyone’s Monday is going well.

 

PS: If you’re looking for some additional reading material, pop over to Go Mog Yourself and see my post on my shaman’s fiery ‘mog!