The Age of Dragons and Origins

So like probably everyone and their pet rhinoceros, I’ve been playing Dragon Age: Origins lately; though I suspect unlike most, my interest manifested rather late – it wasn’t until they released a stand-alone character creator “demo” that it began appealing to me, the main thing that got me sold on the concept being the character origins. I love the idea behind it – it provides you with a kickoff point to define your character from, gives you an identity that can merge with the world (unlike so many other roleplaying games where you’re more like just a visitor to the world, rather than someone who belongs in it) and a motivation to get started.

I ended up creating a dwarf, unusually enough – I rarely enjoy playing dwarves in most settings, but Dragon Age seems determined to be an exception: the Dwarf noble origin is by far my favourite at present, and I’ve quite enjoyed jumping into an unfamiliar world in the guise of Princess Saeri Aeducan – warrior and shield-swinger extraordinare! With most of the game taking place in human parts of the world too, my unfamiliarity is her unfamiliarity, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve mumbled “silly humans.” at the screen just because.

I think the best praise I can really give it is that it’s managed to immerse me quite a few times – something that neither Oblivion nor Baldur’s Gate 2 succeeded at. It’s not quite Torment for dialogue, but it does try to make you a part of events rather than a stranger to them. The voicing is good, though Duncan’s voice took me forever to place – I knew I recognized it, but it’s somewhat embarassing that I couldn’t remember from where, seeing how much slaying I’ve done at that voices’ behest. Simon Templeman, on the other hand, was an obvious spot, surrounded as he was by his vocal awesome. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Paul Eiding in there a few times too.

It has its weaknesses too, of course – with Mass Effect in hindsight, it’s really obvious how much added interaction there is they missed out on by not giving your character a voice – other characters have to speak for you half the time to put vocal power and emotion into the words, and they seem a little less willing to let characters interact physically during dialogue than in Mass Effect. Seeing the various compositions of body sizes, armor bulk and weapons I’m not too surprised, but it feels a little as a step back. What really struck me, though, was two things: The severe lack of emotional response you’re allowed, and your companions apparent utter indifference to your origins. There’s dialogue about where they’re from, of course, but they speak very little of your origins. I mean, sure, okay, they might just be disinterested.. but when the dwarven woman they’re following around suddenly gets refered to as “Your highness”, I expect atleast eyebrows to be raised!

Which brings me to the other part – I realize this is very much unbroken ground for games, and that they have a limit to how much content they can produce and there’s some concessions made because a whole lot of people just want to be complete bastards revelling in evil, but when my character’s entire past pretty much just shatters before her eyes and everything goes potatoes, I reserve my right to atleast have her rage or QQ over the whole situation to affirm that it wasn’t just an everyday event that can be shrugged away in the blink of an eye. Furthermore, where are my party members in situations like that? Can’t they come pat my head for a change?

Okay, then there’s Wynne – grandmother of the whole world and all-around awesome. We like her. But still!

Still, it’s been a fun journey so far, and I’m only halfway through on my first attempt; I’m hoping it’ll pick up more yet as things progress – it certainly looks as if it might. It’s entertained me a whole lot more than I originally expected which definitely stands as strong enough praise. There’s still some things I wish it was more than it is, but I realize some of that also ends up touching on elements that are generally underdeveloped in games – I’m not going to expect BioWare to revolutionize the character narrative just yet.

So, Hallow’s End..

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Well seeing how I did an image for it last year around too, I figured why not. Actually, it was more that this idea just came to me really early on during Hallow’s End, and I only now felt I had time to try and make something of it. The idea did amuse me, hence why it managed to stick in my head in spite of everything. As for whether I’ll come up with something next year.. we’ll just have to wait and see!

I was rather lucky with the Hallow’s End in-game event – I’d done it with the wrong character last year around – it happened pretty much just as I swapped character class, so it was the one thing I was missing for the Long, Strange Trip – which I always felt was a fitting achievement name, because looking back.. it has, and far from only because of the events. Still, I managed to get both the pumpkin hat and the squashling really early on, so it was just hunting a few wand transformations and it was done – which I’m quite grateful for as the event coincided with having waaay too much things to do in a waaaay too short a period on my end.

Something Pretty This Way Comes

Since most community pages show off new gear on the human male model (also known as the Prince of Blandness), I find previews of new set items can be highly misleading until I get to see versions on characters I play; especially as male and female incarnations of the same armor set can be.. quite different. Getting to see a first glimpse of the tier 10 priest set on the chimp put my mind at ease somewhat in that in spite of what they did to the sets of some classes (notably rogues), the priest one wouldn’t be too bad – though I’d still have to see how it looked on night elven women.

Then a friend of mine who tries the PTR mentioned trying to get modelviewer to show her how the new sets looked; while I couldn’t help with that, I told her that if she passed me the textures I could atleast try to assemble them into something viewable, and well.

I’ve decided that I rather like the look of the priest tier 10 – atleast the robe. The dungeon set was something else they apparently added recently – it’s labeled as Dungeon anyhow; looks to be an extension of one of the basic northrend cloth looks that go around.

Still, all in all.. I can only conclude that there are indeed advantages to playing a priestess as main – of all classes, it strikes me as the one that the most consistently gets decent-looking sets.

Ding Dong, A Nub is Dead (again)

So Yelnenu have already trumped heroic 10-man Anub’arak once; I happened to miss that however, so this time around was the first time I got to see it happen – and did I ever. Not only did he die, we still had 47 tries left to go when he did – taking the entire 10-man heroic dungeon in only three wipes on the second time we complete it at all was pretty awesome; especially for a 10-man only gang. There’s always the 50 mark and more achievements to go, of course, but now it feels most progression we have left as such is Ulduar, with Algalon and Yogg-Saron with less keepers.

Of course, we weren’t entirely alone in our blasting of the 10-man heroic Coliseum – the corpse of Icehowl remained a steadfast ally all the way to Anub’arak himself. We’re actually quite mystified why it chose to stick around, but it provided an interesting – if potentially obscuring/dangerous – element to our efforts.

I has Pretty Dress pt.2

So while I ended up missing Yelnenu’s first triumph over 10-man heroic Anub’arak (we do have other healers than me, after all, and I do like to be able to kick back and take it easy every so often) the Coliseum has been good to me lately – or rather, good to my sense of dress, bad to my economy. Adding the missing belt and the utterly gorgeous Enlightenment staff, I’ve ended up with a healing outfit that not only works, but looks very stylish and uniform, not to mention that it strikes me as suitably night elven for old priestess Moonfall to wear.

While I’m still very much set on my whole character swapperoo to take place in due time, it’s still quite some time away; Nhani Moonfall still retains her priestess class until Cataclysm comes around, so I’m not exactly intent on dressing her up as a gnome just yet. (though I’ve been known to overdose on pygmy oil on some raids) As such – her looking presentable still feels like an important goal, and I’ll admit to really liking how the Alliance priestess Tier 9 set looks. It leaves me with one less goal as such – from this point on it’s mostly just tweaking stats around and deciding which parts to get where from set gear and offset gear, taking stats and set bonuses into account. Of course.. then in time will come the Icecrown Citadel raid which will likely undo all my work towards looking presentable by offering yet another gear style. Here’s to hoping their offering for that will look suitably good!

In the meantime, we have the other Nhani – her past form that I’m slowly bringing around to a solid enough place for when Cataclysm hits.. seeing how she’ll recover her old role of being the Nhani Moonfall in due time. I have less of a focus towards her yet – and too many loose ends to really have a good sense of direction. I have decided, however, that once more the Alliance Tier 9 set looks suitably gorgeous – though in this case I’m mostly concerned with getting the leggings, having already obtained the chestpeice and matching boots. There’s an ulterior motive for getting it, though – that of consistency.

Namely: with my swapping character classes around a little, I’ve been considering a few new approaches to my poseable Nhani Moonfall model – getting rid of the skirt and letting her go back to a more combat-centric look, while still trying to inject a significant night elven look to the end result. Though I tend to dislike using tiered gear too much because it tends to be very recognizeable and I want character equipment to set a theme, to tell you something about the character rather than just being “oh she did this and that raid.”. In this case.. I gave in, since the Alliance rogue Tier 9 set just looks that good. That said, I couldn’t let it go without atleast a few tweaks and a recolour..

It’s all work in progress, of course – I’m not entirely sure of how to handle the hood or what to do with it, likewise I want to decide on a few convenient knives she can carry both to fight with and to throw, but I haven’t quite decided where a convenient location would be yet. Still, even at this early stage, this look has given me a greater Nhani-vibe than her old knee-length skirt one did, which is a rather good sign.

It’s all in the goggles

So it’s been time for that seasonal event again – the one I have a long tradition of completely avoiding because it never synced well with the Ancient Night Elven Priestess sensibilities I’ve found myself carrying through nearly all of my World of Warcraft history. I speak of course of Brewfest. Seeing the Long, Strange Trip meta-achievement, I decided to indulge in it for pretty much the first time ever this time around, part for the achievements, part because my priestess character is still destined towards gnomehood as soon as Blizzard lets me do that jump, so she exists somewhere between a night elven past and a gnome future. It’s a tad paradoxial sometimes.

I took to Ram Racing quite quickly – much like the vehicle section in early Ulduar (though strangely not the vehicle parts of Oculus or Malygos), it seems right up my alley, and it’s something I find fun and enjoyable. It’s also one of those situations where you dig up either Splash Wave or Magical Sound Shower and picture the Ram as a black horse. Figuratively speaking. Anyhow.

I seem to consistently hit 36 prize tokens (that’s 18 round trips) with each go – it feels like 38 should be possible, but I always seem to end up a few seconds short. I imagine I’d just need a perfect run where I somehow avoid making a single mistake, but well.. good luck there.

Then of course on to the top image.. yes. Seeing how the character presently inhabiting Nhani Moonfall is intended to become Nhomi Lightspark, I decided to get Belbi’s hilarious goggles as they might be amusing for a gnomish priestess to have. Of course, after a quick pass by Dalaran (above image), I temporarily decided to exclaim her goggles as the Best World of Warcraft item ever. Somehow, I get the feeling that the sight of Rhonin and Vereesa Windrunner transformed into two shirtless gnome men (with black-ish pants!) will forever taint my perspective on them.

So some patches have holes..

With World of Warcraft patch 3.2.2 now live, it seems a rather strange bug has managed to worm its way in; I found out about it when one of my Yelnenu cronies linked me to a particular discussion thread on the MMO-Champion forums regarding it. It has some of the more fun details like how some priests managed to steal anything from Bear form swipes, to taunts, to soul shards. I kid you not, the first post has a screenshot of a priest with soul shards in his inventory!

As for what happens, it seems that to make Power Word: Shield use the spell crit rate of the casting priest(ess) rather than that of the target, there’s a split second where any ability on the target (in this case, the shield) is attributed to the priest(ess) rather than the target. It’s a very small window, but it seems during that, anything from DoTs to attacks to taunts can be attributed to the priest rather than the actual caster.

I can see why it happened, and in a way it’s an utterly hilarious bug, but I’m rather hoping they’ll hotfix the thing like yesterday, because the prospect of stealing a taunt from a tank worries me.

Edit: Forum thread seems to suggest it’s fixed since server reboot. Not in a place to try it, so I sure hope it is!

Angry Thrall does not Approve!

So sometimes I get random, strange ideas for images; occasionally I even assemble them. Most of those times, I find myself wondering whether I should actually be allowed access to graphical tools of any form. ahem. This particular idea just came to me and struck me as somewhere between outrageous and hilarious, so I just ran with it.

After all, even Thrall has to run out of patience at some point!

The Colosal Fox

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So, the whole Pirate Day thing kicked off when the clock passed midnight last night and like many others I thought I’d just quickly run down, get a free achievement and that’d be that. Such was also pretty much the case, but then I spotted a Draenei male with the pirate disguise transformation and suddenly the only thing on my mind was how much the resulting look made me think of Don Diego and Zorro. Following that, I felt compelled to take a stab at this particular render, just because.

Now, as much as I wish Blizzard had kept Colosos as a Paladin rather than changing him into a Shaman as they did (he looked better before!), I suddenly find myself idly wishing they could turn him into Zorro instead.. eh.

However, in conclusion: This is why we need Draenei rogues.

Sampling Gnome Destiny

I’ve felt incredibly directionless as of late – my priestess main only has achievements and wealth to attain outside of daily quests (doing those), pvp (skipping that) and raid content (not soloable). While my revived rogue incarnation who’ll eventually get the mantle of being old Moonfall again is up to speed and in definite need of proper kit to get some output.. I’ve not really felt driven to do much. It’s just more questing or more battlegrounds – neither seems to call to me much. The slump extends out beyond World of Warcraft too – I have plenty of 3D modeling work I’ve been hoping to finish that I’ve not really put enough time into. The spark simply hasn’t been there.

It’s somehow just feeling like most of the things I want at present – both including ingame things such as completing my priestly robe look with a belt, transforming my priestess into a gnome and out of game things such as waiting for Batman: Arkham Asylum to be released for the PC and then arrive in my mail. With everything being sit and wait, I’m somewhat stuck on figuring out how to pass the time.

So. I decided to pre-empt Blizzard somewhat. I can’t have my gnome priestess just yet, but I decided I could atleast try to start her off; get a sense for her character and provide her with some sort of origins rather than her suddenly just appearing on Azeroth, decked out in epics and honorary titles. So I made a gnome mage, picked the appearance I wanted, handed her a human priest starting robe and went off to cleanse Troggs with holy fire.

While I certainly don’t enjoy the class too much – atleast not at this low level – giving the character a ground has been interesting, especially when she spent an evening wandering around the madness that is Stormwind – a place I rarely take any of my night elven characters simply because there’d be far too many situations where they’d simply have to sigh and shake their heads. As a gnome, I feel far less inclined to take everything seriously, including people whose descriptions claim all manner of outlandish features or supreme powers: I don’t have to consider the potential repercussions – either of accepting them or of not.

But, on to Mini-Tyrael, which is one of my favourite vanity pets in the game – especially now when they’ve made him a whole lot more animated in a recent patch. I was given him once, quite some time ago, and my one regret has by large been that I’ve not had a character where he made sense to have around. Old Priestess Moonfall would be expected to explain him if he’d been in her company, nevermind would want a good reason why she’d bring him along anywhere. She’s like that – most of my elven characters are – and that’s part of why I’m trying to get away from that.

As a gnome, however, it’s almost like all stops are pulled out – there’s no need to really know or understand what the creature floating along with her is, just as long as she knows it’s friendly and tries to help. People are free to make their own explainations, and said gnome can spend more time trying to have patience for a travel companion that keeps prancing around or falling asleep. So far, the two of them seem to make a very good duo that plays off eachother perfectly.

It’s a start, at least; something to do and something to let me wander around Stormwind and see how things have changed over time. I’m still hoping to get started on other things too, of course, but it’s a taste of where I’m intending to head with Cataclysm. I definitely like the look and feel of gnome casters more than night elven ones – especially since for me, gnomes have a greater license to be frail. And no, for the record I still haven’t gotten over how the night elven Priestesses of the Moon have been reduced from capable warrior women into the priest class.