So this is another ficlet response to Too Many Annas’ ficlet challenge. After writing about Megaly, Gentlewind told me she was too hot also!

Too Hot!

The normally soothing breeze blowing though the grasses of Mulgore today carried nothing but more of the oppressive heat. Even the grasses themselves seemed to wilt under the unrelenting summer sun. Gentlewind lay among those grasses next to the small creek near her village, her fur still wet from rolling in that same creek. It didn’t help. She wanted to fuss and whine but mother would tell her that whining accomplished nothing. Gentlewind knew from experience the only thing it accomplished was a scolding!

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Too Many Annas suggested a Friday Five-Hundred Ficlet addressing how our characters would deal with the heat. Living where I am I know well how miserable it can be when a hot and humid heat wave hits. Then Megaly immediately began complaining about being too hot. Here is my result.

Thanks for the inspiration, Anna!

Too Hot!

Meg woke with her mouth feeling nearly as sticky as her bare skin. The stuffiness of the room and the thick, sticky air told her what kind of day it was going to be; hot and miserable. Again. The temperature during the night had dropped to almost pleasant but with the coming of dawn she could feel the heat and humidity rising to envelope Stormwind.

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I have come to the realization that <Lost Virtue> is pretty much dead. Oh there are plenty of alts left but few mains. While I was gone folks went away to other guilds or left the game and truly I can’t blame them. Things move on.

What this means for me and sweet little Nau though is that she’s now level 80… with nothing to do. Weekends roll around and things get pretty quiet in the chat channels as everyone heads off to their raids. It gets kind of lonely.

So I’m going to start actively looking for a new guild for Nauloera, my priestess. All the rest of my characters will continue to wear the <Lost Virtue> tag, but I would like to get out there and meet people and maybe even have hope of doing some heroics or getting in on a raid somewhere. I hope to find a guild that is fairly active and if not RP centered, at least strongly tolerant of it. Folks that are patient with me learning again would be good. And that are patient with the fact that my gear sucks. I’m working on it. And they gotta be nice. I don’t like mean people!

Now if you know of a guild on Feathermoon that might be interested in picking up a Draenei priest, feel free to comment below. Or if you just want to use this post as a place to extol the virtues of your guild whether it is on Feathermoon or not, I welcome it.

Let’s talk about guilds here and what makes yours awesome!

Okay, I’m gonna try something new at TDRP. Each week I’m going to throw out a RP challenge to anyone that happens to read this. It will be something different that could stimulate RP for you and others around you. If you participate in the challenge come on back and post how it went in the comments!

Thursday RP Challenge for June 24, 2010: Walk This Way!

Here is the challenge; every time you are in a city or town, walk. Don’t run. For one week. Turn off your run. You can be mounted or on foot but walk only. You don’t have to do it on every character but maybe give it a try anyway. See what kinds of things you notice around you. See if anyone else is walking. Then come back here in a week and let me know!

Ready? Set! GO!

So when I left game there was a thriving RP community and if you knew where to look you could find events, weekly get-togethers, even just random encounters.

Since my return it seems the RP has dwindled. Almost gone underground. I’m sure it is there somewhere I’m just not having much luck finding it.

So someone tell me and share with anyone else that might visit here: Where have all the role players gone? Where do they congregate on both Alliance and Horde side? Are there any weekly RP get-togethers still? Where are events posted?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Recently I’ve had some pretty miserable things happen in my life. Just within the past month I’ve lost two of my beloved cats. Dealing with that on top of other things that have been going on has been quite a chore.

However I don’t want to be a wallower so I’ve decided to try to find something good in the muck. I started thinking about how my characters deal with personal tragedy. Every real person deals in a different and unique way. How would our characters handle death of a loved one, loss of love/home/friendships, etc. Or even what would they consider a personal tragedy?

Here are mine:

• Nauloera: As a priest she should follow the ideal that “everything happens for a reason” but she doesn’t. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that she is fairly recent into her position as a priest. She does, however, try to accept that bad things happen, that loss is inevitable. Since the loss of Draenor and her beloved sister her resolve has been hard pressed in this area. When she learned of the destruction of her home village where her sister still lived she was devastated. It was her sense of responsibility that brought her back from the edge. There has been little to compare to that tragedy in her mind so she feels if she could survive that, she could survive anything. As a healer she now understands that wounds heal eventually… even her own.

• Merlinne: Merlinne tends to bottle things up inside. Raised as she was she was taught that ladies kept their feelings to themselves and in some cases were not even permitted to have feelings of their own. The greatest loss she ever endured was the loss of Hugnir. During the time of his “death” which came about when he sacrificed himself to save her, she withdrew into herself so far and bottled everything up so tight she was more a statue than anything. From experience it has been discovered that the longer she keeps things inside the more explosive it is when they finally release. As a mage that explosion is sometimes literal.

• Megaly: She drinks. Heavily and with great abandon. She figures if she can still remember it then she hasn’t had enough to drink.

• Ithrene: Her pets are more than just pets. She identifies better with animals than she does with other people. When she is affected by loss and tragedy, she turns to them for her solace. Their love and unconditional understanding is where she finds the comfort she needs to get through her difficult times. Having something big, warm and fluffy to curl up and cry with truly is healthy!

• Xedra: The loss of her husband is the greatest tragedy she has had to endure…. and she is still dealing with it. She tends to brood and plot. In her mind she is plotting preventative measures to help others so they don’t have to endure what she has. In truth she is still plotting vengeance. She can’t get enough of the rage against the Scourge out. She gathers information, skills, artifacts, all in the hopes that someday she in some way contribute to the purging of the Scourge and will gain retribution for the death of her husband.

I have other characters but they’re still pretty quiet after my hiatus from game so I’ll wait to write about them until they’re talking again. Feel free to post in the comments how your characters react to personal tragedy.

Some things change while others stay the same. One of the things that stays the same is that I don’t really like soloing. I’m a social animal. I like doing things with other people.

I do realize that soloing the quests and such in the outdoor zones is going to give me the maximum XP, so I will continue to do that while leveling. But I sure would like to get in on some instance groups.

I do get to instance with some friends on occasion and that is great fun but they have their own things to do as well. What I’d really like to do is expand my circle of group contacts to increase my chances of being able to find a group for an instance run.

The dungeon finder terrifies me. I’ll admit it. It does. I have always disliked PUGs. I have never had a good PUG and that is all the dungeon finder is. Oh I’ve been told it’s great for finding groups. I believe it was worded to me thusly: “It’s great for finding groups! You slam through a dungeon in 30 minutes and nobody says a word.”

….

That isn’t why I play. If that was what I was looking for out of a game I’d go play a first person shooter. Or Final Fantasy. So while I haven’t tried the dungeon finder yet, I’m scared it will just be like every other PUG I’ve ever been in… only worse. Because it won’t even be with people from the same server!

I also need to group with people that understand that I’m having to re-learn my game; re-learn my class. Oh my gosh! I want to play with people that have some patience! I know, sounds silly, right? My character is almost 80. I should know how to play her! And I should know what to do in every single instance! I should be the Psychic Healer!!

Unfortunately I was never a great healer to begin with and now that I’m coming back after 18 months gone I need to learn to be a healer again. So if there are people willing to give me a chance then I sure would like to tag along. I don’t think I could deal with some stranger yelling at me because I made a mistake.

I would also like to group with other role players. IC instances are fun! We did two of them Tuesday night! And Ben….. you should be smacked for the wand conversation.

And Randi….. you and Rin should not engage in contests of urination in the middle of a dungeon.

Anyway! If you have a group that I may fit in (even though I’m being terribly picky here) and would be willing to take a chance on me, PST. I would love to meet new friends and characters and expand my group base. Heck! You might even like me too!

Wow. It is pretty shocking how much a game can change in 18 months.

New mounts, new zones, new features, new controls. Everyone’s points refunded, things added, taken away, biffed up.

It’s almost like a whole new game.

I’ve actually started working Nauloera up through her last levels. She was a whopping 74 when I started and as of last night she is 77. During this time I’m still futzing with addons: picking new ones, finding old ones, setting them so they do what I want, and all that other good stuff.

So as of right this moment here is my addon lineup (in no particular order):

Auctioneer: Though following the advice of Anna, I have it turned on only for my Banker. Auctioneer tends to be a memory hog so I give it to banker girl and let her do all my buying and selling.

Gatherer: Got this back up and running finally. It is going to be very handy for the character who does mining AND flower-picking.

Dominos: My UI replacement addon. I like having small buttons with no frames and being able to put them where I want them. <3 Dominos!

Altoholic: This is a new one for me and so far…. I LOVE IT! I haven’t yet figured out how to see everything from both accounts but what I have played with so far I love. I can look at tradeskills, quests, inventories, everything on all of my characters without having to switch. Love love love.

PetEmote: This is by far one of my favorite RP addons. I love giving my hunter pets custom emotes. My hunter has a bear. The bear farts a lot. Now PetEmote does the farting for me. Again, Love love love. (Thanks to those who helped me find this addon again!)

PetsPlus: This is another RP addon that I am having great fun with. This is an emote system for the vanity pets. Though I haven’t played with it enough to know for sure if it does automatic emotes from your little friends, it does do emote responses. It also encourages you to interact with your pet. I now keep a stack of fetch balls that Nau can use to play with her new “kitty”.

FlagRSP2: Yet another RP addon. Many who role play know this addon or others like it. It allows you to put up descriptions, titles, surnames, etc for your characters. I haven’t filled it out completely for all of my characters yet… well, I haven’t even finished Nau yet. But I like being able to see others. I used to use ImmersionRP but it was abandoned and I couldn’t find a version that would work for me anymore.

Omen: Mah threatmeter. Since I suck at managing my agro. Gimme a break, I’ve been out of game for over a year. And eventually I would like to raid. Might as well get it installed and get used to it before then.

Advanced Trade Skill Window (ATSW): This is a tradeskill addon and it has many uses but I use it primarily for the ability to queue up several things to create at once. I queue up however many of whatever I want to build and it starts at the beginning components and works to the end. It can also create a shopping list for you though I don’t use that feature much. It is a complete replacement for the current trade skill window.

Deadly Boss Mods: It’s a raid addon. I don’t use it yet. Again, I hope to raid someday. I’d like to see things. Cool things. Spooky things. New things. So I put it in.

Atlas (and everything attached such as Atlas Quest, etc): This is a map addon for dungeons. It shows the instance, where your quest guys are, what quests each particular instance has, everything. Love love love Atlas.

Persistence of Chattiness: A very small, very simple addon that only does one thing: it makes whatever channel you last spoke in the default channel when you hit enter. That’s it. That’s all it does. Very very very handy if you talk in lots of custom channels. Which I do. It really helps keep down the mis-tells.

Friends4Ever: Another really simple addon. When WoW says “Friend removed because the character no longer exists” this addon tells you what that name was. Especially after being gone so long I like to know what friends are gone gone from the server. Even if it makes me sad.

AddEmote: This is another RP addon and this one lets you create your own custom emotes. As in the example the creator gave, if you wanted an emote that you used a lot such as “NAME rubs his chin.” You could create it and give it the command /chinrub. I have already used it to create /snuggle. Everyone needs a /snuggle emote. Now if someone could just make PetsPlus AddEmote work together it would be absolutely dreamy.

Move Anything: This is another addon related to the UI. It makes it so you can scale and lock in a different location anything related to your UI. Most of my UI is handled by Dominos but I got this one specifically for the bags. The bags were big and clunky and right in the way with the rest of the UI placement and had to be moved and I couldn’t find a way to do that in Dominos.

QuestHelper: Best… Questing… Addon…. EVAR. Shows you where to turn in the quest, tracks progress, shows you “ant-trails” suggesting an order for doing quests. And boodles of other great things! I love QuestHelper. The feature I use the most is being able to look at the map and see where the quests are turned in or where in the zone I have to go to complete them. There is also a handy green arrow on screen pointing the direction to go relative to where you are. Love love love.

RPHelm: A small RP addon that can turn off your helm and cloak when you are out of combat and turn it on when you are in combat. Configurable per character and you can set it to leave one on and one off. I like it best on my melees.

IgnoreMore: Simple. It makes your ignore list considerably longer. Mine was always too full.

Decursive: This is a cleansing addon that makes mage, priest, pally, druid lives much easier. When someone gets debuffed it shows it on a small grid on your screen and you can just right or left-click to clear the debuff. Very very handy.

So after the first few panicked days of figuring out what addons I wanted, finally I think I’m happy. The above list does what I need when I need it and overall has made learning how to play again a little smoother. We’ll see how the rest of the learning goes!

I suppose I should have written this a few days ago. Ah, well. Still trying to get back in my blogging groove. Not that I ever had a fantastic groove to begin with though.

So What Happened To TDRP

Fairly simply, about 18 months ago my life blew up. Some things started going bad. I tried to fix them. They kept getting worse and worse and worse then suddenly: BHWOOOM!!! There it goes. My life laying in sloppy little pieces all over the floor.

Since then I’ve been trying to put it back together. Living alone with my cats and dog is different but pleasant. Being able to play WoW again and have regular contact with the friends there even more so.

What Is Happening With This Blog

Well, I have ideas for posts percolating but it is going to take a little bit of time to get everything running smoothly again. My creativity and inspirations for WoW were pretty burned down to nothing while I was enduring such high levels of stress for so many months. Now that I can let my creativity run free again I’m hoping to get back in a good groove.

I don’t know how many of my RP 101 posts I will be doing, however. There are plenty of others out there now writing them and doing a much better job. I don’t believe I would have anything useful to say that hasn’t already been said… and much better.

As soon as I can get back in the character groove there will be stories again. And there are a couple that I should wrap up. Having only been back in game less than a week, however, I’m still working on just getting settled into the mechanics of it.

I would like to get back into posting every day (except weekends) but until the ideas are flowing a little better, likely that isn’t going to happen very regularly.

What Is Happening With The Characters

At this point, not a whole heck of a lot. At the moment I’m focusing on getting one leveled to 80. Probably the only one that might have some use somewhere. If I can ever manage to get her geared. Since I started playing again last Thursday I have managed to get her from 74 to 77. Finally! Northrend Flight!

Nauloera- 77 Priest(Draenei). At the moment she’s Shadow spec (and hating it) for the purpose of leveling. 90% of my leveling is solo and leveling a solo Holy priest is a bitch. Anna once suggested trying out Discipline but looking through the talents I didn’t really understand it that well and just wanted to get moving. Shadow goes pretty fast (almost feels like cheating some days) so I’ll just Shadow her up to get the last 3 levels then re-spec her back where she belongs.

As far as Nau’s RP? /shrug. Nothing going on there yet. I’ve only had very very brief (maybe 3 paragraphs total) IC interaction since coming back into game. The only time I’ve been paired with anyone else it was when they were dragging Nau through a quest. Doesn’t leave much time for talking when you’re scrambling just to figure out where the rest of your party went and how the f*** did they get beneath you?

So Nau RP wise is stalled.

Merlinne- 70 Mage(Human). Much like Nauloera, Merlinne is stalled but in leveling as well as RP. I haven’t much draw to her right now. Eventually I will level her to 80 but I don’t know if it will be before the expansion. She’s not talking to me currently and quite content just sitting in the library reading. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that her mate is involved in something I as the player not only don’t understand but feel pretty disconnected from. As if I’m not yet ready to be overwhelmed by someone else’s huge dramatic RP. So Merly will sit in the dust for a while longer.

Megaly- 70 Warrior (Human). Meg, I miss. She spends more time as my “light” character than any other. She’s fun and sassy and speaks her mind. And she’s great for when I just want to go out and smack the crap out of something and use her to vent my frustrations. She’s talking. Clamoring to be let out. I think part of that is some of my own frustrations since returning to game. As soon as I get Nau to 80 I’m going to take a couple days to play with Meg then get back on my goal track.

Nothing is going on with Meg’s RP right now. Hell, I can’t even remember the name of her son. I think he’s a toddler now… uh… not sure. Though the primary reason he exists is to give an excuse for Meg disappearing for long periods of time. She’s talking loud enough that I figure her RP will fall back into place easier than Nau’s once I let her out to play, though.

Ebonywind- 68 Shaman (Tauren). Ebs is my main on Horde side. She’s had some good times and some bad times. Because when I left she was caught in some bad times she’s being pretty quiet right now, though I think she’s pretty much over being emoo. However I wasn’t a very good shaman before I took a break. It’s going to take forever for me to just figure out how to survive with her again. So really there hasn’t been much draw to pull her out. Just this overwhelming dread of tackling her Talent Tree.

RP wise there are some things that happened while she was away that I think it would be really fun to at least see her reaction to. But when I try to log her in I’m swamped with guilt for not wanting to tackle the Talents and move on to something (or someone) else.

Ithrene- 34 Hunter (Dwarf). I’ve decided that after Nau hits 80, Ithrene is going to be my next leveling focus. Not only is she fun and light as a character, her bear, KaeAskavi is always good for lightening my mood (he’s the one that farts a lot). Though I find the task of tackling her Talents a little daunting, it isn’t nearly so much so as tackling someone who is already over 60.

There are also a couple other reasons to focus on Ith. I need a miner. I need someone who can dig up gems and ore and such. Nauloera is a jewelcrafter and she needs ore to prospect for gems and powders. Ithrene currently is a skinner/leatherworker. But I have another leatherworker with my druid so I can safely drop that and pick up mining.

And one other reason to level Ithrene is just pure silly. But it is my silly and I want to do it! Ithrene needs one of those white riding bears. KaeAskavi is her best pet. He’s a white bear. She has the bear cub vanity pet. Now she needs the white riding bear. I think it is just Kae with a saddle though.

So before too much longer Ithrene is going to move up my ranks.

Those are the major players on my account. There are other characters but none that are even whispering at the moment, much less demanding screen time. I think I’ll just leave them further back in line and worry about them later. They will give me something to work on in the future.

Though I expect my dog in Cataclysm may eclipse them for a while…..

So for the moment, this is where I am and where I’m heading. I expect I’ll still be trying to put my head on straight for the game for a couple weeks still. There is so much new and so many changes and truly I feel like an idiot some days. Hopefully that will wear off eventually.

I got to thinking this morning (yes, I have too much time on my hands) that I’ve seen lots of role play posts out there where someone asks what song represents your character. Sort of a way to share more about your character and their personality. Well, I’ve always been pretty suck about that so I decided perhaps I needed to do a post about songs I hear for other people’s characters.

Don’t worry, this won’t hurt much.

One of the first ones I thought of was Kyraine. Nauloera and Kyraine “grew up” together in a way. They were created about the same time when Burning Crusade came out. It became pretty obvious even then that Kyraine’s major motivation was coin. I thin AC/DC – Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap fits her well.

Soon that was followed by Azaar, just a cheery little bundle of Draenei Death Knight with a dry sense of humor. Of course nothing could fit him as well as Oingo Boingo – Dead Man’s Party.

Of course there is a Draenei shaman I’ve known for a while who has to be the most miserable and depressing character in the world. We all expect her to throw herself from the edge of Draenor one day. So for her, it must be Adam and Andrew – I Must Be Emo (The Emo Song).

I think three is enough for today. I’ll post more another day!

What songs do YOU feel fit those you hang out with regularly? Inquiring minds want to know!

DISCLAIMER: This post is written tongue in cheek and should be taken as such. As just retribution please feel free to respond in kind!

<3