Wow. Okay quick explanation. We crashed. Hard. My blog is hosted on a friend’s server and the server got cooked. Poor server.

We’re up and running again but we lost the backups for anything after March of this year. I still have the text of the posts but all the comments have been lost. Sorry folks.

I’m going to be working on getting all the recent posts back up but its going to take some time. Please be patient. I should have TDRP back in order in no time.

-Nau

Recently I have been relearning about addons. They can be great for enhancing your game experience, improving performance, or just plain fun.

One of those that falls under the category of “just plain fun” is the addon AddEmote.

Read the rest of this entry »

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!

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!

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.

Wow. So last night I logged in to WoW. For the first time in 18 months…..

Holy CRAP!

I haven’t felt like such a noob since Merlinne tried to buy her first bag and was offended that it cost 15 whole silver!!

Yeah, such a noob that I forgot that Nauloera had the flight path to Dalaran already….

 This is gonna be fun.

I was wondering what could I write about for this blog now too. I mean seriously, others have stepped up to the plate writing RP articles since I left at different blogs and doing a much better job than I ever did.

I still have no firm plan for the future but for now I thought it would be interesting to write about my experiences returning to the game after such a long hiatus.

Welcome to The Diary of a Re-Noob: Part I

So the first thing I noticed when I logged in was my chat window was spamming me to beat the band. Holy crap! Make it stop!!!!

And I couldn’t bloody remember how to leave all those damn public channels that Blizzard slams you face first into when you join the game.

 So the LOLs and USUX were scrolling up my screen at breakneck pace. Somewhere in there I caught a flash of purple. Wait! Purple is a whisper! Someone is contacting me directly!

Fortunately it was a friend! Two of them as a matter of fact! Both clamoring for my attention. In a panic I frantically remembered that if I hit the “r” key I could answer them.

/w [Friend] “HELP! I can’t remember how to leave the public channels! How do I do that?”

 [Friend says to you] “I create a new tab and move them.”

 ……

NOT HELPFUL!

/w [Friend] “I don’t want to hide them! I want them GONE!” And I really didn’t want to admit that trying to make a new tab was waaaaay too complex for me anyway. Even if I wanted to stay in the public channels. WHICH I HATE!

[Friend tells you] “Oh. I think it is /leave and the channel number.”

 /leave ALL THE CHANNELS THAT ARE FLOODING MY SCREEN!!!

 ……

 Ahhhhh…. Blessed silence.

 [Anotherfriend says to you] “OMG! It’s a Nau! [friendchannel] is going nuts right now!” (I believe the precise phrase was “fu***** nuts” but I could have a faulty memory.)

 /join [friendchannel] and try to respond to a zillion people at once! Well, okay, that’s an exaggeration. Only half a zillion.

 So we chatter for a while and talk about some of the changes and I decide that really, tonight is going to be just a chat night since I’m still being bombarded by /whispers and my UI looks like icon vomit. And really…. I have no clue what half of those buttons are for anyway.

After things calm down a bit I log out and make a list of my previous addons then grab one that I see as one of the most important ones I use.

Persistence of Chattiness. I’m sure there are others that do the same thing, but this one is simple and does EXACTLY what I want it to. I hate having to type channel numbers every time, especially right now when my fingers are fighting the keyboard and keep popping up random windows that I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THEY DO!

 So I log back in and start a plan of action. I decided to start with AddOns first. I’m not thinking about Talent Trees yet… they scare me.

 Okay, so the icon vomit has to go. I ask about UIs in [friendchannel] (that isn’t really the channel name btw so don’t look for me there) and get several answers. Then I asked Anna (yep! Anna of Too Many Annas. She’s totallyawesomefantabulous! And very kind to this re-newb.)

I told her my dilemma. My UI looked like the icon mill barfed on my monitor and I needed to fix it. I used to use Dominos but didn’t know what the latest and greatest UI addon was. I was absolutely giddy when she told me that Dominos was still updated and functional and it was the one she used. Hoorah!!!!

So I scampered off to get my Dominos updated and take a quick peek for some of the others I used to run. What I found:

Dominos- my lovely UI that found my previous settings for the main account. Hoorah! Though the second account was never set up on Dominos so it’s all buggered up. Does anyone know if there is a way to copy settings between accounts?

Decursive- I fell in love with this cleansing addon when I was playing a mage in the Core. Still love it. Was very excited to find it again.

Friends4ever- this is a silly little addon that hasn’t been updated but still works. Ever get annoyed by that message “A name has been removed from your friend list because the character no longer exists.” Well this addon tells you what that name was.

QuestHelper- I have little time to spare searching for places, items, etc and trying to keep track of what quests are in progress. QuestHelper has been a dream come true for me. It tracks quests by zones, keeps a running list on screen of what I need for the ones I’m working on, and points me in the right direction (remember boys and girls, I am the healy that can get lost in a wet paper sack). QH = <3

So those are the only ones I picked up last night. Likely I will look for some others later. But I’m going to have to go through my list of previous addons and see what still exists and what has been abandoned and do I really need it.

Previously I had:

Atlas and all its additional packets. If that one has been updated, I will get it again.

Auctioneer. An auction house addon and again, if it is updated I will get it again.

Gatherer. I liked it when I was out hunting herbs or ores but apparently it isn’t being updated anymore though my source said it still works. I will check into it and see if I can use it. Though I don’t think I need all the bells and whistles it had. I just need it to point me to herbs and ores and such.

ProfessionsBook. This one has been abandoned. **CRY!!!** I’m going to have to do some deep digging to see if there is some sort of replacement or suitable alternative. If anyone knows of one I sure would appreciate it if you could let me know.

ImmersionRP. When I was using this before it was dangerously close to complete and utter abandonment. I haven’t checked it yet but I certainly hope it is functional still. If not I suppose I’ll dig around for FlagRSP and see if it is still up and going.

PetEmote. This one makes me sad. It gave emotes to hunter pets and now I can’t find it. If someone knows of a working version out there I would love to have it. KaeAskavi just wouldn’t be the same if he wasn’t able to fart at random.

IgnoreMore. This addon seemed to be a replacement for Infinite Ignore. It basically makes your ignore list capable of handling more than 100 names. Yes, I needed it.

 Those are the ones I know what they were for and would like to have back. Now apparently there is at least one I won’t need anymore. YATA was a totem manager and it seems with changes that Blizz has made it is no longer necessary. Doesn’t break my heart any at all. One less addon to break during patches!

Then there are some I don’t know what they were for (I… uh… don’t remember) or if I need them anymore. They are:

Informant

Omen

TinyTip (I think that had something to do with the mouse)

DeadlyBossMods

If anyone knows what these are for and has advice about them I’ll listen. I don’t promise to follow it but I will listen. Likely I won’t get time to research them until this weekend.

So it seems my first night was spent chatting and cleaning up the most important addons. Oh and I did a little bit of bag digging too. In between all of this I went to Dalaran to test my processor, drooled over some new mounts and pets I saw and asked a lot of dumb questions.

It’s really going to get stupid when I start trying to do Talent Trees!!

“Hey…”

*mumble* “What?”

“Do you hear something?”

“S’just your imagination. Go back to sleep.”

“No…. I hear something…”

The world is a better place for your contributions and a sadder one for your departure.

Rest in peace, David Lance Arneson.