Why I play mostly male characters

     I've thought about writing this post from time to time before, not because I think it matters, or at least it really shouldn't matter, since it's my choice and at the root that's probably reason enough right there. This post by Erinys at the Harpy's Nest and this one over at Orcish Army Knife reminded me that this was a thing. And that got me thinking all over again about my own character roster. At 90 currently I have 11 characters. 10 of them are male. I'm not, though people mistake me for one from time to time in game and I generally don't bother correcting the assumption. I don't mind at all if people want to call me dude or bro. It doesn't change who I am behind the screen and I am comfortable in that. And besides, Seish is a dude and so is Tyl.
     And that's reason one. My characters are characters. They aren't me. I should certainly hope I'm not as arrogant and racist and judgmental (yay paladin puns) as Seish. I doubt I'm quite as patient and kind as Laen. My cats don't love me as much as Tyl's love him and I am not as well-adjusted to whatever horrible things life might throw at me as Tai (I also don't drink nearly as much). I'm not saying they aren't part me, I'm the one who made them after all and I'm the person behind the screen when I'm playing them. I just tend to think of them as fictional characters with their own personalities and foibles more than pure representations of myself.
     Reason two is a little closer to the core of the things in the posts I linked above. Paladins are my favorite class. Blood Elves are unabashedly my favorite race. But when I play a plate wearing warrior of the Light who is going to rush up and throw their shield in a dragon's face to make him mad I want to play a character that looks like they at least stand some chance of living through the resulting fury. And when my choice is between looking like this:

Or like this:

In the same suit of armor. I'll pick the male every single time. It's not even just the skimpy armor. I can mog around that now. (Thanks Blizz :) ) But the fact that her weapons and shields are smaller than they need to be and her animations are silly and dainty too. Can't I play a woman without having to be girly?
     Reason three is along the same vein, with the attitudes I run into in game sometimes. Not always, not as often now, even. But well, I started MMOs back in Everquest and some people were pretty unabashedly creepy to female characters. My High Elf paladin never did get as far as my Dark Elf Warrior and Wood Elf Ranger partially for that reason. The worst and most infuriating Dungeon experience I have ever had in WoW happened because someone found out I was female, but that will be a post for another time. What it comes down to is... I'm also perfectly happy if the average person I run into just assumes I'm a guy and doesn't give me any kind of sexist crap because of it.
     Reason four is the simplest of all. I just like them. I tend to have a preference for the look and animations of the male characters. Male blood elves are fun to look at! I wish there were as many male characters that were designed to be fun for women to look at as there are female characters designed for guys to ogle. But it's not always about being good looking. Male trolls have to be some of the most lovable things in Azeroth. That dance!
     But in the end what it all really boils down to is that I play male characters because I like to and because I can. The female characters don't often look like the ones in my head. Tai's twin sister would exist in game if she could look more like a bad ass and less like a dainty flower. And since nowhere in the rules does it say I have to play my own gender... well I'll just be over here, happily watching Seish cut things up with a suitably giant sword.

Minipost: Today was a lucky day!

     When we remember Os' player and I like to take as many pairs of 90s as we can field to the Eye of Eternity, in hopes of a mount drop. Many weeks of doing this haven't accomplished much except a few transmog drops, like Laen's pretty blue shield. But today was a lucky day.

     The Azure drake dropped first and she won the roll for it. Then a few runs later the Blue Drake dropped and she passed on it for me. So we each got a pretty blue dragon today, and then Rothorin had to rob Tyl's bank to finally learn artisan flying so he could learn it. Now we just have to keep running until we pick up one more of each :D

Healing Wings

     So far this has been a week for first world loot problems. Laen was super excited to roll some tier gloves off the Celestials... until the crushing realization that his loot spec was set to ret, so they're ret tier gloves and not holy ones. But oh well, his offspec gets and upgrade and they'll be nice for transmog if nothing else.
     He started the week at 9/12 Titan Runestones and when he got to the Consorts with 10/12 I was fairly certain it would be another week to get the last one, since I'd left that wing for last. But they were kind enough to drop one. Then after Lei Shen's it was straight back for a very quick run of the very same wing to pick up the Thunder King's heart. At that point I probably should have gone to bed.

     But I couldn't resist giving the healer challenge at least one shot. I fully expected that I'd be terrible at it and ready to give up healing and that it would take me many many tries like Seish's DPS challenge did. And my first go when I realized Wrathion didn't show up in my Vuhdo frames and tried to heal him with bars not set up for doing it that way did nothing at all to boost my confidence. But then I took a look at Vuhdo and realized I could set up a frame for my focus target... and it was even easy enough to do that I didn't need to resort to internet help.
     I'd give it one more shot before bed. Only instead of ending in abysmal failure that shot ended up in victory! I wouldn't go as far as saying it was easy. But it wasn't really that bad. Laen's probably fairly outgeared for it and though he didn't learning healing in two-manning like Tai did (a technique that would be really good preparation for this challenge.) he did spend a bunch of time doing rares on the Isle of Thunder with a dps warrior buddy. That was good practice.
     And with that all done I couldn't resist going around with Wrathion to talk to the rest. (And take a few screenshots)

     Then it was off to the Timeless Isle where the hardest part was getting into fights with the Celestial I wanted. I have no idea how many times I helped do Nuizao because once they'd invited him Laen didn't feel right leaving without healing people. But finally Laen and Tai's guild has a new achievement and he's got some shiny healer wings.

      I think the healer wing proc is my favorite as far as looks go. Most likely because it's not too far off from the look of paladin wings. And I hadn't fully noticed until looking at these screenshots that it comes with a halo too!

     I think I'd be almost tempted to try this again on a healer if I had any clamoring for it. It was fun, the shorter queues made gathering the items a lot less time consuming than it was on Seish and the challenge was fun, at least for a paladin, but then before those coming changes, paladins are decently mobile healers.
     But for now it's Tyl's turn. He can start working on valor capping in earnest and I can start complaining to myself about DPS queues now that Laen's entirely spoiled me. Laen on the other hand, might have to give a shot at Flex if I can find a group. After all what's the point of beautiful, shiny healer wings if you don't use them?

A distracting mog for a distracting Priest.

     Saelindir hit level 60 today!

     And that means flying! And it means there are only 30 more levels to go before he can use that Timeless Gear in his bank and maybe pick up a few pieces of pretty gear in LFR. But it also means that the distracting priest nickname I gave him is all too accurate. Ailuuya was supposed to get to level 60 first so she'd be all ready when boost time came. She's still sitting at level 45, but no worries, she'll get there.
     In the mean time though Saelindir was finally able to get most of the pieces for a mog I'd been planning for him since I decided I needed a horde priest. You see, Laen and Tai sometimes spend a fair amount of time in the Shrine. Drinking in Tai's case and looking at pretty armor in Laen's.  And chatting with guildies and friends. Well in the time hanging around the shrine I started noticing that at least half of the female blood elves I see in plate... aren't wearing a heck of a lot of it.
     Nobody can deny that female blood elves look really nice in impractical metal bikinis. But seeing so many of them starts to get a little old. So one evening I was commenting on it in guild chat. 'Oh look there's another one. And another.' And the thoughts started brewing and finally I said. 'That's it. If I see another female blood elf in a plate-kini I'm making a male character and I'm putting him in the skimpiest mog I can come up with.'
     About five minutes later I was playing around in Mogit on a new little priest. This is a mog in progress. There is a better pair of gloves he needs at least 10 more levels for, and a few belt options he needs 20 or 30 more levels for and a helm or two that he's got a bit to go for. But for now his heirlooms are mogged into this:

Head: None currently
Shoulders: Royal Amice
Chest: Polychromatic Visionwrap
Hands: Fisherman's Gloves
Waist: Belt of False Promises
Legs: Barbaric Loincloth
Feet: Suspicious Slippers
Back: None
Weapon: Currently unmogged Devout Aurastone Hammer
Off Hand:  Currently Father Flame until I figure out what to do for weapons.

     Saelindir's clothing leads me to think he's spent far too much time around easy going Darkspear trolls. He certainly didn't pick up his taste in clothing in Silvermoon, though the boots at least might not go over badly there. (They are pretty awesome boots after all.)

     And skimpy and impractical as it is, well it still works alright for his job description. After all, if things go well priests aren't supposed to get hit, that's the job of the heavily armored people that stand up front.

Changes for Tiuli

     I'm at the stage of the expansion where I'm thinking really hard about getting some of the neglected alts up to cap. Poor Tiuli, the resto druid's been hanging around in Pandaria for ages and getting nowhere fast. So finally the other day I picked her up and started in on the quests in the Valley of the Four Winds. It didn't go well. Tiuli is mostly resto, but I am too impatient to quest in resto spec so she had a feral spec for that.
    It didn't take long among the vermin for me to remember that I am as incredibly bad at feral druids as I am at rogues. There were many, many, many deaths and I started to think maybe she could just stay at 87 which was where I'd managed to get her to... in between dying to crowds of vermin and crowds of sprites and then one alliance hunter who must have just wanted to rub it in.
     But then I remembered that a while back I'd seen Repgrind's post about how much fun leveling a balance druid through Pandaria was. Well, it couldn't really be worse than my terrible lack of sneaky kitty ability, could it? And at least my baby nelf balance druid has given me some idea of how it's done.

     So Tiuli's a resto/balance druid now. And it really is so much better! She's not indestructible by any means but she can get things done and dies much less often, and when she levels enough for her transmog she'll be able to show it off in her shiny astral form when she's not being a part time tree. She's part of the way through Kun-Lai now and might actually make it to 90 in time for Warlords.

Shiny shiny mount!

     Seish has been working at the long and very tedious process of gaining Shaohao rep at the rate of around 20 kills a day for the daily because for the most part I don't have the patience for more than that at a time. This morning before the daily he had 1500-ish rep to go and I pushed a little extra to get it down to 700. I meant to finish it tomorrow but I was having a kind of sad day and so this evening 700 rep didn't seem like too much to try to grind out to cheer myself up.

     It wasn't. Finally! Seish left the island and I don't think he'll be back for a while unless somebody needs his help. And after he learned the mount (186!) it was handed over to Rim. Because who else would ride a shiny Golden Cloud Serpent?

     And since Rim did most of the mount grinds this expansion it's only fair Seish finally returned the favor. And it was totally worth it. Such a pretty Cloud Serpent.

ROYGBiV Transmog: Green!

    Yet another dress-up post. I couldn't miss out on making a mog for my very favorite color! And while I was at it I made it for one of my favorite classes. This one's for monks and is modeled by the junior Mistweaver: Vaelanys. Green!

Head: Feathered Headdress
Shoulders: Swiftstrike Shoulders
Chest: Rockfall Ribwraps
Wrists: Serpentskin Bracers
Hands: Imbued Pioneer Gloves
Waist: Dragonmaw Emergency Strap
Legs: Jinxed Hoodoo Kilt
Feet: Swampwalker Boots
Back: Elunarian Cloak
Weapon: Anguish

Random Dress Up Post: Lady Huntress

    I blame this largely on my friends who play lovely lady Draenei. Matty, I am looking at you! Anyhow running around the other night checking auctions on my little draenei shaman I couldn't help noticing how skirts on draenei look rather like those Victorian bustled dresses. Then I remembered a certain pvp helm and I couldn't resist trying out a hunter mog based on the idea. I rather liked how it turned out in Mogit, but since I don't have a draenei huntress I whispered Kamalia to show it off.
     As far as I can tell this only looks entirely right on a female draenei and because of the helm it's only for hunters, so I'll probably never use it, but I still think it's rather fun!

Head: Crafted Malevolent Gladiator's Chain Helm
Shoulders: Azure Shoulderguards
Chest: Robes of the Setting Sun
Wrists: Not seen
Hands: Yak Herder Gauntlets
Waist: Ranger's Chain of Unending Summer
Legs: Osul Peak Kilt
Feet: Not seen
Cloak: Not Shown
Weapon: Silenced Rifle

A second version:

All the same except the chest and belt.
Chest: Tidefury Chestpiece
Belt: Crafted Malevolent Gladiator's Links of Cruelty

Let me know what you think!

Old Ladies do Dragon Soul!

     Saturday is without a doubt one of my favorite days of the week. I love it when I get to sneak in some runs with the Old Ladies Raiding guild. The Alliance did Firelands. (Your staff, Fandral, we will have it!) Tyl's dps was somewhat improved by my finally getting around to doing stuff I really should have done ages ago like reforging his gear and Tome tanked for us! I really wish I had thought to screenshot Cat's bear form. It was so much fun, as it always is.
    Then we went off to do Horde side Dragon Soul and Laen got to go and be the shiny healer. (You can see him standing up there next to Karaelia because he loved her pretty armor.) That was fun, we stomped it all handily though there were some hiccups on the Deathwing's back fight because we were just too awesome for the mechanics to handle. And there were achievements too! And not a whole lot of healing actually needed so Laen was mostly decorative. Luckily, being a male blood elf, he's very good at that.

     On other stuff notes: Laen's onto Runestones for his legendary and can start collecting them next week. Meanwhile Tyl is working on valor which, which until Laen's done at least, is being worked at by the lazy and slow method. (One heroic dungeon a day unless I feel like more.) And that's it, alts. I'm not doing this for anybody else. You hear me? Then again I am pretty sure I said I wasn't doing any more at all at some point when I was working on Seish's.
     I wonder if they'll ever do something like this legendary quest again. Something that lets even the people who just do LFR work on it. I hope so, because I've really enjoyed it, even if the RNG is really terrible sometimes.

WoW 30: Class you want to level

Day 11: Class you want to level

     There are three classes I don't have anywhere near 90. I don't have a druid at 90 yet, but I've got two at 85 plus so they are nearly there. I do at some point want to level and try out each of these three classes so this post really becomes a tossup as to which one. I'm working on a priest at the moment:

     Saelindir's already more than ten levels higher than my previous attempts and holy which is also new and so far I love him. I've been having a lot of fun playing. He's doing some questing to pick up bits of mog gear, some dungeons to practice with his healing toolbox and all of it's been fun. So I'm pretty sure he'll make it at some point or another.
I've got a total of one shaman on  my account:

     I've had several others but they always seem to get rerolled as something else because I just haven't been able to get my head around the class. But Naneeri's got every advantage, she's got Laen's hand-me-down heirlooms and is trying resto which seems easier for me to understand than enhancement. So I am pretty sure she'll get there too. I'm glad she's  a draenei. I love those totems.
But the third class that I want to level and have tried several times and just not been able to manage yet... is mage: I've got several little mage alts on my account, but I'm scared to level them solo and so they make some good progress but then inevitably stall out when their partner alt gets ditched.

     Murasaki is my highest level and second favorite mage. She's played with my husband's rogue and is level 64 (and kind of horrified by the quest gear she's ended up in.)

     Falsyr is my favorite mage. He's level 46 and played with Os' priest. There are several others not really worth mentioning that may or may not stick around. I'm not sure any of them will ever finish leveling. But I'd really love them to. Because portals are pretty neat. And there must be something nifty about them when so many people really like playing them. So I guess the class that I most want to level and seem the least likely to actually manage is mage.

30 Days of WoW: Favorite Class

Day 10: Favorite Class

     I'm sure this was really hard to guess. What with the name of the blog and all. Paladins. They're only the best class in WoW (and in D&D) and in probably anything else where they exist. So obviously they're my favorite. I've written several entries about paladins, so in the interest of being less repetitive I'll let the main paladin here tell you his top five reasons for being a paladin (please note that Seish's views are his own and may not be endorsed by the rest of the paladins affiliated with this blog):

5. Paladins get the best mounts. And they ride them just a little bit faster than everybody else.
4. Paladins get the best armor. It's metal imbued with the holy power of the light.
3. Paladins get all the best weapons. If a paladin can't use it it's not worth using. Staves, fist weapons, daggers, and bows? Who needs those?
2. Paladins can do anything that needs to be done, tanking, healing, or dealing out heavy helpings of righteous vengeance. If you need somebody to do damage from a distance you can always pick up one of the paladin support classes. There's no reason they wouldn't be happy to follow you into glorious battle for the Light.
1. All of these things are because the Light loves paladins best.

    In all seriousness, paladins are a fun class, but they'd probably be my favorite even if they were less fun to play. I love the idea of them that harks back to stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I love playing them as characters in tabletop gaming where their sense of divine purpose makes them very dynamic and their strict morals can sometimes bring them into conflict with the rest of the party. And it's fun to find the person inside the paladin.
     I love playing them in WoW because they've got a whole bunch of shining abilities that look the way I'd always imagined paladins when playing them in other things. I love a lot of the other classes in WoW. Monks and hunters are very close in my affection as well, but if I had to start over from scratch a paladin would be the first thing I'd roll.