I should have named the blog "Pointless Rambles".

First things first, a big welcome to the slew of new bloggers our WAR: Age of Blogging initiative have brought in. Cabal of War , Asuryan's Flames, Alt Much, Grumble and Mutter, From the Forging of Fire and Ice, The Rant, WAR! For Casual, The Tome of Gonna, In the XOne, Schlotzky's Game Blog, The Grumblings of Gorebash, WAR Addons Reviewed, Cry Moar Noob, One Side of the Fence and Rainbow's MMOs. Whew. 

And now for another pointless ramble. 

I've been concidering dusting off my sorceress. Lyst was my original character, thus the name of the blog being a Sorceress ability. I had even planned originally to focus a good portion of my content on the Sorceress class, from it's abilties to it's very awesome lore. But then along came the pokeypokey portable blender joy of Witch Elf and the launch of Blackgaurd and poor Lyst has been sitting at 24 for months. Teir 4 has instilled a deep hatered in me for MDPS (ok, annoyance. But I'm a Dark Elf, I can be emo if I like.) and while healing with my DoK is fun it doesn't satisify the blood lust so well. There's also the fact that she's been sitting at 140ish cultivating and apothocary for all those months with a vault and mail box bursting with supplies from my 200 scavanger and my boyfriends 200 butcher. I spent about an hour crafting a few days ago and she's now just below 175 in both. I do like the potions I can pump out, +70 to a stat for 10 mins is really awesome. I am wary of switching to another alt when my main isn't getting much play time and I have completely failed at getting my current alt into the rampant RP of my guild. Which brings me to my original point of posting.

I have no idea what my problem is. Perhaps it comes from years (yes, yeeeeeears) of really only roleplaying with my boyfriend's characters but I'm like an RP hermit. I created Menkara's character specifically so that I had the drive and means to get involved in multiple storylines. She's a seer, of the strict Druchii variety and based very heavily on the various seers and prophets of the Malus Darkblade novels. I've gone really in depth learning about how exactly the Druchii seers peer into the future, the tools they use, what they see, how concrete it is etc. I worked out a storyline for her entrence to the guild with my guild leader and she ended up being named High Priestess of the House. 

But she's hardly interacted with anyone. If I may be blunt and open, being that this is my personal blog, I and she was/is a bit off put by the fact that even though I had her character sheet up on the forums for months before she actually started being played within a week of her entrance to the guild there were two other seer or psycic characters created or joined. It sort of took the wind out of my sails. I had all these grandeous ideas of her established standing as a semi well known seer of Har Ganeth, infamous for the powerful people she has backed giving her a lot of "buisness". Of people coming to her to employ her talents. She's very cheap after all, she's made it clear she works for anyone and the only compensation she requires is that of flesh sent to her temple for sacrific. The average price is a dozen Asur or two dozen human. Affordable rates! But that fact is that no one seems to even remember that she's the High Priestess, much less that she's a seer. Is it my fault? Probably. As I said, I seem to be a hermit. I just can't manage to get myself involved, or in the right place at the right time, or not busy when events are going on or finding conversations that Menkara doesn't find insepid to take part in in guild chat.  I think my failure at this character that I had so many hopes for is contributing a lot to my lack luster drive to play WAR anymore.

She has an awesome, awesome storyline going with her leveling partner, Calintz. Their RP continues to be dynamic, unique, varied and highly emotional. But her relationship with the House is about nill. I log on, she greets the house, everyone says "Greetings, Menkara" and then I fall quiet.  A lot of time it's because I get swooped up into personal RP. It's very hard to chat idly in guild when Menkara and Calintz are busy argueing or some other drama. It goes back to what I said in a post months ago, RP is what you put into it. And I think that's where I fail :/ 

I promise to keep the ratio of emo to non-emo posts at a steady 1:2 ration by finishing my comments on the several totally usless abilities that DoK get or a run down of my biggest pet peeve in the Sorceress vs. Bright Wizard debate ... wait, would Sorc vs. BW count as an emo post? 

How WAR saved me from WoW

In August I was playing Lord of the Rings Online and pretty happy. I was excitingly looking forward to the expansion and gladly provided information, pictures and movies from PAX to my fellow LoTRO players.  In September I got into the Mines of Moria beta and also got my minstral to 45, five levels bellow cap.  I'm not sure what happened but I got bored. I think as much as I love Tolkien and his works, playing a character in his world is just a little ... bland. Perhaps it's my preference for a more sword and sorcery type of setting. Regardless I was playing way more Tales of Vesperia than I was LoTRO. 

Then that day came. The day I dread fairly often. My boyfriend, my gaming and roleplay partner, the love of my life said words that cut to my heart....

"I'm thinking about going back to WoW."

In a instant panic attack full of visions of duo farming SM for that dagger I never got my 40 rogue and countless hours of mind less gulch farming and a world full of men with shovels for hands and barrens chat my mind raced for a way out. The first thing I thought to say was "I won't love you anymore if you make me go back to WoW!" but I deemed the situation not quite at that level yet. Taking a sharp turn to the right my brain scrambled for something, anything to divert him from that terrible idea. "Sex!" There was a good idea. "I'll do you if you don't go back to WoW." I felt this was probably a short term solution and I was not ready for dedication it would take to make it a long term one. 

"We can play Warhammer Online!"

I said these words not a week after stating that Warhammer Online didn't interest me and that it seemed like a PvP centric gankfest. (Can you feel the carebear shining through there?) But faced with the threat of a return to the land of epic farming, faction farming and ... and ... Goldshire (!) I was desperate.  Blessedly, he said that would work.

I bought a copy of WAR the next day while my boyfriend was at work. Just one single copy. You see, I still wasn't sold. I'd read a review that stated very clearly "If you are not a fan of PvP this game is not for you." I am in fact, not a fan of PvP, so I was pretty sure the game was in fact not for me. 

By the time he got home a few hours later he had to nearly pry the mouse from my clutches and peel me away from the desk to get a chance to play. Even then I hovered over his shoulder, pointing out the Tome of Knowledge and how it was "a deed log on steroids" and shoving at him like an excited kid telling him to join a scenerio que and yammering about class combinations that would work well for us.  Needless to say, a second copy was in my hands the next day.