The items I never sold or destroyed...

I just got my account stolen, leading to a serious amount of paranoia. It turned out it was my own fault; I had entered my username and password on a phishing site. Some of the phishing mails are good, some are insanely good. This one was pretty good.

Anyway. I just suddenly got mail that my account was suspended because of gold selling. I filled out a contact form, and after about a day, the suspension was lifted and most items was returned to me.

The downside; What a mess. Full cleaning required, please. In addition, I noticed a few items that the GM hadn't restored that I got when I asked specifically for it. I have no guarantee that there might not be other items missing as well. It just comes down to my memory, which frankly is a bit bad with 8 different characters.

The upside: I got a good opportunity to look through my items.

My priest is my oldest character. I had no less than two 16-slot bags in my bag full of technically useless stuff. Vanity items, if I can call it that. I got a chance to see through them now.

Each of them tells a tale. I did sell a lot of them during this cleanup, but there are still some that I can't destroy. I'd like to share the tale of a few of them.

My Gnomish Battle Chicken

Its level is dependent on your engineering skill - it is for example lvl 82 at my current skill, I believe. Anyway, at somewhere around 35 I had skilled engineering all the way up to 300, despite being low level, with the help of materials from guildmates and friends. In battlegrounds, walking around with a lvl 60 battle chicken at level 35 was actually a real threat. Oh, what fun! Since it has a 20 min cooldown, I constantly switched trinkets after each one had been used.

Arena Grand Master

If you don't know, it requires you to "win" the gurubashi arena chest 12 times in order to get it. And I did it long before level 60? How? Well, three ways, really.

One was to ally myself with any horde interested that was there. Before the fight, we agreed on who would loot the chest should we win, usually by /roll. I never fought horde in the arena, for roleplaying reasons. If some horde didn't want to join my cause, I didn't enter the arena until they had died or the chest was gone.

The other way was to go for it at 6 in the morning. Since it spawned exactly at 6, 12, 18 and 24, "all" I had to do was stand up early and get the chest if there were none other nearby.

The final way was combined with one of the other, namely the Gnomish Mind Control Cap. I did sell that one in BC, though, as it was useless then. Of course, sometimes I ended up fighting FOR the one I tried mind control (backlash), but fair enough, that was in hindsight fun as well.

My best memory was when there was a lvl 60 night elf druid who really, really wanted the chest. I stood behind a pillar and watched her kill all alliance left and right. I was only lvl 45, not a real threat to her at all. Anyway: I just leapt into the arena while she looted the chest, and used the cap. Then I looted the chest, while she (mind controlled, like a minion) attacked an alliance player who just had respawned. Naturally, I ran afterwards. Boy, was she angry at me! She chased me for a loooong time. Fortunately, she didn't have epic riding skill, and I had the carrot on a stick, so I eventually outran her.

Imperial Red Robe

This one I bought purely for roleplaying reasons and its looks. I still think it looks neat. I paid 5 gold for it, which was a rather big fortune at that point in my career, somewhere around 30ish, long before I could actually equip it. I used about a handful of times on roleplaying occassions, and even got offered 15g for it, which I refused.

Piccolo of the Flaming Fire

I never got this one in classic. I got it at the end of BC, I think, while soloing a part of Stratholme. It wasn't even intentional, I just aggroed the rare mob and had to defend myself. It's a sort of item I just can't throw away, since it's so hard to get hold of again. But would I really miss it? I doubt so.

Hydrocane

I spent a few hours farming for this one. It was hard for a discipline priest at level 55ish. And in BC I didn't even have a use for it. I finally decided to sell it yesterday. I also sold Azure Silk Belt, which I had made for the purpose of swimming. I figured I can just use Levitate instead to run on the water.

Speeeeed! Gimme what I neeeeed

From my WSG career: Nifty Stopwatch and Skull of Impending Doom. Who knows, these might come in handy again in Cataclysm with rated BGs? I actually got half-way through revered just by playing WSG and enjoying it. Yes, I know a lot of people are exalted, but I also know that most of them painfully grinded it. I didn't play if I didn't find it fun.

Various irreplaceable quest-items

I'm considering selling Barov Peasant Caller. I don't think I'll ever use it, and it's not really great. However, it is irreplaceable. I can find a bit more reason to hang on to Moist Towelette. I used it on my shaman to get Intense Cold. They're less useful for a priest than say a shaman, though. In Cata all healers can remove magic anyway. I just can't help but some day... some day I'll find a use for it. Bah. Highly unlikely. However, also possible with rated battlegrounds.

What do you mean? You SOLD it?

Those mentioned above are what I decided to keep. I sold the rest. I do actually regret not hanging on to my enchanted White Wedding Dress, the one I was "married" in. However, seeing that it wasn't soulbound, I gave it away to another troll who was marrying after me. Oh, fun roleplaying times.

I also got rid of the Warden Staff, my classic PVP staff, a long time ago. I caused a druid in my guild to guild quit when he discovered he had it, despite him having farmed and attempted to buy it off the auction house for a long time. I think I paid 150g on the auction house, which was a pretty big heap of gold for that time.

If any of you have any vanity item tales to tell, feel free. I'm all ears.

Roleplaying Rant

I've spent the vast majority of my playtime on Earthen Ring, which is an RP server. As I wrote in my earlier post, I was a rather active roleplayer for the first year of my WoW career. After that, it went downhill. At some point, the roleplaying in WoW was taken over by various drama queens and kings.

This post is aimed towards those drama queens and kings, but might be of interest to others who've encountered them, or even to people intending to start roleplaying.

How to recognize a drama queen

While I find the term 'drama queen' to be the most descriptive, other names are also floating around. 'Spotlighthugger', 'Power RPer' and possibly a dozen other such names describe similar behaviour in roleplaying. What generally defines them is that their roleplaying is all about them. They're the main character in the story, everyone else are less important characters. They're practically bursting to tell/play their story. Just push the botton (ask to hear their story), and they'll talk about themselves for at least the next half hour. Most won't even wait for that, if they believe someone will listen to them.

Practically every drama queen use some addon like FlagRSP. It allows you to write a description for yourself, which other players with the same addon can read. It can be quite entertaining to install this addon if you're on a RP server, and walk around some capital city just to read what people've written in the descriptions.

The third defining characteristic of drama queens is that they all want to be special. They try really hard to write stories and create characters that are completely unique, resulting in rather quite a few far-fetched bios.

The problem

Now, the problem with drama queens is usually not that their stories are uninteresting. Quite the opposite, it can be very entertaining to listen to a story. What type of entertainment depends on the story and the character, ranging from hilarious (often without the intention of the storyteller) through amusing to exciting.

The problem is usually that it can be rather tiresome to listen to yet another far-fetched, overplayed story, which rewrites the lore of WoW yet again. How many secret lovechildren does Tyrande have? How many times was Thrall saved by a single hero, who for some reason needed to be omitted from the common lore? That, and the fact that it can be quite annoying to listen to someone who won't let anyone else get through. Granted, unlike a verbal conversation they can't just speak louder than everyone else, but they don't necessarily need to. Many roleplayers are quite polite, and will wait their turn. And when their turn doesn't show up... well, then they'll just wait until their patience grow thin, and then stop showing up for roleplaying sessions.

Hints on backstory creation

I don't want to teach you how to roleplay. The paragraphs above contains quite a few hints on how to roleplay. Besides, there's quite a few sources that have written 'Roleplaying 101' guides before me. I'll just list up some spesific suggestions I have for drama queens.

Normality, the new originality

If you desire to be original, you needn't nescessary go out of the way to create a new original backstory, complete with some major names from the lore and some grand event that without your intervention would've doomed the world. In fact, there are so many of those, that it's refreshing to read/hear a down-to-earth story. There are still many things that can and does happen to "normal" people, and just because it can happen to normal people doesn't make them uninteresting. Try roleplaying a father who needs to feed a family, for example.

Avoid anything about rape

I'm very certain that 100% of all characters I've met who've been "raped" in their past, have been played by male players. Many other male players, and probably almost every female player will react very negatively to that. To the poor souls that've actually experienced it, it will probably be a lot of emotional pain. Here they come to WoW to relax and play, and get reminded of their probably worst experience ever. Tasteless.

Regarding lost eyes

... it's the peak of unoginality. But if you really want to lack one eye, first find a good reason that actually doesn't make everyone think "yeah, right". Second, most people don't cover lost eyes with the biggest gem in the world or something like that. Third, actually roleplay it. A person with only one eye will have a limited depth perception, causing him to occasioanly misjudge distance and bump into walls, loose their footing, misjudge a ledge. With that said, they will also be used to it, meaning they will avoid moving too close to somewhere they might misjudge and fall down. In fact, they might've developed phobia of heights. And that brings us to...

Mental problems

Now, this is something refreshingly new. I personally believe that every adult person in the entire world have some mental problems they live with. Most people don't have a diagnosis for this. Only those that have problems that in some way hamper their life get a diagnosis. Why shouldn't WoW characters have theirs as well? It makes a character way more realistic. But here's the trick: It must be some problem that you can function normally with, or at least hide really well. A challenge can be to roleplay a character with a problem the character itself isn't aware of, or at least views as a problem. Some examples of mental problems that could be roleplayed: Father/son-problems, general problems with authorities, virtually any phobia, schizofrenia (not to be mixed with multiple personalities), sleepwalking, hearing voices, paranoia, lack of respect for own well-being, bad judge of character (often trusts the wrong person), bad memory, and various fascinations. For more adult roleplaying, various fetishes. Again; the character must still be able to function normally.

Traits

A mixed bag of everything that doesn't include mental problems. For example, habit of chewing a root all the time, stopping to salute every guard, shouting when angry, blinking unescessarily much, raising an eyebrow occasionally, talking very polite, talking very commanding ("You will have a fine day!") or practically anything else you can think of. Make a macro and hit once in a while when the situation calls for it.

Emo is sooooo last year

Generally, making an emo character is not the best of ideas. There ought to be something in your story that's positive as well. A character with an optimistic view of life is so much easier to stick around with than someone suicidal.

Roleplaying the character

Now, let's say you have a wonderfully interesting, or plainly dull backstory. The most important part is how you roleplay, not how well you've written the story. Here's some general advice:

Listen more than talk

In a group of at least 3 roleplayers, if someone speaks more than listens, it means that the group's turned into a speaker and two listeners. Avoid that.

Be subtle with traits

A good roleplayer will be subtle about their traits and problems. They're something that you remember the character by, but shouldn't occur too often. If you do it too often, you'll start annoying others. I'd like to make an example from one of the best roleplayers I've ever met in WoW (hope you don't mind); A shaman that heard the spirits speaking to her. Once in a while, the combat log would say "Shacklya whispers to herself." What happened? She roleplayed that she replied to one of the spirits speaking to her, which no one else can hear. When asked about it (in character), she would explain that she was replying to a spirit which spoke to her first. And she did that once in a while, sometimes seldom, sometimes often. Never more than about once a minute. Ingeniously simple. Everyone that meets her will remember it, and I don't think anyone would be annoyed by it. And it can create great plotline hooks, depending on what she's discussing with the spirits for the moment.

Create stories/plots with solutions

Many roleplayers like to make large plots and stories. Great! As long as the rest find it entertaining, no worries. The problem, though, arises when you've created a plot that doesn't really include any input from the other roleplayers. It's really frustrating to "participate" in a character-driven plot when you can't do anything at all to affect the outcome. Be flexible! If a given character is possessed and someone tries something good, let them succeed. Don't just wait and eternity and then present *the* solution, which they never could've done.

Create positive plots as well

Practically every plot I've seen in WoW is some sort of negative. Try to create some positive plots as well, or at least some that has light points. Go to a pub and drink yourself silly, for example. Can lead to a lot of interesting roleplaying without demonic interference.

And a word of respect to my master...

Aside from Shacklya, the best roleplayer I've ever met on Earthen Ring have to be Cavran. Unfortunately, he's no longer playing, and hasn't for quite some time. His interest in WoW was killed by various bad roleplayers. Bah. Salutations, Cavran!