Kyrilean’s Journal: First Night in Karazhan

Last night was a blast! I entered Karazhan for real for the first time and boy was I excited! Well, let me rephrase that, I was initially hesitant, but later excited!

I logged on and immediately got a whisper from a friend whose guild is apparently short on healers as he asked me to join. I was told two hours max, which I should have dismissed, but I really wanted to go. It took almost an hour before we were finally ready to go and had everyone invited.

While we were waiting I started reading up on the first boss and mentally preparing. Lo and behold! This was a saved instance and they were on Nightbane and Prince Mel. I tried reading up on Nightbane quickly, but didn’t get any really good information to prepare. He took a few tries, but we managed to get him down. He dropped Stonebough Jerkin and as there were two priest healers and myself, I had the option of taking it. It’s definitely an upgrade from what I’m currently wearing based on the healing bonus, but because it was leather I opted not to take it. I also didn’t want to appear greedy, so the tankadin ended up with it. I did get 2 Badges of Justice out of it though, so I’m happy.

Prince Malchezaar was a bear! I believe we wiped three times when I told the raid leader that I appreciated the invite, but that I really needed to go. It was already 1:00am and I had work in the morning. He convinced me to go one more time as another member of the raid had to leave too. Thank God he did too! We were able to get him down relatively easy on that last try. He dropped Jade Ring of the Everliving and I was the only one that rolled on the item and won it! It’s been a long time since I’ve upgraded any equipment and it’s a good feeling to have that again. Prince Mal also dropped 3 Badges of Justice which I was very pleased about.

I’m hoping to get invited back with these guys as my own guild is not yet prepared to go. I think we’re still waiting on a few others to gear up, although we have at least 10 players keyed.

Recommended Blog Site: The Pugnacious Priest

Although I have a few recommended blog websites listed, I’ve never actually recommended one in a blog. Granted, my blog site is fairly new and so I haven’t necessarily taken the opportunity.

Today I stumbled upon a blogsite that I believe to be fairly new, at least I couldn’t find a huge archive cache of posts. http://pugnaciouspriest.wordpress.com/

So far this is a great read and I look forward to reading more.

Definition of a Casual Gamer

Znodis over at Blog Azeroth listed four suggested topics for blogs. I don’t think anyone has actually answered any of these over there, but maybe I’m not looking close enough. I’ve been mulling over my answer to the first three questions for some time now. The fourth answer is easy:

Q: If you could tell a newbie one thing what would it be?
A: Run for the hills!!! There’s a reason why people compare WoW to crack!

Here’s my attempt at answering the first question, “What does casual WoW gamer mean to you?”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines casual as; 1) feeling or showing little concern, 2) lacking a high degree of interest or devotion, or 3) done without serious intent or commitment.

Everyone out there is going to have a different definition of “casual” gamers. Anyone willing to shell out the bucks that it takes to play WoW, I wouldn’t necessarily classify as lacking concern, interest, devotion, serious intent, or commitment. Quite to the contrary! But there are still casual WoW gamers out there and I consider myself one of them.

I know a few people who love experiencing the thrill of leveling. Once they reach level 70, they’re on to the next toon. They don’t completely abandon their 70s because of all the end game stuff available to them, but they also aren’t dedicated enough to seriously tackle raiding and the like. Does this make them casual? In the eyes of a raider? Definitely. Personally, I think it’s still pretty hardcore to make the attempt to level another character to 70. Sure it’s a little easier, especially if you rely on your 70 to help out in gear, gold, etc. but there is still a time investment that cannot be avoided.

I consider myself a casual gamer. I spent quite a bit of time getting to level 70, but then again I soloed as a protection paladin almost up to 70. I consider myself a little anti-social and don’t spend a lot of time trying to make a bunch of friends online, but primarily I hate asking for help. I’m a guy! What can I say? I don’t ask for directions either. LOL!

Once I finally got to level 70, I started trying to upgrade armor by working on the instances in Outland and upgrading my professions that I hadn’t bothered with for a while. I spent time working on the dailies and am still saving up for an epic flying mount. Because I don’t focus on it and grind for the gold, and spend what I do have frankly, I’ll probably get that mount sometime when the 3rd as-yet untitled expansion comes out. I’ve also spent time working on rep with the Aldor, Ogri-La, and the Shattari Skyguard. I’ve gotten the Skyguard rep to exalted and Ogri-La should happen today, as I’m only 800 points or so away. I’ll concentrate on Aldor next and then move to the next probably, but I keep jumping around on what I’m doing and never stay focused on any one thing. I get bored otherwise. Let me give you an example.

During the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, I spent a lot of time in the battlegrounds working to attain my Ornamented Gladiator armor set. Initially it was fun, but because I had time off from work, I was spending 10-16 hours on any given day to get enough honor points and tokens to buy the stuff. It was exciting as I purchased each new piece and added it to my toon. But I overdid it and quickly became burned out. Now I have a couple of rings and trinkets I’d like to get, but it’ll take forever because I can’t stomaching the battlegrounds more than two or possibly three times a night.

I haven’t tried the Arena yet and I hear the gear is worth it, but I also hear it is extremely time consuming and I am not that fond of PvP. So why did I spend so much time in the battlegrounds? Frankly, I needed upgraded armor. The battlegrounds provided an avenue to get some fairly simply, cheaply, and quickly (although quickly is somewhat relative). It only provided a stepping stone to getting into instances in Outland. The gear I had at the time was inferior and I kept dying in the instances. I also wasn’t healing as well as I needed to and the PvP gear gives a nice boost.

I’ve read the arguments between PvE and PvP gear and how they don’t work well in the other setting. Now I agree that in general it’s better to have the appropriate gear designed for the appropriate forum, but I disagree with just about everyone arguing the importance of gear because as important as gear is, and I think it’s very important, I think party dynamics, including class make-up and the individual players play a more important role overall, but that’s an argument for another blog.

So I’ve spent a lot of time jumping between daily quests, battlegrounds, reputation advancement, profession advancement, helping out lower level guildmates, helping guildmates get keyed for Karazhan, etc. I’ve been trying for three or four weeks to get into heroics, but I haven’t dedicated the time to doing it every night. Dyna’s been wanting me and Yec to join up with him as he’d prefer the three of us to do these with a couple of others, but Yec and I haven’t made the time. Dyna’s really gotten into it and has 47+ badges where I only have 6 and I think Yec has 2.
So does that mean focus determines whether someone is a casual gamer or not? It can, I suppose, but I don’t think so. I focused on battlegrounds, but still consider myself a casual gamer. Dyna’s really focused on heroics, but I still think of him as a casual gamer. I think there’s more to it.

The biggest reason why I consider myself a casual gamer is attitude. A couple of weeks ago I had a blast in a heroic ramparts although we continued to wipe multiple times and only came out with one badge. It cost me 47+ gold in repairs, but I had a blast! It was a learning experience, I was with friends, and I couldn’t have cared less. There are so many people out there that would have given up after the second wipe because to them it’s just not worth it.

Don’t get me wrong! I’m all about upgrading my toons and being the best that I can, but I also want to just spend time with the people that I like and having fun.

Q: What does casual WoW gamer mean to you?
A: Bottom line, the definition of a casual gamer is someone who just plays the game to enjoy the game.

Character Name Creation

Author’s Note: Bunnyfer over at Blog Azeroth suggested two questions for blogs. I’m going to address the first one, “How do you come up with your character names?”

Kyrilean. Funny thing is I invented this name, but evidently so have many others. If you do a Google search for Kyrilean, the first item in the list is my blog page. Currently the third item down is a link to Allakhazam for Dark Age of Camelot. There’s a few more so you’ll have to take my word for it that I came up with it on my own. Ironically, I also read Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Absolutely love them. In one of the books, there’s a character named Kyril. I use this a lot as a nickname, but I’ll explain that as well.

Back in high school I used to play D&D, back when it was still owned by TSR, Inc. I was still playing a little by the time Wizards of the Coast bought them, but not as much. Because of this I used to spend time inventing names for characters. It was during this time that I invented Kyrileanthos Silverblade.

At the time I was reading a lot of the Dragonlance novels. In fact, I read them over and over constantly. I was intrigued by the characters Tanis and Laurana. Tanis and Laurana are shortened names for Tanthalas (if memory serves) and Lauralanthalasa. The long names and shortened versions intrigued me and I wanted to create a name that had similar characteristics.

This is where my memory gets a little hazy. I don’t remember exactly if the correlation came before or after I created the name. For Star Wars geeks, we all know that the Millenium Falcon was a Corellian freighter. Corellian and Kyrilean have very distinct similarities. I cannot remember to this day if I thought of the name first and noticed the similarity or if Corellian was an influence. Anyway, I attached the “thos” at the end of the name. Looking at it later, I unintentionally had created a name that could also be shortened to Kyril, adding another nickname. I thought that was pretty cool. It wasn’t until creating Kyrilean, Kyrileanthos didn’t fit, and adventuring in Azeroth that it was even shortened further to Ky by guildmates. I accomplished what I wanted with this name and have been proud of it ever since.

That was probably the only name I created using that method. Most of the names I’ve created involved picking a letter that I wanted the name to start with and then picking random letters to start filling in spaces within the name. As soon as you get a few letters together with a sound, begin substituting letters until you get a name that works well with the character you’re inventing.

Another technique I use is to take a name I like and change it. I’ve always liked the name Jason and I once modified it to Jasyn and created a character named Jasyn Blackhawk. That’s a simple example, but you can take it much farther. Take my character Luthe from Ultima IV—if you’ve never had the chance to play this game, it’s been widely said that this became the template for all future role-playing games, so give thanks to Lord British. I believe I started with something close to Legolas from Lord of the Rings, substituted and removed letters until I got to Luthos, which became Luther and finally just removed the ‘r’.

Other techniques just involve envisioning your character in your head and then having that determine the letters and sounds that will ultimately become your character’s name. Remember I mentioned I was reading Dragonlance? Quite possibly my favorite character in the entire Dragonlance series is Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I wanted to create a similar character and envisioned a Halfling. From there I decided I would use the letter ‘K’. For whatever reason the letter ‘u’ seemed like it would fit perfectly so it became “Ku”. After that I cannot remember where it went, but eventually it settled on Kupix. The name itself does not evoke a sense of dread, so it wouldn’t necessarily work well with a warrior. However, for a semi-innocent Hafling thief? It worked and the name stuck.

One final technique to use is foreign words. This becomes harder for those that cannot speak another language, but for those of us that do it can be a great help. I recently created a Human Female Priest character named Maedchen. For anyone that knows German, “das Maedchen” is “girl”. Kinda corny I know, but the average person won’t know and it’s a good looking name. I also created a Shaman named Erdkrieg, which is using the German words for “earth” and “war”.

Whatever technique you use to create your own character names, have fun with it. As long as you like the name, that’s all that really matters. Try to create something that you won’t regret later. I’ve seen some fairly silly names online that I can’t imagine anyone would want to live with all the way through level 70. At least Blizzard gives us the chance to change those names now.