Insane in the Membrane: PART TWO

Posted by Apple Cider in Achievements, Guide and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Epithet the rogue climbs through Lower Blackrock Depths looking for marks.

Insane in the Membrane: PART ONE

Welcome to Part 2 of my lengthy saga of how I acquired the “Insane in the Membrane” feat of strength, wherein we make billions of cards and stab a whole ton of orcs. Where we last left off, it was the day of the Cataclysm pre-patch, wherein we met the dragon what come and blew fire and things. I had finished up both my Shen’dralar and Goblin rep that day, and now it was time to finish up the last two reputations. I was not expecting it to take another year and a half.

Darkmoon Faire: 5,200 Card Pick-Up

The Faire was a lot harder of a reputation to grind out before Blizzard gave it the revamp. Anyone looking to rep up with this group only had a handful of profession quests (which capped out at Friendly) and turning in decks. There wasn’t really much to do at the Faire other than buy some materials off vendors, eat some food and turn in decks for trinkets that didn’t start becoming really good until Burning Crusade. Similarly, this is most of what we did in order to get to exalted – turning in thousands of card decks. Both Myth and I took the recommended action of leveling up scribes for this reputation, as it would have cost us thousands more in cards if we had not. The reason that people did this as you literally would spend hours farming herbs, milling them, and turning them into cards and this was considered the easiest way to the end. Working on Darkmoon Faire was by far the most RNG-filled out of any of the Insane grinds. Myth and I had two scribes working on this, as well as a shared bank guild. This is due to the fact that all the decks had between 3-9 cards (particularly the trinket decks) and you were never guaranteed to make the ones you needed, so you were always scanning the Auction House for the cards you needed cheaply. I let my more anal-retentive personality characteristics run free here, because organization was key here. There’s no way you would make it through this part of Insane without literally going insane if you didn’t really get your shit together. (I also had considerable help from add-ons such as Altoholic, Postal and Auctionator.)

It’s no surprise that Myth and I shared a Google Wave (remember that?) full of materials we needed for every rep and where we were at in all of the reputations.

When <Sweet Cuppin Cakes> was started, I took over two tabs of our bank guild in order to order all of the decks and cards we had in individual rows, in numerical order so that it would be easy for me to see what cards we had duplicates of, which ones we were missing, and then turning all completed card sets into decks. There was also the matter of holding onto all these decks until the Faire came around that month. We’d race to the grounds and turn them in the first day, then attempt to sell off the trinkets to recoup money. There was also much spamming of Trade Chat to have people let us turn in their trinket decks for them just for the rep. This would have been easier if we were on a more populated server that wasn’t already overrun with Insane-grinders, I believe.

For a while, this was my daily routine:

  • Bank alt goes to AH, prices out and finds cheap materials for six different kinds of Darkmoon Cards via material shopping lists I built into Auctionator.
  • Buy out herbs and inks as cheaply and in gross as possible (using AH pricing data), including many stacks of herbs that had no business being sold that low.
  • Check bank guild for missing numbered cards.
  • Check AH for said card shopping list using Auctionator.
  • Buy any cards listed reasonably (although near to the end, the yardstick for “reasonable” started moving quite far) as well as cards on shopping list. Duplicates bought cheaply would be put towards future decks.
  • Empty mailbox of herbs, primals, inks and cards. Mail materials to scribe. Take cards to bank.
  • Order cards in bank using set/numerical layout. Turn any finished sets into decks. Set decks aside.
  • Clear out glut of decks and mail even number to Myth and my main.
  • Hop onto scribe and mill all herbs.
  • Turn herbs into ink.
  • Take inks and primals and make as many cards as possible.
  • Mail cards to bank alt.
  • Arrange cards into various slots in the bank guild.
  • Dynamically update card list.
  • Do this several times a day.

I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that I spent a lot of time and money on this particular part of our grind. The fact that anyone can achieve exalted reputation with Darkmoon Faire via dailies now is mind-blowing. I sunk in excess of 20,000 actual gold and countless more in gold-hours from farming, buying, and putting everything together. Near the end I was spending thousands a day and kept myself financially afloat by some of the other financial ventures I was into like soloing and making money via raiding. (Did I mention that I was still a progression raider throughout this grind?) But honestly, it was fun. It was fun trying to watch for deals and shop very smartly. This was the reputation that Myth and I spent the most time helping each other out with since we had gotten into this mess together.

Ravenholdt

This was the final showdown and ultimately where I proved that I didn’t quite have the fortitude to finish as quickly as Myth did. While she crossed the finish line last year in September, I dawdled around until April. A lot of it had to do with the fact that Myth had already a rogue, but even when I had finished up leveling a rogue for just this purpose, I had so much more work to do. One of the ways to save a lot of time turning in lockboxes as simply grinding out Ravenholdt rep by killing swaths of Syndicate mobs in Alterac Mountains, Hillsbrad and Arathi Highlands. What she had done was do loops around Hillsbrad at the Lordamere Internment Camp killing the Syndicate there, but by the time I was ready to that, Cataclysm had hit and those mobs were gone. I did, however, find an alternate solution in Arathi – do loops around Northfold Manor and Stromgarde Keep. My rep sat between Honored and Revered for a very long time. I didn’t want to grind lockboxes, I didn’t want to pick off mobs for 5.5 rep a piece.

So I didn’t.

Sure, I kept planning to. But other things came first or go in the way. I’d half-heartedly say that I’d do it but tab out of WoW and go AFK in Stormwind. All those things I would sit around talking in guild chat could have been times I was killing mobs. Eventually I did though and hit 11999/12000 Revered. Then I knew it was time for the hardest part: pickpocketing lockboxes. You don’t necessarily have to do it all yourself but if you want any control over the speed/process, you’ll want to. A lot of people buy lockboxes in bulk and if this were a bigger server, I might have been able to con a rogue into doing it for me. But given that I had wasted all the time leveling up a rogue to do it, I conscripted a couple guildies to help me for the last bit on their rogues (for some cool money) and did some of the grunt work myself. The two best places to do this are the Blackrock Stronghold (with the packs of quest mobs lined up) and LBRS. I chose mostly Blackrock Spire as it was an instance and I wouldn’t run into other rogues hoping to farm lockboxes as well. However, my farming fatigue is super high, especially after having done that marathon stretch in Dire Maul. Still, I plow through a couple days worth of loops around LBRS, watching Adventure Time episodes as I go. I have an amazing system down even: clear through the end of the instance, drop down one level from the end and re-pickpocket back to the beginning, reset the instance, and mail off 75 lockboxes when my bags get full.

Within a couple days of guildie help (thank you to Relkir, Myth, and especially Trangie!), I reach my goal and become Apple Cider the Insane.

The Insane

This was a test of my dedication towards achievements. What really made this fun though was the fact that I had a friend. Doing something this dramatic with someone I enjoy being around made the more lonely parts enjoyable. Is this a metaphor for life in general? I think it could be taken as such.

Over the past 2 years or so, I’ve definitely burned out a lot of my capacity to sit and camp things, farm stuff up. It was a huge goal of mine on my “WoW bucket list” to complete this though, so I feel accomplished in that regard. Other people have done this with more brevity than I, but I don’t care. I got it when it was still “hard” and that’s good enough for me. I would never do this again, though. And I doubt that Blizzard is going to ever have a Feat of Strength like this again. They are moving towards a model of game that doesn’t require lengths this profoundly complicated to go through and most of the reputation changes have indicated this. All of the reputations now only require kill grinding or turn-ins or even dailies. While there might be another carrot dangled in front of us achievement crazies, I doubt it will ever be as sweet as this one.

However, you bet your sweet bippy I’ll be finding all 10,000 waterfalls in Mists.

 

Insane in the Membrane: PART ONE

Posted by Apple Cider in Achievements and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Apple Cider dings the achievement "Insane in the Membrane"

It’s true; I never thought I’d actually finish this notorious Feat of Strength. I had put it off, procrastinated, and simply shot my foot in so many places that I did not know if I’d limp across the finish line. However, expansion doldrums always tends to drive me into a frenzy of trying to do the impossible. It is what got myself and a guildmate started on this road 2+ years ago – Wrath of the Lich King. I didn’t do this the “easy” way in the slightest and stretching it out over a long period of time did nothing for me other than force me into day-long grind sessions  at times and benefit from almost no changes to the mechanics of obtaining reputation.

It started innocently enough too – I don’t think most people say they are going to go for Insane. It’s one of those far-off dreams you always say you want to accomplish. The day that it truly takes root in your brain, though, is when you spy something on the Auction House or on an alt and you tuck it away for the “eventual Insane grind.”  That is when it has taken your brain in its feverish grip and doesn’t let go. Oh, sure, you might think you’re doing other things, like raiding or PVPing, but you’re really just putting off doing the Insane.

This is my story – it is long and definitely not without the concerted efforts of one Mythraidates, my insane partner and my guildmates, for putting up with my craziness (literal and metaphorical.)

Tips for Insane:

  • Have some way of watching stuff while playing WoW: A second monitor, laptop, TV, or overlaid video files on top of WoW will make this a lot more painless.
  • Friends/guildmates/employees: A lot of people can help out for stuff like Ravenholdt. I paid guildmates 1k gold to get me a chunk of the lockboxes I needed for the tail-end of Revered -> Exalted.
  • WoWjuju.com: Their reputation calculator is invaluable here. It tells you how you can rep up with every single reputation in-game in a concise manner and tracks your personal progress with breakdowns on kills or turn-ins needed, as well as individual item counts.
  • Don’t loot bodies: If you’re doing kills for rep, do not waste time looting a body.

Bloodsail Buccaneers

I believe this is where I started. It’s really hard to tell at this point but the completion date on my Feat of Strength indicates 4/20/10, meaning exactly 2 years and the first rep I finished. It was by no means the first rep I started, but this was the accepted place most guides recommended. Ideally, when attempting to do Insane in the past, you were constantly gathering materials for some of the more turn-in heavy reputations (which has been mostly negated now, save for Ravenholdt) even while you were working on kills-only reputations. Bloodsail is suggested as the easiest  just because you can clean through it in a couple hours at most, even spread out over a couple of days. It helps if you have friends to do this part (since you can share the reputation) and it also lessens downtime to regen health or mana. However, even at 80, I still cleared through most of Booty Bay’s NPCs (skipping guard spam as much as possible) quickly on my circuit and needed to wait for respawns.

Keeping away from the auctioneers and other high-level NPCs would keep guard swarm low. You don’t want to get overwhelmed. Also, after a while, your reputation will cause you not to be able to go into any Goblin towns or use varied mailboxes or vendors until you repair it.

An interesting side-effect of doing the grind was that while I was hated by Booty Bay, I could kill the innkeeper in the bar. Doing this on a Sunday would, in essence, prevent people from binding their hearth there for the fishing contest. However, this is griefing and makes you a giant dick if you do this over and over intentionally, so don’t!

Finishing this grind up to Honored rewarded me with a sweet hat and outfit, along with a title. However, because I’m such a weirdo softy, I do not like wearing said outfit very often because Bloodsails are corrupt! However, I believe the hat CAN be transmogged, if you want to show off your piratical pride.

This had to be, by far, the easiest part of the grind and the least time.

All the Dang Goblins 

After getting Bloodsail, the efforts to get the Insane title kicked into serious effort. There was no going back now, unless I really wanted to never set foot in goblin towns ever again. Efforts to collect and gather materials for both Shendralar and Darkmoon Faire were going on concurrently. However, I made a rookie mistake and had started using what-was a recently implemented NPC that allowed you to “fix” your goblin rep easily for people who were interested in Bloodsail Admiral but wanted to not be smooshed by bruisers on a regular basis. What this does however, is dial back your Bloodsail reputation. You have to have Bloodsail stopped at Honored in order to gain the meta achievement, so this won’t work. You have to do it the hard way.

The hard way, at the time, was predominantly running Dire Maul to do the Free Knot! quest. This was the most efficient way just due to how it worked in tandem with collecting some of the items for the Shendralar grind. Librams frequently dropped off mobs or were found on the floor, as well as access to the elders for turn-ins. The alternative to this was spending hours upon hours killing tons of low level pirates for 5 rep a pop. I chose Dire Maul and had to run it many, many hours. Back then, having access to an engineering mailbox and a Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth was crucial, as well as binding your hearth in Feathermoon. The reason for this is because you could only carry one Gordok Shackle key (a random drop off ogres) on you, which would be used to free the goblin, Knot. This meant you always wanted to be carrying one key on you, so you’d be guaranteed at least freeing the goblin.  Before you let him go, you wanted to maximize how much rep you got per instance reset with doing Ogre Suit quest. How many suits you could make depended on how many materials you had on you (you could pick up tannins inside the instance, but needed outside materials to create them), as well as how many you could comfortably destroy or mail off (hence the mailbox) since suits were Unique.

So this is how a perfect Dire Maul run would go:

  • Run in with Gordok Ogre Key.
  • Kill ogres, hoping other key drops.
  • Key drops somewhere close to the goblin.
  • Scurry to clear up to the ogre tannin and back to the goblin before the key despawns.
  • Turn in as many ogre suits as possible, destroying or mailing them off if you had a mailbox/Argent pet available.
  • Free Knot.
  • Scurry to pick up key.
  • Rinse, repeat until instance limit kicked in.

A lot of times runs were not perfect. Extra keys would drop that I couldn’t loot, I’d run out of materials for the suits, my hearthstone wouldn’t be up to empty my bags in Feathermoon or I had to wait out the instance cooldown.

On the last day that Dire Maul was available to do this part, I ran the dungeon for 18 hours straight. I’m not  in a hurry to ever do anything like that again. I consider it a dark, shameful moment in my WoW career.

Nerdy Librarian of Shen’dralar

I’m glad that I got the Feat of Strength for this as I feel this is what really separated old Insane grind from new Insane grind. And not in that “badge of courage” sort of way, like most achievements. Mostly throwing people who were involved in this ridiculousness a bone. By the time that Shen’dralar became a “meaningful” reputation just via the Insane, most of the materials to grind it had already fallen well into disuse (Librams, Pristine Black Diamonds) and scarcity. What you did was have to basically scope the Auction House (which I already was doing every day, most hours of the day for Darkmoon Faire) and do dungeons and run around zones for mats. Why? Because the only method of gaining rep aside from the class quests (as any vanilla player will remember) was turning in librams/materials for enchants. The librams were a rare zone drop from Dire Maul itself. The materials were another story entirely.

  • Libram of Focus: 1x Pristine Black Diamonds, 2x Large Brilliant Shard, 1x Blood of Heroes
  • Libram of Protection: 1x Pristine Black Diamond, 2x Large Brilliant Shard, 1x Frayed Abomination Stitching
  • Libram of Rapidity: 1x Pristine Black Diamond, 2x Large Brilliant Shard, 1x Skin of Shadow

The PBSes were exceedingly rare world drops and usually went for a fortune in the Auction House now that people had dumped off their large supply of them post-vanilla. (We started doing this in Wrath, remember) The value of them due to scarcity and demand was up pretty high. LBSes were easily the cheapest of the bunch but still required a lot of time spent disenchanting things or just plucking cheap lots of them off the AH. The rest of the time was spent going through Scholomance, Stratholme (thankfully we could solo or duo this reliably now), or the occasional zone run-arounds in Western/Eastern Plaguelands. Thankfully Gatherer/Gathermate had data for treasure, which is what the Blood of Heroes counted as. The only problem is they had hundreds of potential spawn points and usually only 7 up at any one time.  At any point you might be working against other people as well (our server has a high amount of Insane people, interestingly.) So we mostly spent a great deal of time in Scholo, as Stratholme took a little longer.

This easily was the most annoying part of Insane, given how much money I shelled out for stuff or dungeons I ran to gather mats. It was always down to RNG and money and time. When I finally finished this off, I was glad. Keep in mind that this reputation and the methods of obtaining it went into the ether at the same time as the old Goblin rep quests too, so part of that large chunk of time that I spent in Dire Maul was racing to get this done as well (as far as I can remember; that day is mostly a blur.)

Blizzard had originally planned on removing the Insane grind in 4.0 for Cataclysm, but recanted when enough people shouted that they needed more time or had come to the game late and wanted to try and complete it. They ended up removing just Shendralar from the meta and gave all of us who were stupid enough to try and get that reputation to exalted an extra Feat of Strength for our troubles.

This is everything I got done before Deathwing came and breathed fire on all the land.

Part 2 of this wacky, Herculean effort.

Ji Firepaw: Now More Than Ever

Posted by Apple Cider in Discussion, Language, Mists of Pandaria, Sexism, Women in Azeroth and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hello, I’m Apple Cider. You might know me from such great Internet Blog Posts as Ji Firepaw: Creepy Dude and Ji Firepaw: Cardboard Gentleman. I’m here to talk to you today about a serious matter.

Joking aside, I’ve been away from my blog for a bit, after dousing the Internet in man-hating gasoline and setting it on fire according to certain inflammatory MMO-Champion trolls.

However, sharp-eyed blog reader Failadin caught this bit of dialogue in the beta:

I cannot tell you how much this tickles me. Not only did Ji change his dialogue in the first place, but he has enough self-awareness to realize that dropping a compliment on Aysa apropos of nothing might be a little off. Blizzard’s sense of humor about this whole thing is really amazing, and it makes me feel a lot better having raised the point originally. Not only do we get a “reckless” character that may learn a touch of reflection from another, but it shows a real tongue-in-cheek jibe at themselves as writers. I love it. I love when flawed characters grow and learn and possess the ability to learn. I hope Ji and Aysa, despite their personality differences, bring eachother much needed balance to their personalities, as well as the Horde/Alliance in general.

See that people? Ji Firepaw is now more self-conscious than your average Reddit poster. Zing!

What do you feel about this change?

Flowers Made of Tears

Posted by Apple Cider in Feminism, Lore, Women in Azeroth and tagged with , , , , ,

Warning: This post features so much lore-breaking! You might feel nauseous! This post came out of an idea I thought up late at night.

It’s really no secret that I’m more of a dreamy “I have all the FEELS” sort of person when it comes to lore, rather than an all-knowing lore expert like so many people in my immediate vicinity. (Rades and Catulla come to mind, as well as Mythrai and Bug) I tend to get caught up in the half-truths and emotional contexts to the characters and stories I see in the game, filling in the gaps with my own inventions and notions because I cannot be bothered to read EVERY relevant text or my brain cannot stitch together the pieces well enough to un-fragment the whole. Out of these wisps of imagination comes fanciful notions like:

“Maybe Garrosh is capable of receiving my sympathy because he’s downtrodden by other’s expectations” (He isn’t.)

“The Naaru are benevolent but have no ability to grasp mortal concerns.” (Debatable, everyone thinks they are evil though.)

“Sassy Hardwrench is a can-do feminist lesbian who runs hot spring resorts for other queer Azerothians.” (You will never, ever sway me on this opinion.)

I’m not ashamed to say that I have desires to think about these things, even when I ask stupid questions of my friends to make sense to my constructivist self. I only feel embarrassed when I get the lore so profoundly wrong that everyone gives me the side-eye. It is fun though, to dream of an Azeroth that neither lore scholars nor Blizzard themselves have yet. Basically, when I’m not failing Influential Characters in Lore 101, I do like to make up stories in my head about characters that maybe don’t exist in WoW, or don’t exist in the ways that the game has presented them as. I make up facts and consistent logic is not very strong here.

The Azeroth of my dreams features way more women, for a start, and with more agency; a lot more people present as genderfluid and queer. Chromie and Androgos are male-identified dragons that love being lady gnomes. Lynnia Abbendis and Lilian Voss are vigilantes working to undermine the sinister forces afoot in the land, and they also are in love with eachother. Baine Bloodhoof sees his father regularly in his dreams, and it guides him. Fandral is seen as a tormented father rather than a loot pinata. Keristrasza gets the last laugh. The world that was broken is remade or improved in my head. It’s idealist as hell, but it makes me feel better.

Therefore we find ourselves suddenly in Duskwood. It’s chilly and damp, but it is mostly just hard to see. We’re standing on a small plot of land with a small shack. The stink of rot is here, cold and lonely. Scourge amble aimlessly. Fluttering softly on the only breath of wind here are many small white flowers. We see two adventurers run up and hack an undead man to pieces as he comes out yelling and waving his arms. Slowly, piece by piece, he will sew himself back together. He is cursed for all eternity to never die, only to live with the regret and shame of what he did. He is only starting to figure out why possibly he is doomed to this fate. It is because of you.

You look down and you are not the person you were. You are a woman, undead specifically. Your garb is lavish and clearly marks you as someone who dabbles in necromancy and fel energy. Every time you see Stalvan tearlessly weeping to himself in his shack, crying over a faded picture of your human face, you laugh. It is always his name that the villagers whisper to their children. Bitterly, you were forgotten, lost to the letters that he wrote to his family and friends. A footnote for a madman’s murderous rampages. Where was the memorials for you? Where were the tears for your family? A teacher with an unnatural lust for his devoted student, and no one cared that his story was the only one that was publicized. You were the shameful woman, the bad woman. You must have lead him on, giving him such a simple gift – a white flower. You didn’t notice the barely concealed contempt when you showed up with your fiance, you were too consumed with the idea of an arranged marriage.

All that is gone now. Gone because of his jealousy and his perversions. “The blood that was shed paled in comparison to the tears I shed.” Feh. You spit on the ground. Tears? Tears? You cried tears, Stalvan? What about the tears as you saw your family murdered in front of you? He left you alive for last, he left you alive the longest so you’d feel his suffering. His suffering, heh. He didn’t know the first thing about suffering.

When you took your first breath as one of the undead, you vowed to never let him rest. You were given a gift, a second chance to write the story over. You would hound him screeching until the ends of the world and time itself for what he’d done. So you learned and you studied. You were the darkness that overcame him, sitting unrepentant in the middle of the woods. You struck him down, his last moments alive were with fear in his eyes and heart as he slowly realized who you were. You grasped your bony fingers around his neck and as your corruption stilled his heart, you whispered in his ear, in a dirt-ragged voice:

I came back for you, your sweet Tilloa.

A stupid man in a stupid shack doomed to live his entire unlife in rotting, tortured flesh, bound to this place with the weight of his guilt. A thousand heroes of a thousand generations will come to steal his treasures, and judge him for the crimes he committed. They will piece together the measure of his worth and find him wanting, a curse on the name of Mistmantle. It is small justice for the woman who wanted to be free from her life.

You pick up a flower from the field and tuck it behind your ear. You always loved how they smelled, when you could still inhale their fragrance. There is time now for happiness, and rejoicing. Your work has been completed. You can do other things. You are the author of your own story now, and it is time to turn the page.

Poised and Ready

Posted by Apple Cider in Expansions, Feminism, Language, Mists of Pandaria, Real Life and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

I will have screenshots up when beta servers are not dying due to turtles blasting them off their racks, but apparently Ji Firepaw’s dialogue got changed. He now refers to women Pandaren by how poised and ready they are, making his character arc a little more subtle. As Llandrywyn on the MMOC forums espoused:

Where I find myself agreeing with the people who find it inappropriate came about by considering a simple question; “If Ji Firepaw is a flirtatious, bordering on sexist, lecherous old panda, what benefit does it have to his story?” Honestly, I can’t find any real benefit; without this line of dialogue he’s still define as being somewhat flirtatious, impulsive and reckless. His character is still developed in the same way and my overall impression of the character remains unchanged, except I find him somewhat more endearing in that he retains a little more dignity. I freely admit my personal feeling shouldn’t be a factor in the decision making of a creative enterprise, but the question I pose to this thread is this:

“If a character can be conveyed in the same terms, for the same overall feeling and with the same overall character traits, is it not just good and respectful practice for the designers to minimise content that might offend?”

I’m so fucking overjoyed with emotion right now that Blizzard changed this. There’s some speculation that this was part of a larger sweep of changes. Maybe we didn’t cause them to change it directly, maybe we did. I’m counting it as a victory anyways. I’m so proud and emotional about this – Blizzard, you did good this time. You nipped something lazy and uncreative in the bud and worked towards making an NPC that I don’t feel slimy talking to. I’m really happy with myself and everyone who took the time to talk about this issue. We really did something today.

Screenshot from courtesy of Xelestri:

New Pet: Soul of the Aspects Now In the Blizzard Pet Store

Posted by Apple Cider in Pets, Screenshots and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Far be it from me to never talk about what Blizzard has gleefully coerced me into spending money on, there is a new pet in the Blizzard store today. Much like Heart of the Aspects mount that it is based on, this adorable little golden whelp is precocious and sleek. It is wonderfully high-res and features a number of cute-as-heck animations such as a cyclone twirl (which makes it dizzy), a loop-de-loop (like the mount), fire breathing and a zippy dash that is reminiscent of the Celestial Dragon pet.

It retails for $10USD in the store and is for one World of Warcraft license, meaning it will be sent to all characters on that account.

I found myself snatching this up as soon as I read the tweets from Warcraft Pets as I hadn’t spent the money on the mount at the time. The price was right (as opposed to $25) and I consider myself suckered a lot easier into account-wide pets rather than mounts. Take a look at some of the screenshots I took on Misandry:

I think it goes wonderfully with my transmogrification. Let me see screenshots if you’ve gotten this pet yet!

Mists of Pandaria Beta: First Impressions and Nitpicks

Posted by Apple Cider in Expansions, Gameplay, Language, Sexism, Women in the Media and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been enjoying the beta greatly. I’ve been taking it slowly, exploring a little bit on my mage and testing out glyphs and talents on random mobs I pass-by while taking screenshots. A lot of people have been doing the high-level quests but I tend to burn out fast when I do that so I’ve been plonking around with testing abilities and rotations primarily. I also rolled a monk (Shojuu) and have been leveling her in the early morning just to avoid the deluge of other people who are in the beta right now.

The art direction and mechanical development of this expansion is in such stark contrast to how half-formed Cataclysm felt; what the Blizzard development teams learned from Cataclysm’s challenges definitely reflects here. Abilities have a lot of polish and additional functionality, and the world feels so much more cohesive and alive. I could get lost in Pandaria and I’ve only been around the Jade Forest at this time.

One thing has stood out to me so far, while testing new Pandaren monks. Early on in the leveling experience, you meet Ji of the Huojin. He’s part of the Firepaw clan that’s in the first village you come to after leaving the initial starting area. As a female Pandaren I ran up to him to turn in my quest, only to be greeted by slightly creepy conversation text.

I went back and did the quest as a male just to see how it changed. It was similar text in that it was constructed similarly, but it did not have nearly the level of inappropriateness.

See for yourself.

What he says to women:
Hello, friend!
You’re some kind of gorgeous, aren’t you? I bet you can’t keep the men off of you!
Join me! You and I are going to be good friends!

What he says to men:
Hello, friend!
You’ve got a strong look to you! I bet you’re all the rage with the ladies!
Join me! You and I are going to be good friends!

It’s a subtle difference but it pulled me out of playing for a moment. I am aware that Ji is written to perhaps be slightly too friendly. I know people in real life who are like that. However, how it reads to me, as a woman in real life – it came off as exceedingly creepy, especially with the absence of a male-centered experience up until that point. The focus is on how beautiful she is, rather than strong. Given how Pandaren society seems to value strength and poise as gender-neutral traits, why make this guy espouse an exception? Add to the fact that this is stuff I hear from weird random dudes I know all the time, with the added “You and I are going to be good friends”…

…well it comes off as weird. I made a forum thread trying to break this down and it will probably get crapped on, but oh well. Part of beta testing is picking out bugs and giving suggestions and I actively want Pandaria to feel as cool as I know it could be, even if you are a lady Pandaren.  Recognition of gender is important, but not in a way that marginalizes. Blizzard hasn’t done a knock-up job of this in some places, but overall when I’ve leveled characters, I’ve not felt like the world I am presented with as a lady toon is wildly different from a male toon. It shouldn’t be that way in a fantasy game anyways! As I explained yesterday when bringing this topic up, “It’s one thing to encounter sexism from other players in roleplay who are dragging that stuff with them, but a game company can make a fantasy world in whatever image they choose. It should let women and men stand on equal footing, especially in a video game where mechanically it’d be a disservice otherwise.”

Obviously there’s a lot of unchallenged sexism in the developers and creatives at Blizzard themselves, but I felt that if I’m given access to the beta in order to make it better, why can’t better mean “less othering”?

Feminists All the Way Down

Posted by Apple Cider in Feminism, Personal and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I have lived every day of my life
Thinking only of what I should think
When I read back at everything
That I have written
On how I lived my life

And in the process of doing so
I have missed the chance to feel alive.
Just to stay an observer of an impartial observer.

- Every Time I Die, “Turtles All the Way Down”

I’m not going to mince words, the WoW blogging community has been having a sort of tumbling, somewhat-related discussion about women* and their experiences with gaming in Warcraft for the past week or so. Usually when varied opinions on sexism and women in a male-dominated space shake loose, that’s when the huffy nerd feelings come crawling out of the woodwork to tell them how wrong they are. This time though, instead of men, it was women.

And not only was it confusion about where all the sexism was, it was deeply “controversial”** opinions about feminists and their ilk (TW: discussion about rape in the comments). I found it deeply upsetting, honestly, not just from the perspective that it was my life’s work and blog focus being mocked and derided, but the fact that these things were coming out after significant posts about people’s experiences had been expressed (including my own.) It shocks me when people tend to shrug off things that don’t directly happen to them. It hurts when it comes horizontally from other women, those people we know have probably felt the lash and sting of the same things at some point in their lives.

I’m not going to get into a passionate defense of feminism right now, not here at least. Anyone who’s read me long enough knows how I feel on the subject, knows who I am, knows what my brand of feminism is like. It is unrelenting, capable of love and definitely full of anger. Take it or leave it.

Effy’s posts are the ones I fixated most of my complex, snuffly-nosed emotional feelings onto because they stood to be the most personally insulting. It was tied to me, whether she wanted it to or not, and it felt like a slap in the face. After the annoyance subsided, I realized that all that was left was disappointment. I knew where she was coming from and I was saddened that that is where she stood, especially being so close in age with me. It rang like words from a younger woman; that woman being me.

I know that it is the common belief that feminists spring fully-formed from the heads of society; we’re clad with a book on Judith Butler in one hand and a picture of Gloria Steinem in the other. This is not the case, gentle readers. Women in the geekier spheres of society (read: male-dominated hobbies) that come into feminism tend to follow a very similar method of growth -

  • We start our unsure of ourselves, very often because we like things others don’t, and don’t present as especially “feminine”
  • Rise to a special position, “one of the boys” and well-liked for our sexual or geeky value
  • Quickly look to eradicate sources of opposition (other women)
  • Realize that being vociferous defenders of the status quo doesn’t buy us but a temporary reprieve from neckbeards
  • Fall from grace, realize it was all a sham
  • Find strength in other women who’ve been through the same thing.
  • FEMINISM!

Okay so maybe that’s an oversimplification of things, and I’m sure more than a couple of you can disagree that that’s how it happened for you, but I’ve spoken with enough women in the various nerd places I’ve hung out to see a trend emerging about when they precisely got into stamping out sexism in geek culture. It’s how it happened to me. I used to be that woman that was special and cute, an alpha female who was loved and beloved. I said horrific things about other women despite having women friends. But it was pretty terrible because in a lot of ways, the trust wasn’t there. So in that respect, the posts I saw around the blogging community rang true in a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey way. That’s who I used to be, they said back to me. I started to grow out of it when I realized that my female friends had my back in ways that men didn’t; they’d be the ones that could accurately describe the terror, the disgrace that came from various problems that face young women these days, I don’t need to elaborate it for you. They didn’t make me feel like I only had a value in my looks or acting a certain way. We could curl up together, drinking wine and eating crab rangoon and watching Law and Order: SVU until we got too scared to turn off the lights. As I moved away from college and into the online world, feminism slowly crept into my life. I remember having a discussion with Dysmorphia about this and she described it as “taking the red pill” (oh ho, geek feminists and our pop culture references still make me giggle, but it was still apt) – that moment when you woke up to how the world really is, and that it was largely unfriendly to you solely by the virtue of being a woman.

I know how scary realizing that can be. I know that this is why a lot of women still hold tightly onto the internalized sexism or misogyny they  have. I’m pretty sure this is what inspired a lot of the really shitty things I had to read on Twitter and blogs this week. You don’t want to believe that the men in your life have the potential (notice I said potential) to be shitty to you with little consequences socially. You don’t want to believe that you can trust other women. You’re still working from a place that hurts really deep inside, from a world that tells you that you’re wrong and others like you are wrong. You force it down so deeply that it turns into hate for femininity and women, but it really is hate for yourself. It’s why you can’t talk to women; they are confusing and emotional and you’re clearly neither of those things. You’re accepted and loved by the men of the world. You love the things they are into.

And it’s okay to be that way, but it’s not because men say it is. That’s why I’ve so embraced feminism – it has allowed me to be whatever woman I want to be on the path to letting everyone be those things too. I know that feminism can seem to be full of anger, because it is.  Anger is productive. There’s a lot of justifiable reasons to be angry. It comes from being treated like less for so long. It’s trying to tear down the structures that have crushed us under its heel in our every day lives. It doesn’t affect just us women, but men too, but we need to take care of ourselves first. Men are OP, but instead of “nerfing” them into oblivion, we need to get rid of the whole dang system in the first place so we can all see eachother as how we are meant to be.

I spent most of the last week just circling around making angry noises, unable to really speak or feel positive about much of anything. I had a long talk yesterday with the inimitable Cynwise because I was having problems really framing my emotions and in the middle of it I had a flash of lightning run through the middle of my brain. How am I supposed to explain what feminism means to me, especially when so many people in the WoW community seem to have really false ideas about it? The answer was so simple.

(1:46:35 PM) Apple Cider!: Oh yeah trust me, some of my best feminist friends are all video gamers
(1:46:41 PM) Apple Cider!: It’s been an interesting …
(1:46:43 PM) Apple Cider!: huh
(1:46:48 PM) Apple Cider!: that just gave me a really good idea
(1:47:12 PM) Apple Cider!: thanks Cyn

One of the ways that I found my way out of the scary, dark forest that was getting into feminism was letting go of that old part of myself that didn’t “really know how to talk to women” which as not just a woman myself, but also as a queer woman, was intensely problematic. I’m going to be blunt here; getting into World of Warcraft made me a better feminist. I joined a fairly progressive guild from the moment I stepped into WoW, one that had many different kinds of women in it. One that had women officers. There’s no point in my WoW career that I haven’t been surrounded by ladies in some shape or form. When that eventually lead me to joining a particular woman-based Livejournal community for the same reason, suddenly it was like the world and all of these delicious ideas and opinions came gushing out. Not only was I constantly being challenged about what the notion of a woman or a gamer meant, but it lead me to a discovery of so many more social justice issues than just combating sexism. I came more to terms with ableism and fat acceptance, and unpacked some of my white privilege with regards to racism as well. Now I’ve grown as a better person that respects others deeply, GMs a guild full of radical feminist women in a safe-ish space where they can play video games and not feel abused or scared or marginalized. (Maybe not as good as I could be but I’m getting there.)

There’s not a day that goes by that doesn’t look on everything I’ve accomplished – this blog, my guild, my wonderful circle of lady friends on Twitter and in-game and realize that it come out of my willingness to challenge my own ideas and self-perceptions and embrace something that truly is trying to shape the world. It’s also made me better equipped to chose people (hint: men) in my life who stand beside me, rather than tolerate my presence because I’m sexy and a geek. I want to make the world better for them too. I want it to be better for everyone, and there’s a lot of movements to try and do that. So when I hear that feminism is man-hating and full of bullies, it lashes at my deep inner self. This is the self that is the person behind the blog, behind the cute little gnome. The person who keeps a seperate Twitter to let off more of the “angry” steam at the world that tells everyone they are less than human compared to the majority.  The person that a lot of people don’t know beyond just this blog.

This person, me, I value video games. I value feminism. I value making people feel uncomfortable and pushing them to think about things. I do it because I want people to be able to enjoy their hobbies, their life and live it as they see fit, in a world that lets them exist and do so freely and without judgement. Do I think this is able to be accomplished in my lifetime? I’m not sure.  I don’t have all the answers. But we’ve seen in the last 100 years women move from pieces of property to being able to vote, own land, be their own citizens, so maybe at the end of my life we will see even more. Right now is a scary place to be, even for us enlightened 21st century women, so I have to keep fighting.  However, I couldn’t do it without the wonderful women and feminists that I’ve met online and in real life and I think that everyone should know that.

Even if you don’t agree with me, we’re all in this together.

 

*Don’t call discussion between women about their own culture “controversial,” it’s mega-stupid.
**It’s not controversial to have societally-accepted opinions about other women being terrible.

Discussion Post: Beta Thoughts So Far?

Posted by Apple Cider in Discussion, Expansions and tagged with , , , , , , , ,
Panda looks at giant carrot.

Screenshot courtesy of @alexziebart

It’s PANDAMONIUM, folks!

The first wave of beta invites went out (sadly, none to me) and so far we’ve seen a pandalanche of news and quirky things coming from testers. Gloriia of Corgi Island has some primo beta videos and stills from her time spent as a female pandaren monk, so you might want to check that out. I peeked over my boyfriend’s shoulder and watched him run around Stormwind with his flippy belt and flippy hair and very expressive panda lady face (lucky sod.) I’m so far impressed by what Blizzard has offered us in the way of the expansion.

As far as non-pandaren related beta stuff, there’s been some intriguing mage glyphs floating around. Who is going to find random critters to turn into turtles, leaving your indelible magey mark on the world?

What are you excited for in beta so far? What would you do if you got an invite? Have you just been reading every scrap of news you can get your hands on? Let me know in the comments!

PS: If you want to hear the most hilarious Mists of Pandaria discussion, tune into Bifactional this week. *tiptoes away*