So awful, it was awesome

Everybody’s got pick-up group (“PUG”) horror stories.  If you’ve played WoW for any length of time, and grouped with total strangers to try and get a quest or instance or raid completed, you’ll quickly start building a list of tales of woe.  If nothing else, PUGs should make you feel much better about yourself, I think…after all, since you’re smart enough to be reading this fine blog, obviously you are a top-notch human being in general and WoW player in particular, and do not deserve to group with people so stupid that they have to put a sticky note on their monitor to remind themselves to breathe.

But even the best of us–and I–sometimes have to PUG.  And last night, I ran across a doozy.

I was on my hunter alt, and wanted to run the daily heroic, which was Gundrak.  Now Gundrak isn’t the easiest WotLK heroic out there, in my opinion.  Slad’ran (the poison snake boss) has wiped me more times than I care to think about; even with excellent players and a top healer in T7/T8 raid gear, his Poison Nova can throw out more damage than we can power through.  The Drakkari Colossus is a pain-in-the-ass pray-your-and-your-healer’s-latency-is-low movement fight.  Even Gal’darah, who’s pretty straightforward, will gib a strong tank if the tank has a brain fart and doesn’t get out of whirlwinds.  (Don’t ask me how I know this.  Please.)

But, against my better judgement, I joined the LFG queue for it anyway.  And a couple of minutes later, I got a whisper–”h gun?”

Let’s see.  No complete words, all lowercase, and this on an RP server.  I feel a winner of a run coming on.  Eh, toujours de l’audace, dude, what the hell…”Sure!”, I replied.  I immediately found myself in a group with the group leader (a boomchicken), a warlock, and a male human paladin–obviously the tank, since he had over 40,000 health–named…Hotbox.

Ohhhhh yeah.  The stench of quality is overpowering with this one.

I flew for Gundrak while the leader druid rustled up a healer (another druid), and the five of us headed inside.  I was immediately greeted with Blizzard’s lovely new feature…the “ZOMG are you sure you want to save to this instance??!?!?11?” dialog box.  Hmm.  That’s not supposed to happen.  Well, we were all a bit confused by this, but all of us accepted and thus saved ourselves to that heroic Gundrak instance.  And down the stairs we went toward Slad’ran’s area.

We got to the entrance, ate a Fish Feast, and the paladin “Hotbox” pulled.  Without warning.  Two groups.  Hoo boy.  A frenetic and confused fight ensued in which the warlock and tree died, but we got both the trash groups.  The resto druid popped (yay soulstones) and started rezzing the warlock…as the paladin pulled more trash without saying anything.  Ugh.  We four-manned the trash, got the warlock back in…and then the tree said, “no boss.”

We looked.  Slad’ran wasn’t in his alcove.  We walked over to the alcove and saw that the alcove bridge gizmo had been activated.  In fact, all the gizmos had been activated, the bridge to Gal’darah’s ramp was aligned, and had the trolls and rhinos in position.  That meant that Slad’ran, the Colossus, and Moorabi were all dead.

Now people started getting pissed.  The critchicken who had the “hat” denied vehemently that he’d been in Gundrak that day, as did the rest of us.  And yet somehow, we were looking at an instance where the trash was up, but the bosses weren’t, the worst possible combination.

So the rest of the party started jumping off the ledge into the water.  I was last because, of course, I had to dismiss my pet.  In that period of time, people started getting eaten by the fish.  A clusterfuck ensued, resulting eventually in us getting to the ramp with two more deaths, to which the group leader said, and I quote exactly, “lol.”

Yeeeeah.

We formed back up, buffed, and fought our way up the ramp to Gal’darah’s area…

…and he wasn’t there.  His bodyguards and their rhinos were.  But he wasn’t.

The paladin pulled the rhinos (without saying anything) anyway, and nearly died because we were all too busy going “wtf?!?” in party chat, but we got them.  A ferocious argument ensued where the boomkin protested his innocence and swore he hadn’t been in Gundrak for at least a week.  Hotbox also said he hadn’t been in Gundrak for at least a week.  The other two said it had been longer than that, and I hadn’t had my dwarf in there for literally a couple of months.

So there our tale ends.  Hotbox (!) the male paladin, plus the other four of us, all hearthed our separate ways, probably to never see each other again except amidst the bustling crowds of Dalaran…or in the LFG tool someday, God forbid.  I had a pittance of silver and a locked instance with no way to score the two Triumph badges I wanted.  Either somebody was lying their ass off, or had gotten tricked, or we had a bugged instance.  And it was 25 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.

I balmed my wounded soul by wandering off to the Pig and Whistle in Old Town Stormwind for four hours of the best RP I’ve had in many a month…culminating in a raid by the Stormwind Guard, two near-arrests, three strained marriages, a couple of damaged friendships, and one of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins telling another of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins to go fuck themselves, while the third of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins stood there and shook her head in disbelief.

What’s two Triumph badges in comparison to that?

Redemption (Beltar’s backstory)

Linedan is my main–he always has been and barring catastrophe, he always will be.  But my “Alliance main,” the dwarf hunter Beltar Forgebreaker, is probably my most fun character to roleplay.

On the surface, he looks like your typical fantasy dwarf…irascible, sarcastic, a bit on the greedy side, inordinately in love with his guns.  But dig deeper and you’ll find that Beltar’s not exactly a stout-hearted dwarven hero in the Gimli mode.  For over a hundred years, he’s wandered the Eastern Kingdoms as a gun for hire, on both sides of the law (sometimes simultaneously), not settling in any one place for long.  He’s been a mercenary, an assassin, a guard, a hitman, a bodyguard, and more.  His idea of a fair fight has always been one where he shoots his opponent in the head without ever being seen.  And now, late in his life, he’s found his calling as an adventurer and general ne’er-do-well with the Wildfire Riders.

But even anti-heroes have to start somewhere.  And in a fashion typical of the accidental nature of his wanderings, Beltar’s first steps on his wandering path didn’t happen the way you’d envision they might.

“Redemption” was a story that I wrote in late 2005, a few months after Beltar’s creation in August.  I don’t remember how this backstory came to me, really  It just popped into my head and I had to take some time out and write it right now dammit…so I did.  I always knew Beltar was oldish, and a wanderer, but until this story body-checked me out of nowhere, I had no clue as to what started him on his lifelong odyssey of the gun.

It’s below a cut, because it’s hella long–4400 words.  In case you haven’t noticed, I do tend to run on a bit.

I hope you enjoy it.

 

Alone (Linedan RP circa 2005)

This is a story that I wrote in August of 2005, back when Linedan had not quite reached level 60 yet and was still struggling along as an arms warrior.  I had originally given him the last name “Granitehoof,” because the original Linedan, my warrior in Everquest, had taken the last name “Granite.”  And, y’know, Lin’s a Tauren, so, yeah, “Granite…hoof.”  Get it?

Yeah, I hated it too after a while.  So I decided to ditch the last name…and this story was what I came up with to do it.  The story of the “curse” and the slow decline of the Granitehoof clan had been part of Lin’s background since I created him, this was just the culmination of it.  To this day, four years later, Linedan has no last name.  I wanted to get Exalted with all of the other Horde factions before getting it with Thunder Bluff, but things didn’t work out that way; nevertheless, Lin doesn’t use his “of Thunder Bluff” title and I pretend like it doesn’t exist.  He is, in my mind, still “one-named,” somewhat dishonored before Tauren society, and will remain so until something happens that would allow him to join another clan, or even (should he marry) found one.

I put the story below a cut because it’s long, about 2600 words.  So without any further exposition, here it is…”Alone.”  I hope you like it.

Dramatis Personae: Moktor

Don't you wish your death knight was hot like me?

Well, she’s my fourth level 80, and she’s been getting a big chunk of playtime lately, so it’s time to introduce the “lady” that’s displaced a few of my older alts…my death knight, Moktor.

• Full name:  Moktor
• Created:  November 2008
• Level/race/class:  Level 80 orc death knight
• Spec:  Blood (53/2/16)
• Age:  21 (sort of)

If you follow the Blizzard explanation of death knights, they’re born of heroes of the Light that were turned to the Scourge by Arthas after they fell in battle.  Some people roleplay that their death knights actually volunteered (or were coerced) into taking the job.

Moktor is the proof that any rule has an exception.

Moktor, y’see, was nothing more than an Orgrimmar street thug.  Orphaned in the interment camps (I think I’ve got the timeline right on this), she lost her entire family and ended up falling through the cracks of the nascent post-demonic orcish society.  She ended up scraping out a bare existence in begging and theft, first in the camps and later on the streets in Orgrimmar, lean, hungry, and tough as raptor leather.

As she got older, she fell in with a troll rogue named Dabashi and his small pack of teenage urchins, where she began to learn the fundamentals of roguing…to a point.  She never was good at the subtle part of things.  Strong, wiry, and always willing to commit violence, she was the headsmasher of her crew, and when Dabashi fell under a Grunt’s axe, she became its leader as well at the tender age of 15.

To avoid Dabashi’s fate, a few years later she “went legit” and fell in with the Black Hand, and headed out into the world.  She’d just begun to eke out a living as a free agent when…Scourge Happened. To be precise, Arthas’ latest plague that his human agents unleashed on the settlements of Azeroth and Outland.  Back in Orgrimmar, still hungry and broke after an ill-fated expedition into the Stonetalon Mountains, she slipped into the inn and stole some food, including some bread made with the plagued grain.  And thus, Moktor became one of Orgrimmar’s first zombies.

For 99% of the people turned by the plague, the story would end there.  But Moktor, through whatever happenstance, retained a modicum of her former intellect and skills.  She hid.  She struck in ambush and kept herself fed.  And she managed to “live” quite well.  In doing so, she attracted attention.  The Cult of the Damned had agents in major cities, and through magical means, they took notice of this particularly hardy and effective zombie surviving in the midst of the chaos.

So just before Putress’ cure was deployed world-wide, Cult of the Damned necromancers cornered and killed zombie-Moktor, removing her soul as they did so and taking it with them back to Acherus.  Her orcish body was destroyed, so they found another one–not exactly the same as her old one, this one was slightly taller, more muscular, not nearly as lean and half-starved.  Her soul and consciousness was implanted into the necromantically-animated body, and thus was born Moktor Mark II.  She was put through the battery of gruesome and near-fatal tests to become one of Arthas’ chosen, a death knight, and as she had always done, she survived through sheer toughness.

Physically, there is no possible way that you can’t tell Moktor is a death knight.  She’s fishbelly green-white all over, with lank, dirty, stringy shoulder-length purplish-black hair.  Her pale skin is stretched a little too tight across her cheekbones, her fangs are yellow and nasty, and her eyes glow with the blue light of the undead.  She has several large scars across her torso (the wounds that killed this body’s previous owner), all usually covered by clothing or armor.  Her voice is harsh and creaky and has that slightly off-putting timbre that many death knights have, and oddly enough, even though she’s speaking Orcish, she has distinct trollish overtones in her cadence and word choice–one of Dabashi’s legacies to her.

The original Moktor was my attempt at playing a rogue.  Despite the fact that I am, in general, a physical DPS-loving guy (as witnessed by my alt list), rogue is the one class I never have been able to “get.”  Moktor was no exception.  I had plans to take her combat maces as just a brutish, face-smashing thug with a little bit of stealth.  Instead, she never made it past level 26 and eventually got deleted several months before Lich King came out.

My first attempt at a DK was actually a gnome with his own backstory (a nerdy scientist of Gnomeregan who fell in with the Cult of the Damned, was found doing necromantic research, killed by the Alliance authorities, and raised by Arthas as a very reluctant nerdy death knight).  I just couldn’t make it work in my head, so the gnome got deleted…and then I remembered Moktor.  The class didn’t work for me, but I liked the character concept.  Plus, female orcs are very rare on Feathermoon, not to mention first-rate booty-shaking badass in combat (their fighting animations are among the best of any race IMO).  And then the whole story just clicked together–instead of a mighty and tragic fallen hero, here’s an amoral no-name thug from the streets…who’s just become an amoral, no-name, much more powerful thug.  It was perfect.  It took that whole “woe is me, what have I become” thing and stood it on its head.

See, Moktor is the least angsty death nugget you’ll ever find.  While fallen paladins and turned blood knights curse their condition and struggle to deal with who and what they are in a world that hates them…Moktor has never been happier, because everybody (she thinks) always hated her anyway, so why not turn it up to eleven?  She loves being a death knight now that she’s free from Arthas’ thrall.  People are scared of her?  Cool, maybe they’ll do what she tells them.  You want to pay her to kill things?  She grins and says, “where do I sign up?”  Forget hiding in corners cutting purses and scrounging for garbage…she’s running around in heavy armor, with a huge-ass mace, her own deathcharger, the power to command frost and disease and blood…what’s not to like?  If ever there was a character whose personal motto was truly oderint dum metuant–”let them hate, as long as they fear”–it’s Moktor.

So even though she’s a total screaming bitch with no morals, Moktor may well be my most “well-adjusted” character in some ways.  She’s comfortable in her own slightly-rotten skin.  She totally accepts who and what she is.

On the other hand, this makes her hard to roleplay, which stunts her development from “idea” to “character.”  I’m shy, and it’s hard enough for me to roleplay my basically-decent characters like Linedan and Illithanis.  Beltar has his moments where he crosses the line toward darkness, but in general, he’s still not a bad dude.  Moktor, on the other hand, doesn’t have many redeeming qualities besides being good at killing bad guys.  I find it very difficult to let go and play a character with a negative personality, someone who’s bossy or manipulative or worse, a loner who doesn’t feel herself bound by any law or moral code at all–not even loyalty or friendship.  So because of this, I haven’t taken many chances to roleplay my little fresh level 80 thug a whole lot, and so her concept is not yet fully fleshed out.

Hopefully I can loosen myself up and work on RPing her a bit, because I think it would be an interesting experience.

Patch 3.2: All Argents, all the time

Random Friday afternoon thoughts as I try to make it through my last hour and a half at work this week, laying low with the Robert Earl Keen turned up to 11…

So this week, the WoWosphere exploded with the release of the first round of release 3.2 PTR patch notes.  Now I’m not going to go over them bit by bit by bit here; everybody’s already dissected those notes like a frog in biology class.  I don’t get too bent about class changes in preliminary PTR notes like these, because they always get tweaked, at least a little, based on testing on the test realm.  I’m not even going to go into the mount changes except to say “woot!”, or the badge changes except to say “boy, the Blizzard general forums are full of tardburgers.”

No, my thoughts today are about everybody’s favorite Scourge-slaying, scrupulously-neutral, joust-loving party animals, the Argent Crusade.  More specifically, about the little place that they’ve put up on the ass end of Northrend…yup, the Argent Tournament, or as I call it sometimes, the Icecrown County Fair.

When I read the 3.1 patch description talking about the Argent Tournament, I’ll admit it, my WTFometer pegged.  Not because of anything to do with the actual game itself, mind you–even though jousting could, IMO, be done better, and I despise the “before the gate” dailies, especially the Champion version.  No, the mechanics were fine.  My bogglement at the Argent Tournament was strictly, I assure you, rooted in roleplay and lore.

Think about it.  The Argent Crusade, Horde, and Alliance are standing before the seat of the Lich King’s power.  Icecrown requires a massive cleansing that will require an immense amount of effort and the blood, sweat, and lives of thousands of heroes.  The Crusade’s job is made more complicated by escalating tensions between the Horde and Alliance in the wake of the Wrathgate (thanks ever so much, Putress and Varian), forcing the Crusade to rely more and more on the death knights of the Ebon Blade, their own smaller armies, and free agents–that’d be us, kids–and less on the elite forces of Thrall and Varian.  The financial and logistical strain is immense…the personal one, even more so.

So with this incredibly daunting task ahead of them, the leadership of the Argent Crusade decides to take their precious, limited resources…

…and build a fucking jousting tournament.  On the wrong end of the glacier from both their own base, and from Arthas’ doorstep.  Sweet jumping holy goblin Jesus on a friggin’ pogo stick, are you kidding me?

Excuse me, folks, but exactly how is this going to kick Arthas’ undead ass?  “Oh, but we’re seeing who the greatest champions of the Horde and Alliance are!”, you might respond.  Riiiiight.  Sitting on the back of a wolf or kodo or chicken, beating each other over the head with a blunt lance (that does 0.3 dps, by the way), is going to show you who’s capable of leading the charge against the Lich King.  Boy howdy, I know I’d be scared of seeing a line of Argent Jousters, pennants flying, riding their mighty war chickens toward the gates of Icecrown Citadel.

Actually, no.  I’d be laughing my ass off right before Scourge Happened and I’d have both new ghoul soldiers for my army and Kentucky Fried Hawkstrider for dinner.

OK, I’m exaggerating a bit, but not much.  Do you see why I thought (and think) the concept of the Argent Tournament made no sense?  It’s jarring to me to put this thing in Icecrown given everything else that’s going on.  It doesn’t fit.  You’re engaged in, literally, a life and death struggle for the future of the entire world against Azeroth’s biggest home-grown evil Big Bad and his endless armies, and you’re taking time out to freaking joust?  Do you seriously think that Thrall wouldn’t take one look at this and laugh himself silly?  Tirion Fordring is really going to buy into this fluff?

(Now this hasn’t stopped me from getting Linedan involved, because hey, excellence in combat–any kind–is what the Panzercow is about, so he’s a Champion of Thunder Bluff and is currently working on Silvermoon.  If I ever ratchet up any more interest in the daily grind-a-thon, he’ll eventually be an Exalted Champion or whatever the title is for five Champions and all factions exalted.)

Enter patch 3.2.  The Icecrown County Fairgrounds expand with a new big arena, and I somehow think it’s not going to be used to hold L70ETC concerts.  All the new content in this patch centers around the Tournament.  A new 5-man instance.  A new raid instance involving the Colosseum–or as Anna called it, “Onyxia v4.0.”  New dailies.  A Cult of the Damned camp attacking the Tournament (took ‘em long enough).  The return of the Black Knight!  (Uh…woo.)  Other than defensive operations against the Cult of the Damned, I haven’t yet seen anything to indicate that any of this content actually involves…wait for it…a substantive fight against the Scourge.

Please note that as far as we know, the war against the Lich King hasn’t moved forward much at all.  Arthas sits inviolate in the Citadel.  He’s still holding us off at Corp’rethar.  The forges at Malykriss are still producing.  The Vrykul still hold Ymirheim and new slaves trickle into the saronite mines, no matter how many we free.  The only real success you see as you proceed through Icecrown’s questlines, after the establishment of Crusader’s Pinnacle, are the opening of the Shadow Vault and the destruction of the Fleshwerks…and both of those were courtesy of the Ebon Blade, who seem to be out doing the actual dirty work while the Argent Crusade goes into the fourth month of their little Ren Faire on the north coast.

Maybe it’s me.  I dunno.  But from a lore standpoint, the whole Argent Tournament concept just doesn’t fit, and dumping all this extra content into it for patch 3.2 makes it even worse.  It may well be because I only have one character who, from a roleplay standpoint, gives a damn about the Tournament.  Beltar, my dwarf, has not done a single AT quest and may never; he’s old, he’s crotchety, and he would much prefer blowing a jouster’s head off at thirty paces than running the risk of getting unseated from a ram.  Illithanis would be offended that they won’t let her use her wasp pet, and Moktor’s never met a fair fight in her entire life and subsequent unlife.

Maybe my sense of lore and roleplay is offended.  Or it could be that it’s 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and DAMMIT I WANT HOMETIEMS NAO.  I dunno.

Discuss among yourselves.  Peace out.

Vanity, for once, thy name is Linedan

I normally don’t care much about fashion on Linedan.  Some of my characters do care about how they look; I admit, somewhat grudgingly, that I picked one of my hunter Illithanis’ pets because it was red and most of her armor was matching red mail at the time.  But Lin?  Nah.  He’s a function-over-form kind of cow.  Besides, so much armor just looks strange on the weird proportions of the male Tauren–bracers disappear completely under the gloves, the legs are so small that pants are hard to even see much less admire, stuff like that.

So it is a rare moment indeed when I have a squee like this.  The Anvil did Flame Leviathan with one tower up for our first hard mode attempt in Ulduar last night.  (It really should be called “sorta kinda hard” mode…even with a tower up, Loot Leviathan still isn’t too bad.)  And he gave us a little something for our extra effort…the Anvil’s first ilevel 232 epic loot.

A Titanguard.

You can't see it, but there's a big stupid grin under that helmet.

HOLY SWEET ZOMBIE JESUS DOES THAT THING LOOK INCREDIBLE OR WHAT.

Forget that it’s an epic.  Forget that unlike my old Broken Promise, it actually looks like a fecking sword you use to stab people with instead of a railroad signal.  Forget that I’m enjoying actually tanking with a fast weapon (1.6) again instead of a slow Broken Promise (2.5).  Just look at it, man.  It’s bacon-wrapped badass.  It screams, “hi, I’m Linedan, and I’m going to gut you like a fish and then hit you in the face with my shield until you stop moving.”

I have not been this stupid giddy gleeful happy about an upgrade in a long time.  And it’s not even because it’s a good weapon.  It’s just because of how it looks.  Crikey, next thing you know, I’ll be taking Linedan to the barber shop.

…nah.

(FYI, question for you cutting-edge tank types–what enchant should I put on this beast?  Right now I have a self-made Titanium Weapon Chain on it, which hit-caps me in my block gear and over-hit-caps me in my boss tank gear.  Is Blade Ward worth the ridiculous prices it commands, considering nobody in our raid can apparently do it yet (we’ve had lousy luck on drops)?  What about our old BC friend Mongoose?  You can see his Armory from the link at the top of the page if you’re curious.  Thank you!)

Congrats to the Wildfire Riders

I have to give a major shout-out here…big congratulations to the Wildfire Riders, my dwarf Beltar’s guild on Feathermoon.  The Riders have been chosen as WoW Insider’s Guild of the Month, and let me tell you, they deserve it.  There aren’t that many guilds out there that can deliver great roleplay one night and then go kick Ulduar in the nuts the next, and I’m damn fortunate to be in two–the Riders on Beltar, and Noxilite on Linedan.

Anna’s RP Friday Five: Parts of The Whole

(Sorry I’m late on this.  I was flying solo with Nublet over the weekend while my wife was selling her jewelry at the North Carolina Renaissance Faire, so I didn’t have time to blog.)

Slightly delayed by her foray into homeownership, Anna at Too Many Annas has gotten her RP Friday Five up.  This one’s called Parts of the Whole.  I’ll answer for Linedan, though I really should give the dwarf and the belf a little more love in these things…

• What color are your character’s eyes?

Linedan’s eyes are a light ice blue, both in his character model and in his RP background.  I’ve seen very few other Taurens use that eye color, it’s pretty distinctive.

• What is your character’s skin like?  Does he or she have freckles, tattoos, or other noticeable markings?

Lin’s fur is actually very uniformly colored.  It’s gray, all over, lighter in the front and snout and darkening on the mane.

• How does your character smile?

Rarely.  Very rarely.  When he does, it’s small, unless it’s one of those very uncommon occasions where something makes him laugh.

• How does your character carry himself or herself when walking around?  What is his or her posture like?

Very erect, as much as a Tauren can be.  Lin walks tall and proud (and often slowly) but without arrogance.  He doesn’t strut or preen, he just…walks.

• Describe your character’s hands.

Big and three-fingered.  (Tauren touch-typing would be interesting.)  They’re heavily calloused from years of wielding weapons and blacksmithing, and always have a little bit of dirt around the nails–do Tauren even have fingernails?–no matter how he cleans them.

WTT: RP

Some friends of mine from the awesomeness that is the Feathermoon server have started a new blog dealing specifically with roleplay and roleplay-related topics in WoW.  Knowing the people involved, the insightfulness will be epic and the posts will be legendary.  So, put on your RP clothes and head over to WTT:  RP.  Now.  You won’t regret it.

(Full disclosure:  I wasn’t in on the ground floor of the idea, but I’m hoping to do some writing over there.)

Anna’s (Guest) RP Friday Five: Items of Significance

Guest post by Avonar over at Too Many Annas today, with another Friday Five set of questions.  I’ll do these for Linedan only today since I’m a little pushed for time:

Does your character have any specific jewelry that they constantly wear?

Lin doesn’t.  He does have a pink mageweave shirt that’s a bit of a constant though (see below).

Does your character have items that they always carry with them have that personal significance?

The aforementioned pink mageweave shirt.  See, our raid main tank, Gorebash, has worn a pink shirt for years now.  It’s part of one of his RP outfits–pink shirt, denim overalls, a straw hat, and a Thunderstrike.  (No, I’m not kidding.  On a male orc.  It looks like he just stepped out of bizarre through-the-Dark-Portal version of Iowa.  It’s awesome.)  One raid night he couldn’t make it and I had to stand in as MT, and did a creditable if not particularly noteworthy job in Tempest Keep.  The next day, Gore mailed Linedan a pink mageweave shirt.  To this day, Lin takes good care of it, keeping it mended and clean, and wears it on every raid as a good luck talisman.

Does your character’s weapon have a name? A personality?

I used to name Linedan’s weapons early on.  One of his first sabres was called Truecleaver.  His self-crafted Masterwork Stormhammer was named Cloudcaller (because it cast Chain Lightning).  But soon he was switching weapons so fast that I got out of the habit.

Are there any items in the world your character would defend/fight to the death over?

Maybe the pink shirt, but probably not even that.  Lin’s got a fairly que sera sera attitude about possessions.

Is your character a pack rat or do they just carry the bare essentials?

Most of my characters pack-rat.  So did Lin for the longest time.  Eventually I got sick of my wife’s little friendly jabs about never having any bag space and I got ruthless.  Now on average Lin’s got 40 open slots, sometimes more.  Of course, this just means his bank is full to bursting…

(EDIT:  Welcome to the folks from WoW Insider!  Thank you very much!  Hang around, browse the blog, I hope you find something you like!)