Random fun

A couple of weeks ago, I got an Orb of Deception on my druid, and I sent it to my shaman.

Shavra has had the Ambassador title since the achievement system was put into place, and as soon as the mount restrictions were lifted I put it to good use. She became one of the first draenei to own a shiny (noisy) mechanostrider.

And all that makes this screen shot possible. Blood elf on a mechanostrider! Isn't it awesome? Later, I'm going to get few belf on an elekk screen shots, too. ^_^

What time is it?

It's time to play with my UI again!

(SS taken yesterday, while I was out looking for thorium. I'm NEVER going to get enough thorium to level Wee's blacksmithing! I just don't have the patience. Ugh.)

Anyway, it was a pretty layout while it lasted, but I'm pretty tired of it. I like some of the functionality of AutoBar, but for the most part it's just not meshing with me. After all these months I'm still looking in my bags for quest items instead of on my bar, because sometimes they're just not there. And, PitBull with Grid was fine for a while, but it's just not working the way I wanted.

I'm keeping SexyMap. Come hell or high water, that mod stays! It really is sexy. Yum.

My brother has been trying out HealBot on his undead priest, and I think it's time to give that a spin. I've been banging my head against Clique/Grid, and there are a few things that irritate me. For example, Clique doesn't like being active with pet classes. I left it on with it only programmed on my druid for raid heals, and it made my glyphs completely unaccessable on my warlock. For another thing, I can't get it to remember that if I click on Grid buttons I want heals, but if I click on PitBull buttons I want to be able to do defaultish stuff. Like target. Or leave a raid. I had to unbind my right click, and I've been targeting by /tar ____ for the last few weeks. Otherwise, somebody's getting an untimely lifebloom.

The button layout isn't working for me, either. Bartender is great, but I think I messed up the layout myself. I was trying to keep buttons to a minimum, with a minimum of room taken up, but it looks ugly to me now. (I also need to learn how to play my paladin all over again. Things die, sure, and I don't...but I don't know if I'm doing it right. lol)

All that aside...oooh, pretty portal in there! I know it's been there for ages, but it makes me wonder what it's going to be. What's lurking behind all those elite demons in Winterspring? Will we ever know? I'd better get my warlock on the doomguard quest before they remember they've got an instance portal out there that needs to be opened!

The Totem Thrower

Even today, my guildies still call me Shavra. She was my first 70, and for the longest time I identified with shamans the most. Forums, lists, info, the first section I'd read on patch notes...it was all about the shaman.

It was all about THIS shaman.

She's still sitting at 72 right now, and leveling her is somewhat more of a chore than a pleasure. It's an obligation.

Actually, really, it's more of an afterthought.

Before BC came out, I'd been playing for a few weeks and I thought for sure I'd never play an draenei. I'd seen the males, and I couldn't imagine that the females would be any more attractive. I was hung up on the blood elves, and I loved playing Horde even though everyone else I knew was Alliance. With the blood elves, maybe I could get a few people to follow me in switching sides? Well, that was my hope. I had my tauren shaman that I loved to death. Seriously, he was the first character that I enjoyed playing. The peaceful philosophy of the tauren, the "in touch with nature" nature of the shaman. Everything was perfect for me. This was my class! It was like it was made just for me!

Well, since everyone I knew did play Alliance, I had to at least try one of these monstrosities. We got the disks delivered about mid-day the day BC came out, and Raven was still at work. We'd already talked about starting blood elves together, so I installed the game and poked around at the draenei.

I had giggle fits. There was this tall, curvy, mature-looking race, and I could get pigtails! I loved it! I played around with the options a bit more, seeing everything available, but the pigtails were a must-have. In fact, my new shaman was a lot prettier than I thought she would be.

I played around with the starting zone, bolstered by the fact that most people out there didn't know any more about what they were doing than I did. I was in my element, discovering new things rather than following others and hoping I didn't come across as too much of a noob. (And oh, was I a noob back then. I couldn't even figure out how to speak in the general chat channel! It was day two of leveling my shaman when I finally played around enough to figure out how to do that. And yes, that's after a few weeks of playing before BC came out.)

The best part for me, about playing my newborn shaman, is nobody could come up behind me and tell me I was doing it wrong. It was a great boost to my ego! So many Alliance players were so unfamiliar with shamans that everything I did was amazing. Within a week my draenei had far outstripped my tauren in levels, even with fighting the rest of the BC opening day crowds. If you were there, you know what I mean. If you weren't, I can't begin to describe just how bad it was that first day. The fighting over mobs was insane, at least on Moonrunner. The starting zone kill quests took at least half an hour, each, while waiting for mobs to respawn and hoping you could tag it first.

Or, maybe I just wasn't enough of an asshole back then. I'd sit back, philosophically, and wait for others. I was in no hurry.

Yeah. That didn't last long.

I started out enhancement, because that's what all the guides said to do for leveling. I got to my mid-20s and was getting a run through BFD, and a nice staff with loads of spirit dropped. It was only me, so I wasn't rolling against anyone. My first character had been a priest, so when I saw spirit I thought, "Oh, healer weapon!" and I respecced resto that night. /facepalm In retrospect I'm only glad I wasn't rolling against anyone and depriving a poor priest or druid of a good weapon.

I learned. I kept reading. I had a group I leveled with/instanced with in the evenings, and I healed them. It was pretty fun, and I didn't know just how slow I was. I thought resto was awesome because I could put my earth shield on myself, hit mobs all day, and end up with full health and mana by the end of the fight!

At 63 I went elemental.

Lightning Overload stroked my libido every time it procced. I was killing things so much FASTER now! I had no idea being a shaman could be like this! I suddenly felt powerful, and happy, and strong!

It was my spec of choice after that. Oh, I went resto a few months when I was learning to raid, because I wanted to be more helpful to the guild that took me in and showed me the ropes. But, there's something about playing an elemental shaman... *_*

When I started playing on beta, I still loved my ele shaman and flinging lightning bolts and knowing what totems to put down and when and and and...

And then...

...at some point, my level 72 epicced out shaman on beta was doing less damage than my freshly dinged 70 druid.

They'd introduced lava burst, and nerfed lightning bolt severely.

I went from thrilling at how amazing it felt to decimate my enemies with the all-powerful force of sky-fire, channeled through my body, laying waste to all who stood before me...to what elemental shamans are today.

I never reached lava burst.

I don't know if it was actually worth it.

I will some day. I swear.

Maybe after I level my warlock. She's actually fun.

But, right now, Shavra is still 72. And I don't know when I'll bother getting her higher.

Dear BG QQers

If you're too busy typing out your opus of how much we suck, you're not helping.

Also, if you're obnoxious enough, I won't heal you.

No love,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Tree

Ding!

I love the smell of sleep deprivation in the mornings.

Well, I do when the sleep deprivation has a good enough reason, at least. Meet my latest level 80. (Yes, the pic is vintage 70, standing outside of Kara and all, but I didn't think about doing a screen shot at 1am when I hit level, and I've always liked this pic.) I stayed up LATE last night, because when we went off to Naxx last night I was over 75% of the way there. Every Thaddius wipe, I was thinking to myself, "Self, this is time you could be spending leveling Inara. So step up your game, and don't miss the platform again, noob!" Yes, Self, I know that, thank you....

So, here we get to a character that proves a sense of obligation can sometimes be more motivating than having fun. That's not to say I don't love my little priest to bits and pieces! It's just that I still don't know how she ended up my third 80. It might have something to do with wanting to get it over and done with as fast as I could. Or, it could just be that when I get stubborn, things get done.

I mentioned my first priest a while back. He was a night elf, and he was my first character, and he was made of fugly. Oh, and he got deleted at 20.

When I started playing, I was in The Browncoats. A few people had characters named for Firefly, and since the good names were taken I decided to mix up the last names with who they were obviously paired with. I had a dwarf paladin named Kayleetam, which got confusing since our guild leader was named Kayleefrye. Anyway, that's where Inara was born. Inararnolds. She was supposed to be Inarareynolds, but the name wouldn't fit. So, I ended up with this mishmash that people only get when they squint and look at it sideways long enough. I wasn't sure how I'd like having a priest again, even if this one was a lot nicer on the eyes than the last one, so I didn't mind the mangled name. I knew what it was, and that's what mattered.

At first.

That's what mattered at first.

You know. Before I started meeting new people, expanding my horizons, and caring about whether my name was memorable (or even pronounceable) to people who might think about inviting me to more than one group.

But I digress...

I was never sure about my priest. I threw jewelcrafting at her just because I needed a character to be a jewelcrafter. It also seemed vaguely in character, since the character she was named after was rather classy, and WoW doesn't have "companion" as a profession.

Ultimately, jewelcrafting is what kept me from deleting her in the mid-20s. It's such a gold sink that I felt too guilty to delete her when I'd put so much into her profession. I even had a friend provide me with mithril he wasn't using, and that cinched it. That was such a rare and precious commodity that I couldn't disgrace his generosity by getting rid of my priest. In fact, now I was obligated to level her!

I had a few priestly mentors, as well. People I could look up to. People I could be intimidated by. Most of all, people who could help me and sympathize with how difficult it is to level a priest. Over the course of 70 levels, I tried all three specs. Disc was fun, but it just didn't click with me for some reason. It's got great talents in it, but it wasn't my favorite for leveling. Holy was a LOT of fun, and I loved the dps I could get, but I hated how inefficient the mana of the damage spells were while I was trying to level. I was a bit hesitant about shadow, because that's what EVERYONE did for leveling, and I wanted to be able to heal an instance at the drop of a hat.

Now, I'd already leveled a shaman to 70 at that point, and most of that was resto. I had three heal buttons. A big heal, a little heal, and a chain heal. When I started taking my priest into dungeons to heal them, I was a little overwhelmed.

Strike that.

I was a LOT overwhelmed!

There were so many buttons to pick from! Big heals, little heals, HoTs, group heals, bouncing heals, medium heals, efficient heals, quick heals...HELP! Add to that all the talk about downranking at the time, and I just wanted to crawl into a corner and rock back and forth until all the heal buttons went away.

That, and an interesting Underbog run, left me with shadow. I'd tried it a few times, but it was always one of those things I flirted with and felt guilty about afterward. I didn't want to be "that" priest. The selfish one who won't heal when there's a healer shortage. The noob priest who specs shadow just to piss people off. You know. THAT priest.

By then, though, I'd started raiding on my shaman. Lo and behold, I learned that shadow priests weren't necessarily a parriah. A good shadow priest was a spell-slinger's best friend! Come here, little purple mana battery, let me drink of your manalicious returns.... So, bolstered by the opinions of my newest set of friends, I took Inara through the last few levels of Outlands as a shadow priest, and I haven't looked back. You can't get me to try holy now. Get thee behind me, buttons! You want heals? How 'bout a little vampiric embrace while I lay on the DPS? How's that for heals? Sure, she was an aggro magnet, but the warlocks loved me.

Shadow. It's what's for dinner.

~~~

As an aside, Naxx last night was interesting. We dropped down to two healers. My tree, and a paladin friend of mine. It was a bit stressy, especially since I'm the type of healer that takes every death personally. I was beating myself up all through Loatheb even though we didn't lose anyone. I think the only Naxx deaths I don't take personally are the Heigan dance deaths and lag frogger deaths. Nothing dropped for me (Loatheb hates me, the shoulders will never be mine), and we had two DKs come in.

At the end of the night, I was nearly in tears. I cried on my pally friend's shoulders after the raid, lamenting and ranting about my poor neglected DK. He's a young teen player, so he's all full of "I'll find a way to fix it!" Much as I'd love to see it fixed, I'm not sure there is a fix. It's a dumb situation, my DK is supposed to be my main, my druid isn't even in the guild, but it doesn't matter to our raid leader, and we've been over it and over it and I don't want him to know just how much it upsets me. Why? Because I love my raid leader to little bits and pieces. I don't want to put him in a bad spot.

And, after the pally logged off and said he'd think of something, my raid leader whispered me and made me feel all warm and squishy. He praised my healing, going on and on about how awesome we were, and I couldn't stay mad. I still want to raid on my DK, where there's not so much pressure. Where I don't have to be on my toes at all times or PEOPLE DIE. But, at the same time, DPS never gets that warm and fuzzy feeling of being needed and that sense of a job well done.

Nothings more rewarding than being told you're an awesome healer.

Nothing.

D&D (Death and Decay)

Meet Weeinsanity, my baby Death Knight. Isn't she cute?

If you scroll down/look through the archives, you'll see how much I worried about creating a Death Knight in the first place. I AGONIZED over it for months, before I got a beta invite and got to try one "for free". It was a throwaway character, at first. I wasn't sure in the least that I'd be happy with the class, especially after the druid tanking fiasco I was still recovering from at the time. Top that off with never having gotten a melee dps class up past 20 and I was ready to resent having to take up a character slot with a death knight.

Fast forward to beta. Here I was, playing around on Northrend with my shaman, my main, my baby. I loved all my characters, but Shavra was special. We had something, some spark, that made all others pale in comparison. But, I couldn't play her all the time, especially since Northrend wasn't entirely stable. So, I bit the bullet and made a DK. First, I made her a gnome, since I knew I wouldn't be able to keep her after beta ended. No problem! Everybody hates gnomes. They're for punting. I just knew I'd never love a gnome so much that I'd be sad to get rid of her in a few months. Auregwynn was born, and terrorized Outlands whenever Northrend was unplayable.

I didn't think too much of her at first. Sure, the starting zone was fun enough. I knew I'd be making a DK on live, and I knew I wouldn't regret it. It was different, and it took a bit of getting used to, but on beta I had a lot of the best minds to pick from browsing forums or doing the occasional instance. Some people had gotten in on merit rather than luck (like me) and I was happy to learn at their feet!

In that time, shamans started getting the shaft. In particular, elemental shamans were being left in the dust, and Shavra was as elemental as they got. I played around with enhancement on her, in beta, and while I liked it well enough I just wasn't happy. So, I spent more and more time escaping to Auregwynn. With this fresh new class, the game was fun again! I got big crits, and I was learning something that would put me ahead of the game! I could be useful and innovative! Hell, that's part of what attracted me to Shavra in the first place. As I leveled, most Alliance players didn't know a thing about shamans, so I got to break new ground! I get a great deal of satisfaction from that.

I planned on sticking with the name Auregwynn on live, and playing a gnome had grown on me (like some sort of fungus, I suppose.) I sat around, waiting for Raven to bring home our copies of Wrath, and a gnome warlock friend of mine sat around talking with me about names and plans and stuff. I mentioned that the only other gnome I'd played before had been a warrior that got deleted at 20 named "Weeinsanity". He laughed over the name. My sis-in-law, Sindorella, also got a giggle out of it. And, in an instant, Auregwynn became Wee. In the back of my head she's still Auregwynn, and Wee is her nickname, but since I'm not on an RP server it's a little hard to get that idea across.

My DK is still my favorite. I love her little dead heart to bits and pieces. Oh, and trust me. She's quite dead. Er, undead. Whatever. I went with one of the dead faces to hammer home the point. Nothing like gnome rot in the morning!

Of course, everyone is playing a DK these days. Death Knights are the new "huntards". I'm awesome at playing her, of course, but it's hard to get a chance to show it. It's going to take a miracle for her to get a piece of raid gear. Seeing the inside of Naxx is just out of the picture. But, she's my main in my heart, where it counts.

Keep on striving, my wee little Wee. At least you're good for farming... /sigh

DROOD!!!

My altitis extends to specs, when it comes to my druid.

Ceraan was the character I had the hardest time getting into, that didn't end up getting deleted after a while. Being a druid at first was a little frustrating for my tastes. It's not so much that I died or anything. It's just that the first 30 levels were more tedius than any other character I've ever leveled. I can't even explain how. She languished at under-30 for a year and a half. I think I kept her mostly because she was pretty, and I really liked the character I named her for. I was in love with the idea of playing a druid, but the reality blew chunks.

When I hit 30, all of the sudden I had travel form. I could suddenly go faster, without having to wait to cast it! I could be running along and BAM! All the sudden I'm a cheetah! OMFG! What could be cooler than that? And, a whole ten levels before I'd get to ride! I'd loved the hell out of my shaman's ghost wolf ability, so druid travel form was like that only ten times better for me.

From 30 to 60 went by in a handful of weeks. I relied on rested exp to get me by, but other than waiting for my bar to fill with blue again I was blazing through levels. I spent more time on my druid than any other character. I'd stuck to feral below 30 for the extra speed to my regular kitty form, but at 30 I decided to switch to what I knew my strength was and do caster dps. So, balance it was!

Around that time, I also got a random whisper asking me to heal SM. I explained that I wasn't resto, since only masochists level as resto. (Remind me to tell you about my shaman some time...) They said it was okay, the tank was a bit high for the instance. So, away we went, with me in my scraped together caster gear. And, surprisingly, it wasn't a complete disaster. It also helped solidify my fondness for the class.

So, from about 30 to 60 I leveled as balance, and I LOVED being a boomkin. My SO, Raven, hates the boomkin dance with a passion, so I'd dance with him at every chance just to freak him out. I don't think I was very good at it, but I had fun.

Then came Outlands.

I got out there and decided to go resto for practice. I had an elemental shaman and a shadow priest at 70 at the time, and I wanted to have a healer at max level without having to switch either of them. It was great in theory! I knew another awesome druid who had done the same thing, when I was leveling my shaman. I'd been impressed by that druid's skills, and a bit intimidated by him, so I turned to him for advice.

"If you're going to level resto, go out and moonfire, hit yourself with rejuv., and then go bear and kill it."

...

I stuck with that for about three levels. What can I say? I'm stubborn.

Sometimes, I think I'm a masochist as well.

I was spending so much time in bear form, I figured I might as well go back to feral for leveling! I hated questing as resto, and I just couldn't stand waiting in LFG for a tank all the time. One under-leveled and failed trip through Mana Tombs later and I was switching my spec to feral. I headed back out to Zangar to sweep through quests I hadn't done, and I fell in love with mangle.

Mangle.

Say it with me.

Mangle.

It was OMGly. I was a happy kitty! I was even a happy bear! Feral rocked my world, and I couldn't imagine wanting to change, ever.

I hit 70 with all four kitty paws on the ground and running.

"Hey, Shavvy, wanna hop on your druid and tank for us? We're doing heroic UB. Got the key?"

oshit

I'd done a few regular instances as a kitty, and I wanted practice tanking. I had decent blue gear, at least. So, I pointed out that I didn't have practice tanking, and since these were my T5&6 geared guildies I warned them that they'd have to be VERY careful with their threat.

We wiped our way through, including a few runs out for repairs, but we beat that damned instance. I don't know how they found the patience for it. I was about ready to cry a few times. But, we got it done, and I learned a LOT. I improved by leaps and bounds, and stepped down to tank or dps some regular instances for the Kara key. Within a week of hitting 70, I was OTing Kara.

I actually didn't do too bad, and I continued to learn.

Mostly though? I learned that I didn't like being a bear tank. @_@ I didn't MIND it, but it intimidated me. I was all that was standing between nine of my best friends and certain doom. If my armor wasn't up to it, there wasn't a healer in the world who could keep me up. And if they died? It would be ALL MY FAULT!

meep

I switched to boomkin. And then went tree. And then back to boomkin. I couldn't decide! And then I saw that after the new talent trees came back pre-Wrath, my boomkin in blues was out-dpsing my spriest in T5 epics. UGH!

When Wrath came out, I went back to feral for the OMGly mangle until I hit 75. But, I went back to my plan of druid healing at 80, and for questing I switched from feral to balance for the last few levels, so I'd be picking spellpower items for quest rewards. Boomkins are FUN at later levels! I hit Naxx as a boomkin at first, and then I stayed true to my plan and went resto (without warning my raid leader first even though we had two dedicated healers. I may or may not have been trying to force him into taking my DK who was SUPPOSED to be my main.)

Tree druids really are a lot of fun, even if they're almost as stressy as bears. Healing and tanking are high responsibility jobs! But, they're also really rewarding, when you know you've done it right.

Of course, being the healer sucks, when you've screwed up and everyone starts bitching about repair bills.

But, I digress...

In the background of all this, there is one thing that makes druids AMAZING!

Flight form.

It's so FUN to walk out of Naxx as a tree, step off that ledge, and switch forms half way down! Remember how I mentioned that travel form made druids playable for me at 30? Flight form/epic flight form made druids AWESOME for me! Not having to dismount to pick flowers gives me warm fuzzies. Being able to fly away when a mob paths too close while I'm picking said flowers makes me giggle.

I love my druid, in all her forms, in all her specs, in all her glory. Stressy or not, playing a druid is amazing, if you can get past the drudgery of the first few levels.

Where do I begin?

It's been a while.

Not that anybody's reading this but me, but I shouldn't just abandon my baby blog! What a horrible fate! So, let's dust this off and try again.

Beta was awesome, and it sucked up all my time. I loved my baby DK Auregwynn so much that I made another gnome DK on live, and I named her Weeinsanity. I got Wee to 77 and...ran out of gold! I'm sorry, but I couldn't run around Northrend without my epic flying skill. I'd have cried. For serious.

In comes my druid to the rescue! She's an herbalist/alchemist, and she can make money in her sleep. I got her to 80 in no time, got my DK's epic flight and got her to 80 a week later...and since my druid hit 80 first, she's my designated raiding main.

Let me tell you, folks. This is NOT WORKING AS INTENDED!

If I could go back in time and change the order there, without the frustration of flying the friendly skies on a floating snail, I would in a heart beat. My druid isn't even in my raiding guild!

But, what can you do except go resto and use the DK for questing fun?

It's irritating, but it's life. Ah, the perils of altitis.

In better news, I got my warlock to 61 a minute before summoning the demon for her epic mount quest. If I get my warlock to 80 before my shaman, who used to be my "MOAST FAVORTIESTEST CHAR EVAR!!!" I'm going to have to laugh. A lot.

Yes, I am living proof that shamans can only be pushed so far. Shavvy is sitting at 72, and I'm just not thrilled with leveling elemental, even though that's her best gear set. Enhance is pretty fun, but I feel disloyal to my spec. Does that even make any sense? Oh well, maybe it'll actually be better at 75, like everyone keeps telling me. If I don't spend the next few weeks just pushing my warlock along.

There's my great, grand, grandiose and erratic update of the last few months. I swear I won't forget this place again, now that my WoW life is back on even ground.

Beta

Nothing shakes off those "I don't have anything to post about and nobody reads this anyway" blues like a dose of good news.

I got a beta invite for WotLK today. It's currently downloading (at 6% as I type) and I'm in a pretty bouncy mood. Yes, I can't wait I can't wait I can't wait!

I've copied my shaman and my druid so far. My shaman is decently geared (just started BT on Sunday and made it all the way to Akama), and my druid is a noob 70 that I just enjoy for the pure joy of enjoying her. I want to see what kind of difference there will be with the quests going in as a raider, and going in as a casual.

See? Without altitis I'd never have this kind of opportunity. ^_^

And, of course, I will be able to know difinitively if I should keep saving my last character slot on Moonrunner for a Death Knight, or if I should just make me a warrior or rogue and be done with it. It might satisfy some of my cravings for new characters, too. Bwahaha!

Gems of Yesteryear

http://www.gucomics.com/comic/?cdate=20021213

It's funny. This is a comic about EQ, from six years ago. But, if you scratched out the "Everquest" under the comic name, you could write in World of Warcraft, and it would still be the same.

Especially about the shamans. My main is a shaman, and I avoid the shaman forums because they're obviously marinating in the QQ juice.

Preparing for WotLK

A few months ago, I was frustrated when it was confirmed that Death Knights wouldn't get any special treatment as far as character slots are concerned. I'd had high hopes that I wouldn't have to delete any characters, but in the end my lowbies had to go. My sister-in-law had created Horde characters on my home server (pve), and I wanted to be able to play with her. I ended up deleting three Alliance characters and making two Horde characters, and I have one spot open for a Death Knight.

The empty space is taunting me. It used to belong to a draenei warrior that I'd loved playing. She was the first time a warrior really clicked with me, but I just never had time to play her.

Every time I log onto the game now, there's that button at the bottom. "Create New Character". Some days it's a sad reminder of how fun my little warrior was. Some days it's a shining beacon of hope that Death Knights will be SO much cooler, and I won't have to slog through the 'tween levels again. I've got four characters pre-Outlands right now, and I'm sick of leveling them.

Hell, I think the best thing about Death Knights is I won't have a level 50 quest telling me to go into the hell that is Sunken Temple. Someone once asked me if I wanted to go ST with them, and in a streak of honesty I said I'd rather have a root canal. I know it's cool and popular to hate Gnomer more, but ST is my bane. And I'll NEVER have to go there on a DK.

Maybe that, right there, makes deleting my warrior a thing worth doing....

A Little Bit Off Today

Real life is that thing that happens between raids.

Well, when you're not grinding, questing, or leveling...

(I'm having a bad day and don't feel much like rambling right now.)

Birth of an Alt-er

So, how does someone catch altitis?

Do you start the first day and say, "I think I'll make sure I hit max level as slowly as possible while I juggle a billion characters at once?"

Usually, no. I suppose if you've been playing MMOs for a while and are looking for an extra challenge you might say just that, but even then you've most likely developed the proclivity somewhere else.

I mean, I could blame it on advice I found in the WoW Wiki newbie guide. Try out one of everything to see what you like best. But, for me, that's only a small fraction of what made me the alt-hopping monstrosity I am today.

I remember the night I started playing WoW. There were so many choices, and they were all outside of my comfort zone. Well, back in high school, and a little bit beyond, I played AD&D a lot. My parents played basic D&D when I was little. I played other RPGs as well, but I was a mom now and hadn't really had a chance to play in a while, with a little kid to take care of. One of my favorite characters had been a cleric, and I'd always loved elves. I topped that off with a character from a novel I'd written (I'll get into that later) and my first WoW character was born.

Joulaim stood on the screen before me with the long, silvery hair swept back from his handsome features as I'd always pictured. Kinda. Well, not really, but I accepted that there were limitations in the existing framework, and I couldn't make him look like the paragon of male beauty I'd imagined for years, but he was there and in 3D for the first time. Excitedly I pressed the "enter world" button and set out to explore this new world with my imaginary friend of old.

Yea, verily, did I slay little piggies and kittens in an effort to cull the wildlife in the hinterlands of Teldrassil. I vanquished demons that didn't attack first and had a funny kind of flippy jump that made me giggle like the girl I am. I killed icky giant spiders that made my skin crawl and would come at me sometimes two at a time. I set aside the RP crap, since this was a normal server and I realized I was a stranger in a strange land. I picked flowers and mushrooms and wondered what kind of weird clerics they had in this game.

In other words, I learned the basic mechanics of the game, and set aside my delusions of what I thought the game should be. I forgot about getting into character and sat down to learn how to not drown in the shallow pools of the starting zone.

One of the earliest lessons I learned was that I couldn't stand how my character looked. I had this mental image of my Joulaim, and fugly wasn't part of it. Stupid Michael Jackson dance moves had no part in it. In fact, the Joulaim I had written was a mage, not a priest, and the only elves in the game at the time were too snobby for mages.

My dissatisfaction grew, so I picked avatars for other characters I'd written. One by one they didn't measure up, and the deletings began. My night elf priest didn't last past level 20 before I sighed and basically threw him away. (He was wearing a stupid bright orange pirate shirt he'd found on the corpse of some guy that was stupid enough to build a ship underground. It didn't look right. In fact, he looked like a 70s reject, with his shirt hanging open at the chest and old-man ponytail. The stunning silver hand long since faded in my mind's eye to a dull grey with all the wrinkles on his 'roid-rage face. He had to go.)

We knew some people on another server who played Horde, and I finally sighed and decided to see how the other half lived. I'd only chosen Alliance because that's what the boyfriend had been playing for a year and a half. I wanted to play with him, but at the same time I had other friends I wanted to play with. So, while he was at work I created my first shaman. He was a big, burly tauren who wasn't named after anything I'd played before. He was all new, and peace-loving, and totems were the shit. Shaman was where it was at!

But, I couldn't play with Wolf Cub (my boyfriend), while I was on my shiny new toy. The solution was coupled with the best timing in history. A week and a half after my tauren was created, the expansion came out and I was ready to take the plunge and be an Alliance shaman.

I'd found my calling, or so I thought at the time. I played with the Wolf Cub and other RL friends in the evenings, but I'm a mom, and I'm a writer. I had a lot of free time during the day, and I wanted to catch up to their mains who were already sitting at 60. I'd play my shaman while they worked, or I'd play around and create something new in my bordom. I'd wake up with new ideas for new characters and new names. Some of them lasted, and some of them went the way of Joulaim in his bright orange clown shirt and orange fingered gloves.

I thought, at the time, that my shaman would be my main, and I could quit alting at any time.

I was so young and naive.

Hi, my name is...

If you're not sure how to complete that sentence in game, you might be an altaholic.

Hi. I'm Shavra. And Inara. And Ceraan. And Augr. And Ahrianna. And Grr (even though he's long since been deleted). And a few other in-game names on various servers on the World of Warcraft.

I'm a raider, and a soloer. I'm a grinder. I'm a social butterfly, and I'm a wallflower. I sometimes play different characters when I'm in different sorts of moods. I haven't met a WoW class I don't like, even though I haven't managed to get a rogue past level 10. Strike that, change it. I haven't managed to get a rogue up to level ten. I enjoyed those levels, though. When I've got time, I want to make another rogue and try again, but I'm just so busy lately...

When you're an altaholic, though, you never have time. There's raiding. There's instancing. There's talking with guildies. There's grinding mats for whatever you're crafting. There's grinding gold for whatever you can't craft. There's leveling. There's leveling. And finally, there's always more leveling to do.

Some days, I spend five minutes trying to figure out which alt I want to work on leveling that day. Am I in the mood to do dailies with lightning speed on my elemental shaman? Do I want to pick flowers on my druid, so I have pots for the next raid? Do I want to afk while I take slow chunks out of the health of everything around me on my prot pally? Do I want to hide behind my pet on my warlock or hunter? There's so much to do, and the game never ends.

So, who do you want to be today?