Release Week, and WoW Geekery
First of all this Monday morning, there’s a post (with a giveaway) over at Deadline Dames announcing the release of The Eternal Kiss, a YA vampire anthology I’m in with tons of great authors. My own story, Ambition, is a very dark little tale. Almost too dark. It just barely snuck in.
This week is chock-full of Dame releases, including my own Redemption Alley, the next in the Jill Kismet series. In many ways Redemption Alley is my favorite Jill book. We get to see Jill dealing with things on her own, her growth as a character to get to this book has been good for me to see, and the last five words? They make me cry every time. Much of this book was heartwrenching for me, especially as I was writing it in what I suspected (and was right about it being) a calm before the storm in my personal life.
Caution: I am about to geek about WoW, for those of you who asked about my delirious tweetage of finally hitting level 80…
About World of Warcraft…the toon I just hit 80 on is a death knight. Don’t sneer–I got a nelf hunter to 77 but when I tried to transfer her to my new account (long story short: the UnSullen wanted to do dungeons with me) various hijinks occurred. I ended up just bagging that character and leveling another nelf hunter to 58 while playing a belf pally with the UnSullen. Then I switched to a belf DK to see what all the fuss was about, and so I could quest with the UnSullen’s high-level orc shaman.
Much to my surprise, I found out that I liked playing a melee character. I went with unholy because of the movement speed and the ghoul pet, but I might double-spec in Frost for tanking. And I did get myself a Titansteel Destroyer. I might name it “Pain.” Or something even more terrifying, like…”Fluffy.”
I don’t give out my character names, because I like to be anonymous on WoW. I tend to quest alone and only dungeon with the UnSullen and his buddies, for the same reason that I pick male toons and shift them to female when I’m high-level. For some reason, people don’t bother male toons as much, so I can play solo and not get a lot of grief. I play WoW at the end of long days so I can avoid thinking and have clear-cut, nonambiguous goals and a sense of achievement when I reach them–even if those goals are purely illusory pixels.
Plus, with a girl toon in dungeons, I found myself trying to smooth things over and make people get along. (It was worse when I leveled my nelf priest to 48 before several patches–priests sucked and I had to be everyone’s effing therapist or mother in dungeons.) I don’t feel that need with a boy toon.
But now that I’ve reached the magic 80 I figure I can have a girl toon. Being level 80 means not having to be everyone’s therapist–at least until the next expansion comes out. *snork*
This concludes my WoW geekery. Heh.
My semi-vacation is over, and I have a short story to finish and another one to revise before final submission this week. I think if I keep the goals small and attack them in bite-size chunks it will be easier. Because I don’t want my vacation to be over. I’m not nearly done goofing off yet. Waaaah.
It’s going to be up in the 100s this week, and high humidity. Hopefully I can get out to Target and buy another couple fans. I might buy a second air conditioner, too. This is just unlivable. 80 degrees before 11AM. Ugh. We are drinking gallons of iced sun tea.
Over and out.
Related posts:
July 27th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
“I play WoW at the end of long days so I can avoid thinking and have clear-cut, nonambiguous goals and a sense of achievement when I reach them–even if those goals are purely illusory pixels.”
It delights me that someone else derives the same psychological satisfaction from video games for exactly the same reasons that I do.
July 28th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
I don’t know if its the fact that I’m either a DPS or a Tank, but nobody bothers me when I’m out soloing on any of my female characters. Some have made the mistake of thinking Paladin = Healer with me in the past. Then I tell them what my mana pool is, and they quickly find somebody else.
I’m counting down the days to Redemption Alley. Maybe I should go pre-order it, so I can have it the first day its out… or talk my husband into a trip to Borders.
July 30th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Wow – grats on 80! I run a few toons, but my main is a female nelf restoration druid. I totally get where you’re coming from with female toons – when /shoo doesn’t work, I just end up hearthing. >:|
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Congrats on 80! My first toon just made lvl 78 this morning (fdwarf “huntard”). Funny you should mention about smoothing out dungeon runs — exact thing happened last night in DTK — tank and healer were fighting about how best to tank the dungeon. We finally made it through the thing and I vowed to myself I would never accept another dungeon run with those 2 toons in the same group — LoL. Live in the PNW and you know it is hot when it is too hot to play WoW.