Lessons

Yesterday, I had an interesting thing happen to me.

I was in Dalaran, taking a look at the cost of the mounts Mei Francis sells. I was there because I’m getting close to 150 mounts (I believe I’m at 126 right now) and looking for the easy ways to fill out my collection.  Besides the obvious time I need to spend at the Argent Tournament and on Netherwing rep (which will net me a cool 17 mounts, since I already have one of them from the Tournament) the purchasable mounts immediately came to mind.  I need to work on Shado-Pan and finish out Klaxxi rep, but a few purchased mounts would certainly help.

But, mounts are just the reason I was there. While I was there, a paladin whispered me, asking relatively politely if I could lend him* the money for cold-weather flying. I asked if anyone in his guild could possibly help, and he replied that no, they were mostly lower level (which I verified. I’m like that.) 

I was about to say no. But, I was out and about, spending thousands on my mount habit. He promised to pay me back. I decided to pay it forward, and went ahead and gave him 450. I know how this sort of thing works, and I didn’t want the poor boy to be without pocket money. I can pick that much cash up in an afternoon of dailies.

After we parted company, I asked him if I could ask about his toon name. And he said I could. So I asked Is it supposed to be parsed as Jo is gay, or Jois Gay? He explained that it was actually an insult to his brother.

After I digested that, and swallowed the rage that always comes up when I see gay being used as a perjorative, I said. You know, you could inadvertently hurt a lot of people’s feelings running around on a toon with that name.

And shortly thereafter, he asked if there was any way for him to change his toon’s name.   I told him the only surefire way I knew of was to pay for a name change. But later, I wondered if it would work for me to report his name… if that would get him a free pass?  But I really don’t know if just one person reporting him would work.

*I use he/him/his because the toon was a male model.

The Great UI Overhaul, Unit Frames (Part 3)

Where we left off

Unit Frames, or What Is that Mob Up To?

Until recently, I’d always used a large addon like Perl Unit Frames to do this work, but I always found them to be slightly buggy in some way or another, so I went for something that’s both been around the block and has good reviews. You know, or used what Sona selected after she did the research. We play to our strengths, right?  So I selected Shadowed Unit Frames.

As I mentioned before, I like having my character on the left of my bars and my target on the right. Focus and Focus Target just above, and target-of-Target under my target.  Since I’m also dealing with my own pet, I chose to put Sionnach underneath Breige.  Setting those up was easy, I just placed them where I wanted to, selected how I want to see buffs and debuffs, and away we went.  SUF has a few settings worth playing with, like what you want to hide from Blizzard’s UI (say, your cast bar and buffs) and what to show on each frame’s info panel. The nice thing about SUF is that you can use global settings to set up a whole bunch of things the same way, then tweek them individually later.

The next thing to tackle in SUF is party and raid frames. I wanted both to take up the same space on my hunter, since generally I’m not doing any healing, so 25 small frames work just fine for me.  A few selections, and then some sizing was all it took. Be sure, of course, to select when to show or hide each type of frame so that you don’t get overlap. That wouldn’t be helpful.

There were a bunch of additional frames available to me, as well, like tanks and bosses. I wasn’t sure how I wanted that to go at first, so I decided to put them on the left over my chat window. I’ll see how often I need them, and suppress them later if they become a problem.

Shadowed Unit Frames with one Party Member

Once SUF was done, I took a look at Vuhdo, since on my shaman and priest, I use Vuhdo for my party and raid frames for the click functions.  One of the big advantages of SUF is that you can use profiles. I did the bulk of my work in the default profile, but moving over to Sruith, I started a new profile by copying from default. Then I supressed party and raid frames, and set up Vuhdo very similarly. And, of course, set up my spell clicks!

From what I’ve learned over the last 8 years of WoW playing, those two things are the meat and potatoes of my interface. Buffs, maps, and functionality addons come and go depending on my interests and their dependability.

In the next segment, we’ll talk about a few of those functional things, including maps and chat.

 

All I Want For My Birthday

Birthdays have always been a big thing in my family, though they are becoming less so* as we get older.  That, however, does not preclude me from wanting to have a birthday party. Since I just held a party at home a couple of weeks ago, I’d like, instead, to have an Azerothian birthday party.   Because one of the things that I really want is a shot at a Violet Protodrake to call my very own. 

So here’s your official invitation to my birthday party:

Date: February 9 (the actual day of my birthday, even!)

Time: 7:00 pm Central (GMT-6) until I get too tired to tank!

Where: Azeroth, Alliance side

Who:  You! If you’re not already on Ysera or hooked up with me via battletags, you should do that – Shoryl#1300. Also, your friends are welcome – up to a nice 25 person raid size

What: Northrend raids, starting with Obsidian and Ruby Sanctums, then hitting up as many of the other raids as we can get in.  I’m thinking Naxxramus after that for a shot at some pets, and then Ulduar.

Note: I’m sort of kidding about the drake. Yes, I do want one. No, I’m not going to demand everyone else skip on rolling, or throw a temper tantrum if one of you lovely folks wins it instead.  

Typical loot rules apply – need on things you really want, greed on the other stuff.

*Except, of course, that in my household, birthdays are very important again, because we need more of them.

The Great UI Overhaul, Bars (Part 2)

How often do we see this UI?

Yes, that is a lion. We dinged 25 after Sona noticed we were within a million points of achieving max guild level!  But, back to the task at hand.

Creating Something From Nothing

Someone commented on a Youtube video (that was linked by someone else, and now I cannot find it!) that it is generally easier to build up from nothing than to chisel away at default settings. So very true. And so, here you have it, folks, the default UI.  The first addon I installed was Bartender4. As I mentioned in my last post, Bartender has been with me for some time, probably since shortly after I stopped using one of the larger addons (Perl Unit Frames and similar predecessors).

Bartender has some wonderful functionality, but it’s primary purpose for me is moving and resizing my bars.  Sona uses a two bar approach to her actions. Those bars are placed directly under her feet, making them easily accessible.  I decided I’d try that method, though Breige gets three bars – the top bar is actually a combination of two bars: The pet bar and a 4-button bar that has pet commands that come from my resources.

I was suddenly a little sad when I realized a very useful ferocity pet talent didn’t make it onto the action bar, and to be only functional, I would need to remove the play command. Being able to have a dancing pet is too much fun, so instead I removed the defensive status button that I never use. (I would have removed the attack button, but, well, I actually use that one!)  So I urge all you pet wranglers to take a look at your pet’s spellbook to be sure they have the right abilities out on their bars!

I have additional bars out, which run the bottom of my screen. These contain the buttons that I use when I’m not in combat, like professions, my hearthstone mount and pet summoning, and so on.   I current have my XP and Reputation bars stacked on top of them to make a nice smooth break, but I may be moving my XP bar to just below my two action bars (clearly, much smaller!) as I only reference it lightly.

Yay! Pretty Bars!

Next up, Unit Frames!

The Great UI Overhaul, The Start (Part 1)

Sona mentioned today that she wanted to overhaul her UI, with some very salient points about addons she doesn’t really use, and addons that she thinks might be causing her some issues.  I thought a bit about my own UI, and decided that it is perhaps time for an overhaul of my own.  I’m going to chronicle this process because, well, it’s a handy thing to do on a blog, now, isn’t it.

Where We’re Starting

First, let’s look at what I have. For this exercise, I’m using Breige’s UI, because it’s more thrown together than Gurdrid’s. (As in, less put-together, and more crap-I-need-to-see-my-pet)

There are several things I like about my UI:

I like the openness of the middle area, really allowing me to see the game I’m playing.

I like my four bars grouped above my rep/experience bar, laying out my abilities in a good order.

The location of the minimap works for me.

I like having my character, focus, and target (and target of  target) set up in a nice triumvirate.

Omen is there, but generally out of the way, which I also like.

There are several things  I need to fix about my UI:

The bags are over the top of a group of three bars that I use for out-of-combat buttons, it can also cover up parts of my quest log when it gets too big. This is definitely sub-optimal.

The bottom of my screen is a bit overcrowded, leading to a tendency to not see things coming up behind me.

Stuff feels like it’s just floating. I need something to draw the various elements together.

Most of my party (and my pet) are way over on the left side, this is not useful.

Addons Now

Here’s my surprising list of addons, along with a few comments:

Ackis Recipe List:  I use this as a checklist for when I want to go poking around for patterns. I find it useful to have on my crafting toons, though it is by no means a requirement.

Adibags: My bag addon that, now that it is updated, usually doesn’t lose things for me. The new mobile nature of the addon does sometimes give me fits when selling, though, as it will dynamically change the location of items I wish to sell mid-click, causing me to pay much more attention to my vendor clicking.

Auctionator:  This (or something like it) is a must-have for my bank toon. Most of my other toons don’t have it installed.

Bartender4:  The basis of my bar-moving functionality, I’ve been using bartender for a really long time, and really like it.

Battle Pet – Quality Notifier: Sure, the battles tell you the quality of the pets you’re fighting, but they don’t get compared to your list of captured pets, providing a handy (Upgrade) or (Not Owned) notation!

Castbars: Used to keep track of important things like healing spells that the enemy might be casting.  Also for timing interrupts.

Gatherer/Gatherer HUD: I like gatherer addons when I’m farming. They assist with route planning as well as things like the best zone for a particular resource.

Mogit: Do we really need to talk about the transmog addon?

Move Anything:* The addon does what it says, but… We think it might not be playing nice with other addons, like Tidyplates. 

Prat 3.0: My preferred chat addon

Raven: I use this on my casters for watching cast times and minimizing lag downtimes.

Sexymap: Used to skin and move the map. I likes me my square maps.

Silverdragon: For tracking Silverdragons, duh!

Slidebar: I don’t actually use this addon (It came with Gatherer), though I think I might start, it will make my map look tidier.

Tidyplates/Threatplates: This seems to be buggy as all heck for me. It works on some toons and not on others. Usually not on the ones I care about more. Go figure.

Vuhdo: I use this addon on healers and other classes with click-on-player utility. Like Sruith and Sveala.

WoWhead Looter: Because more information is good, right? Besides, I use WoWhead all the time, why not send them information to help their database.

* I forgot to include move anything when I originally posted. Sorry ’bout that.

Where oh Where Has the Spirit Gone?

This was not a rhetorical question a couple of days ago.

You see, on Saturday, I saw Navi get online, and I greeted her (I also noticed she wasn’t on Dath’remar, but I won’t give away where she was… just in case). She said hello, and hopped offline, then got back on almost immediately. I took a peek at my friends list, and she was on Ysera.

She told me I had to stay put while she farmed a little money.  I told her I could easily meet her, but she said that I wasn’t allowed to work for it.

So I waited. Well, truth be told, I completed an achievement, which was what I was working on anyway, but that is neither here nor there.

Then it dawned on me that she was farming money to send me mail. At about the same time that she said I would have to wait an hour. Well, none of this waiting business… I immediately invited her to join the guild, which she accepted.

What was in the mail, you might ask?  Well, she sent me a Pandaren Earth Spirit!  I was very excited! What a lovely Christmas present! I went about clearing out the rest of my mail, deleting the messages as I went…

And then I opened my bags, and I could not see the Pandaren Earth Spirit.  I run a bag add on, so I was able to perform a search, but it showed me nothing.  I was certain I had deleted the Spirit.  So off I went to put in a ticket.

Daestra, the GM who got my query, explained that when you delete a message from a friend that contains an item, it just gets mailed back to the friend.  I was relieved. So off I went to Dath’remar to send Navi a message. There’s now an orc Warlock named Shoryl. I’m sure it’s Shoryl’s (the Paladin) dark side.  Navi wasn’t on, so I farmed a little cash, and sent her an ingame mail explaining the situation.

When Navi did get on, she rushed back to Ysera to discover… she didn’t have the mail.

I created a second ticket, and Bahkteva told me this: I do show one being sent from Navimie on the 22nd, however that spirit was received by you and pulled out of the mail not deleted. It is currently in your inventory in the 18th slot of the Embersilk bag in the second bag slot.

I picked up this email at work, so as soon as I got home, I logged in, turned off my bag addon, and looked. There she was. And now there she is, appropriately named:

Notice the horns not unlike those of a tauren

Thank you, Navi!

 

American Politics and a Site Update

Yesterday Americans went to the polls to vote for their leaders, including the president.  If you’ll pardon the RL stuff for a moment, I just have to talk to someone, and we’re not allowed at work.

In Minnesota, where I live, there was a consititutional amendment initiative to ban same sex marriage. We became the first state in the nation to oppose such a ballot initiative.  Democrats also swept through and took many state offices. Sadly (to me) Michelle Bachman is still in office. I couldn’t vote againt her, I don’t live in her district.  

Edit: Also, as a nice segue into more WoW related news, a Maine Senatorial candidate; whom the GOP tried to slander by saying she plays WoW; won her seat! There is one of us publicly in office! Whoot! (Though she plays Horde, as I recall).

In WoW blogging news, I’m in the process of updating my site. If you haven’t been by recently, you might want to take a look. I think it looks brighter, and if you can’t guess where the background picture was taken, I suspect you’re new to the game.   I’m still in the process of converting a few things, like widgets, but if you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to add them here. I’ll take them into consideration as I continue the update process.

Intention and Reality

Before Mists came out, I laid out a plan for what I thought I wanted to do. I knew that this plan was what I “thought” I wanted to do, even though I’m sure I spoke in concretes. I based my thoughts on nearly 8 years of experience and, I’ll admit it, some regrets.

The first thing I wanted to do, though, was make sure that Shoryl and Sonaira got as much play time as Sonaira wanted (with the exception of when Gurdrid hit level 89. That last level is always a drive for me. It’s just too exciting!)  Neither Sona nor I expected that we’d spend the entire first day of the expansion on Sona and Shoryl. We both thought Sona would want to do something other than sit in her computer chair and play WoW all day. It’s just the way she’s wired. We both accept that; and we make appropriate accomodations for it. (After all, I have two paladins)   I think I’ve continued to cover that. We’ve learned that Sona and Shoryl are going to RP their way through Pandaria.

To that end, as best as I could, I have remained unspoiled. I didn’t read quests much on Gurdrid. I ignored the comments the NPCs made in my chat window.  I couldn’t miss the themes, but I could skip the details, and I did.

Second on my list was to get Gurdrid to 90 as fast as I could; and get her into heroics. My theory was that if I could get into heroics quickly, I could learn them while people still had patience, and have a chance at having some confidence tanking them. Well, when I finally got a f ull set of Pandaria tanking gear, I queued for a normal (at around level 86); and I had a mediocre-to-poor experience. So, not so much with people having patience. I haven’t set foot in a dungeon since. The asshattery outside in the world has made me think it’s just not worth it to do anything with strangers.

After that,  I was going to work on getting my other toons leveled, so that I could have a complete set of professions at max level and start cashing in.  That hasn’t worked out quite as planned, either. Breige and Kerridwen are trundling along out in the Jade Forest, skinning, herbing and mining – with the fruits of Kerridwen’s labor going to Sveala, and Breige working on her own leatherworking. But they’re sort of held back by me not wanting to spoil Shoryl and Sonaira’s trip. So they are only questing as far as Sona and Shoryl.  Since they’ve got professions that require killing things and/or that give them experience on their own, they are doing some grinding. But grinding is a slow way to level.

Instead of my best-intended plans, what I’m doing is pretty straight-forward:

Shoryl comes out to play when we have a chunk of time for Sona and Shoryl (we had about an hour one day, and got three quests done because we wanted to thoroughly explore Tian Monestary). They did finish Jade Forest last night, and have moved on to the Valley of Four Winds. They’re really really sorry, and hopefully Yu’lon understands why we came back, and killing Mogu is a little bit of atonement.

Gurdrid is hanging out doing dailies. She’ll happily tank for anyone on her friends list (Shoryl#1300 is my battletag), but going it all alone is not going to happen for a while at least. Her order of business has been: Tillers, Order of the Cloud Serpent, Anglers. She’ll look at the others soon, but for now, she’s enjoying these. She just made it to exalted with the Tillers, but she has no best friends yet.

Pet Battles! I didn’t really expect to want to do these; but, you know, I had to try them out. Sometime in the first day I took a look at them and got hooked. I started out trying to find rares of each pet, and now I’m content to only find rares of the interesting ones. (Last night I picked up my rare Tiny Twister just before bed. I think I shall name him Andrew.) I have my first level 10 pet; and I’m finding that pet battling goes nicely with archaeology – even though I frequently can’t fight where I dig. It keeps me flying myself around.  I still find pet battling a diversion from regular WoW activities, rather than an activity to sit down and pursue. But eventually, I’ll need a Minfernal or various other hard to acquire pets for the achievements, and I’ll spend more time on it.  But until then, I’m just going to blithely wander about fighting where I want to, and hunting rares only for the cutest of pets.

And on a final note, since it’s Wednesday, I do plan to do LBDs tonight. I’m one achievement away from my Red protodrake, so a trip into Violet Hold will definitely happen – but then we’ll either look at other protodrake achievements for other people; or we’ll head into Cata dungeons to see what we can start getting there.

An Order To Become Friends

When a knock came at the door of our guild house, those few of us sitting in the common area were unsettled. Who would bother us at such an hour? Certainly not an applicant. Something else must be afoot. Shoryl answered, her sword hidden from view behind the door. I slunk low under the table, prepared to pounce. Sonaira seemed to be polishing her shield. It was not something she did except after battle.

A page in the livery of the House of Wrynn stood outside, “Is this the Guild House of Higher Authority?” he asked. Shoryl nodded, and opened the door wider. I lay down under the table as the boy came inside. He brought a scroll out of his coat, “This is a call for all those able bodied and of 85 seasons to come to the castle. More information is in the missive. Shoryl, Sonaira, and Gurdrid, King Wrynn has asked to speak with you personally!”

He wanted to speak with the paladins. Not just the human ones, but all three of the paladins who made up our upper ranks. I yawned loudly, startling the boy a little. Shoryl said, “We’ll wake Gurdrid and we’ll be along to the keep as soon as we are able.”    The page nodded, and ducked out into the night, likely to summon more heroes.

I padded out from the table and changed back to my elfish form. Shoryl looked at me and said, “Go and get Gurdrid, if you would.” Sonaira was already putting on her armor, and Shoryl had taken the polishing cloth down from its shelf above her family’s ceremonial armor.   “And when you’re done, get yourself ready, too, Kerridwen.”

“Who’ll stay here to keep things…” I began to ask. I didn’t really want to go adventuring. Being a druid was harder than many thought. I hated battle. The senseless death.  The smells of blood and fire. Shoryl just stared at me, “all right.” I responded glumly as I climbed the stairs to get the sleeping dwarf. Hopefully they would get whisked off in a hurry to do whatever the King’s bidding was, and I could take my time following after. There were plenty of things I could do from Stormwind that would assist them!

As the three paladins left the guild house, Shoryl shot a look over her shoulder, “Wake or find the others. Give them the page’s message!” It was a momentary diversion, finding everyone could be challenging, as the members of the guild were spread all across Azeroth, and a few were on Draenor as well.

~~~

It had been 10 days since Sonaira, Shoryl and Gurdrid had left for what seemed to be a new continent. They’d sent mail, saying they were on an important mission. Gurdrid was faring very well in the new land. I had been rallying the others, always coming back to the guild house to take care of whatever general business there was, trying to get out of following along.  And then a page came late in the evening with a missive for me from King Wrynn.  I was to go to Pandaria. I was to find his son. Why me? Had Gurdrid and the others failed – certainly they’d been looking for the King’s own son? Had something awful happened to Anduin, and Varian wanted a little known druid from a tiny guild to blame it on?

Unfortunately, I had sworn my allegience to the Alliance, and as a daughter of Elune I had to answer the specific summons. I could no longer pretend to support from home.   And so I reported to the air ship, and began my tour of duty. 

The flight to the uncharted continent was uneventful until the last moments, when we discovered Horde gunships and a base of operations. The orders went out, and I found myself on one of those flying contraptions, bombing the Horde. A brand new continent to explore, and all we could do was blow up our age old enemies?   When the order came in to fall back to the airship, I was more than happy – but then the ground assault was started. I would have taken to my own wings then, but the air currents were different. I wasn’t sure I could actually fly. So I took a parachute and went over the edge.  The warring continued in the same old manner as it had for generations, until Operative Rell was overcome by some strange force.

Moments later, a huge serpentine dragon carrying a native of the land arrive. The native admonished us for bringing our negative emotions with us, and I saw their manifestation all around. I fought my way to the nearby village, where I began to learn of the tranquility that ought to be in this place. A tranquility that I longed for.  At that moment, I vowed to do whatever I could to change the course of what we were doing to this land.  

For the moment, though, trying to stop the Horde was the best I could do. They’d stolen cubs of the locals away, and so I agreed to a mission to stop them. That mission went well, except the stupid flying contraption got shot down on my way out, leaving me – a druid who should be perfectly capable of flying on her own – floating to ground in another parachute! The indignity! 

I spoke quietly that evening with some of the locals, learning how to pick their herbs correctly, as well as discern their ores from the normal rocks of the land. And I learned of their great dynasties. I longed to explore this new land. But I had a duty, and this duty I must fulfill.

The following day was spent looking for Admiral Taylor, and when I did find him, I learned of the Hozen and the Jinyu. The Hozen are monkey-men, and attacked us on sight. The Jinyu a more tranquil race of fish-men, whom we were able to help to some degree. Once Admiral Taylor was found, we went about befriending the Jinyu. While I was helping them re-acquire familial artifacts from the hozen, Rell and his team of operatives went scouting.  When they came back, Rell was near dead, but they’d found Amber, another operative. They explained what had happened; and Rell gave me an order that, even though he was a fellow Night Elf, I had to refuse: Befriend the Jinyu on behalf of the Alliance. 

It wasn’t so much that he asked me to befriend them, for I would certainly help them in their struggles. But arming them, preparing them for a war with the hozen – with the Horde – I wanted no part of. Had Rell not learnt from his own taint on the docks? The Sha would destroy this place if we continued to make war. No, I would have no part of that… and so I disappeared into the wilderness.

Typifying Gamers is Bad

To start,  I want to say that disagreeing with individual views does not fully shape my opinion of an individual. Now that we have that out of the way, I was reading my blog roll, and ran across this guest post on Sugar & Blood. Matty also rebutted it; and while I am not necessarily going to have a full rebuttal here, these two posts did get me to thinking, and talking with my dearest, who reads a great deal more in the feminist circles than I do.

Where I’m Coming From

I think that it is important for people to understand how I categorize myself, or, more to the point, my history.  I am in my 40s. I’ve been a video gamer at some level for over 30 years. My first computer games were on a Wang Desk computer.  I both read and ran dial up BBSes in the 80s. I’ve rarely played console games, and generally never seriously. I used to be a huge fan of turn-based games like Civilization (II was my favorite).  I’ve been playing WoW for nearly its entire run, without a break, because I’m the kind of gamer who likes to play the same game until I’m utterly bored with it.

A significant number of people with those or similar credentials are male. I know this because the majority of those who I have been in contact with during those decades, up until the last one, are male. However, while a significant number of these individuals are male, that does not mean that there are no women, or that those women’s goals are either similar or completely different from the men who have been gaming for decades.

The Problem With Typification

When you start using typifying statements, you do several things. First, you will categorize people without a full picture. Second, you will label people incorrectly because you don’t have that full picture.  And most importantly, when you go far enough in those statements, you stop seeing the exceptions to your own rules.

How many of us complain about the stereotype that gamers all live in their mother’s basements, can’t get a date, and have no idea how to interact socially – regardless of gender?  Xak even does this himself, while discussing why women use overly sexualized behavior in game to get attention from men with low self esteem and poor socialization skills.

Xak then discusses his categories, which all make assumptions about where these women get their behavior. I presume (or at least I hope!) that he does not ask these women questions about their weight, sexual orientation, gender orientation, or a myriad other things that would actually give him a more complete picture. But here’s the thing… how often does he run a random dungeon with a woman and never realize she is female because it just doesn’t come up?  Is he asking every random player if they’re female?    If a woman isn’t typifying one of his categories, he’s probably paying attention to their ability as a player, not their gender. It’s very difficult for me to not assume that anyone who doesn’t fit his first or third categories isn’t automatically placed in the second – even though they may not be hiding their gender at all.

I took a glance at my friends list in WoW, which I am not going to share due to the number of RealID individuals in it.  Of 31 individuals, 13 of them are women.  I do not really know how most of them play, but I do know that several of them are feminists.  I also know several of them are guild leaders, raiders, or raid leads. On top of that, there are a variety of professionals, including doctors, technology professionals, and the like.  None of them behave like slutty insecure nymphos.

Sexual Behavior In Game

Even more than the categoires Xak assigns, is the accusation in the title that women in WoW are slutty insecure nymphos.  For starters, Nymphomania is an actual psychological diagnosis. It is more than a little presumptuous to accuse the entire female player base of having the same psychosis.

Second, the pot should not be calling the kettle black. To whit; a couple of weeks ago, I was on my warlock in Loch Modan. The toon is a femaleHhuman.  As I was minding my own business turning in quests, two players; one on a male Worgen and the other on a male Dwarf; started to flirt with my character and mock fight over her. I tried to rebuff them gently, but they would have nothing of it. I tried to rebuff them more firmly, but they just tried harder. I ended up hearthing, flying to Ironforge, and doing a few dailies in the hopes that they would get bored and move on, so I could go back to playing the game.

Who in that scenario was being slutty? My toon’s gear was quest rewards, and at that level, they’re not all that. I had not interacted with them before they started, so they had to make assumptions about the player behind the character.   And no, I realize that I cannot assume that those players were men, nor did I. The judgment that I made about those players is that I didn’t want to interact with them. They went onto my ignore list, and I went about my business.

Claiming that a woman who shows any sexual preference, flirts, or otherwise indicates that she has any sexual identity at all is a slut is the height of double-standards. Also, I have seen several situations where men will start flirting with someone who is known to be female, to turn around and call her a slut the moment she either turns a cold shoulder to them, turns up the heat higher than they want, or starts to flirt with someone else. And, of course, the drama that is started by this sort of behavior is often blamed on the woman, regardless of anything other than her existence in the situation.

TL;DR

The long and short of it is that when you start putting people into categories, you stop seeing the individuals, especially the exceptions.