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.

 

 

First Impressions

You may have gathered from my last post that I think Pandaria is gorgeous.  I still do. I’ve already taken more screen shots of the world than I have in any previous content. Ok, so part of that is because I’ve only recently started taking screen shots at all. But still.

The World

I am so instantly immersed in the world; even starting with Varian’s anger at his son disappearing.  I’m even pleased that Captian Taylor got promoted. He was a pretty good chap in Vashj’ir.   The lead in; that includes an Admiral who has it in for the Horde for what they did to Southshore; and the moments that include payback, as it were, for Theramore are important to get me riled for the war.  And then there’s the beauty of the world. It’s so enjoyable.

 Questing

We did have a bit of trouble initially with the mechanics of aerial combat and too many people being around, so Taoiseach and Ardrhian went about their start.

Garrosh is not making friends among his elite. Where Varian is sending in a crack unit, Garrosh is making you part of his war machine. And worse, Garrosh’s plans involve conquering the new continent, even though he has no clue what’s there.  Varian… wants to find his son.

I haven’t gotten much past learning Anduin’s fate on the Alliance side, either on Shoryl or on Gurdrid; but the story is unique. The Alliance are complimented for precision. And hey, we did a nice little quest hub and picked up another exalted reputation – sadly it’s not one that counts towards United Nations. 

But I look forward to questing – something that wasn’t so true in the last two expansions.

Dungeons

I went and ran a random dungeon on Gurdrid last night, and got Stormstout Brewery. It was mayhem, which I suppose makes a certain amount of sense. Sadly, people still seem to think you know your way around and what the trash does even if you say at the beginning you’ve never been there. The people I was with made it a lot less enjoyable than I would have preferred. 

The insides of the dungeons do look interesting, though. I actually spent a little bit of time looking around after I was done with my dungeon – at least in the safety of the last boss’s room.

Pet Battles

My weekday mornings have been taken up with pet battling.  I have collected 9 rares, and defeated a few of the pet battle masters. I’m leveling three pets I plan to cage and sell. I’m thinking about level 10 or so.  These are all pets that I have multiples of, so I’m hoping I can get at least a little bit out of them.  I really need to start reviewing the AH to see what levels I want to target for various pets. 

After I pick up all appropriate pet count achievements, all the snakes and most of the bugs are going to go. If I have to buy or catch them again, so be it; but I don’t want to keep having to scroll through them. Or look at the stupid Adder every time I open my pet window for the first time.

In Summary

I’m enjoying Pandaria. I’m enjoying Pet Battles. I’m enjoying inflated AH prices.   I’m hording my money, and really need to get Shoryl started on her all important quest to sell jewelled panthers to people who have too much gold.

Short and Sweet

OMG Pandaria is PRETTY!!! 

Shoryl went out with Sona right out of the gate, and it says a great deal that we both played for the majority of Tuesday. We had anticipated we’d get started, Sona would want to get away from her computer, and I would move on to Gurdrid, who would then blow ahead.  Not so much. Sona wanted to play, so we played together. I’m very pleased.

When Sona was taking breif breaks, I hopped on Breige to check out pet battling. While I’d been interested in the pet capturing aspect of it, I wasn’t so keen on the battles prior to trying them. It’s so very 8-bit! (Just listen).  I love it!

Laid Back Dungeons will not be happening tonight. I have real life things to do that didn’t get done during the WoWathon yesterday.  We’ll be back at it soon, though, I promise!

Only Hours To Go

In six hours, a new land will be discovered.

Let’s take a look at what I got done in preparation for Mists (Here’s a look at my initial plan):

Oquae

Level 85 – check. Professions maxed – more or less. Tailoring is at 501 and enchanting is at 499, so I call that good.  Mog set… Check.  Oh, wait, you want to see that, don’t you? While my original plan was to go with lower level gear, none of it looked properly vicious enough for a Fury warrior with a wild bent. So this is what I came up with instead:

Deadly Gladiator’s Plate Helm, Valonforth’s Tarnished Pauldrons, Dragonstorm Breastplate,  Daunting Handguards, Titanium Links of Lore, Dragon Brood Legguards, Tempered Saronite Boots, and a pair of Runeblade of Baron Rivendare. (which is how a non-DK can have those blades).

Additionally, Oquae has her 25 dailies prepared for her 10-15% head start towards 86.   I am satisfied with where she sits.

Sveala

Sveala also made level 85, though she quested most of the last 5 levels. I got plenty of dungeoning in on Sruith and in the Laid Back Dungeons and Raids, so I wasn’t as keen on finishing her up via dungeons. On the other hand, her second spec really made leveling fairly easy. Her Scribe’s skills have gotten nearly all the way to mastering the craft, at 508, and I did convert alchemy to her from Kerridwen. That’s maxed, but I wasn’t able to pick up my mastery thanks to 5.0 dropping before I was able to. The required items for the transmute mastery are not available in game yet. Feh.

She also got a fairly simple mog set. I wanted something that encompassed both of her specs, since it’s a fair bit of shared gear:

 

The Wavemender’s Mantle, Breastplate of the Fifth Hunter, Patterned Bronze Bracers (because they hide well), Handgrips of the Savage Emissary, Belt of Ten Storms, Infection Resistant Legguards, Sealing Heartstaff. I didn’t pick boots out for her because they wouldn’t really show under the kilt, and no helm because I adore the way her hair goes with this outfit. Neither of my Draenai sport capes because I hate the way they bend across the tail. That’s some serious starch they use!

Sveala only has a few quests lined up for turnin, but that’s okay. She’s not one of my front-runners to get out there and get going. She’ll continue to work with quill and ink for quite some time; and get out to heal as various teams need her.  I’m pretty happy with Sveala’s position.

Shoryl

Her Engineering has been at 525 for quite some time now, and she has once again been idling her time in Stormwind. She was quite happy when Gurdrid decided to share some of her rarer mounts and pets with her.

Shoryl’s got a new mog design planned, thanks to the Mogolympics.   Shoryl doesn’t have any quests set by, but she and Sonaira have noted that things are changing around the lakes in Stormwind, and plan to go find out what’s so interesting.

Kerridwen

Kerridwen’s been switched over to dual gathering, though her flight form isn’t quite as advantageous as it was pre-5.0. That’s ok. The instant cast to get back into flight form is still a boon.  She can’t wear the Biker set I put together, since she’s (a) not an engineer, and (b) not a rogue; so she doesn’t get to play dress up just yet.   Her quest log is also full up, preparing her for launch like a champ.

Gurdrid

Gurdrid has had her bags emptied, and three sets designed. I’ve been plucking away at completing those sets, and is farther than the others at any individual set, but none are completed. I won’t be mogging her until she reaches endgame anyway, as she will be the first out of the gate.

I decided not to preload her with quests, in part so that she could daily moving into Mists, but also because I want to experience the new content with her – so I’m not in that much of a hurry to make it to 90.

Breige

Breige has been selling everything my other toons could send her way. Bags from Oquae; ore and gems from Gurdrid, cut gems from Shoryl, Glyphs from Sveala, and even herbs from Kerridwen. All in the name of putting away a little nest egg. It’s not much, but I topped 50k, which is the most money I’ve ever had in game in my life.   Her quest log is full, and once she’s made it to level 86, she will be skinning her way to 90, with a few dailies thrown in. She’s probably also going to do a bit of pet hunting. It seems right up her alley.

Taoiseach

My only 85 Horde toon will be waiting until Sonaira and Shoryl have made some progress in Mists. With Ardrhian by her side, they will see what they can do for Silvermoon City (we are not pleased with Garrosh’s sloppy methods).

Sruith and her Dwarven Friends

These guys will be continuing on starting up again next week. I’m planning to be asleep when we would be dungeoning, so they get to have a rest.

Margueryn and Nemain

My current pair of leveling toons will keep on keeping on when Pandaria is too busy.

The As-Yet-Unnamed Monk

She shall be a dwarf. (I know, you’re surprised) and she shall have a good Irish, Scottish, or Welsh name.  Because I don’t want a human male monk named Asim.

 

 

Miscellania

I wanted to take a moment to make a few comments before Mists releases on Tuesday (squee!!!), my busy weekend, and, y’know, stuffs.

Of Lists and Goals

I’ve posted as I’ve completed my goals before, but this time, it’s to say that I may not make my final goal. That was to get Mining to 525 (or at least 500) on Kerridwen, having switched alchemy over to Sveala.  She’s gotten to 450, but the busy-ness of the weekend makes me unsure whether I’ll get those last points. Mining in current content on a toon I don’t much care to play is kinda hard. The combined zones don’t help matters, either.  So we’ll see. It is, after all, only 50 points.

I’m pretty proud of myself, though. I got two toons maxed, and four professions to at least 500…

Laid Back Dungeons

I plan to continue the LBD runs on Wednesdays. This Wednesday ( Sept 26) I’m hoping that more people on will mean a shot at finishing up my Glory of the Hero achievement. Of course, it does require a certain water elemental to show his ugly mug.   I’d like at least a threesome for trying to use a bronze drake mount – even at 85 (87?) the drakes just can’t withstand the barrage as well as I’d like.   Call me cautious.  But, if there’s only two of us, we’ll totally try anyhow.

Once that’s done, we may start doing Cata heroics for those interested. It’ll all depend on who’s there and what we’d like to do/get. Gurdrid has some clothes to get from a few Cata normals, as well – though I’m hoping once I hit 90 I’ll be able to solo those. 🙂

A New-ish Blog

Tyledres went and created a blog, pinged back to me here, and I totally missed it. I found it when I looked back at my logs, but I was a little bit surprised!  Anyway, go check out Frost and Claws. I’m glad we’ve been here to support her challenging herself to stop worrying and start doing… Now I just need to figure out blogger’s comment system so I can comment already!

(Also, now I’ll have a clue which toon she’s on, so I can actually properly name them in the LBD runs!)

Carefully Then Quickly

Last night, Tyledres (on her mage) and I were back at the Laid Back Dungeons, and got Gurdrid down to only needing two more for the Red Drake, for which I’m very excited.

We successfully completed Zombiefest, even though I died once on trash before the first boss. I’m not sure what happened there, because I was fine, and then I wasn’t.  Her mage picked up both Zombiefest and the heroic Culling of Stratholme achievements; which was a nice bonus.

Then we headed into the Oculus, where we swapped positions from our previous run and she rode the green drake while I rode the red (I needed red marked off for Experienced Drake Rider).  That looked at first like it was going to go off without a hitch, then an odd bug had Tyl stuck on a platform, her mount unable to move, and her unable to find the dismount button. She logged out and back in, and it fixed the problem; but I was pretty sure at that point we weren’t going to make the speed run (which we were only half-heartedly working on).  I wasn’t sure only two of us would have the firepower to get Eregos down quickly, because really, it’s still a little bit challenging, even if you can kill him once you’re on your feet.  We did, however, have a flawless kill, and much to my surprise, picked up Make It Count.

So Gurdrid is down to just two achievements to go, one of which is completing Experienced Drake Rider by riding a bronze drake; and the other is Dehydrated.  I fear the last is going to be my bane.   To be honest, I’d love it if we could pick up a few more regulars to the runs. Having more than two of us will both speed up the runs, and make it easier to have one of us on a bronze drake in Oculus.

Gurdrid also picked up some alternate (much more boring) shoulders for her Dragon Sword set – she still wants Hydross to drop his shoulders, because they’re significantly better.

How To Completely Miss the Target

Several people have already complained about the Theramore event. I’ve read a few of them, because I wanted to have a realistic expectation.  I won’t get into the event scenario until (maybe) Wednesday night. And likely, in all honesty, not at all, because I was hoping to do it with Sonaira on Shoryl.  The problem is, it requires and item level of 352. Gurdrid, my best geared toon (by far, frankly) is only at ilvl 357.  Shoryl and Sona are both in the 340s, with no real way to get quick gear upgrades.

Blizzard has been talking about making things better for the casual player. Gating content in this way is not it.  This is especially not the way to do it for those players who picked up the game recently during the fabulous sales, and may just be getting to level 85 now. There’s no way they’re going to have high enough ilvls to play the scenario.

I understand about gating endgame content. But pre-expansion content (whether it’s a world event or not) shouldn’t be gated at all! I don’t see any reason why, with phasing, they couldn’t have made a really awesome event that any player on any level toon could participate in at least some of it.

Look at the pre-Cataclysm event, with portions of the Gnome and Troll start area quests being available at very low levels, and the max-level things requiring nothing other than showing up! 

So this wasn’t supposed to be a world event, apparently, but we were all expecting one – and Blizzard did nothing to make us think otherwise. There’s a lot of dissappointment out there – for good reason. 10 minutes of gated content does not live up to the hype that Blizzard allowed to happen. Blizzard never once denied that we were getting a pre-expansion world event. At least, not until the last minute, when we learned it was a scenario.

Client Boss Soloed – Impales Imminent

I will admit, I was a little surprised when 6:30 rolled around and my current favorite Death Knight (no offense, Maurice, or Morai!) was nowhere to be found.   Magik arrived on the scene, and we were just getting ready to head into Azjol-Nerub to work on his red drake some when Tyledres made it online.  Apparently, she was having client problems.    That gave us 3 of the needed five to complete Share the Love.  We started into Azjol-Nerub, deftly completing the entire fleet of achievements (Magik needed Hadronox Denied and Watch Him Die). Meanwhile, Magik and Tyl looked for folks to join us, and I put another call out over RealID.

We were joined by Hottotemseks from Tyl’s guild, and decided that since Sonaira had said she would join us if we needed a fifth, but she was out getting stuff for our lunches, we’d hit up Violet Hold and see if we could get an Ichoron spawn. No luck, but by the time we were done, Sona was on and ready.

Off to Gundrak we went; picking up Snakes, Why’d it Have to Be Snakes for Hott, but missing on Less-Rabi for Magik. We’ll have to be more coordinated in our interrupts on that one for a future attempt.  It took a bit for us to get everyone impaled. It seems that he doesn’t like to impale the one with aggro, so it was handy that we had two tanks for the fight. Afterwards, I actually remembered to get a screenshot, so here’s the gang. If you can’t read the names, Tyledres is on the left, Hott is sporting his drake on the right, Magik is on the white hippogryph in the back, and Sonaira and Gurdrid are sporting the Cenarion Hippogryphs in the center.

Cheers, Tyledres!

More thoughts on patch 5.0.4

Pet Battles

I’ve been wandering around the old worlds quite a bit lately, thanks to first leveling alchemy on Sveala, and now leveling mining on Kerridwen.  This means that the first of my stretch goals (getting Sveala to 525 alchemy before Mists) is done, and the second (getting Kerridwen up to dual-gathering)  is well on its way.   I’ve been noting the new critters around various places, and thinking about which ones I’d like to add to my menagerie (most of them!)

But there’s one that I don’t want to add.  I don’t remember who it was who brought it to my attention initially… there are a few suspects, and I can’t find the original blog post; but someone mentioned the Infested Bear Cub, and it makes me sad! I do not want pets to make me sad. The player population does enough of that already.  Of course, I certainly don’t have to, but looking around at the other pets, like the adorable rhinos and clefthoofs (clefthooves?) that make me squee with delight, and the fun achievements like taming a pet from every zone, I may have to do some careful considering as I think about taming in Hillsbrad.

Zone Merging

And I’ve been thinking about a few other things that are coming in Mists, or, more to the point, that are already here, and I can only think that Blizzard are putting in the things they need to set WoW up to have very little maintenance once they’ve written the last chapter expansion. One of those things has been the zone merging. At first, I had my little list of pros and cons, but as time goes on, I only have one pro: I can now see the people I’m grouped with from other servers when I’m out in the world. That’s totally cool.  But the list of cons is greater than that one pro.

First is a concern that can (hopefully) be fixed with some tweaking on Blizzard’s part: lag. The amount of lag I have changes depending on which zone I’m in. Currently, if I’m in a zone with people from Azuremyst, I get periodic lag spikes. If I’m in a zone with mostly people from my home server (and coincidentally, the same time zone as my home server, which Azuremyst is not) I get little to no lag.   This would bother me less if the lag spikes weren’t, frankly, pretty extensive and pervasive. A little lag every hour or so is totally livable for me. A spike that gives me stop motion (or not motion) for a perceptible length of time every few minutes is not.

Second is more annoying, and something that Blizzard is likely not going to “fix”, and that’s when I’m in Sholazar, or Uldum, or a host of other places farming, I’d rather just be fighting with one or two people from my home server for my nodes than a dozen from several different realms. Not to mention the bots.  But I suspect that this is something that Blizzard doesn’t particularly have high on their priority list for reasons to change things.

Could Have Beens

Another thing that I’ve been thinking about, thanks to leveling two professions to 525 in a matter of days, has been ways to make professions more interesting. Now, I may be asking for something that’s coming, as I haven’t been paying a lot of attention, but it would be nice if all of the professions had some kind of a daily; and I’m not talking about inscription research. In fact, I think the randomness of inscription research is rather annoying.  Here are some of my thoughts:

Crafting professions: Like jewlecrafting, have a few quests that use a small amount of current, easy to acquire materials. Requiring that the items be made while you have the quest is just fine with me.  These are super easy!

Gathering professions: These are a bit tougher to make interesting, but having a special drop of a node/skinned beast would be one thing. Maybe include things like turning already acquired leather into something else for skinners.

All professions: Make these darn things possible as soon as you take the profession. Maybe have an item that you can buy with your tokens that allows you to increase your actual profession skill, or make what you do incur point increases when it’s not the “standard” thing that you would do to gain points – or even gain a point from turning in, just make them beneficial for low-level players alike..  For crafters, maybe make some lost patterns from the game available to be purchased again.

And while we’re talking professions, can we maybe change the points you get for crafting items a bit? Maybe make it so all blue-quality items give 3 points (while orange) and all epic items give 5 points regardless of when you can acquire them? 

Travel

I still hate the extra flight points in all the 1-60 zones. I find it ironic that Wetlands has something like 6 flight points and Twilight Highlands has 4, even though it’s about twice the size.  It’s only somewhat irritating to me that we get all the flight paths as we level, too – mostly because I would only get a couple in each zone if I had to do it manually.  The easy way around this, to keep the ease of movement for lower level characters, would be to provide ground mount transportation within the zone from the 1-2 flight points. After all, every town doesn’t get an airport, but you can rent a car/taxi to get to where you’re going once you’ve gotten to the right airport!

Another thing I’m sad about is not being able to move freely between the capitols. This still confuses me. Surely the mages of the Alliance and Horde would want their heroes to be able to move easily between areas, why are they not supporting portals?  Even just a portal to/from Stormwind for every friendly capitol (including Shattrath, Dalaran, and whatever the new one in Mists shall be) would be nice. There is no reason that I can think of that we would be able to take a portal to Uldum, but not to Darnassus as an Alliance hero. It’s just ridiculous!

 

Laid Back Dungeons and other Lovely Things for Today

To start, y’all are going to have to wait at least until tomorrow to see my final mog set, because I want to write this post instead of that one. 🙂

Laid Back Dungeons

This week Tyledres (on various toons, none of which were actually Tyledres!) and I tromped around Northrend once again, getting ourselves ever closer to our red drakes. For both of us, the shared achievements quite thoroughly helped us out with getting closer to our goals.

Oculus

We started in Oculus, with only two of us we were focused on getting drake riding and void achievements. Tyl’s priest was closest to completing Experienced Drake Rider, so she brought that toon, and hopped onto a ruby drake. I chose a green drake, which conveniently gave me Amber Void.  After one wipe, when I was poorly healing, we were able to get the kill, giving Tyl her drake riding achievement, and me the emerald tick on my experience as a drake rider.

Violet Hold

Tyl changed to her shaman as we headed into the Hold to knock some stuff out. I  had three achievements left to complete: Dehydration, Void Dance and Lockdown!  We didn’t get Ichoron, but we did get Zuramat, completing both Void Dance and Lockdown! for me.  Tyl’s Shaman got the achievement for completing the instance, as well as Defenseless.

Halls of Lightning

We finished the evening in the Halls of Lightning, knocking off all four of the achievements for me, as well as giving me Northrend Dungeon Master.

Future Laid Back Dungeons

Tyledres is now only one achievement away from getting her Red Drake, and we totally would have done it tonight if we could have. The problem is we need a full 5-man group for it, because she needs Share the Love.  So I beseech anyone who has an alliance toon of at least level 80 to step up next Wednesday (9/12) so we can put together a full 5-man for at least that one achievement. If folks are able to get on, but not necessarily right at 6:30 central time, just toss a message here and we’ll try and work it out. Tyledres has been awesome in helping with strategies for the acheivements, as well as kicking serious undead behind on all of her characters, I really want to see this happen for her as soon as we can muster!

After that, I still need a run to the Caverns of Time, more time in the Oculus, and another shot at Ichoron; but I, too, am very close to getting my drake!

And once the drakes are acquired, there will be mog runs, or if we’ve all gotten to level 90, there will be Cataclysm achievements to get, too.

Other News

In other news, the Transmogolympics are over. You can see the Equestrian event, as well as Closing Ceremonies.  And to top it all off, JD has been diligently working on a site just for the Mogolympics, where we can see all of the entries, who put them together, and our scores.

In all the excitement, you might notice that Grizled won a Judge’s Choice award from Tome of the Ancient (or, well, maybe it was Catwynn who did that.)  I’m more than a little excited! I entered the event just to give me the opportunity to stretch my mogging skills. I only entered 6 events, as well as providing my standard-bearer, because I wanted to go with quality over quantity. I believe I did quite well, considering I was rarely more than 3 points out from bronze, and sometimes much closer.  The Judge’s Choice award is quite an honor, being picked above over 400 other mog sets is pretty small odds, even if it was a human male willing to show a little skin.