Introducing Liliva

Liliva was a young woman training in the arts of the harvest under Sister Celestine. Hours spent playing and helping her mother in her garden as a child, she was well-versed in herbs to begin with, and so the craft came easily to her.

Then the Worgen came.

Little did we know that the beasts were really our own, that this infection was spreading amongst us. How do you fight a disease such as this... a curse so easily spread?



Bitten by a friend who transformed into a Worgen before her very eyes, it was only through the quick shooting of Lorna Crowley that Liliva survived.

It is with mixed emotions that Liliva continues her life. Between the devastation of this curse, the invasion of the Forsaken, and The Shattering of her home, she has hit rock bottom.

When the curse first took her she slaughtered her fellows mercilessly, caught up in the savagery of the beast. She was caught and caged by her people. It was only through the medicine that Krennan Aranas was able to create that she was just barely able to retain her humanity.

Should she have survived all this?

Yet she has, and she continues to live, despite the death of Prince Liam, despite being driven from her home, despite the feeling that she is a monster even though she is now able to control it.

The Night Elves have taught her and her people much, and have welcomed us into their home. We accept graciously, and yet, we do not yet have a true place in this Alliance. We do not yet even truly know who we are.

Liliva has spent days since her peoples' escape to Darnassus just thinking about all that has happened, and about what her place is to be in the future of this world. Within the peace and tranquility of the Night Elf world she has come to the only possible conclusion for herself. She shall live in peace with everything around her. She shall avoid violence at all costs. When she is confronted with danger she will retreat. If retreat is not possible, then and only then will she harm another being physically.

She will continue to learn the ways of the Harvest, and as an extension, has taken to learning the Druidic ways of the Night Elves. As such, she must contribute to the community she is now a part of, and will do so by gathering valuable herbs and mining precious ore.



In case it wasn't clear, I am leveling my druid through gathering professions only. Wish me luck in this non-violent journey.

The 20 Days of World of Warcraft: Day Twenty

Where would you be now if World of Warcraft never existed?

This has to be one of the most difficult questions to answer. Like Beru at Falling Leaves and Wings, WoW empowered me to leave a relationship that had been rancid for some time. The friends I made and the challenges I overcame while raiding made me feel strong enough to remember that I am a human being and I deserve to be happy. It took a long time and a lot of chit-chat with friends in game for me to really get to that point. Now, I am happily divorced, working in a career that I love, and I am writing again (even if just in this medium). These are all things that I am sure I never would have done if not for WoW. I don't want to think about where I might be right now if that hadn't happened. I'd like to think that I would have recovered my self-confidence in some other way, but I just don't know that to be true.

Love is...

Love is...

• Trading Heart Candies during the Love is in the Air holiday with the one person you couldn't dream of living without.
• Tasteful RP (Is that an oxymoron?)
• The Hordie who saw you struggling to find the quest givers for Wailing Caverns and /beckoned and showed you how to get up to where they were (Pre-Shattering) and didn't gank you.
• Female Dwarves
• Chasing after a friend, healing him, as he charges recklessly into groups of mobs, slaughtering them mercilessly.
• That new toon smell.
• Hearing the cheers in vent as you and your guild down that raid boss that you've been wiping on for weeks.
• The successful PUGs - the ones that don't send you screaming to your blog to rant about the horribleness that is LFD (it isn't really that bad).
• /dancing - anytime, anywhere, any reason - but especially if the reason is a Piccolo.
• WoW blogs and all of us in this quirky community.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

The 20 Days of World of Warcraft: Day Nineteen

How many hours do you play a week, roughly?  


The number of hours per week that I play has varied over my WoW career. Currently, I pretty much only play on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays (my days off of work). I'm not sure I could clearly estimate how much time I spend playing on those days. Afterall, this here blog takes up a good portion of my free time as well, and is often done interspersed into my WoW time. Can I include blog time in my /played since it is WoW related? Hehe.


Rough estimate, I'd say I spend about 20-25 hours per week actually playing the game. Bump it up to 30-35 hours if we include my blogging time. I don't think this is unreasonable. Some other people would say I'm obsessed and addicted and whatever other stupid labels there might be. To those people I say, "What if I took away your television?" Tell me you're not "addicted" to TV, then we'll talk.

Random Six

I took inspiration from Pilfkin at Moar Alts! and started my very own "Project 10." Except there aren't 10, and I'm sure I didn't set it up the same way she did. I have 6, that way I don't have to try and dig out my D&D dice set. I haven't the foggiest where I put them, in fact, its entirely possible the ex took them and my rule books in the split. Wow... got a lil off topic. Ermm... yes.

So, six toons, the first of which is my paladin, Audrid, whom you all have met already. I'll be introducing them individually over the next days, and one of them even adds an interesting new twist to your normal way of leveling.

Admittedly, I am not doing one of each class, even though eventually maybe I would like to have one of each. And I'm definitely not doing much cross-faction, only one of them is Horde. It seemed like a good way to get me playing and making the toons I've always wanted to have.

Thanks a million for the inspiration, Pilf!

The 20 Days of World of Warcraft: Day Eighteen

Post your favorite Screenshot.

Oh gosh! You're going to make me choose one favorite? Nuh uh. Isn't going to happen.

So here they are, in no particular order:

The Love Picture

Steam Punk Draenei (or Space Pirate, Ashelyth is too sexy for her goggles)

Background - Dryad in Ashenvale (Pre-Shattering)

Harder than Vanilla

WARNING: Rambling and disjointed rant incoming.

I got into an argument the other day with one of my co-worker/friends who also plays WoW. He is quitting WoW and insists that players are making a mass exodus because of the difficulty of Cataclysm raids. He claims that he's been raiding since Vanilla, and these are the hardest dungeons he has ever seen. He insists that only the most hardcore of elite guilds are getting any bosses killed. He claims that its not fair if one person's mistake causes the raid to wipe.

I can't really argue with any of it because I am not personally raiding at this time, although I have friends that are, but the whole conversation really ticked me off. I'm sorry, but even if raids are "too hard" right now, we haven't even seen a real patch yet (well, up until yesterday).

Comparing Cataclysm to Vanilla is like comparing apples and oranges, yeah, they're both fruit, but...

I highly doubt that my friends' guilds can be considered "the most hardcore of elite," afterall, I am on the Cairne realm. We're notorious for being low on the PVE charts, yet many of these guilds are at 7 or 8 bosses down.

As far as one person causing wipes... uhh... hello? Lich King Defile anyone? Seriously? Can't remember that? It really wasn't that long ago. And this was certainly not the only situation where one person's mistake could cause wipes. Remember Flamewreath on Shade of Aran? Remember Solarian's Wrath of the Astromancer?

I find it hard to believe that raiding is so hard that people are quitting in droves. If that was the case we would have either seen a massive nerfbat taken to the instances or a massive boost to player talents/skills by now. Blizzard would not sit idly by if the game was so unplayable.

There is a fine line to walk between making the gameplay too easy at endgame and making it too difficult. Maybe its because I am a BC baby, but I think the raiding difficulty in BC was just about the right balance. If current raiding is anything like that was, then I'd say things are just about right.

Being a blogger, I see people come and go all the time for various reasons. The reasons I see more often are not because of the difficulty of raid content, although I'm sure some people do quit for that reason. If I were to quit the game, it certainly would not be because of the difficulty of raids.

Honestly, I find it very telling that when things get hard this particular individual gives up. It speaks volumes about his character. Then again, who am I to judge what he does during his free time. This feels like yet another instance of rage quit. No one does the quitting thing quite like a WoW player does.

I can't sit here and say that I think WoW is the best game ever made and that it will never jump the shark, but I don't think it has yet. At least it hasn't for me.