Digital Alterity

Dear Ganking Wannabe Wankstas,

While I’m working on my Loremaster achievement, the lowbie zones are under my protection. I will not stand by idly while you kill quest givers that my lower-level friends and I need. I understand that killing low-level NPCs and any lowbies who flag makes you feel like a big, bad PVP star, but I will make you feel like the sad wanker you truly are.

I don’t care about your stuns. I can outlast them. I don’t care about your burst damage. I’m a PVE tank with enough health to laugh at you. Frankly, you’re not even all that good at PVP. That’s why you’re out in Brill or Crossroads in the first place.

These lowbies are under my protection. I will think nothing of corpse camping you. When you try to run away, I will mount up and follow you. I will hit you with everything I’ve got. I will stun you at 1000 HP just so that you can take a moment to look your coming death in the eyes, you coward.

I am a soldier of Orgrimmar. We eat our meat raw, and we don’t run from a fight. For the Horde!

Love and kisses,
Mugwort

1. My orc shaman Rokhar is now the troll Zulkhar.
2. Yes, I know I change my characters a lot.
3. No, it’s really not a problem.
4. For RP purposes, this is a different person, a troll that Rokhar rescued and served as a mentor for. This explains why their names are so similar.
5. Mugwort is currently my main.

Yet another back story for one of my World of Warcraft characters. Bargor is the sort of character that would be really conducive to playing in a D&D group. He’s team-oriented and has a lot of history without being disruptive.

“Mugwort” is actually the nickname of Bargor Corpsehammer, a soldier of Orgrimmar and single-father. Bargor and his wife Chok’la joined with the orcish forces to help repel the Scourge after the orcs fled to Kalimdor (i.e. during the events of Warcraft 3). Chok’la was killed in the fighting, leaving their young son Guksal with only Mugwort to care for him.

During the time of relative peace that followed, Bargor earned an extremely meager living as a day laborer gathering herbs. Upon realizing that he didn’t have enough money for Guksal to be educated, Bargor joined the military and used his stipend to put Guksal into boarding school at the Orgrimmar Orphanage.

During his first tour of duty as a guard in Ashenvale, he earned his botanical nickname by picking flowers and herbs to sell when he returned to Orgrimmar for leave. Using his son’s old schoolbooks, Mugwort taught himself to read and write well enough to earn some extra money as a scribe during his off hours. Mastering the written word has given Mugwort a love for writing long letters home to his son, a past-time he frequently indulges in while other soldiers go out drinking.

Mugwort looks forward to the day when he can retire from active duty and return home to open his own business and take care of his son.

After about an hour of genocide, I finally got Ashwin the gnomish warrior rogue her Red Defias Mask.

Isn’t she the cutest spy/assassin, you’ve ever seen?

Alliance

1. Dwarf. Hard-drinking stout people with Scottish accents, a desire to explore ruins that puts Indiana Jones to shame, and an affinity for projectiles? Sign me up. Dwarves also have possibly the best lore on the Alliance side and some of the best emotes in the game.
2. Draenei and Gnome. You’ll have to forgive the tie. I simply can’t pick between the two. I love draenei for their ties to the orcs, their class choices, and their excellent starting area. I love gnomes because of their diminutive size and obsession with engineering.
3. Night Elf. I like the Night Elves from Warcraft 3. I don’t really have a problem with the ones in WoW, I guess. They just don’t speak to me. I also hate their starting area.
4. Human. I like the Defias quest chains, but the humans themselves just bore me silly. Also, the human males look retarded.

Horde

1. Orc. The orcs are by far my favorite Warcraft race. I love how much like Klingons they are. I love their ties to shamanism and (unfortunately for them and all of Azeroth) witchcraft. The orcs did some pretty horrible things while under the influence of the Burning Legion, and they’re having to deal with that legacy of attrocities as they strive for a peaceful coexistence in their new homeland. If orcs could be every class, I would only play orcs.
2. Tauren. I primarily like taurens because of the spiritual assistance they offer the orcs. Also, they can be druids. However, male taurens scratch their butts far too much for me. As a result, my druid is girl.
3. Undead. I love their lore. I love their starting area. If I could somehow cover their bony elbows and knees with armor, they would probably be above taurens on this list. Undead were my race of choice in Warcraft 3.
4. Blood Elf. I love the notion of magic-addicted elves. I love how ruthless the blood elves have become. They would probably be higher on the list if they didn’t constitute over half of the Horde population on every damn server.
5. Troll. The trolls have just never appealed to me. Their quests are the same as the orc quests. I don’t really dig their accent, and I wish they had better hair options. As an aside, I would like the trolls better if they used the more feral-looking femaletroll models from the beta.

Overall

1. Orc.
2. Dwarf.
3. Draenei and Gnome.
4. Tauren.
5. Undead.
6. Night Elf.
7. Blood Elf.
8. Troll.
9. Human.

• Meeting Stones: To use any Meeting Stone, it is only required that the character’s minimum level be 15. There is no maximum character level requirement for any Meeting Stone. In my guild, we often run lower level and/or younger members through non-Northrend dungeons. There’s always a significant time investment involved in actually getting everyone to the instance. This should cut down on some of that.
• Many of the tail sweeps with knockback effects will no longer hit players’ pets. My pet isn’t very smart. He just parks himself right behind an enemy and then gets knocked back when the inevitable tail sweep comes into play. As a (stubborn) Beast Master hunter, those few seconds away from the boss constitute a significant DPS loss.
• Orc and troll shamans now have their own unique totem art. I seriously can’t wait to log onto Rokhar and see what his new totems look like in action.
• Players no longer need to kill the final bosses in all four wings of this dungeon in order to teleport to Sapphiron. Maybe Besom can finally down Sapphiron now. She healed through KT as an emergency replacement but never actually got the big dragon.
• Rebirth: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes. Having a quicker recharging battle rez makes me that much more valuable as a healer.
• Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. I have a full stable of pets. I like using them all. This way I don’t have to feel guilty about using my spirit beast in raids/instances. If we need mega-DPS, I can switch out to my wolf just for a boss fight.
• Players can now track quest objectives on the map (‘M’ key). I’m hoping this will be a suitable replacement for Quest Helper, allowing me to free up a bit of add-on memory.
• [Dungeon Finder:] This feature has replaced the Looking For Group tool and provides all-new dungeon party creation functionality. I can’t wait for this. I have visions of logging in, queueing up for dungeon, and then going about my business until it pops. Half the reason I used to PVP so much was the convenience of it establishing groups for me. This should also make things a little easier for my guild since we rarely have a full 5-man group anymore.
• Consolidate Buffs: Enabling this adds a buff consolidation box near the mini-map. When I’m raiding, the top part of my screen gets a bit insane. This should hopefully free up some screen real estate.
• Tutorial System: The tutorial pop-ups are now larger, contain images, and better try to direct players to the relevant locations or user interface elements on the screen. In addition, several new tips have been added, while some existing tips will now appear at more appropriate times for new players. My friend Jason is currently playing WoW for the first time. Hopefully this will make his life a little easier.
• The following reputations have been sped up by roughly 30%: Amen! Now Hemlock can get a red drake mount 30% faster and finally get rid of the damn funky-looking wind rider.
• Top-level helm and shoulder faction-related enchants are now available as Bind-on-Account items that do not require any faction to use once purchased (they still require the appropriate faction level to purchase). Because Besom is exalted with everyone, I no longer have to grind reputation on my army of alts. This is possibly the best change on the whole list. Well, you know, if it weren’t for…
• Bind-on-Account Items: Players can now mail Bind-on-Account items to characters on the same account and realm regardless of faction. Can I get a Hallelujah?! I can now trade that my Bloodied Arcanite Reaper, shoulders, etc. between my Alliance warrior and my new orc warrior! This makes everything beautiful in my life. There are showers of rainbows and fluffy kittens made of pure effing joy in my life now.
• Power Word: Shield: This spell can now be cast on non-raid/party friendly targets. I like this not because it affects my play really at all anymore. Rather, I love it because I remember when it worked this way, dammit. My very first WoW forums shitstorm was when they restricted this to people in your party. The priest forums had a collective fit. Glad to see it’s back.
• Drain Soul: This spell now deals 4 times the normal damage for all ranks. Previously it was only ranks 6 and above. This should make Allyson’s belf ‘lock that much more powerful.
• Rewrote OpenGL implementation for Intel Macs with Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later. Please make my framerates go up. Especially in Dalaran.
• [Mac:] Added support for mapping all 15 buttons on the SteelSeries WoW Mouse via the in-game key bindings. Now I’m even more tempted to buy the damn thing.

The storm came on suddenly and violently over Feralas. The lush vegetation on the jungle floor seemed to shrink from the rain’s heavy assault, and the tree canopy threatened to be torn asunder by the gale force of the wind. All the wild creatures of the earth had found whatever shelter they could manage and hoped that the storm’s fury would be as brief as it was violent.

Rokhar Soulflayer wished nothing of the sort. The white-haired orc scrunched up his wrinkled face and concentrated on the sheets of rain. Good sleeping weather, he mused, A good night’s rest will mean an early and effective start to the morning. Silithus was still many days’ journey from this little outpost at the Southern end of the jungle, and from what the initiates of the Earthen Ring had told him, the Silithid population was increasing with each passing month.

Something, however, simply didn’t feel right. About the silithids. About the undead plague that ravaged the land five years ago. About the blood elven king heading into Outland. The world had gone mad, but the madness was bitterly familiar in some unfortunate way. The madness felt distastefully comfortable, and for the tenth time this week, Rokhar remembered with shameful longing how simple the world seemed when in the throes of the blood fury.

The old shaman sighed and looked down as his wrinkled green hands. How much blood belonged on those hands? How many souls had come to rest in those palms? How many draenei would never laugh, cry, mate, or dance again because of the terrible energy those hands called forth from devils all too eager to supply power, hate, and rage?

Shaking his head with some force, Rokhar crossed the small room in two quick strides. There was no point in dwelling on the past. The spirits of water had been very clear from the outset that nearly all taint could be cleansed with time and effort. Giving power to the past was taking power from the present moment and ignoring opportunities for positive action. The ancestors could no longer speak to those still walking the earth, but he felt certain that his honored forbearers wouldn’t approve of such maudlin weakness. Picking up the chipped and faded stone mug from the table by the hammock, the old orc whispered the briefest of chants to the fire spirits and began heating the water within. Taking a leather pouch loose from his beaded necklace, the orc sprinkled sacred herbs into the now boiling water. This would be a night for sleep and hopefully, if the spirits allowed, for a vision journey as well.

***

The winds blew crisp and fresh over Nagrand as Rokhar look out over the land from atop the sacred mountain Oshu’gun. Far below, he could see the clans setting up for the Kosh’harg celebration. He saw the banners of the Frostwolf and Warsong clans and strained to spot his own Dragonmaw clan amongst the throng. The gentle touch of a mockingbird landing on his shoulder focused his attention immediately back.

“Why do you hold our gifts away from yourself, Rokhar?”

The mockingbird spoke with an echoing, forceful voice and fixed Rokhar’s glowing red eyes with an insistent but not altogether threatening stare.

“Brother bird, I must be careful not to grasp the power you offer. The elements are not a power to be controlled and bent to my own will as I once commanded the fel magics. If I grab at my desires like a mewling infant, then I am not worthy to wield any form of power.”
“You are afraid.”
“Am I not right to be afraid? I proved my own weakness years ago. I turned my back on the spirits and gave in to…twisted and horrible things. I must take care not to lose myself in the hatred again. Every battle is another opportunity for the madness to take hold again.”
“This is not what you are afraid of, shaman. You are afraid of losing yourself.”

Rokhar felt a white hot fury build up at the mockingbird’s words but tried to soothe the rising heat gushing into his limbs from his racing heart. A few moments of quiet meditation looking out over the beautiful green hills of Draenor calmed his heart and left his mind distanced from the furious beast he threatened to become.

“See, Rokhar? You distance yourself from our gifts.”
“You did not gift me with with the blood fury!” the elderly shaman spat out in a trembling rage, “That is my curse. I drank from the chalice. I gave into the mindless wrath. I wielded the green fires of the Burning Legion. I tortured good and brave men to death and painted my face with their very blood.”
“Do you know nothing of the spirit of fire, little orc? Water is a blessing, a necessity for life. It washes away filth and gently soothes, but too much water will merely wash life out to sea. You have forsaken balance, Rokhar.”

For the briefest of moments, Rokhar saw Nagrand not as it was then but as it was now, littered with fragments of the land that had been quite literally torn asunder.

“We chose you to be a healer and a wise man, yes, but we also chose you to be a warrior. We chose you to be a white hot flame, lighting the way and cleansing away the disease that has taken hold of our land. The shadow is coming, shaman. Fight it with all the fury you can summon or all living things will fall never be reborn.”
“This madness…It’s all connected, isn’t it, Great Spirit?”
“Sometimes, Rokhar, all it takes to start a terrible avalanche is a whisper.”

***

The morning sun filtered through the canopy, evaporating the rainwater and making the day even more humid than normal. Rokhar looked at the image of the old man staring out from his mirror with a mixture of pity and disgust. The white locks of unkempt hair fell over a withered face of an old one simply waiting to die. With determination, Rokhar grabbed a dagger from his belongings and began fiercely cutting at the locks of hair, and he didn’t stop until he once again looked like a proper orc warrior. Damn the silithids. And damn the Lich King as well. There was a madness behind all of this, and Rokhar was going to find it and then end it with his warhammers.

After a couple of weeks of dedicated searching and logging on at ridiculous hours, Hemlock finally tamed Gondria, the spirit beast in Zul’Drak.

I have named her Kali after the Indian goddess that goes berserk and kills/destroys everything, and yes, in true nerd fashion, I have a backstory for why/how Hemlock tamed her. It might show up here in this space sometime soon. Here’s a shot of Kali saying hello to the camera:

Also, looking over the blog posts, it looks like I haven’t posted a screenshot of Ashwin the gnomish warrior since she was first created. Here she is hanging out in Darkshire after embarrassingly helping Abercrombie create a flesh golem:

Since Hemlock dinged 80, I’ve had an opportunity rarely afforded the plentiful DPS classes. Several friends and friends of friends all had alts ding at pretty much the same time, so we’re all going to heroics college together. In a world of EZ-mode, over-geared 15-minute speed heroic runs, we’re actually having to formulate strategies and actively plan our way through heroics. It has been a great deal of fun, making WoW feel like a whole new game. This is, of course, especially true in my case because my main has a double major in healing and tanking. Just walking in and laying waste with the mightiest of pew-pews I can imagine is strange and different.

So as a two-day old level 80 hunter, I have rather spotty gear. My armory profile is a rainbow coalition of blues, greens, and a couple of easy-to-grab purples. Nonetheless, I’ve made good gear choices with what I’ve had to work with. I’ve reached the hit cap with gear, talents, and enchants. I’m a Beast Master hunter for RP reasons, but I’m within 150 DPS of what I could theoretically be doing with the cookie cutter Survival spec. I’ve theory-crafted my build and pet with spreadsheets to pick the best possible spec for my current gear. I’m safely above the “huntard” threshold.

Last night, our little heroics crew ran through UK and Nexus. We wiped a few of times in Nexus, but I think that was mostly down to trying to approach the instance the same way that we would with our mains. We picked up a healer outside our little group but someone who was nonetheless well known and well regarded by everyone in the group. She healed her butt off, and we definitely needed a lot of healing.

After wrapping up Nexus, we toying with idea of a normal ToC run for gearing up and our healer started looking at our gear scores.

“[Mage], you’re geared for Naxxramas already.”
“Wow, [druid], you’re ready for ToC-25!”

I’m cringing. I know what’s going to happen next. She’s going to look at my gear score.

“Hemlock, we really need to gear you up.”

Now, I don’t dispute this. I have an average iLevel in my gear of 174 or so. I could use some work. I’m less geared than Besom was when she started healing instances, but I’m also having no real problems dropping monsters with the big bad skull mark on them. Nonetheless, objective data is what matters. How I feel about how I’m doing is irrelevant. That’s why I have Recount.

A quick glance at Recount showed that I was above 2000 DPS on almost every fight. (Grand Magus Telestra gave us all real problems, knocking each of our DPS down by around 500.) Overall, I was the top damage dealer, and spot checking individual battles in the logs, I was almost always top slot for DPS. I didn’t really see a fight where I was lower on the meter than second place, and there were only two fights that I noticed where the tank did more damage than I did.

Please don’t misunderstand. This isn’t about e-peen. I’ll admit to being a noob and scrub. Nonetheless, my group downed the bosses without too much loss of gold in repair bills. Our paladin picked up some rather nice plate armor, and I even got the Drake Mounted Crossbow from Igvar “I’ll-Paint-My-Face-With-Your-Blood” the Plunderer. By all counts, it was a successful dungeon run. I just think there’s a larger point to be made here about gear score.

Gear score definitely tells a story, but it’s not really the whole story. You can have a full set of iLevel 200+ epics, but if you’re not hit-capped, then that’s a problem. You can have an intelligent set of gear with great enchants, but if you don’t know a proper shot/spell priority, then that’s a problem. You can know what you’re doing on a stand-in-one-place DPS race like Patchwerk, but if you can’t react on the fly when things go wrong, that’s a problem. If you treat gear score as anything other than a convenient but often flawed measurement, then you’re cruising for a Fail PUG.

Unfortunately, I’m increasingly seeing posts in Trade Chat that look something like this:

LFM for H UK (daily). Min gear score of X required.

And, frankly, that’s a bit retarded. No, don’t tank a heroic until you’re defense capped. No, you’re probably not pulling your weight as a DPS until you’re pulling down 1500-1700 DPS. But you don’t need a full set of Naxx gear to go kill Ingvar. You just don’t.

I’m hoping that the new auto-LFG/random dungeon features coming in patch 3.3 will help out a little bit with this, but until I see the end result, I’m going to have nightmares of people getting kicked for not measuring up to some arbitrary line.

Just to clarify, no one in my group was upset with me about my gear score. They were almost certainly looking at the same Recount data I was. The above anecdote is simply intended to show how gear score seems to pop up everywhere and all the time.

Hemlock is a child of orc internment camps. Much of his early memory consists of glassy-eyed orc adults feeling the absence of the Burning Legion’s demonic energies and of human soldiers treating his people as wild animals. When Thrall’s armies liberated his camp, young Hemlock was primed and ready to fight and die on his feet like a true warrior.

Hemlock considered it an honor to fight alongside Thrall and his allies in the conflict against the Lich King and his Burning Legion masters. He ended up paying a high price for this honor, however, when he was kidnapped during Admiral Proudmoore’s assault on Durotar. Hemlock spent the next two years as a slave in a human camp. When a Forsaken raiding party descended upon the town, taking prisoners of their own for their ghoulish experiments, Hemlock pledged his service to the Royal Apothecary Society in hopes that he could earn his revenge against the humans and their allies.

Hemlock became a cold assassin, killing members of the Alliance at every opportunity. His service to the cause got him noticed by military leaders in the Horde, who sent him out to the front lines of the Burning Crusade in Outlands. When the Lich King brazenly attacked Orgrimmar, it was a foregone conclusion that Hemlock would be at the forefront of the Horde’s military response. Sadly, during the massacre at the Wrath Gate, Hemlock was cut down — not by the Lich King’s minions, but rather by the Royal Apothecary Society itself. Hemlock nearly died there on the frozen snows of Dragonblight, but the timely intervention of the red dragonflight restored him to health to assist with picking up the pieces.

With barely contained fury, Hemlock is now on a personal mission to destroy the Lich King, his undead minions, the traitors in the Royal Apothecary Society, and anyone else that stands in his way.

Personality and Mannerisms

Out of combat, Hemlock is an expert tracker and woodsman. He easily befriends animals and other wild creatures but tends to hold orcs, tauren, and other humanoids at arm’s length. Hemlock is far more comfortable in the wild places of the world than he is in most civilized settlements. He is a child of the frontier, constantly pushing further into the unknown.

In battle, Hemlock is a barely contained berserker, firing arrows or bullets so quickly that his accuracy suffers. He often loses all capacity for speech, descending into a feral rage that only stops when his prey is dead. Because of this, the military commanders that have made best use of him have used him as a solitary strike force rather than as a member of an organized regiment. With his fierce pets and even more fierce personality, Hemlock is his own army.

Hemlock is a pragmatist who has few qualms about sacrificing others to accomplish his goals. He views life as a war and often finds himself at odds with Thrall’s vision of the Horde. In many ways, Hemlock is far more comfortable amongst the Forsaken since they share his savage view of the world and his lack of scruples.

Roleplaying Notes

• For RP reasons, Hemlock should always be a Beast Master hunter.
• When in doubt, pretend you’re Wolverine from the X-Men — especially the version from earlier in Clarmont’s X-Men run.
• The Bridenbrad quests in Icecrown are very much a part of Hemlock’s continuity. They hint that Hemlock does have a respect and camaraderie with his fellow warriors. The beast has a caring heart somewhere buried inside.
• Hemlock always wears his Argent Dawn tabard that was given to him as a mark of bravery during the Lich King’s recent attacks on Azeroth.
• Hemlock rides a swift skeletal horse, a gift from the Royal Apothecary Society when he was in their service.