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WoW.com Guest Post: Creating lore-based characters that aren't Mary Sues
Anna writes about roleplaying, healing, raiding and creative writing over at her blog, Too Many Annas. One of the most frequent criticisms leveled at any kind of roleplay or fan-written fiction is the presence of the dreaded Mary Sue. If you're not familiar with the term, a Mary Sue is a character who is overly idealized, has few or no actual flaws and functions as a wish-fulfillment or fantasy for the author. In WoW, this type of character is also frequently tied to major lore figures – the stereotypical lovechild of Thrall and Jaina (or some other such invented tie to a major character). Unfortunately, sometimes this turns into an avoidance of all lore information in an attempt to not make the character Sue-ish. In a world like Azeroth that has a lot of really well developed lore, that can result in characters who are dangerously ambiguous and don't have any connection or history. So how do you write a lore-based character without toeing the Mary Sue line?
The Daily Quest: Paladins paladins paladins
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. I Am a Paladin offers tips and tricks for healing 5-mans as a holy paladin. The Hunter's Mark offers a refresher on gemming your hunter. World of Matticus discusses the Flash of Light spec for holy paladins. Listen to this week's edition of the Twisted Nether Blogcast. This week's special guest is Tristan from The Elitists. This isn't particularly WoW-centric, but happy anniversary, Anna. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: Brohnjam's Jam
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. MrVoletron is back with a brand new tune... and some tips on how to make your own remix! The retribution paladin priority 'rotation' is a lot more confusing than people let on. It's not feral druid, that's for sure, but it's not exactly simple. The latest shared topic from Blog Azeroth was especially interesting to us here at WoW.com. What do you think of the PTR and the news sites that follow it? If that last link didn't get you in a writing mood, maybe this one will. Last Friday's writing prompt from Too Many Annas: Letters from the Front. OutDPS has a few hunter tips for the early Icecrown Citadel bosses. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: No more helm polishing
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. The 65th episode of the Twisted Nether Blogcast is available for download. We've all heard of Deadly Boss Mods and BigWigs, but have you heard of Deus Vox Encounters? Too Many Annas teaches the new roleplayer how to initiate RP with others. Mortigan the Lock has written a resignation letter to the Sons of Hodir. The Stoppable Force asks a question. What racials would you like to see your race get in Cataclysm? Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: Goodnight, sweet prince
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. The blogosphere is going to be a little less fun from now on. Ratshag has called it a day. All Things Azeroth #138 is available for download. Check out the website for a list of topics! Help! Help! I'm at 540 defense and got crit! What happened!? Too Many Annas has a bunch of tips for the brand new roleplayer. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Breakfast Topic: What Tropes does your character embody?
Ok, I'm going to make sort of a pretty geeky confession here: I have been known to read TV Tropes. In fact, I have been known to waste hours that could have been better spent writing (or raiding) reading TV Tropes. For those of you who do not know what TV Tropes is, I'll explain in short: it's a wiki in which the contributors look for common themes and cliches present in modern pop culture and fiction, document them, and categorize them. Of course, rather than give the Tropes simple names, part of the fun seems to be giving your tropes fanciful and offbeat names. Big Lipped Alligator Moment, anyone? How about Contemplate our Navels?
Saving the old world with wallpapers
I don't know that we've ever quite posted about this, but here you go: given that we're going to be losing old Azeroth forever (sometime in the next 12 months, if the guessing is to be believed), Too Many Annas is stepping up the wallpaper project, aiming to put together pictures of every single zone in the World of Warcraft. Before, this was just a bit of idle fun, turning some scenic views into desktop-sized files, but with the recent Cataclysm-ic news, this is almost a public service, saving these classic old zones from extinction. We've got time yet, surely, but if you like the way anything looks in Desolace or The Barrens, now's the time to screenshot it for good.TMA is even taking requests, so even if you just have a suggestion for a great view, you can send it along and it'll get into the wallpaper database. Only a matter of time until the world is completely shattered; probably a good idea to admire these old zones while we can. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
The Daily Quest: Podcasts, Lord Jaraxxus, and playing the other gender
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Episode 54 of the Twisted Nether Blogcast welcomed StoneyBaby of BigHitBox to the show. All Things Azeroth #125 is waiting to invade the inner sanctums your ears, too! World of Matticus and 4 Haelz both have guides to healing Lord Jaraxxus, this week's Trial of the Crusader boss. Too Many Annas discusses roleplaying different genders in WoW. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: I'm hungry
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Nourish is back to regular updates again, and has already given us three more delicious recipes. Alterac Volley explores ways to profit from PvP. This one is for you roleplayers out there. Do you use personal NPCs? Check out some of the great contributions to the latest shared topic from Blog Azeroth. Righteous Defense explores a few possible talent specs for Protection Paladins in patch 3.2. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Five Rs of Character Revitalization
So I've talked recently about life as an RPer, and how we seem to interact with our characters just a bit differently. Sometimes, whether we like it or not, a certain character and their back story just grab hold and won't let go, and we find ourselves coming back again and again, just to see where the story leads. Of course, sometimes the character goes just the opposite way, and no matter what you do, your stories fall flat and you don't feel enthusiastic about logging on. It may be because you can't stand the character's personality anymore, it may be because your normal group of friends has hit an RP rut or even taken a break for a while themselves, it may be a variety of other things. Recently, Anna of Too Many Annas wrote a pretty awesome article about how to refresh a flagging RP character using 5 Rs: Relax and Rest, Reintegrate, Refresh the Character, Retcon, and Reroll/Reskin.What's sort of cool about this list is that you can even apply a lot of the principles to characters in general, even if you're a non-RPer. Anna's covered the RP angle pretty well, so I'll mostly focus on this other angle.
Blogatelle signs off
One more major WoW-related blog has closed its doors. Too Many Annas, among others, notes that Blogatelle has called it quits, saying that Sean and Jess over there both feel they've come to the point where they've run out of things to say. While the blog itself is definitely a nice achievement -- it was an excellent blog centered on roleplaying (we've mentioned it before here on the site as an excellent resource for RPers) -- they will unfortunately leave a number of series behind, including the Katafray project, which followed a roleplaying Paladin up through the levels in Azeroth. As Anna says, they definitely deserve a hat tip, both for giving the RP community a solid and steady blogging voice, and for being accessible enough to bring in new RPers.This closing follows the shuttering of a few other WoW blogs lately, most famously those of BRK and Resto4Life. You might say three is a trend, sure, but on the other hand, we've seen a lot of blogs and podcasts grow as well lately. Four years in, there are going to be all kinds of people in the community, in all kinds of places regarding their interest to the game. Anyone who sees a few bloggers step away to do other things and cites it as a sign that the game is on its last legs needs to keep looking. We're sorry to lose some popular bloggers, but it sure looks from here like the community is stronger than ever.
The Daily Quest: No seriously, that glyph is horrible
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. The second edition of the Hearthstone Tavern podcast has gone live, this week featuring many new lore and RP segments. Alterac Volley is feeling the hurt of Blizzard discouraging players from going to Wintergrasp. Do you still go to Wintergrasp, even after the change to the daily quests? Again, we're a few days late, but all of our RPers out there should answer Anna's Friday Five! So... the Glyph of Disease is kind of terrible, says Runeforge Gossip. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: A podcast, eh?
We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Serennia discusses the 2v2 arena bracket. Would we be better off if they replaced it with a 4v4 bracket? Too Many Annas answers reader mail regarding a fairly widespread (in my experience) phenomenon: RPers griefing RPers that raid simply because they raid. Are you a Hunter? Are you a Hunter that hates Naxxramas as much as I do? The Hunter's Rhok shows you how to gear up for Ulduar without it! Episode #115 of All Things Azeroth has been released. This week it features an interview with Cadistra of WoW, Eh? along with a whole load of other topics. Those of you using our WoW.com profile system... we want your blogs! Have you written something that you think is worth being featured on The Daily Quest? Have you discovered another good blog here on WoW.com? Send them in using the link below! No, this doesn't mean we're going to stop linking to other sites, so don't worry! We have enough love to go around. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: Rise of the Wordy Warrior
We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Still looking to get your hands on some BlizzCon tickets? WoW-Achievements.com is currently running a trivia contest, so head on over and give it a shot! Sideshow and Syrana take Memorial Day to Azeroth, honoring fallen heroes of the Horde and Alliance. We're a few days late, but have you roleplayers out there seen Too Many Annas' Friday Five this week? A good opportunity to take a look at the Varian/Garrosh conflict through the eyes of your character! One of our favorite blogs, The Wordy Warrior, has a brand new site and keeps the great content flowing: Check out An Officer's Guide to the Trial Period. Lorecrafted reviews the latest issue of the World of Warcraft comic. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: Post Mother's Day Quests
We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.There's really no reason that the above photo needed to be included in today's Daily Quest, other than the sheer awesomeness that was SNL last weekend. Honor's Code has a good story about how that little extra push helped down Vezax. A good read for those working on him, or thinking about working on him. Twisted Nether Blogcast is having a t-shirt design contest for their trip to BlizzCon. Win a 60-day game card! Too Many Annas asks: are your problems healer caused? Does your mother play a Shaman? If so, she will love Lodur's Restoration Shaman - Best in Slot for Patch 3.1. Shields Up! takes a look at the loot council distribution method. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: Welcome to Patch 3.1
We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. The official Ulduar cinematic showed us another glimpse of King Varian Wrynn. Want to know more about him? Check out Lorecrafted's Varian Wrynn character study. Speaking of the official cinematic, if you're having trouble with Blizzard's flash player, MMO-Champion has put the video in full on its YouTube channel. If you're a healer looking to start Ulduar, World of Matticus has just about everything you could possibly need to be prepared tonight. The Death Knights in our audience may be at a loss as to how to spec tonight. Your talent trees have gone through a lot of changes in patch 3.1. Luckily, Death Knight Tactics has some build suggestions for you. Too Many Annas uses Dual Spec to try something a little more unusual. If it doesn't work out, you can always change it, right? Click here to submit a link to TDQ
AFKing your way to greatness
One of the most irritating things about raiding would have to be ninja AFK's. You wait for the results of a ready check only to see that -- oh, crap -- someone hasn't returned a verdict. Now, AFK's can happen for good reasons (children, explosions, children with explosives), but just as often they don't. On farm content, it's an irritating wait. On progression content, you check your watch and realize you're inching that much closer to a respawn timer and a raid leader who'll need a prescription for that skyrocketing blood pressure of his. As time passes, the clamor to just pull the boss rises, but that's not really possible on an achievement-oriented run like The Undying or something like a 3-drake Sartharion.There are still a few fights where you can AFK entirely and no one would be the wiser (here's looking at you, Patchwerk), but they're a dying breed. Too Many Annas, much to our surprise, managed a successful Heigan kill with an AFK player, and Heigan's notoriously unforgiving even to the inattentive. The tactic involves a Paladin and what I assume to be a supremely annoyed heal team, but apparently it worked -- and I am mightily tempted to suggest it for our next Naxx clear.
Snowshaman!
This is brilliant -- after Anna jokingly asked for pictures of Snowshaman, she actually got one. Niyahti and her husband built this snowshaman, complete with two totems (though we're not sure which ones they are -- Wrath of Air and Frost Resist maybe?). Sure, it loses a little something in the translation from polygons to frozen water, but remember the medium. Considering it's handmade with snow, that's a pretty good snowshaman. The horns on the head must mean it's a Draenei, right? Though I have no idea what the sticks are coming out of the front.And hey, if you happen to get a nice bit of snowfall this month and feel like you can make a better one, feel free. We'd love to see it.
