User:StarshineSpearmaiden

About me
I have been actively gaming, as well as a computer geek, since I was a kid - which may not sound much at first but trust me on this.

I played D&D in the early paper and pencil days, enjoyed some perhaps unusual aspects of Traveller, a glorious time in Runequest, and a few other games - and a fondness for friends who really can tell the difference between fact, fantasy, and the physics of the Real World we walk in versus the (sometimes consistent) curious physics of worlds of magical pasts, alternate worlds, or distant futures.

Um, and oddly enough I'm social too; MMO seems to work for me!

I joined Wikia so that I could comment on an active discussion regarding WoWWiki. The wiki moved. The old one remains. If you want to read my (also rather verbose) thoughts on that transition, go read them over there. I'm here to talk about WoW :)

About my toons within WoW
Spilledstars (Caelastrasz: Night Elf druid) is my main character, but not the only one I play actively. She's a maxed level Resto druid, with an alt spec and gear for feral tanking on behalf of my lower level guildies. Although, this may get less common as our other tanks are blossoming. She's our JC and one of our most active herbalist.

Ishnudaldien (Caelastrasz: Draenai shaman) is our guild's most active Inscriptionist. Not quite maxed level yet; working on that too.

Seneschal (Caelastrasz: Gnome mage) runs our "sister guild" and leads the auctioning team; it's also occasionally fun to go out a-blasting :)

DistantSuns (Terrokar: Human paladin) tromps around questing a lot, generally when my main realm is down, but sometimes just to enjoy not worrying about keeping up with anyone.

I also have a couple of worgen, a human shadowpriest, a warrior, and a rogue. And I've recently poured a bit of energy into a new warlock on Blade's Edge.

Con Diablos (Caelastrasz, Oceanic)
Spilledstars is guildmistress of this family guild. We do some dungeoning. We actively quest or farm together. We enjoy using in-game voice; we had a vent server for a while, but were using it rarely. Not all of us are related, we're close family friends too, or a few people who have had really good runs with us. The heart of it all is, if you're a member of our guild, the player is a member; we help each other's alts too, and people who've matriculated up into raiding guilds still quest with us and help out.

Promise (Caelastrasz, Oceanic)
Seneschal is guildmistress of this banking-alt guild - and the coincident "sister guild" of Con Diablos. Although, some of us aren't mere level ones, as some of our players enjoy also running the toons or pushing the professions forward. Profits go toward gearing up Con Diablos and Promise members.

Guiding Knights (Terrokar, US)
The same family folk active on a US server, and perhaps a few locals to the realm. The hope and goals of this guild are to (when we're active) help anyone whom we find is new to the game; bags for young toons, etc.

Thoughts on playing WoW via the LFD tool
I recently read an pleasantly awesome thread over on the Blizzard forums: I met an Elitist Tank last night

Well worth reading. Actually he met a few elitist tanks, and one really good elite man up to the challenge of playing the dungeon he was actually given... who happened, in the queue for that particular run, to be a Tank.

It's awesome that his crew had the perseverance to even bother to keep queueing up, instead of just "going for an achieve" like running off and pasting Stratholme in case of getting a mount. The universe was kind enough to grant them something they really needed - a sensei. That man brought the ideals he lives with in the real world into our MMO's fake one, and made it more real thereby.

More players should consider being real people behind their toons. :)

It caused me to write these bits...

 * /ShouldHaveLearnedInTheNormals
 * /AboutGearingUp
 * /OnlyRunningWithGuildies

Risks aren't bad. They just require energy and maybe a bit of brainpower - and more time. If you're willing to put some time in - use it well. Help a few other souls spin up too.

More thoughts on attitude issues
This set of nitpicks all describe the same pickle:

If you had high hopes of playing with people who know what they're doing, then you quite reasonably look for traits that suggest that yeah, they probably know what they're doing.

But, many of these traits are not properly represented on Playerscore, nor by itemlevel. Sorry lads and lasses, math is not enough to play this game. Go out and have some fun instead of nitpicking. If you like math that much, stay in the auction house.

PVP gear versus PVE
If you just plain delete the resilience stat entirely, and it's still good stats, shut up, ok?

Green versus Purple gear
Gear from the expansion lands includes greens of significantly higher itemlevel, but less sexy color on the tooltip. Again, if the stats are right for the class, shut up already.

Caveat: at major patches, "stats right for the class" sometimes has changed drastically. If this happens again, there will be a few weeks when people will have great gear for an older world. (For example: hunters with lots of int; 4.0 / 4.1 Cata made hunters use their own special kind of second bar and don't use Int anymore.) For at least a month give 'em a break, re-gearing is a pain and takes time if you don't play every single night.

Decent blues and an occasional purple does show one thing, that someone has a little bit of spare money or a decent amount of spare time and was willing to spend it on finding the right gear.

Excellent greens and everything enchanted even if not at max shows they are a bargain shopper.

If the stats aren't so hot, they may be a bit inexperienced in dungeons, and running around in whatever quests have given them. Maybe they're saving up for epic flight speed.

Learn 2 Play
Hardcore raiders versus Casual play, or elitists who want to be carried through speed runs?

PVP itself
I'll admit I do not PVP a lot. I also don't hang out with premades or other farming-clubs. I just play to have fun. Sometimes the fun includes places the other side owns.

My thoughts in response to this thread: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2661227888 It's not fun to give up. Sure it's not fun to rez, but I've HK'd the ganker who was camping the spiritheals area too. Regardless of living on a PVE realm, I think it's a darned shame he was only worth one point for all the damage he did.

As such, I'll have to say all my HK's and honor points have been well earned, as have the fairly few Achieves I've gotten on the battlegrounds. I even went back in to the Undercity to rescue some companion during the flamefest week.

I wanna say "don't even ask" but I know everyone does. Why?!?! THE DARN THING IS OUTDOORS - A LEVEL 27 CAN GO GET IT! Before I realized where the flame was on my first year, I'd joined a group that was going for it, and the leader, well... he'd gotten some wrong impression about where it was. So we'd fought our way through the sewers and past surprised kidlets at the AH and everything. Of course this means there were a few real players defending by the time we genuinely got to the flame. And of course this means at least one dead soul among us back in the corridors. I didn't feel like leaving one of us behind. Spirit hopping sucks. Battle rezzing can be done (at least by me) though some planning for one certainly helps.

Perseverance and knowing yourself are the key.

If anything, the main frustration I have, as an only occasional PVPer (I have this opinion of the raiders "tokens" too) is that you have to get so darn many to be worth ANYTHING. I'm just not into PVP enough to collect that many boxtops for gear I'm going to outgrow before I say boo. Not only that, but honor points buy very little in the way of useful PVE gear, except the free action trink itself. So, the ONLY reason I could possibly dream of doing it is for fun. The coinage count is impossible. Winning a BG - even if it means turning the tide - is not.

The awesome quote from that forum was from a blue who posted their own thoughts rather than Blizzard's:  Because for some people it's not about the honor you earn, it's about the honor you own.

A Letter To My Lower Level Self
Dear Spilled at level 1: Your hair is lovely, keep it silver always.


 * /DearSpilledLevelOne
 * /DearSpilledLevelTen
 * /DearSpilledLeveling