MoP and Me

I’ve not blogged about MoP yet, I guess things have just been a little too busy to get round to it, so I should really take the time to do so.
The first thing I did was roll a Pandaran Monk, though as of yet I haven’t levelled her passed lvl 12.  I was very happy to get the name I wanted for her.  Ok, it’s cheesy, but one of my favourite movies is Big Trouble in Little China, so I named my monk after one of the characters, Miao Yin (as we aren’t allowed spaces in names I called her Miaoyin, close enough).  She’s the lady on the right (the other is Kim Cattrall from SaTC).  I think she has something silly like 3 lines in the whole movies and sepnds the rest of the time being a victim, but she stuck in my mind.

But after getting Miaoyin to the point I could chose a faction I concentrated on levelling Pinkamena.  She is currently 89, I hope to hit 90 in the next few days.
My first impressions were amazing.  Everything looks so pretty!  And the story lines are well written.  I have fallen in love with the game all over again, which I am very happy about after the major Cataclysm burn out.   The areas are well made and well thought out.  I absolutely love the Foxicopter I saw flying around Nessingwary’s camp.

And was I the only person who saw this in the Panda starting area?

Think this was put in after the whole Ji Firepaw controversy ? Or was it always there?

Anyway, back to levelling.  More later.

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I Have No Idea What I Am Doing Anymore…

Patch days are never straight forward. This one would have been easier if I hadn’t had a brain crushing migraine for most of the day, which is great timing by my head I must say. I dragged myself out of bed at 11am, fired up the patcher and by the time I came round again at 4pm (no work for me today, throwing up behind the bar is frowned upon) it had more or less finished. So I logged on for a while.

The new loading screen is pretty

I will miss Deathwing though, I have a soft spot for dragons, even one with a Skip for a lower jaw.

Of course the first thing I did was log onto all my existing characters to get all my mounts and pets logged. I finally got enough pets to get Stinker! I adore Stinker, and as much as I’d love to be a pet collector I just don’t have the patience, so this was a real bonus for me. Never mind the fawn you get at the next mile stone, amorous skunks ftw! And the Blue Drake languishing on my rarely used Belf Priest is now available to the characters I do play. I do now have 6 White kittens in my pets list, far more than any other pet.

After the squeeing about Stinker I decided to sort of Pinkamena with new talent choices. I have to say I love the new Travel form, and I took the Glyph that allows me to tame critters and have them follow me for an hour. I also took the camouflage glyph, because a girl can’t just be one colour kitty all the time. Thing is, after all that, and reading up on Noxxic I still have no clue as to what I am doing. My shadow priest looks even more complicated, and I’ve not dared look at resto shammying yet! I am hoping once my head settles down it will be simpler.

Oh, and if anyone wants to add me, my battletag is chaotickitty#1891 and I’m on the EU servers.

P.S Nearly forgot, I now have the internet at home, so no more going to my dads to use it. G is happy about this too, but I must explain to him about ‘Internet Search History’…

No Room for Negative Characters in WoW?

There has been a lot of controversy in the MoP beta over Ji Firepaw and his dialogue. More specifically something said to female characters.

To Males he greeted them with:

“Hello, friend! You’ve got a strong look to you! I bet you’re all the rage with the ladies! Join me! You and I are going to be good friends!”

To Females he said:

“Hello, friend! You’re some kind of gorgeous, aren’t you? I bet you can’t keep the men off of you! Join me!”

This upset some people and the line has been changed. I have to say was pretty creepy, but then I think the male version was too. My take on it was he was trying to flatter either gender into joining him but getting it wrong and going waaaaaay too far. I’m not sure what it’s been changed to, not having played in the beta. And I’m not against the changes.

But that’s not really what I want to talk about. It got me thinking though.

Is there no room for ‘offensive’ characterisation in games any more?

I’m not sure I worded it right there so I’ll try and explain.

For example a dev wants to write a new character for the game. This character needs its own personality, and that may depend on what part of the storyline it fits into. Let’s say he is a member of a faction you have to deal with to gain acceptance. But this guy, well, it turns out he really doesn’t like women. And says so. Possibly in vocal terms. And part of the storyline is about you overcoming that. Either he gets cut down to size, or you change his opinion, whatever. My question is this.

Would people allow this to remain in game?

Personally I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Oh, sure, the quest line may make my blood boil, but in the end, as long as the over all message isn’t “Hurr hurr, wimenz are useless” and finishes up with only male characters getting passed it, I’m not going to demand it changed. Shit like this exists in real life, and I hate that, I really do, but I feel removing all traces of offensive subjects from the media would harm rather than help. Show it being challenged. Show it bring overcome. But please don’t act like it never happens, because if people don’t know it does then how can it be beaten.

Another example:

A new game comes out. In this game female toons can only take the cooking profession and their level cap is 5 levels lower than a male toons.

Now THAT I’d have a major problem with. It doesn’t highlight any issues other than the devs are assholes, and can influence young males into thinking of women as inferior.

Im not saying that it’s ok to have a character do a sudden about turn in personality and abuse someone out of the blue. I’m not saying it’s ok to have offensive content for the sake of the ‘lols’ or to troll users. But I am saying that in my opinion content shouldn’t be sanitised too much.

I hope this makes sense, as it did in my head, but on print I’m not so sure!