nagaina

‘filled with a dreamy and magical light’

‘The song sings itself’

* When last I logged into the beta, the Horde-side version of the Western Plaguelands tour that WoW.com did here had not yet been implemented: http://www.wow.com/2010/07/06/cataclysm-beta-western-plaguelands/ The Horde camp was present inside Andorhal, mind you, but none of the NPCs had been placed and there were no low-level quests available that connected to the place.

( Now there are. MASSIVE SPOILERS beyond this point. )

Via Slacktivist:

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2010/07/tom-corbett-is-not-right-smart-or-good.html

Okay, so Ed Rendell has been about as useful as tits on a boar pig but, seriously? If Tom Corbett somehow manages to become governor of Pennsylvania, I will fucking build a gigantic fence around my property and declare it the Free Republic of Myrandala, I swear to all the fucking gods that ever were. I KID YOU NOT. I do not know what alternate fucking reality version of Pennsylvania this choad dwells in but I can tell you this: I have sent out no less than thirty applications and resumes to businesses hiring within a fifty mile radius of my home and you know how many responses I have received? NOT. FUCKING. ONE. Fortunately, I am gainfully employed, albeit at a crappy job with shitty insurance and an obnoxious boss. I cannot imagine how fucking stressful it must be for someone who doesn't even have that PLUS asswipe politicians campaigning on what a bunch of lazy slackers they are for not being able to land a new job in a situation where need out-paces availability by a three-to-one margin. The employment situation in Pennsylvania was asstacular BEFORE the economy imploded, for fuck's sake.

Via hradzka:

http://jpop.mystavash.net/node/25

Money Quote:

I happen to really like BL (boy's love) manga, and I've seen Junjo Romantica about 10 times, but I probably don't fall in the category of fujoshi. Perhaps my like is too passive, I just enjoy reading a different flavor of love stories.

Still, we both really enjoyed the sadly short Fujoshi Deka, starring Shinohara Mai as a policewoman and closet fujoshi, with Takahashi Hitomi as her mentor. Shinohara, as the italicized line above shows, imagined BL relationships everywhere, and based all of her crime-solving theories on them. Sadly, most of the time, the truth was much more mundane, but she more often than not was right about the villain.

...To borrow an observation from the inestimable Hradzka, there's a TV show about a police officer who solves crimes with the power of her slash goggles. I must own this thing.

‘Never fear the darkness.’

....I will not spend today rewriting Keldris' section of Lux Aeterna for the third time. I will not.

So! According to this:

http://iwl.me/

Make Lunch Not War means I write like Dan Brown.

Echoes means I write like H.P. Lovecraft.

Survivors means I write like Edgar Allen Poe.

Pyros Manteia means I write like H.P. Lovecraft.

Tactical Romance Strikeforce One! means I write like Kurt Vonnegut.

Wait.

What.

My fluffy plotless Final Fantasy Tactics not-quite-smutfic means I write like KURT VONNEGUT?

....Somewhere, the Great Old Master is laughing his ass off.

‘And summer’s lease have all too short a date.’

http://www.wow.com/2010/07/11/ninja-werewolves/

Since the NDA has been lifted, I can now admit out loud that I participated in the Cataclysm Friends and Family Alpha. I can also say that Worgen rogues are made of win and awesome and EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. The only think they lack? An audible snickt sound effect when they wolf out and get all clawy and maimy. On the other hand? Nothing is more hilarious than standing next to your tiny!female!trainer is hulking Crinos wolf-man form and have her response to you feel very much like she's thinking of disciplining you with a rolled up broadsheet across the snout.

Good News:

* The Jeep does not need a new engine at this time. Yay! It was another wonky sensor preventing the proper registration of real oil pressure. We still need to think about replacing it with a newer vehicle but not, like, immediately.

* I did not come back to a pile of backed-up work a mile high. Yay!

Bad News:

* My Aunt Leonora died on Friday. She'd spent the last several years fighting cancer -- ovarian/uterine, which metastasized into neighboring organs. From what my Mom told me, it was actually more the chemo than the cancer, in the end: she collapsed and, when she was rushed to the hospital, she was found to have no nutrients in her body, as the chemo made her too sick to eat and, when she could eat, she couldn't keep anything down. The youngest of my mother's sisters, btw, and she and her husband were also the primary caregivers for my maternal grandmother. She donated her body to Science and when Science is done, she will be cremated and the ashes sent home for a memorial service.

‘I know I am but the summer to your heart, not the full four seasons of the year.’

July 10th: ‘Tears are the summer showers to the soul.’
July 11th: ‘We always believe that our first love is our last and our last love is our first.’

And the creepiest WoW story ever. I mean it. IT GAVE ME THE WIG GUYS DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD A STORY HAS TO WORK TO ACCOMPLISH THAT FEAT?

The Patchwork Sin'dorei:

http://trollbouquet.ca/?p=897

‘Ah, summer, what power have you to make us suffer and like it.’

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13816839821&sid=1

From the Blue Post:

Hello everyone,

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters (http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/about/mission.html), and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment

This news item kinda got buried in the red hot molten tide of WTF pouring over us this week, so I thought I'd do a bit of a signal boost:

http://www.wow.com/2010/07/06/character-sketch-call-for-submissions/

WoW.com/WoW Insider is initiating a new column that might as well be called 'Tell Me About Your Character.' From the article:

Here at WoW.com, we'd like to celebrate these characters -- your characters -- by taking them for a spin. We're looking for submissions of our readers' characters which we'll take and draw. Think of it as a reverse version of World of WarCrafts, where we'll draw your character and throw in a paragraph or two about them, Know Your Lore-style. We'll need your help, of course. We want you to tell us about your favorite character, whether it be your awesome end-game raiding night elf priest or your humble, low-level bank alt in a snazzy tuxedo set. It's up to you.

We want you to let us know about your character by shooting us an email at zach@wow.com with your character's name and a few lines describing them. Obviously, we'll need to get them right, so you could either link us to your character's armory or just send us some screenshots we can use as reference. The more detailed your descriptions or pictures, the more justice we'll be able to give to your character, so make sure to give us everything we need. We'll even try our best to get little details in there somewhere, like your favorite non-combat pet if you want it hanging around. In the end, if we get it right, we'll have a WoW.com wallpaper featuring one of your characters every week.

So there's this meme going around. The rules are as follows:

1. Pick fifteen pictures that are currently on your hard drive that you feel are self-expressive. They must be on your hard drive right now, no Googling, no Flickr.

2. No captions. You're speaking in pictures.

( I heroically resisted filling this entire meme with pretty boys kissing and licking each other: )

‘I have never forgotten your smile...’

http://www.wow.com/2010/07/08/customizing-and-opting-out-of-real-id/

From the text:

Setting up parental controls:

1. Go to the appropriate battle.net site for your region. (That link should take you there.)
2. Push the Create or Manage a Battle.net Account button.
3. Log in as normal.
4. Click on Parental Controls, which is an option listed under Manage My Games. (And, if you're like me, you'll be sad that you are still not in the beta.)
5. Choose the No - Setup Parental Controls button.
6. Fill in your info as both the child's account and your own. (Why they make this distinction, I don't know. Parental controls always used to be an option for adults to manage their own game time.)
7. You will receive an email. You need to save this email, because the link in there is the only way to get to the parental controls. Otherwise, you have to make Blizzard resend it. Click the link to get into the controls.
8. Save Settings and then be told it will take up to 30 minutes to go into effect.

That is how to opt out. How to optimize opting in is after the break.

If you are using Real ID, there are a few things you should know:

* Check your Pending tab. It's under Social (!), Friends. Real ID friend requests will be listed there.
* Add Real ID friends by typing in their Battle.net email addresses. Choose Add Friend from the Friends tab of Social and type each address in there. Warning: if you have a player targeted, it will add that person as a friend when you press the Add button.
* The status line will broadcast to all of your Real ID friends. It looks like just a status that you might think people would only see when viewing you on their Friends List, and it is also that. But as soon as you change it, it sends a message to everyone on your list. So, make sure you really want all of them to know that you are scanning the AH before you set your status.
* Those excessive notifications can be turned off. I really wish I had known this when many of my friends were having crashing issues.

1. Go to your options by pressing ESC or the computer icon.
2. Choose Interface.
3. Select Battle.net.
4. Adjust your notifications as desired.

Note: If you are into character and world immersion, I highly recommend you turn off all notifications. Otherwise, any notification is preceded by the friend's full, real name.

[Robin Torres] has logged on.
[Robin Torres] is streaming an event. You have been warned.
[Robin Torres] is harshing your RP buzz.

The cross-realm chat with people you trust is really a pleasant thing in a non-RP setting. It is also a fun way to keep in touch with absent friends and family who already know your phone number, IM and home address. Just make sure that you are OK with your full, real name being shown to their Real ID friends. As with anything online, if you are aware of the risks and take the proper precautions, it can be a fun feature.

When the Facebook integration goes through, perhaps we will get some of the same privacy features, such as turning off Friends of Friends and being able to be invisible. And unicorn mounts. We could get unicorn mounts for merging our Battle.net and Facebook accounts. They would breathe rainbows and be able to teleport.

/skips away, humming a happy tune


....You know the shit has hit the fan when the Elitist Jerks AND WoW Insider are getting equally sarcastic.

Via WoW Ladies:

http://community.livejournal.com/wow_ladies/13555131.html

Righteous Orbs Gets It:

http://www.righteousorbs.com/?p=2098

So does Linedan/PanzerCow:

http://panzercow.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/realidiocy/

And, yeah, THE MOON TURNED RED AS BLOOD AND THE SKY BECAME AS SACK CLOTH, the Elitist Jerks themselves come out hard against it and suspend their own no-whining policy for the duration of the concerned thread:

http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t102366-realid_soon_apply_all_forum_posts_other_upcoming_official_forum_improvements/

...I am tempted to call this a lesser sign of the Apocalypse.

I foresee my ffs blizz tag getting a workout.