Ironyca's "Myths and Urban Legends in WoW" – The Bengal Tiger Cave

There are blogs you read for kickarse theorycrafting info (Graylo's Grey Matter) and ones just because they're interesting and usually pretty thought provoking (Lissanna's Restokin or Spinks' Welcome to Spinksville! (though, wow, please stop playing Star Wars already!  ;^D), but the blog that is a legitimate treat every time it pops into my RSS reader is Ironyca's Ironyca Stood in the Fire. (The other blog in my blogroll that's more "literature" than magazine? Cricket Bread, though that's not WoW related in the least, except to remind me that there are better things to be doing than playing WoW -- this is the guy who started the Crop Mob movement.)

The stuff at Ironyca's really has an archivist's and an academic's flair.  Not an industrialist academe, determined to, you know, be relevant by applying whatever theory has their goat to today's hot game (okay, no, really, GTA deserves your attention), but a, "Politics and fads be damned; I'm going to do good work and start chronicling and commenting on this [sub]culture," kind of academic. (Though she's light on the Deleuze.)

So I've been meaning to blog this particular post with more context, but I'm going to stop waiting and share the latest excellent series of material Ironyca's been putting together.  Honestly, if you can't let her work spin you forward a few steps, you're not really interested in non-self-hedonistic WoW [1].

Myths and Urban Legends in WoW – The Bengal Tiger Cave | Ironyca Stood in the Fire:

In Stranglethorn Vale near Zul’Gurub hidden in the mountains, there’s a secret cave with an even more secret mount vendor. She sells a cat mount, supposedly a bengal tiger, but she only spawns once a month for 30 minutes.

I'll admit that I'm much bigger into exploration than I am raiding, for instance, so maybe this is more fascinating to me than most.  I cat form prowled around the Scarlet Monastery for hours before I actually ran it, spent waaaay too much time trying to sneak into Dalaran before I'd leveled high enough, died too many times trying to find where I could drop into Un Goro Crater so I didn't have to run the long way around, and ran around Wintergrasp (hard not to call it "Winterfell" now) for a while well before I was the right level.  Soloing for fun can be, well, fun.  It's nice to take some time off from doing things the way the developers intended and instead see if I can't prank the game -- which, of course, was the whole point of the poorly scanned chapter linked to above.

But Ironyca goes well beyond exploration and strongly into the land of metalepsis.  I've wanted to write about gaming's "industry of metalepsis" for years... how the "real world" and [the horribly backwards notion of] the "virtual world" intersect, whether it's a trick like Rockstar's hidden game or the extra levels in N64's San Fran Rush (iirc)... there are things that can't be found without looking at media that exists only outside of the game (see Picard, via imgur with a small decency edit, above).

And that's why this series is so important. There's nothing in the game that's explicitly there to make you think that there's a vendor than spawns thirty minutes a month in some cave selling mounts. Sure, there's a skin, but that's it. Plus, the skin isn't an Easter Egg by any account. It has a good, reasonable explanation. The mount was in an early beta (alpha?) and was removed. It's a true fossil (again, read the previous link).

But through metalepsis, the digital fossil moves from forgotten mount to legend. That's a distinctly human reaction. We explain the unexplainable through story and narrative, and sometimes prefer to be seduced by romanticism rather than apply William's Razor.

Okay, that's enough. Your homework is to read every link in this post, and then find the cave of metaleptic legend.


And speaking of things not changing, you'll never guess what my first LFG instance was. Okay, well, yes, yes you will. The upside is that I sure as heck remember how to run it.

[1] Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you; beyond capturing the raw materials of my time playing, this blog is essentially just hedonism.

The Old World is New Again: Rumors, Rumors

I'm not sure why two blogs in my roll won't comment on the rumors about the next expansion. It's fun, yo.

So here we go: My favorite news from the World of Warcraft - Cataclysm rumors at MMO-Champion:

Classic Azeroth Revamp
A cataclysmic event caused by Deathwing and Azshara will change the face of Azeroth as we know it. Most of the new content for Cataclysm will take the form of a revamped Azeroth, taking advantage of newer additions to WoW such as phasing and daily quests.

If you've been reading a while, you might remember I mentioned criticizing the virtual ghettoizing in another blog, where you couldn't see nuttin' without the expansion, and asked (here on Panzerkin) for this style of Old World revamp to happen in LK (where we know it didn't happen). Here's a bit from those posts:

[From Curmudgeon Gamer]:

Blizzard needs to ensure that expansions are backwards compatible, not so much that expansionless folk like myself can go to the new lands, nor even that we should be provided access to the new trainers, etc, but players with expansions should continue to flow through old hotspots (possibly with new buildings in cities accessible only if you have the expansions, etc) so that the communities at least do not give the impression of being quite so perfectly cleaved.

[From Panzerkin]:

Instead, it created another system of virtual ghettos back in WoW's Old World. Endgames shifted. Years of development time for instances, etc, rendered worthless. Those new to WoW or who hadn't seen the OW end game had no real incentive to go back.

There were options. Create mobs that have a new attack type or one for which there was little resistance gear in the OW, kinda like fire resist was used in the original. Keep the progression of items natural, and ensure items (other than just epics) continue to have some important value in the future. Here, I'm thinking about something like the Illdari-Bane items -- perhaps there's a mob in the WotLK that can only be damaged by items that specifically harm demons by 150 or more points.

Glad to see that wasn't such a crazy idea after all. Looks like we might even get to fly in the Old World too.

This leads me to one question: What happens if you don't have the expansions? Can I still walk around the Old World? In fact, if, "Durotar is wrecked and apparently Orgrimmar could be destroyed. A new Orc city is rebuilt over the course of the expansion," and, assumedly, much of the 'make-up' content is hidden from newbies by flight, do I now actually have less available content in Azeroth than before the upcoming expansion? UO just recently got smart enough to give everyone access to every expansion for free. Let me tell you, when I played one month of UO two years after one month of UO, years after years of UO, one of the big reasons I didn't care to stick around even with the Kingdom Reborn interface is that I couldn't go anywhere new. I was still stuck on my Third Dawn era dungeons and content. Nice. Thanks for keeping me in the virtual ghetto.

But yeah, this sounds like fun. Assuming these rumors are true, IANAL, LMNOP, etc. ;^)

Zul'Aman, soulbound Leatherworking, and additions to the Moonkin blogroll

Okay, Zul'Aman stunk. I couldn't go anywhere. I like to scout out instances solo before running them, judging about how difficult the first pat or two is and going cat to get the layout down before playing. No luck here. It's a raid instance, so I got a guildie to group me so I could drop by, but then there's this danged door that won't open unless you have 5 party members banging on some gong. Thanks, Blizzard. Perhaps I could do the "die and get by" trick that allows you to enter a few other keyed instances, but I didn't see a good ledge nearby nor any mobs to aggravate. Lots of wasted time. Ran to the Shattered Sun to do a few dailies.

Welp, I finally remembered my goal before I took my seven month break: Make the specialist leatherworking soulbound set. Unfortunately, elemental leatherworking's soulbound set is essentially for feral druids (and rogues, etc). I'm not into respecializing, as that runs me 100 gold. Here's the down-low from WoWWiki:

First you must unlearn your current specialization. To do that, go back to the original quest giver for your Leatherworking specialization and pay 100  to remove your specialization (this cost varies depending on your level, 25  at 49 for instance. See herefor more.) You will lose only patterns that require that specialization. Note: you will not lose any patterns available prior to The Burning Crusade since their specialization requirements were removed when the expansion was released.

You can then learn a new specialization by going to Narain Soothfancy and reading a book. He is located north of Steamwheedle Port in Tanaris. The book on his table will teach you either the Dragonscale, Elemental or Tribal leatherworking specialization skill.

Seriously? Now anyone can dream up a Helm of Fire that I spent what seems like years repping to get? I know they don't sell for crud any more (though I did bring in a few hundred gold before the market crashed out), but this is horrible. And now I just read a book to respecialize? Tempting, but I'm only at about 220g right now. Part-timers don't carry much cash.

And then there's the question of if a panzerkin should be purely into balance gear, which seems almost clothkin-esque. How does the feral gear spec out if I supplement with +nature dmg or more traditional balance fare? Looks like Primalstrike might be something to get simply to help when you're wailing with your staff. "Equip: Improves hit rating by 12 (0.76% @ L70). Equip: Increases attack power by 108." Not too shabby.

Here's a post to thottbot that talks about feral/rogue gem choice for the Primalstrike vest.

Re: Primalstrike Vest
Score 0.75     Vote: [-] [+] by Ethral <The Gladiators>, 6.1 months ago
Yes, if you decide to keep your primalstrike (it won't hurt you at all) you will use it until Tier 4, and unless your guild is already working on Magtheridon, you're probably 2+ months away from getting it.

You should be slapped for not having hit rating in that chestpiece as a Rogue.

For a yellow socket you want:

+8 Hit Rating

Red:

+4 Hit Rating +4 Agility

Blue: (depending on what you need more)

+4 Agility +6 Stamina
Or
+4 Critical Strike Rating + 6 Stamina

While I'm at it, here are a few new moonkin druid blogs I've dug up and need to read a bit to get back in the swing of things. I've already started into a few, but haven't gotten too far.

http://ferociousbite.blogspot.com/ (enjoyable read!)
http://moon-queen.blogspot.com/ (post on joining a raiding guild)
http://waradwen.blogspot.com/ (looks like a pretty serious raider)
http://neighborhoodmoonkin.blogspot.com/ (starting the moonkin gem research)
http://laserchicken.blogspot.com/ (he'll be back)