Tzia of Quel'dorei... Wait, I mean Deathwing!

As I write this Tzia is currently being whisked off QD and put on Deathwing. The reason Tzia is moving from an PvE realm to an PvP realm are many and slightly confusing... since I once swore I'd never move my main back to a PvP realm (that and I couldn't at the time)!

Tzia has gone through a pretty long road to get to where she is today. My only 70 to date, originally had the name Venari on Deathwing. I rolled her after watching The Guy play his hunter, which was soon after we got married in July of 2005. I thought pets looked completely cool, and so The Guy allowed me to borrow his account and create my own little hunter to play.

I immediately tried to roll an alliance hunter (night elf to be exact) and the game chirped at me: You cannot have both a Horde and an Alliance Character on the same PvP server.

I paused, blinked, and looked over at the horde list then... Cow... um nooo. Orc? Eww. Troll? Hmm... Okay then, Troll it was. I sat there and poked at looks, tuning and tweaking until I got something I liked... smallest tusks, kindest face, blue, blue and did I mention blue? Now, what to name... hmm what to name? Off to my favorite Latin Word site it was! I wanted to know what Hunter was in Latin. Turns out Hunter is Venari. It wasn't taken, and boom, Venari was born.

I spent time off and on, because The Guy and I were leveling on one account, and sharing one computer too. We couldn't play together, but I had been introduced by someone kind to the Blizzard Hunter Forums. I read everything I could get my hands on when I wasn't playing, because I had a laptop that couldn't handle WoW, but it handled the forums! I also found Petopia.

I was about level 9 when I found Petopia, and was introduced to all the pets. I think my response was quite litterally, "Oooh! KITTY!!!" when I found my purple baby, Ruka.

I planned for Ruka at level 9. Figuring I would get to level 60 eventually. It took me about a year to get there, leveling and dying as I went through the particular hell that is a PvP server. I got sick of it one night in Febuary of 2007, and wandered off to try out a recomended PvE realm called Quel'dorei.

Let's just say I had a complete and total blast on QD, and talked The Guy over to the realm when he got back from his roadtrip from Oregon to South Dakota and then back from South Dakota to Oregon... fun! He rolled a new hunter and started playing with me. We formed our own guild after finding nothing but immaturity and a rampant lack of knowledge... hey it was a recomended server. I think we stole about 6 - 8 guildies from the guild we were leaving and then formed Chens Champions after a debate on names that lasted at least two days.

The Guy took guild lead, I took co-founder, and his brother took another co-founder position. Then we started recruiting, after having hashed out our guild ranking system : Guild Lead, Co-Founder, Officer, Officer Alt, Honor Guard, Member, Recruit. There was really no diffrence between Guild Lead and Co-Founder or Officer and Officer Alt, so we basically had a five rank system, with recruit being our two week trial period, check the guild out while we check you out.

The guild had a few rocky periods as we ironed out our leadership skills and got a great group of people together that we enjoyed working and talking with. This guild lasted for a year, I running around on a paladin named Dione, because Tzia was still back on Deathwing. I had rolled a paladin because, at the time, we didn't have a ton of healers. I missed my hunter though, and after doing a bit of checking I leveled her to 60, grabbed Ruka, and brought her over and changed her name to Tzia.

I leveled from 60 to 70 on Quel'dorei and then started running with Silvermoon Tradesmen and began raiding. After a falling out between me and SMT on Loyalty Before Loot (which ironically enough is the name of the guild the person I had the altercation with is in). I quit raiding on Tzia after that. She stands in mostly Kara epics, missing the legs,the bow and a helm. I really wanted that bow! Saw it once, lost it to the other hunter I was running with... How many hunters can say they went from Valanos to Sunfury though? ^_^

I was leading Chens Champions at the time, The Guy was on a WoW Break, and I basically passed down a Do Not Associate rule to my guildies over the falling out, and explained exactly why I felt it was unadvisable to run with any from that guild. My guildies knew I didn't make such a decision lightly and agreed with it, or at least didn't tell me they were running with SMT if they did...

Then one of my officers came back from hiatus, and started talking to SMT, thought I'd been over-reacting, (though he understood exactly why I didn't want to associate with SMT - call a woman a word that will get you kicked in the head by any male relative... begins with a C.... and you wonder why I quit raiding with them?!). The officer tried to patch up things, but I would have none of it... I'm stuborn that way, the bridge had burned and that ship had sailed.

My best officer, which I considered that mage, left us for SMT. I wished him luck, but warned him that if they could disrespect an "outsider" not to expect respect in their ranks, or to realize just how valuable a person he was. Soon after that Chens fell apart and we reformed under the name Damage May Vary. I let Tzia sit and rolled a warrior.

Warrior got to about level 35. I started playing Yazmin because my cousin had mentioned he was playing alliance on Echo Isles, and since I wanted to raid again, I burned a hunter to 60. Then he transfered. I went back to QD. I got bored, I let the account lapse.

Now its September, and I'm moving Tzia back to Deathwing. Why? Nobody but The Guy's Friends are there, they are willing to come bail me out of trouble if I get into it, and Wrath is coming up soon... they want to raid, I want to raid. Tzia is my best geared character. She's moved.

Goodbye Quel'dorei, I guess welcome back to Deathwing Tzia... its probably going to be your home for a while... Let's go visit the old stomping grounds, eh? See if Rak'shiri is prowling around up in Winterspring?

Why was the bear on the bike?

Okay, I read the Odd News through Yahoo every day between blog posts and playing WoW. There have been times when a headline will grab my attention... and then there are times when I almost want to write to the editor and ask if s/he fell asleep at the desk, just due to basic errors with subject verb agreement, tense shifts, and then there are sentences that are just worded wrong (which is how it ends up on Headlines on Monday Nights).

Anyways, I ran into an article this morning titled, Teacher OK After Crashing into Bear on a Bicycle. When I first saw it, I thought, car crash + biking bear statue... this did come out of Montana after all! But, no. Its the fact that a teacher, riding a bike, crashed into a black bear at about 25 miles an hour. Now, that in itself is a news piece. Its just the title is worded badly.

My HS journalism teacher would have asked me, with one eyebrow raised, "Why is the bear on the bike? Was it driving?!" if I'd turned in such an article headline. In fact, he'd have grinned over the idea, then gone scary serious and tossed the entire thing back at me, pages ruffling, and reach for the next article of the person that was standing in line.

I'd have scurried back to my little thirty year old wooden desk (I swear my Dad had it when it was new), feeling like an idiot, and frantically tried to find a new title, because if the title sucked? There was no way Cecil was even going to LOOK at the rest of the article. That English Teacher -who taught Comp 3, Comp 4, Journalism, Poetry, and Greek and Roman Myth- did more to teach me the basics of journalism and creative writing than any course I've taken in college to date.

I try and keep such things in mind when writing- even here, because it makes my writing better. And you'll never catch me writing about a bear on a bike, or even implying it. He taught me a lot... that gruff, barking bear of a teacher.

So, next time you are writing up a blog entry, take careful stock of your title, is it implying what you wish for it to, or is it saying something completely different from the body of the article? And if its different, which is easier to re-write, the title, or the entire article?

Kovani of Deathwing

[Note to Self: Get screen shot of Kovani and her hyena, Varuna]

As those that frequently read know, I have a bit of a hunter obsession. At last count there are nine different hunters, on five different servers. Not all hunters are listed in the Too Many Hunters panel to the right. Some are alts that I haven't picked back up in a while, others are just gathering dust, or were part of a BRK event. I will do a posting on each of my hunters that are on the Too Many Hunters list, eventually getting through everyone, and writing Tzia of Quel'dorei last.

My Deathwing Hunter, Kovani is doing something a bit different from all the others... she's going to have a Hyena as her perma-pet. Now, if she gets into raiding, I might consider picking up a DPS pet (like a raptor), but no kitties, or piggies for this little BM Orc.

I've already gotten a few strange looks at having a hyena, and had advice discounted - just because I have an odd pet at my side. Then there was the hunter that tried to tell me to go get a cat. He was kindly thanked, but told no. I want something odd. I hate flapping stuff, so a carrion bird or bat was out of the question. Ditto for a flying snake (aka wind serpent).

The Guy has a wolf on his hunter, we were originally going to pair two hunters and see how well we could destroy Azeroth... instead he's going with his 'lock and Blueberry, Kal'thyk; or his Loud Mouth, Lazrot.

Chaos is the rule of the day right now with these two. His lock has just hit 18, Kovani is a little behind at 17 and needs about 2k more xp to get to 18 and new abilities. As I said earlier, BM Orc Hunter. This is going to be a departure from my usual MM leveling spec, and The Guy and I are going to be perma-grouped. This is Deathwing after all (Deathwing is a PvP server)!

So far, we've cleared camps with a mix of DoT, DoT, FEAR, wand, concussive Shot, Arcane Shot, Hyena-Rip-Mob-to-Shreds-As-Everything-Else-Runs-Away. And then we loot everything, which is spread over half the available area, some up trees, others burried in hills, and somebody -somehow- is floating in mid air... was there a mine there earlier??

We did Guns of Northwatch tonight, and picked up the Escort. I wanted to shoot the friggen escortee by the time we were half way done. I'd forgotten how SLOW the guy is! Though with PetEmote triggering very close to the end of the quest, I laughed.

Kovani's Hyena Varuna yips happily.

We were literally less than a foot from the turn in point. I guess she wanted to be done with the quest too!