The One Where It’s Druid Week

Another alt appreciation post: #DRUIDWEEK

Ah, Druids. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways… okay, there are too many ways to count. On with the post about druids. I love mine. Especially Elfi, of course. Elfindale is not only my main, she was the only level capped toon I ever had until about 2 weeks before MoP was released. So she’s always been my main, my one true love.

In fact, Elfi is the actual very first character I ever rolled. I was such a noob. I had never before played any MMO when my brother talked me into trying WoW, so even though he told me what server he was on, I didn’t know that meant I had to choose that server to create my toon on. I created Elfi on whatever random server Blizzard was defaulting to at the time and very slowly started leveling her up. After a few days of working on her my brother logged in and tried to whisper me. That’s when he realized I did the server thing wrong and explained it to me. /facepalm. I had no idea. Elfi was around level 17.. not very far along at all. But did I re-roll on my brother’s server? Hell no! I loved Elfi already so I paid $25 to transfer my only character to a new server at level 17. It really is ridiculous looking back at it. But as I stated, I was completely new to MMO’s and I went in with my heart on my sleeve. I really took my time identifying with Elfi.

Actually, when I finally let my brother talk me into playing and I created and paid for my account – it took me over a week to even launch the game and roll Elfi. Why? Because I had to decide on her name first. I had already researched the game enough to know I wanted to be a Night Elf because I like the whole hippy, earthy, dainty, magical elf thing. And I knew I wanted to be a druid because it combined magic and shape-shifting. These things seemed amazing to my little inexperienced brain. But what to name her… hmmm. It had to be something I could live with the rest of my life (I don’t know why I thought that these characters must be permanent. Lord knows I’ve deleted my fair share in the years since).

Every time I tried to think of a good name for an elf, the word Elfindale would instantly pop into my head. At the time, Elfindale Mansion was a place I drove by every day on the way to work and back home. It’s a locally famous historical landmark and not only did I see the mansion sign all the time, the immediate area around it is Elfindale Center and that huge sign is right next to the road. For days I tried to think of a cool elf name and for days Elfindale echoed inside my head. Finally I caved. I named her Elfindale. I named her after a shopping center, rolled her on the wrong server and paid $25 to move her when I could have just leveled a new toon to 17 in a matter of hours. Yep, I love that druid.

Here’s some young Elfi shots:

But this is alt appreciate week, not main appreciation week. So why am I blathering about Elfi? Geesh, sorry about that. Okay, so I mentioned above that I only had 1 level capped toon until right before MoP launched. Anyone care to guess what my second high level toon was? Yes, that’s right – a Worgen druid. Her name was Morena and although the Worgen sniffing could be a little distracting, I really enjoyed her while she was alive. I worked hard to get her from 70 – 85 in about 2 weeks so I could claim two max level toons. Once Mists was available, I spent 4 days getting Elfi to 90 and then immediately worked on Morena. I didn’t do her as fast, but she was 90 within 2 weeks.

I suppose if you get completely technical about it, she is still alive. I mean, I didn’t delete her. But when my temporary SWTOR career ended and several of my friends returned to WoW, there were a couple of them that were die-hard Hordies. In order to be able to spend some time in-game with them, I server transferred and faction changed Morena. Obviously she couldn’t be Worgen anymore, so she became a Troll druid. Additionally, the name Morena wasn’t available on the new server so I just completely changed it to my SWTOR name, Krisstalys (except with an extra “s” because Kristalys was also already taken. /shakes fist at high pop servers).

Yep, I love druids. I’ve actually got a few other lowbie druids sprinkled around just for fun. There’s just something about shapeshifting I really enjoy. Oh, and Flight Form. Yeah, Flight Form is the best thing ever. Oh, and back when I was actually a Resto healer I also loved Tree Form. Ah, memories. Makes me smile to remember the good old days.

Showing Some DK Love for Death Knight Week

Laeleiweyn, from World of Lae, recently came up with the brilliant idea of everyone showing their alts some appreciation by showing some love to the classes 1 week at a time for the next 11 weeks. She has kicked it off with Death Knight week and since I have a level 90 Night Elf DK that I love, I am happy to participate.

The story of my Death Knight, Morrissa, began with the color pink. I really wanted a toon with pink hair but I just couldn’t get into the few gnomes I rolled and I always ended up deleting them. Night Elf’s are my favorite race on the Alliance side so I finally decided to roll a Death Knight just for the purpose of having a Night Elf with pretty pink hair. Originally I had intended to use her simply as a bank mule and to gather herbs and ore for some extra money, which I did for a month or two. But not too long after MoP released I decided I needed to be able to get my hands on Ghost Iron Ore and Golden Lotus to make even more money, so I started slowly leveling her as a side project.

I didn’t have a lot of love for Morrissa for a long time because most of my in-game time had been spent on my druid either healing or doing Boomkin dps and this made me hate the thought of melee. I had no desire to stand right in front of a mob and let it beat on me the entire time I was beating on it; I liked the long distance spell casting type of play. But even though I didn’t enjoy melee, it was hard to ignore how quickly I could kill shit while I was questing my way slowly up the levels. Then one day, I won a contest and received a Swift Windsteed mount as my prize. A few days after I got the mount I logged into Morrissa and decided to take her for a spin on it and somehow it just seemed to fit her perfectly. The Swift Windsteed became my mount of choice for my little DK while she made her way through the Outlands and amazingly enough it somehow triggered me to start enjoying her a bit more and spending more time with her. So I started leveling a bit faster.

I had decided when I first started leveling her that I would not do any instances or scenarios because I’m such a noob at melee it would be ridiculous. But by the time I got her to Pandaria I really started itching to hit 90 as fast as possible so I did actually take her through some lfd runs. Turns out DK’s are good even if the person behind the keyboard is not. Lol. She’s Frost 2H spec, btw. I chose that spec based off of Twitter advice and I’m very happy I did. But finally I hit 90 and Morrissa is very happily serving as a farming toon for me; complete with an appropriate title. Every day I login to the game, I spend at least a few minutes with her. She’s not only great at supplying ghost iron ore to Elfindale for the making of living steel ….

…. she’s outstanding in her field.

The One Where I’m …. Flattered?

I, uh … I have had the… uh, pleasure(?) of having a battle pet named after me by my bff, Grace.

For those who know me only as Elfi, my real name is Kristy, people call me Kris, and Grace and I actually met in SWTOR where my character name was Kristalys. My level 90 Troll druid that I use to run around with Grace in-game is Krisstalys, so she’s never really known me as Elfi. I think I’m grateful for that because filthyelfi would somehow be worse. Lol.

The One Where I Was Sick But Not Too Sick

Sometimes you have to call into work sick even when you don’t actually feel too terrible. Those times are called weird and very not cool stomach issues. So what do you do on those nights when you feel guilty because you called in sick but are wide awake and full of energy? That’s right, you cuddle up in the recliner with a quilt your grandma made for you and you read a good book. Until you realize you have too much energy for that, so you pick up the laptop and you work on pet battles while still cuddled up in the recliner. Then you get up and get yourself some ice cream and do more pet battles. Later, as you realize you would actually be off work at this time, you get up and actually sit at your computer desk and queue for a bunch of scenarios on your horde toon that needs some gear. Because we all know as soon as the hour you would get off work has passed, there’s nothing to feel guilty about any longer and you are free to move about your house normally and stop cuddling up with a blanket like a sick person.

The One Where I Finally Got My Turtle

Surprise achievements are the best achievements! I was fishing up some Jewel Danio in front of Mogu’shan Palace Sunday evening when I finally fished up my first Sea Turtle Mount. Yay, me! I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to get that thing.