User:Spilledstars/StarshineSpearmaiden

About me
I have been actively gaming, as well as a computer geek, since I was a kid - which may not sound much at first but trust me on this.

I played D&D in the early paper and pencil days, enjoyed some perhaps unusual aspects of Traveller, a glorious time in Runequest, and a few other games - and a fondness for friends who really can tell the difference between fact, fantasy, and the physics of the Real World we walk in versus the (sometimes consistent) curious physics of worlds of magical pasts, alternate worlds, or distant futures.

Um, and oddly enough I'm social too; MMO seems to work for me!

I joined Wikia so that I could comment on an active discussion regarding WoWWiki. The wiki moved. The old one remains. If you want to read my (also rather verbose) thoughts on that transition, go read them over there. I'm here to talk about WoW :)

About me editing here on WoWpedia
Edit count

I only edit a little bit, but I do try to be helpful, and not to put anything that I cannot confirm. This page, of course, gets the lion's share of my edits.

About my toons within WoW
Spilledstars (Caelastrasz: Night Elf druid) is my main character, but not the only one I play actively. She's a maxed level Resto druid, with an alt spec and gear for feral tanking on behalf of my lower level guildies. Although, this may get less common as our other tanks are blossoming. She's our JC and one of our most active herbalist.

Ishnudaldien (Caelastrasz: Draenai shaman) is our guild's most active Inscriptionist. Not quite maxed level yet; currently XP locked so I can gather us up a level-80 content running group for Guild Challenges.

Seneschal (Caelastrasz: Gnome mage) used to run the sister guild *Promise* but I enjoy running her enough that I switched her into the main guild as she has advanced in levels.

Penumbra (Caelastrasz: Worgen shadowpriest) runs our "sister guild" and leads the auctioning team; it's also occasionally fun to go out a-blasting :)

DistantSuns (Terrokar: Human paladin) tromps around questing a bit, generally when my main realm is down, but sometimes just to enjoy not worrying about keeping up with anyone.

I also have a couple of worgen, a human shadowpriest, a warrior, and a rogue. And I've recently poured a bit of energy into a new warlock on Blade's Edge.

Con Diablos (Caelastrasz, Oceanic)
Spilledstars is guildmistress of this family guild. We do some dungeoning. We actively quest or farm together. We enjoy using in-game voice; we had a vent server for a while, but were using it rarely. Not all of us are related, we're close family friends too, or a few people who have had really good runs with us. The heart of it all is, if you're a member of our guild, the player is a member; we help each other's alts too, and people who've matriculated up into raiding guilds still quest with us and help out.

Seneschal recently moved over to this one from being GM on Promise. This way her skills and quests can advance the main guild faster.

Promise (Caelastrasz, Oceanic)
Penumbra, my dark Worgen, is guildmistress of this banking-alt guild - and the coincident "sister guild" of Con Diablos. Although, some of us aren't mere level ones, as some of our players enjoy also running the toons or pushing the professions forward. Profits go toward gearing up Con Diablos and Promise members.

Guiding Knights (Terrokar, US)
The same family folk active on a US server, and perhaps a few locals to the realm. The hope and goals of this guild are to (when we're active) help anyone whom we find is new to the game; bags for young toons, etc.

Fondest Memory in WoW
This was my answer to a recent Blizz questionnaire.

What is your favorite memory from World of Warcraft and why?

My favorite memory is from only a few days after I dinged level 80. I was flying around Dragonblight headed back to Wyrmrest after some herbing, and for the first time I saw the hole under the Temple. I honestly wondered (and to this day I don't know) if it had only phased in when I turned, or if I simply never came in from that angle before. In that area of the summoning stone, a group was gathering for their raid on the Obsidian Sanctum...

Hey druid, which spec are you?

Of course they can tell I'm a druid. Who else flies around as a dark bird? "Resto "

Wanna join?

"Sure. I've never been in here before."

Don't worry, we'll try to give directions. Tank heal that guy there and try to keep up with him.

It was an awesome run. People were friendly. Our priest died and went SpiritLady mode. People sure didn't mind me using Wild Growth along with everything else on my assigned tank. The lava wall got me. It got more than one of us. We won anyway. I felt glorious - by the freakin' light of Elune WE DID IT.

If you really have to ask why this is such a wonderful memory, you don't play WoW. However... the contest rules say ya gotta answer the question *wicked grin*

I don't dungeon a whole lot compared to some. I love questing, I love exploring. But I like working with friends. This run led to friendships that gave me entries into other raids, people willing to chat idly about talent specs as the world keeps changing, and a heartfelt knowledge that I know my class and my style of play. That knowledge has carried my spirit happily through some pretty mangled runs and long hauls, and has echoed every time I help win a hard fight, whether it's in a dungeon or even a battleground. And I cherish it.

Fly bravely on! -- Spilledstars

Edit: Actually, the lava wall didn't get me, the lava strike of meteors apparently did. I'd been warned about the wall, but when I found myself instantaneously murdered, I thought it was the wall. See Gonna_Go_When_the_Volcano_Blows_(10_player) for details.

What Achievement Are You Most Proud Of?
I only read about Wowhead's contest about achievements when the contest was already closed, but I want to answer it anyway.

I believe I'm most proud of the Feat Of Strength for level 60 Onyxia. I earned the achieve when it wasn't a feat of strength, fair and square, in a slightly older age when the players of Caelastrasz were a lot less fussed about precisely what level someone needed to be to help out in a raid.

I will admit to some other achieves which gave me a thrill or a burst of laughter when I got them, but I'm not generally an ambitious soul. Pride, in my opinion, is earned by deliberate effort, not by luck. Hence the fact that one of my toons has managed to get "Died in the Fire" was fun - and the fairly few PVP achieves I have at all do give me a little smile when I see them - but it's not the same :)

Strategies You Won't See On The Videos
''There is a forum thread where someone is QQ-ing about how mean some third-or-fourth-phase progression 85s were to their second-phase progression 85s who were first timing in a particular heroic. I'm not linking back to the exact thread because there are probably 7 more like it every month. But the buzzword Excellent caught a bit of heat there.''

I may be alliance, but I happen to agree with the orc Kathucka. If they have the gear, they have the shiny achieve, nana nana na They've Got The Look, but they don't actually fight the boss, and fight the {your race name here} they're supposed to be teaming with instead, then they're not fighting the battle that actually needs to be won.

Which makes them Not Excellent.

Contrariwise, as a resto by nature and by practice, it's not specific to this fight you were in, but yeah, even hell yeah, there ARE times when one needs to switch modes and "play the role wrong" in order to win. You can look me up - I have Heroic Halls of Origination. You can also note that I didn't have the normal before that, and as it turns out, this is my only 85. So anyone with a calendar can note this was my first time in HOO as a player, at all. Research? Yes, some, I do read the EJ website for fun, gear and strategy clues, and take in an occasional vid. And had a savvy friend whispering strats in my ear. Nonetheless in the last battle when I realized that the Tank and I were the only ones left - our healer dead as I was in dps gear and spec, having been ruled a little weak on gear to be proper heals and a little slow on knowing the boss to be the tank - I was on the probably sad duty of murdering doorways and doing an ok job at it. Which job I then abandoned to switch into a dual mode healer/caster-dps and run like a cat with a pack o' dogs after me, that being a pretty accurate description of the mobs' hunger for our last few hitpoints. Moonfires are instant and so are a *few* of the heals I have in the off spec. *BOOM* heals *BOOM* heals runnnnnnnn! WE WIN. woooooot. gah. [shiny gold and brown box appears]

Is that "strat" in the vids? No. And you won't find it there.

People who make vids bring all the cool kids with gear matched to the plan. They don't play at mismatched gear levels and mixed attitudes-of-playstyle. And anyone who ever has to do what I did is way too darned busy to be hitting camera buttons instead of fighting the fight.

I find it sad that there's no achieves for winning the big raids or creepier bosses without addons, and sadder that some raidleaders find themselves basically becoming secretaries for the DBM mod. It's a cool mod it is! But. I'm not in a progression raid guild because I prefer to ace the content as I soak into it and if I wanted to take on WoW as a full time job it'd better be paying me more per hour than I pay Blizz all month. I have addons, I like a few, and I play with a style that won't cripple me if I find myself gaming on a naked copy of Cata WoW tomorrow.

But we all favor our own types of challenges, and I'm glad if you won yours on this round.

/salute to all the *actually* excellent and honorable souls out there...

Using the User Interface instead of it using you - or, toon hopping without breaking stride
For a long time I only played one character. I watched my friends and family thrash when they switched characters, and at first did not think it mattered much to me, for I only had the one. Later, I saw a friend of mine basically abandon all of his younger toons, since playing any of the others completely ruined his ability to get back to raiding on his main later the same day.

Clearly, if I ever spun up a second or third character, this was something I should solve first. I didn't really change anything about how I played Spilled - I just took notes, so that it wouldn't break me on Ishnu and the others.



Considerations

 * I mostly play on a laptop. The various builtins for "numpad" mostly didn't work well for me.
 * If I'm going to force a few keys to my style, what to do with the things Blizz had for them by default?
 * my laptop's own "special" keys - brightness, contrast, sound
 * a hot key to dedicate to voice-chatting
 * I really, really REALLY hate it when fear, or some other effects, muck with my camera angle
 * There are some interesting special features that don't have keybinds by default; do I need some of them?  How frustrating are they if I never get them set?

Thoughts on playing WoW via the LFD tool
I recently read an pleasantly awesome thread over on the Blizzard forums: I met an Elitist Tank last night

Well worth reading. Actually he met a few elitist tanks, and one really good elite man up to the challenge of playing the dungeon he was actually given... who happened, in the queue for that particular run, to be a Tank.

It's awesome that his crew had the perseverance to even bother to keep queueing up, instead of just "going for an achieve" like running off and pasting Stratholme in case of getting a mount. The universe was kind enough to grant them something they really needed - a sensei. That man brought the ideals he lives with in the real world into our MMO's fake one, and made it more real thereby.

More players should consider being real people behind their toons. :)

/OnlyRunningWithGuildies
Risks aren't bad. They just require energy and maybe a bit of brainpower - and more time. If you're willing to put some time in - use it well. Help a few other souls spin up too.

More thoughts on attitude issues
This set of nitpicks all describe the same pickle:

If you had high hopes of playing with people who know what they're doing, then you quite reasonably look for traits that suggest that yeah, they probably know what they're doing.

But, many of these traits are not properly represented on Playerscore, nor by itemlevel. Sorry lads and lasses, math is not enough to play this game. Go out and have some fun instead of nitpicking. If you like math that much, stay in the auction house.

PVP gear versus PVE
If you just plain delete the resilience stat entirely, and it's still good stats, shut up, ok?

Green versus Purple gear
Gear from the expansion lands includes greens of significantly higher itemlevel, but less sexy color on the tooltip. Again, if the stats are right for the class, shut up already.

Caveat: at major patches, "stats right for the class" sometimes has changed drastically. If this happens again, there will be a few weeks when people will have great gear for an older world. (For example: hunters with lots of int; 4.0 / 4.1 Cata made hunters use their own special kind of second bar and don't use Int anymore.) For at least a month give 'em a break, re-gearing is a pain and takes time if you don't play every single night.

Decent blues and an occasional purple does show one thing, that someone has a little bit of spare money or a decent amount of spare time and was willing to spend it on finding the right gear.

Excellent greens and everything enchanted even if not at max shows they are a bargain shopper.

If the stats aren't so hot, they may be a bit inexperienced in dungeons, and running around in whatever quests have given them. Maybe they're saving up for epic flight speed.

Learn 2 Play
Hardcore raiders versus Casual play, or elitists who want to be carried through speed runs?

PVP itself
I'll admit I do not PVP a lot. I also don't hang out with premades or other farming-clubs. I just play to have fun. Sometimes the fun includes places the other side owns.

My thoughts in response to this thread: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2661227888 It's not fun to give up. Sure it's not fun to rez, but I've HK'd the ganker who was camping the spiritheals area too. Regardless of living on a PVE realm, I think it's a darned shame he was only worth one point for all the damage he did.

As such, I'll have to say all my HK's and honor points have been well earned, as have the fairly few Achieves I've gotten on the battlegrounds. I even went back in to the Undercity to rescue some companion during the flamefest week.

I wanna say "don't even ask" but I know everyone does. Why?!?! THE DARN THING IS OUTDOORS - A LEVEL 27 CAN GO GET IT! Before I realized where the flame was on my first year, I'd joined a group that was going for it, and the leader, well... he'd gotten some wrong impression about where it was. So we'd fought our way through the sewers and past surprised kidlets at the AH and everything. Of course this means there were a few real players defending by the time we genuinely got to the flame. And of course this means at least one dead soul among us back in the corridors. I didn't feel like leaving one of us behind. Spirit hopping sucks. Battle rezzing can be done (at least by me) though some planning for one certainly helps.

Perseverance and knowing yourself are the key.

If anything, the main frustration I have, as an only occasional PVPer (I have this opinion of the raiders "tokens" too) is that you have to get so darn many to be worth ANYTHING. I'm just not into PVP enough to collect that many boxtops for gear I'm going to outgrow before I say boo. Not only that, but honor points buy very little in the way of useful PVE gear, except the free action trink itself. So, the ONLY reason I could possibly dream of doing it is for fun. The coinage count is impossible. Winning a BG - even if it means turning the tide - is not.

The awesome quote from that forum was from a blue who posted their own thoughts rather than Blizzard's:

A Letter To My Lower Level Self
Dear Spilled at level 1: Your hair is lovely, keep it silver always.


 * /DearSpilledLevelOne
 * /DearSpilledLevelTen
 * /DearSpilledLeveling