Jasyla’s Gaming Questionnaire

Here are my answers to Jasyla’s Gaming Questionnaire:

1.  When did you start playing video games?

When I was a kid (so, the 70s), and that is probably a lot longer ago than most gaming bloggers, my parents bought a Pong console. In looking at pictures, I see it must have been an Atari one, but my brain is remembering it as Magnavox. I know it wasn’t the Odyssey console, though. We hooked it up to our “big” TV, which was in a giant wooden cabinet (and had a small cat rug on the top, as our cat Tom Tom liked to sleep up there where it was warm).

After that, we had an Atari 2600, and played many games on it. I distinctly remember being addicted to Asteroids, and a number of times after school, I would come home and play Asteroids until it was dinner time, trying to beat my previous high scores, which involved flipping the score counter over at least twice.

My oldest brother also brought over his Intellivision, WITH the speech module, and I played many a game of Space Spartans, as well as B17 Bomber. But mainly Space Spartans. The same brother also had a Commodore 64 with a tape drive, and my sister and I would play Jumpman until the game called for flipping the tape over and pressing play. This would be the end of our game, because it would never start up again after you did that.

2.  What is the first game you remember playing?

See above, with Pong. I also played a good amount of Space Invaders on the Atari 2600, besides the aforementioned Asteroids.

3.  PC or Console?

I’m not picky; I’ll play whatever has the game I want. Since I was an Amiga 500 user after moving from the Commodore 128 (also formerly my brother’s and I had a C64 too), I found games on computers to be just as fun as console games. The Amiga had great games on it – I believe I played Ultima 4 on my Amiga, but I could be misremembering.

4.  XBox, PlayStation, or Wii?

Playstation all the way. We had the PS1, and then a PS2, and now we have PS3. No PS4 yet. I’ve never been into gaming so much that I had to have all the consoles, but I did covet the Wii when it came out. Never been interested in an XBox.

5.  What’s the best game you’ve ever played?

This is a tough one, but I’m actually going to go with Tomb Raider 1-4. I sometimes have spacial issues, and I need precise controls for these kinds of games. TR1 and 2 (and possibly 3, I don’t recall if I played that or not) had my kind of controls. You could walk to the edge, tap once, and back up the exact amount you needed to make the jump. You might call them unsophisticated controls, but I thoroughly enjoyed them, and found it hard to play the later games that did not have that.

Plus, I loved the story. Sure, Lara may have huge breasts, but she was a woman out there adventuring!

6.  What’s the worst game you’ve ever played?

That’s a harder one, as I actually haven’t played that many video games. And if I don’t like something, I just won’t play it. I honestly can’t think of one, so I’m skipping this.

7.  Name a game that was popular/critically adored that you just didn’t like.

Again, I’m pretty singular in my gaming choices, so I don’t know one. Oh now that I think of it, I can say that I did try to play Myst, but found its utter lack of ANY guidance to be a detriment to me at the time, so I didn’t get far. Same with 7th Guest. I tried to like it, but it wasn’t for me.

8.  Name a game that was poorly received that you really like.

See above. I really can’t recall any. Probably because I’m old and I have forgotten these bad games thankfully, or the good games, alas.

9.  What are your favourite game genres?

Not a huge fan of FPS games. I keep wanting to try Mass Effect, and Skyrim, but I keep holding off. Probably because I know I will get sucked in. Oh, and Dragon Age too. I guess I’ve found my niche with the WoW MMO, and have stopped there. I enjoy watching my husband play games like Uncharted, and Tomb Raider, and even the little bit of Red Dead Redemption he played, but as I said above, I’m not good at the “twitch” games, and would play them badly. We do make a good team playing together, though! He can handle the controls, and I point out the bits that he missed so he can find the secrets.

10. Who is your favourite game protagonist?

See above, Lara Croft. I’m not a fan of the reintroduction, mainly because I really liked her original backstory, and didn’t see the need to reinvent her. I have not yet played the new game (again, see above re: controls), but we’ve bought it and are awaiting a time for the husband to start it up.

11. Describe your perfect video game.

I have no clue. Lots of secret things to explore and discover. Good mix of action/combat and storytelling. It doesn’t have to have massive character development to please me, but I wouldn’t say no. Something where a playable woman is an option. Writing this reminded me of a Q&A I took part in back in the 80s on Compuserve, with the developers of the game The Bard’s Tale. While I played that game TO DEATH (and even drew up maps using graph paper of the wrap-around dungeons for easier navigating), I was disappointed that you couldn’t have a female protagonist, and asked them why in the Q&A. I wish the old CIS forums were around; that transcript was in their forum archive for ages. I guess I was a femininst gamer even back in 1985.

Just as an aside, some of my favorite adventures and memories were with the original Zork trilogy. Big graphics don’t make a game for me; I had years of fun with text adventures. Hello Sailor!

12. What video game character do have you have a crush on?

I really liked Kurtis Trent, when he was introduced to Lara in TR4. But I don’t know of any I have a huge crush on. Probably would have one if I played more Bioware games, like ME and DA. heh

13. What game has the best music?

Final Fantasy games, hands down. Though I love the music of the original TR (and can listen to it for hours), I love the music of the FF series. I’ve only ever played/watch being played 7-10, and of those, 10 is my favorite and the soundtrack I will listen to on repeat. In fact, some of the music still hits me hard (I played 10 on my own more than the others) and puts me back into those points in the game.

That said, the WoW soundtracks are also incredible and one of the reasons I buy physical CEs.

14. Most memorable moment in a game:

Now that I have FF on the brain, probably when Tidus finds out that everyone but him knows that Yuna is proceeding to her death with her quest to destroy Sin. Again, the music there is one of those points that puts me back at that moment.

And then there are also all of those WoW raid boss kills, like Heroic Deathwing (10m) on (I think) the day before the new patch went live.

15. Scariest moment in a game:

The T-Rex appearance in TR1. Jesus fuck, was TOTALLY not expecting that. There’s also the “gorilla dispenser” in TR, but that’s most of an amusement than scary, though it did make me jump.

There was one room in TR1 that had a lever in it. If you took the time and searched/cleared the room, there was nothing in there or you killed it all, etc. And then when you pulled the lever, somehow a gorilla appeared and would roam the room. So, gorilla dispenser!

16. Most heart-wrenching moment in a game:

Finding out Tidus is just a dream of Zanarkand. I know a lot of people hate Tidus, possibly because of American voice acting, but I was not one of those.

17. What are your favourite websites/blogs about games?

I don’t visit many gaming sites outside of WoW-specific ones, so likely WoW Insider, Wowhead, and MMO-Champion.

18. What’s the last game you finished?

LOL I don’t finish any games. Solitaire. I have Bastion that I bought on a Steam sale a few years ago, but I haven’t done anything with it. I did finish D3, but then they added in another act, and we’re still not done with it.

19. What future releases are you most excited about?

The WoW expansion. To see what else they may bring up with D3. Possibly the new Dragon Age game; Inquisition, is it? Maybe that will get me playing.

20. Do you identify as a gamer?

Yes. Though #GamerGate has me looking side-eyed, I’m a gamer because that word means more to me than video games. I play pen and paper RPGs (though, LOL, most games are going digital for things like character sheets and die rollers!), like D&D, GURPS, Amber Diceless, etc. I’ve been more of a pen & paper gamer over the years than a computer gamer. Though I’ve been a computer gamer longer, I’ve had more enjoyment and more fun over the years with pen&paper RPGs.

21. Why do you play video games?

They are a cheaper way to have a hobby than many other options, and I enjoy them. Why else would you play video games, if you didn’t have fun with them?

Alternative Godmother’s 10 Questions

A bit after the deadline. I had this written up in early August in my email drafts, but never went and looked up my /played time, and kept forgetting about it except when I wasn’t able to log in. So now, late, here are my answers to the 10 Years, 10 Questions blog post.

1. Why did you start playing Warcraft?

My husband and I had been playing Diablo II for a long time together. He has been a die-hard Mac user, so it’s always been hard to find games where we can play together. Blizzard games were a great option. One of our friends had been in the beta, and suggested that we would like it. We had been burned with Star Wars: Galaxies not having a Mac client, so we were leery of MMOs, and decided to not bother. Then in January of 2005, one of our other friends loaned us his account login to “try” it out (I know, I know). Lou installed it and began playing, and immediately loved it. I played very briefly, but also was intrigued. He managed to get the last copy from Best Buy (it had a damaged box and was in the back), and this was at the time where Blizzard had actually STOPPED SHIPPING AND SELLING the game, to try to fix their realm stabiity issues. I had to wait a whole month until I could get a copy (direct from Blizzard, an online friend who also played alerted me to them selling it again). The husband was ahead of me in levels, but made a new character to play with mine.

2. What was the first ever character you rolled?

Skylear, Night Elf Druid, on the Whisperwind realm. I was playing an elven shaman in a AD&D 2nd edition game, and at the time, we’d created our own shaman class by taking out the shapeshifting of the druid and adding in spirit summoning. I decided my first character would “recreate” this other character.

3. Which factors determined your faction choice in game?

For my first character, it was the above. But the husband was playing horde-side (as the original friends who told us about the game were), so I rerolled a tauren druid on Llane named Ruana, to play with them. Of course, they were all higher level than me, and wouldn’t wait/play with me. Husband eventually rolled a hunter to play with me (he was playing a warrior at the time), and we started duoing. I found that horde was a lot more fun for me, and while I have Alliance characters, Horde is home.

4. What has been your most memorable moment in Warcraft and why?

I have quite a few, some of which are great accomplishments, some are mistakes. I think probably the most memorable is when I got the Herald of the Titans title in Cataclysm, with my guild on Bronzebeard, Daughters OfThe Alliance. Yes, Alliance – my second-ever ally character was a priest named Damarisa. I tried to level her as holy, which was not viable back in vanilla. She had sat for a long time, and more priests got created and I found I loved the class. She got to 80 and I locked her and gathered gear. It took us a few tries, but not more than 6, to get him down and the title. I ended up helping the guild again for those who didn’t make the first run, and then later helped friends on another server with their run. Eventually I did unlock Damarisa, and she’s now 90 and has the legendary cloak.

5. What is your favourite aspect of the game and has this always been the case?

Raiding, I think. I was late to the game in vanilla, where druids had to heal and couldn’t do much else. Our guild wasn’t extremely successful – never got Rags down as a guild without help from another guild, though I believe we actually did get Majordomo down. Never entered BWL until just before TBC came out, when one of our officers decided we should try it when 2.0 came out. We only had 1 real night of tries; not enough people showed up for the 2nd one. We did run Zul’Gurub and did manage to defeat Hakkar.

In TBC, my guild had enough people to run 2 10-mans, but never enough for a 25-man without some friends. Plus the attunements! I was trying my hand at tanking for the first time, but also had a healing offspec, so I could do either. We ran Karazhan many times, had successful attempts against Magtheridon and Gruul, but never managed to get too far in TK: The Eye, got a few bosses down in SSC (Lurker, Hydross, one kill of Tidewalker), and played around with Sunwell trash. We got Najentus and Supremus down in Black Temple after 3.0 hit, and I think also got a few bosses down in Hyjal.

And I’ll stop here before I blather on about each expansion’s raiding, but after TBC, I found a home as a tank in my guild, sometimes with the occasional healing offspec and once, very briefly, a moonkin spec. I also raided with alts as healers, mainly my shaman and my priest.

I’d guess my second love would be questing. I got The Seeker on my main while picking up candy buckets, but I also got Loremaster before the Cataclysm revamp. I usually quest on my main in every zone, finishing everything as I can. Right now, she’s not gone back and redone the vanilla zones, mainly because she has no bank space for transmog, and some of those quest rewards will be worth keeping.

6. Do you have an area in game that you always return to?

Thunder Bluff, and the Tauren area in Orgrimmar since the Cataclysm revamp.

7. How long have you /played and has that been continuous?

Yes, I’ve never unsubbed except as in protest for the RealID fiasco. I pay by 6 months at a time, so I did have plenty of time still on my account.

I’d have to look in game to see my /played, but it’s a lot. I have two accounts (I made the 2nd for RAF in TBC), and I have no idea if the characters I moved over ended up keeping their played. I have many, many alts, and I already said I enjoyed questing. I also spent over a year and a third uemployed, without much to do but look for jobs and play WoW. This is the main reason I have 10 Legendary cloaks, though 13 90s. I’ve stopped and will NOT be getting any more.

Okay, I checked. My main has 261 days /played. I have an addon that adds up all the /played of characters, so on my main account I have 673 days /played, and on my second account, I have 194 /played. I also have no idea if any of the /played reset when I moved characters over to the second account, so it could be more!

8. Admit it: do you read quest text or not?

Not as much as I used to. Honestly, I blame my bad eyesight and the in-game font (though I’ve changed it in the past, I don’t have any mods now to change it).

9. Are there any regrets from your time in game?

I regret that I don’t play as much in Daughters of the Horde/Alliance as I once did. Back in vanilla, I leveled my first undead warlock in DotH, and she’s still stuck in the 70s, having been pretty much abandoned in Wrath, when the husband and I started leveling together more (he played a lot more in TBC than I did, due to him maining a mage then, and EVERYONE wanted CC, and druids…not so much with the CC providing).

10. What effect has Warcraft had on your life outside gaming?

I have a world-wide assortment of friends and acquaintances from playing WoW. Even though many of them now don’t play WoW anymore, I still keep in touch with many of them via Twitter. Some of them I have met in person, others I’d love to, but distance and money don’t make it easy.

Playing WoW has definitely decreased my other leisure activities. I used to read more books and watch a lot more TV, and play many more roleplaying games. WoW did cut into all of those activities, but I do still read, I still watch TV, and I still play RPGs. My husband and I also began to eat out a lot more after we started playing, but with my job hours cut before I was laid off, we made significant lifestyle changes, and began planning and cooking/preparing more meals at home.

On White Knighting

I never in a million years thought that this would be the first post to open my blog. I’ve had this blog for months now, meaning to start writing something, but never actually doing it. And it is a case in the recent blogosphere that has gotten me thinking, and finally setting the fingers to the keys.

It has to do with the term White Knighting. I’m meaning a specific definition, one that’s probably not easily found on the internet without MRAs or Nice Guys attached to it, so let me define it for you.

White Knighting, to me in this instance, means going to the defense of someone else (male or female) whom you believe has been attacked or slighted, whether in a forum or blog post, a comment, or a tweet. For me, this also means you’re doing it without permission or against the expressed desires of the attacked/slighted party.

(Yes, I know this can happen in Real Life as well, I’m just doing the internet thing here, sorry.)

I’m not trying to stir any pot again, really. But I want to provide links for when, 6 years down the road, we’ve all forgotten what in particular I was talking about here.

Navimie of The Daily Frostwolf, had a bad experience in game that ended up leading to Twitter, and blogged about it. In this post, she specifically asked people to LET IT GO. To not vilify the person, or do anything to bring attention to the situation. However, this did not stop someone from being a White Knight, and perpetuating the situation.

Look. I don’t know either of these people. I do not have a horse in this race. I’ve read the latter bloggers posts on rare occasions and enjoyed them. I recall reading the former’s posts once or twice, a long time ago. They’re vaguely familiar to me. This is not why I’m writing this blog post.

What I’m really writing to say is that if any of my friends, EVER, decide they want to White Knight me, against my express wishes, you will find yourselves dropped faster than a hot potato. I will cut you off instantly and if not forever, for a VERY long time. You do not get to go against my wishes and decide that you’re going to champion me. No. That’s not how my friendship works.

I am a big girl, I’m all grown up, and I can fight my own fucking battles. If you think you can still be my friend after IGNORING my desires…well, let’s just say that it ain’t gonna happen. Honestly, I really don’t think it ever will – I am a very different person from Navi, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to White Knight me. But I wanted to be clear up front.

I had a lot of time to think about this while cooking dinner tonight, and I felt strongly enough, it poking in and around my brain, that I couldn’t stop until I wrote it all down. So, my first blog post! You’re welcome to it!

Most of my blog will probably be about my adventures in MoP, tanking and healing, with a side of DPS, just like it says at the top. At least, that’s the aim.

Enjoy!