Panda. Monks.

If there is anything that could get me to come back.

 

This might be it.

 

Pandaren Monks.

 

Kung Fu Panda in World of Warcraft.

 

That is all.

 

(I epically failed and posted this on my personal blog, you know the one where all my real life friends and family are subscribed. Great. That’s what I get for having 2 wordpress blogs.)

What a Long Long Long Trip It’s Been

Hot Date at the Lumberyard

Big plans for the weekend, lots to be excited for. I get to go.. spend more money. I need to get my own car insurance… I had been covered under my parents’ plan but now that I’ve moved out, kinda have to get my own.

18-year-old male driver, that won’t be expensive or anything will it?

Hmm, if only I had some friends who worked at State Farm or something who could get me a deal.. *cough*

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I also have to go sign a bunch of papers to live in the apartment I’m already living in.. 2 week deadline for that is.. tomorrow. So I’m going tomorrow.

Did I mention we’ve already gotten a noise complaint? It’s not my fault we live above a nocturnal cop and the floors are really thin. It’s ridiculous.

..

This week I was introduced to The Office thanks to Netflix on my Xbox. Pure epic. I can’t believe I’ve never watched it before.. I’m halfway through Season Two already.

I hear Steve Carell is leaving this year though sad panda. Is this true?? Why?? Will Ferrell is ok, but he just cannot compare.

Side note: My coworker in the cubicle right next to mine looks just like Pam. I wonder if she’s seen the show..

..

Caramel deLites are good, but not as good as Thin Mints. About half as good. Which is why I bought 2 boxes of Thin Mints. Yep.

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I spilled Dr Pepper all over the shelf in the fridge last night. Fail.

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This post is very random. Deal with it.

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I’ve got Two-Step class tonight, and then live music and dancing at the Lumberyard with a very pretty girl. Be jealous.

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Short post is short, but its Friday so I don’t care.

Have a great weekend. Don’t do anything Varosh Saurfang wouldn’t do.

-Del

Thursday Three Things: Spicy Edition

1. I have a big nose. It is almost constantly stuffed with a ludicrous amount of snot. I have been told I snore louder than a dozen trains at once (by my new roommate). This obstruction of air flow in my clogged nostrils leads to trouble with breathing which leads to trouble sleeping, hence my lightheadedness and dizzyness earlier this week. All because of my nose. Go figure. However, this also leads to…

2. Near-imperviousness to spicy food. I have never really been a fan of spicy food. I just haven’t. Whenever anything came with peppers or jalapenos, I would ask for it to be taken off, I would only pick mild salsas, and that was that. Well.. in an attempt to clear out my sinuses, my roommate fixed up this ultra-spicy spiked salsa. He did not warn me about this. I really like chips and salsa, probably too much, but again I usually go for mild salsa.

I barely notice anything different. He just stared at me. He eats a couple chip-fuls, and he’s basically in tears. And this guy loves spicy food. He loaded up this salsa with jalapenos, cilantro, tabasco and some “el Diablo” sauce, and it didn’t affect me. There was just a slight spice on the aftertaste, but that was it.

I have a super-power. Now I just need to figure out how to use this to defeat evil and all that.

3. I love Thin Mints. Ok, who doesn’t?? But it is Girl Scout Cookie season (now made with 10% more real girl scouts!) and my coworker has about 2 hundred boxes at her desk. Yeah. So much for eating healthy this year.

 

Gratz to Shadow Rising on Omnitron and Magmaw!

-Del

Tauren Paladin Naming 101

I feel sicker than a dog.

Have you ever seen a dog that was so light-headed and dizzy it could barely stand up and walk? I certainly haven’t.

I’m really late on today’s post, so I’ll just do something short that will help the majority of the visitors to my blog:

Tauren Paladin Naming 101

As I have mentioned before, this is far and away the most common Google search term that has found my blog. Up until now I have only joked about it, but here are a few general naming tips.

Don’t name yourself Holycow. Seriously. You will laugh at it for about 5 minutes, then you’ll see a hundred others of your ridiculous brethren and you will inevitably log out and give up on that sad, sad character.

The Tauren are a proud and noble race, worthy of a magnificent moniker and of being subjected to a million lame jokes.

Paladins are also (generally) an upright and noble class, in search of some grand cause or something. If you take roleplaying even remotely seriously, do not ever name your paladin Plasticbag or Likmyponybut.

Side note on that roleplaying thing: I do not mean the total act-in-character bit or organizing massive roleplaying guilds and events. That is an entirely different matter, one I have no and desire no experience in. My kind of roleplaying is in understanding my character.

I can’t just level a character. He/she has to mean something to me. Not that I get seriously emotionally attached to them, just that they have meaning. I can’t just roll a warrior because the guild needs melee dps. It has to be more than that. Maybe he’s an orc who grew up with his buddy Draenosh (Can anyone remember what it means in Orcish?) and he always looked up to High Overlord Saurfang. (Side note: this happened. My first time after seeing ICC I rolled an orc warrior named Delefang)

Or maybe I’m a druid who has recently awakened from the Emerald Dream and who now wants to explore the whole world, see how it has changed, and how he can heal it. Delerius had been a dreamer, and I tried to go to as many zones as possible on him, complete as many quests as I could.

My paladin wanted to be tough. She wanted to show off how strong she was and how she could tank better than any of the guys. But in the end she got distracted by pretty shiny things and kind of became a princess-type. I found this obnoxious, and I haven’t really played her since.

I speak for myself, but I think the majority of WoW players would agree with me that this connection with their character is important to them. With this in mind, let’s get back to the naming…

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Some characters are named for their heritage. I mean, people are. Just check out all the last names out there. You can only have 1 name in WoW, no first/last name combinations, but maybe your name reflects the family you came from? If so, take a look at other Tauren names.

From WoWWiki, quoting the WoW RPG:

The language of the tauren is often harsh and low sounding, which is reflected in the names of their children. The last name of a tauren is usually a family name, handed down through the generations. If the tauren has performed some act that has made an impression on the elders of his tribe, however, he may choose to take on his own last name to commemorate that act. Tauren have several names. They receive a name at birth and another during a ceremony to celebrate reaching adulthood. This adult name describes some event in their lives or some notable individual characteristic: for instance, Blackhide, Earthborn, Halfhorn, Hidemaker, Riverwatcher, Scar, Splithoof, Stormchaser, or Windrunner. A tauren may also acquire a third name that he uses when dealing with outsiders.

• Male Names: Azok, Bron, Turok, Garaddon, Hruon, Jeddek.
• Female Names: Argo, Serga, Bessey, Beruna, Halfa.
• Family Names: Darkthorn, Thunderhoof, Stormhorn, Quillsplitter, Stonebreaker, Plainstalker, Spiritwalker.

Again, you can’t have both a first and last name, so you’ll have to pick one. If all you want is a first name, go hit the random name generator a couple dozen times. But if you didn’t like that, well maybe that’s why you Googled “tauren paladin names” 500 times.

For last names, notice how they are almost all compounds of 2 simple words. Either a noun and a participle, or two nouns.

An excellent example: “Sunwalker” would have been an amazing Tauren Paladin name, if, you know, that wasn’t the name of the Tauren Paladins. Don’t do it.

Starting with something sun/star/light related would be very fitting for a paladin. If you follow the lore of the Tauren however (or if you did the pre-cata intro quest), you may notice that the Tauren druids worship the sun while the Night Elf druids worship the moon. Elune is the moon, An’she is the sun. Or at least, that is what the lore says.

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Maybe your character doesn’t have a remarkable heritage. Maybe he’s just a common cow from Bloodhoof Village. If he is not known for his heritage, maybe he is known for his appearance. I once made an albino Tauren druid, named him Sunpaw. He was all white, with the lighter horn color, and so his name both fit his class and his appearance. (He had a friend named Moonpaw, who never made it past level 10)

Or they could simply be named for their actions. Perhaps you vanquished the Palemane tribe single-handedly (hoofedly?) with a frying pan. Frying pans, who knew right? With said frying pan you bashed in the skull of the gnoll leader Snagglespear. From this example your name might be Snagglebane or Panslayer or Gnollbasher. And I’m sure you could come up with something better than that even.

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One final note. Whatever you do, please please please please please PLEASE do not EVER use alt-code symbols. They are confusing, they frustrate your friends (as if you had any) when they try to add you to their friend lists, and they serve no real purpose other than to announce to the world “I’m not creative enough to come up with something better than what someone else already did”. Come on.

/endrant

There you go. Tauren Paladin Naming 101. Enjoy.

-Del

Observation

The sounds of life died away as he strode further south into the forest. Here the trees grew darker and shorter, but closer together, casting ominous shadows in every direction as the sun sank in the evening sky. Darkness was falling, and with it a hush of silence as even the critters knew better than to make any sound that might give them away.

He was on the trail, following the supposed source of the gnoll invasion. The mystery of the glowing purple eye haunted his footsteps as he walked into the deep shadows.

But he was well accustomed to places much darker than this.  The terrors of the lower planes far exceeded anything this plane could offer. His pace was quick, but out of curiosity rather than nerves. Following him closely was his minion, a dark creature of the void.

He paused for a moment at the base of one of the dark trees, this one curiously straighter and smoother than the others. Muttering something in a harsh and gutteral language, he waved his hands in front of his eyes and shivered. The cold grasp of the fel sight hung around him like a cloak, allowing him to see what mortals dared not to.

His eyes fell at once on the tree he stood next to. It was not a tree, but rather a pillar of stone engraved with strange glyphs now visible to demonic eyes. He studied the markings carefully, discerning from it more information than any lesser mortal could hope to understand.

A frigid breeze whipped through the trees, rustling his robe yet not disturbing even a blade of grass. The winds of the nether touched only him, the wearer of the fel sight. He glanced around quickly, seeing no other anomalies, and dismissed the shroud with a wave. The breeze vanished immediately, yet he still shivered for a moment.

Even without the fel sight, he noticed now that there were pillars interspersed with the real trees all around him. He stood inside a massive ruin long since overtaken by the forest. Slabs of marble lay strewn around the forest floor, the remains of what was once beautiful architecture. This had been a place of great power, and even now he could feel its lingering traces.

He walked over the broken flooring and found a crumbling archway, twice as tall as he was and as wide. Beyond the arch was a raised stone altar, cracked and covered in vines. As he neared it, a burnt stench filled his nostrils, and he saw char marks on the table. Fresh marks. A deep red substance dripped slowly from the vines on the altar, pooling on the ground. The nature of the ritual performed here was becoming ever clearer.

A deep thundering noise broke the silence. It came from beyond a large marble wall, still intact, to the east. The thundering was repeated, and again in a rhythmic pattern. The source was some distance away, yet even from here the ground shook slightly.

Master and minion moved quickly toward the disturbance. As they approached they could recognize several distinct rhythms. Something or some things were moving in the distance.

Closer to the large, smooth wall the pillars and trees thinned out gradually, toward what would have been a very large courtyard in ages past. Their view was obstructed only by the wall, which now seemed to be a hundred feet tall at least, and stretching a long way into the distance on either side.

Up close, the marble was not as smooth as it looked from afar. Chunks were missing here and there, tiny chips and larged pieces had fallen all around on the ground. A large vertical crack appeared a little to the side, one wide enough for a human-sized figure to slip through.

The wall was thick, at least 10 feet straight through, and the crevice narrowed uncomfortably on the other end. Yet through the opening he could say what lay beyond.

A gigantic bonfire dominated the center of an enormous ritual circle. Rows and rows of smaller fires were set at intervals out in a circle at varying distance from the center. The flames danced furiously, spurred on by a violent wind. The ground itself heaved under the weight of several dozen incredibly large figures surrounding the bonfire.

The stench alone should have been a giveaway. The thundering roars, the bloated masses of flesh and disfigured faces illuminated by the flames only confirmed the terrifying truth.

Ogres.

Thursday Three Things: Sanctified Bovine Edition

Holy cow.

I made a post with the name “Tauren Paladin Names” and then my google searches exploded. Remember when I was talking about all those searches for stick figures in every possible variation? Remember that I mentioned there were also a ton of searches for Platinum Angel and Whispersilk Cloak?

 

Well Tauren Paladins completely blew that record out of the water.

Searches for:

tauren paladin names	20
tauren paladin name	11
paladin names	6
tauren pally names	5
tauren paladin tank names	4
tauren paladin	3
tauren pala name	3
best tauren paladin names	2

These are the top 8 searches for this blog, and that’s only counting this week!! There are also a ton of other variations with 1 hit each, but these are the top.

Wow.

Because of the overwhelming desire for good tauren paladin names, I have dedicated this Thursday Three Things to the cause of the righteous methane-producing crusaders.

 

1. I am borderline OCD for symmetry. My Wow UI always reflects this, if there is a rectangle box shape on the left, there will be on the right. My minimap is almost always a square, because there is no circle to balance it on the other side. If I have my buffs on the right, my target’s buffs will be on the left.

(Note that this demand for symmetry does not apply to cleaning my room. It just doesn’t happen.)

Also with symmetry, I cannot tap my foot just once. Oh no. If I tap my right foot on the ground, I must tap with the left foot. If I tap twice with right, it must be followed twice with left. And then the pattern must repeat, again equally. Because of this, I try to avoid tapping in the first place to stop myself from performing some sort of tap dance spontaneously.

 

2. I have 2 teddy bears. Yes, I even took them with me when I moved out last weekend. They have very original names: “Teddy” and “Bear”. This limits me to only 2. I guess if I got a third, I could name it “Stuffed”? My Wind Rider plushy is named “Ari”, coming from the Hebrew word for “lion” which is “arioch”. Any resemblance to any other person living or dead is purely coincidental.

 

3. I earned the Gold Sunflower Trophy at 3am on October 20th, 2010. Yes, I stayed up that late just to play the awesomeness that is Plants vs. Zombies.

 

-Del