Category: blogging

Day 03 – Your First Day Playing WoW

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Day 03 – Your First Day Playing WoW

What’s funny about this is I kind of have two “first days” of playing WoW. Somehow, before I went out and bought a copy, I had found an online copy of WoW with a private server attached. Of course, I had absolutely no idea what a private server was, no idea what I was doing. I just followed the instructions with the download and found myself at the character creation screen.

I created a human male warrior and then logged in to the world.

So there I am, level 1, standing in Elwynn, completely amazed at the graphics and level of detail and everything.

And then I decided to go exploring.

There weren’t any NPCs, no mobs, not a soul. It was crazy. I ran, I actually RAN, from Elwynn, over to Redridge, up through Burning Steppes and then I saw Blackrock Mountain.

I went into Blackrock Mountain from the south side and I have this very strong memory of running up the spiraling ramp and running up and down the chains.

But, there was no one there. At all. It then dawned on me that I was on a local server, not an online server, so I went digging around and discovered I needed to buy the game to connect to the real game servers.

It was over Canadian Thanksgiving that I did so, so that’s mid-October of 2005, and showed my brother the game. I had elected to roll a male night elf hunter, because I was trying to keep a low profile. As a woman, I’ve been harrassed a LOT in online communities by creepy guys, so I was prepared for that happening and decided to fly under the radar with a male night elf.

So my first day of playing WoW for real was me running around Aldrassil and Shadowglen, playing like a scrub. I’d shoot something once, it would come at me, another autoshot might get off and then I’d melee the mob down. Somewhere in all of this, I convinced my brother to start playing and he quickly went out and bought the game and rolled a druid. (He beat me to 60.)

My first real day of WoW play was pretty awesome. I loved dinging. I knew I wanted to do more of it. I really felt like a hunter, too, stalking my prey. I had no idea what it meant that a mob was red or yellow or green to me (both in terms of friendliness and level) and I was constantly getting lost by the spider tunnels.

I also remember that Shadowmeld got a lot of use from me right from the start and I was SO sad that I couldn’t move while stealthed!

Honestly, though, what I remember most about my first day of playing WoW is how gorgeous Aldrassil was. This lush, green place, a huge tree… it was really amazing. I was blown away by the graphics and I loved running around Shadowglen. And jumping. I loved (and still love!) the male night elf jump. Somersaults!

Yesterday – Why You Decided to Start a Blog
Tomorrow – Your best WoW memory

Day 02 – Why You Decided to Start a Blog

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Day 02 – Why You Decided to Start a Blog

I’ve been keeping blogs and journals since, well, I think it was probably 1998 or 1999. That was back before Blogger even really existed. My first blog was hosted on my own personal website and it was something I updated manually. Yup, designed it myself, coded it myself and wrote all the content into the HTML code. Having a blog was nothing new to me when I first installed WordPress here and made Kurn’s Corner. (Hilariously, my very first post was dated April 4th, 2008. More on that on day 9!)

So I started one because it was easy for me to do so. I had the web hosting for the Apotheosis site already and I made the subdomain for myself and installed WordPress.

What was I going to write about? Primarily, at the time, I wanted to write to educate people. When I started writing, we were about six or seven months out from the release of Wrath of the Lich King. I was getting frustrated, so very frustrated, by the idiocy of people I would encounter. I’m not talking about my guildies or my friends, but just the random people I’d bump into who were clearly doing it “wrong”.

I like to do things well. If I can’t do something well, I don’t like to do it. (Doesn’t mean I won’t, but I will always try to do it to the best of my ability.) So when I see other people trying to do something I know how to do well and I see they’re NOT doing it well, it drives me a bit nuts.

My second post on this blog was about jewelcrafting and explaining how to get all the different cuts. It was about educating people and telling people that an orange counts as both a red AND a yellow and that metas need to be activated.

Looking back over my first posts, though, I spend a lot of time talking about Apotheosis and Lady Vashj and then pally stuff.

Really, my blog’s purpose hasn’t substantially changed since I started it. I really started it to educate people and I like to think I’m still doing that. I quickly started to use it as a place to talk about what I was doing in-game. I’m definitely still doing that. :) I also used it as a place to ponder aloud about paladin stuff. Pretty sure I’m still doing that, too! If anything, my blog has brought in more paladin stuff over the last year, which is good, since it ties in with the educational slant.

I guess the short answer to this is that I started a blog to educate people and to give myself a platform to talk about stuff in the game that’s important to me and just to chatter a bit about what I’m up to in the game and because it was easy for me to do.

Yesterday – Introduce Yourself
Tomorrow – Your first day playing WoW

Day 01 – Introduce Yourself

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

So I read over at Dwarven Battle Medic that Fannon is taking part in a blogging challenge that Saga of Spellbound came up with. I know I’ve been neglecting the blog lately, what with all kinds of other WoW obligations and some RL obligations too, so I figured at least this will get me to post daily. :)

Day 01 – Introduce Yourself

Hi, my name is Kurnmogh, but you can (and should) call me Kurn. Please do not call me Madrana, even though that’s the character I play on more often than not, nor any derivations thereof. Kurn is just fine, please and thank you.

I’m a female 30-something-year-old Montrealer who has been playing WoW since before I was in my 30s. I’m finishing up a sociology degree from a university here in Montreal and I do some contract work to do with web stuff, both design/coding and the online community aspect.

I’m the guild master and healing lead of Apotheosis, an Alliance raiding guild on the Eldre’Thalas (US) server and spend a lot of time healing in raids as a holy paladin. I still love my hunter to bits and pieces, though, but I realized at the start of Wrath that being a DPS doesn’t satisfy me the way playing a healer does.

I love to write in my spare time. Does this surprise the frequent visitors out there? I think I’m pretty much known for my absolutely epic-length posts (both blog and forum variety) possibly more than I am known for any paladin expertise I may hold. Sadly, I don’t get to do this as much as I’d like to, due to the aforementioned “guild master” title, but I am definitely a writer at heart.

I also watch a stupid amount of television, usually not at the same time as it actually airs. Current shows I’m watching weekly include, but are not limited to: Castle, How I Met Your Mother (a guild favourite!), V, Glee, The Big Bang Theory, Grey’s Anatomy, 30 Rock, Survivor: Redemption Island and I occasionally keep an eye on House and Desperate Housewives. I just finished watching Season 1 of Community and am trying to catch up on Season 2. I also catch as many Montreal Canadiens hockey games as possible, which is probably about 35% or so of them, primarily because they play a LOT of games on raid nights.

Anyways, I guess that’s sufficient for now! Much more and there won’t be a lot left for the next 19 days! :)

Tomorrow – Why you Decided to Start a Blog

Responsibilites, Skills… and Me

Kurn / / blogging, ramblings

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a sociology student. I’m close to getting my bachelor’s degree and, with any luck, the upcoming fall semester of 2011 will be my last semester.

As such, I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with my life and I occasionally see a vocational counselor to try to help me narrow down the field.

Perhaps unsurprisingly to some, she was fascinated to hear about my involvement with WoW. I don’t tend to talk about it a lot “in real life”, but when I mentioned that something I loved doing was raid leading, she kind of had to ask what that meant and I had to explain and, yeah, she constantly tries to get me to relate things to WoW.

Once I get over the embarassment of it, it’s kind of neat, because she shows me why I love the game in a whole other way.

My “homework” for my next session is to write up a CV (or resume) of my GM skills. “Pretend,” she said, “that you need to apply to become the leader of another guild.”

“But that would mean my guild had failed miserably!”

She chuckled and told me to pretend I was six months removed from the pretend end of my guild and to try to write up a CV.

Obviously, the reason she’s doing this is to show me, in concrete terms, that the skills I have gained and refined while playing World of Warcraft have relevance in the real world. Which I know, but I rarely see real applications for it. I mean, how often do you have to parse a log in real life? How often do you have to armory people in real life? How often do you have to respec in real life?

My appointment’s in a little over two hours, so I thought I’d share with you guys what I wrote. Note that my Bronzebeard and Proudmoore guilds are not named because I’ve been pretty harsh on those people in this blog in the past.

Continue reading “Responsibilites, Skills… and Me”

Busy! Productive!

Kurn / / apotheosis, blogging, guild, paladins, raiding, ramblings

Monday morning, I woke up and promptly recorded Episode Five of Blessing of Frost with Majik, which I need to edit after I do this post.

Then, I went out to meet Ophelie from The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon for coffee. She was in the area visiting friends and was kind enough to ask me if I wanted to hang out, so we settled on Monday afternoon. 48 minutes after I finished the podcast with Majik, I arrived at the coffee shop and just a couple of minutes later, Ophelie arrived.

We had a great chat — from Canada and Quebec and Newfoundland to TV shows, from holy paladin mechanics to guild stuff, from Matticus and Conquest to Oestrus and Apotheosis. ;) It was a good time!

FOUR hours later, I realized I needed to get going, so I hauled ass and got home in time for my officer meeting which lasted over two and a half hours. It’s our first of the expansion and we got ALL the EPGP crap ironed out by virtue of doing a random regular, which ended up being Stonecore. And we played with the loot mods through the instance.

I’m shocked that it took Daey almost two hours to make the “Why don’t we just frigging /roll for loot?” suggestion that he’s basically famous for. (He suggests it multiple times EVERY expansion and gets shot down… every single time.) I bust out laughing at it, though. It felt like I was home.

So we finished up with EPGP – decided what loot mods to use, precisely, worked out the figures for EP awards and then, the most miraculous thing happened.

Dar actually said she’d update the EPGP post on the forums (which basically had how we do loot organized, but very out of date and not complete — lacking details that we had JUST hammered out tonight).

I nearly fell over in shock. One of my officers. Volunteered. To write an official post on the guild forums. Why I didn’t make Dar an officer during Wrath, I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell glad she threw her name in the hat for Cataclysm!

So she updated and edited my original post, created a new thread, which I just added a couple of things to, then replied to and gave a couple of additional details on standby and such… and that was it for all the EPGP stuff! Ecstasy!

I’ve gone another check of the people who weren’t QUITE up to snuff on my weekend check and written to them, reminding them of what they’re missing. Mostly it’s just enchants that are lacking. I think almost everyone is at the appropriate ilvl of gear we’re requiring (338+) and the ones who are lacking enchants, I put on standby as a temporary measure to remind myself to check their missing enchants before I invite them to the raid tomorrow.

Tomorrow!!!!

The plan:

If we have Tol Barad, Baradin Hold to start with.

Then, Magmaw in Blackwing Descent. If the big worm dies, we go to Omnotron. If Omnotron goes down as well, it’s off to play with Halfus in Bastion of Twilight!

Why those bosses? We have experience, albeit limited, with all of those bosses, so the learning curve won’t be terribly steep. Hopefully.

Anyways, it’s 4:14am and I need to edit Blessing of Frost before I try to get some sleep and then write more stuff on the guild forums. Busy day on Tuesday!

I'm not slacking!

Kurn / / apotheosis, beta, blogging, cataclysm

I promise I’m not slacking on getting you all the new news from beta that I possibly can. It’s just that the servers have been down for 22 hours now.

Boy, I’m glad I went to bed last night…

Some things to note:

– Level cap to 85 (oh boy, more levelling, which means more screenshots)

– All instances (not heroics or raids, presumably) are going to be open

– Uldum and Twilight Highlands will be open

– Addons should be enabled

So… I’m going to be spending a fair amount of time on the beta trying to get to max level. I’ll do what I can to get into groups to see how healing is, but as it stands, I’m a little afraid.

At least I’ll hopefully have Grid and Clique? :) Cross your fingers that these aren’t broken. :P

In the future, I will have a write up of Blackrock Caverns (I need to finish that one, first), Stonecore (would like to do it a couple more times, I’ve only succeeded in it once) and the other instances, like the Throne of the Tides one I did.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten off my ass and spent this time working on the Apotheosis guild forums. Crazy that I don’t even have an 80 on the server my former guild was on and yet I’m doing guild paperwork…

Kurn's List of Progressed Female Raiders who Blog

Kurn / / blogging, icecrown citadel, raiding

Okay, so obviously, my brain wasn’t working when I wrote my Being a Woman who Raids post, because I forgot about some truly excellent bloggers who are women who are fairly progressed. So, ladies, let’s all work together and try to come up with a fairly definitive list of progressed female raiders who blog, shall we? Please leave a comment with your blog URL if you’d like to be listed (or someone else’s blog URL if you know they’re a progressed female raider) assuming you meet the requirements below. If the blog does not have the woman’s most-progressed raiding character’s armory profile listed on it, please include the armory link as well. (You can email me the armory link if you prefer: kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com.)

I’ve populated the list with a few names and blogs already, but haven’t been able to verify progression in some other cases.

Requirements (may be subject to change, but we’ll start out with this):

1) The blogger must be at least 9/12 ICC HM (that’s 10 or 25, although if you’re doing 10, you shouldn’t be decked out in all 277 gear). This can mean that the blogger has reached that stage with her current guild or a previous guild. Please let me know what the progression is in the comment itself. (Note that I’ll take your 25m progression over 10m if you’re wearing lots of 277 gear.)

2) The blogger must be a woman. This means that the blogger should say somewhere (either a blog post or in the About section) that they are a woman. Gender of the character does not matter. ;) (I will also include self-identified MTF transgender individuals as female bloggers, should any exist, mostly because I’m inclusive in general, but also because my previous post was spawned in part by my annoyance with the male-dominated heteronormative narrative that exists in WoW.)

3) The blog should primarily be about WoW stuff. If your blog is mostly you talking about what movie you saw before you went off and spent a couple of hours in ICC, you won’t get listed. I’d really like for this to be a solid list of women who are progressed in this game and who really talk about the game on their blogs.

A proper submission:

Kurn of Kurn’s Corner (http://kurn.apotheosis-now.com), is 11/12 ICC 25 HM and here is her armory: (link)

Please note that this is not any kind of effort to be elitist or to snub women who may be less-progressed! This is really a sort of experiment to see how many women out there are progression raiders who blog about WoW to help me see if my initial theory was right or wrong. (I believed that the reason there weren’t, from what I could tell, a lot of progression-minded female raiders who blogged was because there weren’t that many progression-minded female raiders at all.)

Also, the 9/12 HM requirement is arbitrary, I know. I put it there because I feel that most raiding guilds can eventually get Lady Deathwhisper down on heroic (typically the 9th boss on heroic you’ll do) but that, for whatever reason, a raiding guild may struggle once they start banging their heads against the walls that Putricide and Sindragosa represent, even to the point of giving up and no longer raiding.

I have a feeling that this post may be updated fairly regularly. ;)

25-man Progressed Female Raiders who Blog

(Please note that progression listed below is for Icecrown Citadel 25-man hard modes.)

12/12:

Avalonna at Tales of a Priest (co-blogger)

Dawn at Disco Priest

Hanny from Hanny’s blog

Vixsyn of Life in Group 5

11/12:

Aislinana of Empowered Fire

Anafielle over at Righteous Defense (co-blogger)

Angela at Restoration Druid

Bellwether from 4 Haelz

Beruthiel at Falling Leaves and Wings

Cassandri (and Lathere) at HoTs & DoTs

ecclesiasticaldiscipline at ecclesiastical discipline

Foofy of Foofy’s CupCake Factory

Keeva from Tree Bark Jacket

Kurn at Kurn’s Corner (tip: you are here!)

Oestrus from The Stories of O (and Divine Aegis)

Ophelie of Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon

Zahraah from Pugnacious Priest

10/12:

Codi at Moar HPS!

Elsen at The View Through the Branches

9/12:

Janyaa from Muradin Musings

Jasyla from Cannot be Tamed

Napps of Mama GM

Osephala from Crispy Hands

10-man Progressed Female Raiders who Blog

(Please note that progression listed below is for Icecrown Citadel 10-man hard modes.)

12/12:

Kae at Dreambound

Nefernet from Krasus Kronicles

11/12:

Ailinea of Playing with Fire

Jen of Stories of WoW

Laranya from Root & Branch

Larísa at The Pink Pigtail Inn

Lidanya of Licking Floor

Leafie at Leaf-head

Vidyala from Pugging Pally

10/12:

9/12:

Arioch of Clearcasting

Being a Woman who Raids

Kurn / / blogging, general, raiding, ramblings

A lot of people have been blogging lately about sort of feminist topics. In particular, Ophelie’s post caught my attention. Not only did she link me (thanks!) but she linked me under “hardcore”. Oddly, “hardcore” is not how I would personally define myself, but that’s a blog entry for another day. (And I don’t take offense, I just find it a curious label. It should be noted that she’s actually changed that heading to read “PvE Progression Focused Female Players” now, though.) Also, I really liked Codi’s recent post about social privilege and WoW and Blizzard being a business.

So in the midst of all these posts (there are so many that I couldn’t possibly link all the ones I’ve read recently), I realized I had a lot of things to say. I don’t really talk much here about being a woman in this game or the strange reactions I get when it’s discovered that I AM, in fact, female, or how I deal with people’s reactions. I also haven’t spoken much about the lack of other capable women at high-end levels. This seems like a perfect time to address some issues and throw my own views out there.

Continue reading “Being a Woman who Raids”

Being a Woman who Raids (preamble)

Kurn / / blogging, raiding, ramblings

I don’t have the time to talk about this right now, but I wanted to let you all know it’s eventually coming. I’ve got lots of thoughts jotted down in my draft and I’ll be posting that eventually.

What about, exactly?

Well, I have things to say about being a woman who raids, about how I’ve seen the decline of women around me as I’ve moved to more progressed guilds, about the lack of women as tanks and other stuff, including questioning why the Leggings of Concentrated Darkness look like this on a female toon and like actual slacks on a male toon. (Couldn’t find a screenshot of the men wearing them. Gee. I wonder why not?)

But, like I said, not right now. If you have any questions for me about being a female raider, leave them in the comments and I’ll be happy to address them in my upcoming post.

/afk for a bit.

Kurn / / blogging

I know I usually post a lot on Tuesdays, but it’s a busy week and I have a lot to do! Dinner plans tonight, an appointment and raid tomorrow, afternoon/dinner plans on Thursday (thereby missing the raid), seeing my best friend and her little girl on Saturday, possibly going away for a couple of days…

In short, go watch my YouTube videos if you’re bored. ;)

Hope to post a fair bit this week despite the craziness going on, but if not, there are thousands upon thousands of words on this very blog for you to read through and a couple hours worth of videos on YouTube. Go forth and read/watch. :)