Soul-searching, the blogging edition

A few prompts were floating about in the gaming blogosphere earlier this month that I wanted to reply to, but I never got around to it. One was Tyrannodorkus' post How you can use gaming to explore your love for writing and Rakuno's response Why I write. The other was the revelation of some well-known bloggers that they were playing with the thought of giving up on blogging altogether (check Liore, Belghast, Waiting For Rez). That gave me a good scare. They seem to reflect totally opposing sentiments, but somehow in my mind they make a connection by expressing the two conflicting feelings I have about blogging - sometimes even at the same time, to make things even more confusing.

LOTRO hairstyles I'd love for my characters

It's happened to me before and it will happen to me again: bumping into an NPC in Lord of the Rings Online that looks better than your own character. Player customizations barely got upgraded after the initial launch of the game back in 2007, while the developers did keep improving the looks of their NPCs. In this post I'll be sharing some NPC hair styles that I'd love to see in-game for characters one day (but they're not there yet, unfortunately).

Female nerdism

Scrolling through the feed of the Female Geek Blogger group, my eye caught a post that was different from the usual positive fangirl posts. In My Kind of Nerd, Healthy.Nappy.Nerdy.Mommy writes:

"Many people hate the kind of nerd I am. I did not grow up reading comics and don’t know all the details, and the issue, of every comic, that every character has appeared. I developed my love of superheros, anime, and other nerdy interest late in life."

Here, I paused. The first question that came to my mind was "who are these people that hate newbie comic enthusiasts?" I suspect they would not approve of my own 'nerd score' either. Reading this article made me realize I'm living in a sheltered blogging circle where all people I meet are open minded and supporting.

Fashion Friday: cute curvy scoundrel

Somewhere during the past week, my boredom with Star Wars: the Old Republic waned a bit and I started feeling the force again. This time, it pulled me towards one of my favourite occupations when new (group) content output is low: playing warzones with friends. 

My friend Marinka was having a hard time playing scoundrel DPS, so I decided to roll one myself for the baby PvP bracket. What better way to torture the enemy than hunting them down with two giggling scoundrel girls? I still had a female body type 4 character on my wishlist (never made one*), as well as someone to wear Calo Nord's jacket, which I bought ages ago. I always thought the jacket makes you look a bit fat from the back, so I decided to embrace the look rather than be bothered by it. I also made her look really cute, and guess what, I adore this character! I don't know why I waited with making a body type 4 character for this long. So today I present to you: Ravinne, my cute, naive and slightly silly curvy scoundrel.

The quiver dispute

MMOs hide the true identity of players behind in-game avatars, and are usually heralded for this, it being harder to form prejudices and all. At the same time, though, this lack of information forms a great source of miscommunication.

The Star Wars fashion giveaway winners

Thanks everyone for entering my Star Wars fashion giveaway! It was exciting to see if people would actually want the rewards, for instance the wrist warmers. Turns out they were at least as popular as the SWTOR rewards. If you didn't win them, you can always make your own using this pattern, then just stitch the sides together. Special thanks go to everyone who shared my giveaway post.

In this post I'll reveal the winners, who were decided upon by random draw. But first I'll test your patience with the results of the question to enter the giveaway: who's your favourite Star Wars character?

Fashion Friday: a Sith-style political statement

You know that feeling when you see something in the cartel market that looks absolutely fabulous, but you have no clue which character would wear it? Well, I do. It happens to me a lot. 

I like to make up background stories for my characters. Problem is, many of the really cool looking armour is specific to a certain hero, for instance Bastila and Satele Shan's armour. I always think it feels odd to walk around in the armour that belongs to a celebrity, especially when that person still is alive and active. My characters are no mindless fangirls. But the armour looks so awesome. I need to have this! You will understand: the in-game store provides a great source for inner conflict to me.

Thexan's robe was one of those cartel market pieces I have been drooling at for a while, but never could find a use for. Until today, when I found the perfect excuse to wear it.

How gaming made me more confident

A while ago, I wrote a blog post about playing PvP on a stream with Traitine and Shintar. In it, I admitted that it was a small personal victory, because I was scared at the prospect of being recorded. Rakuno wrote a blog post in response called Why I don't like voice chat and one of the many comments both posts sprouted forms the base of this one.

Tips for spending your steel tokens (LOTRO Anniversary event)

It's already the last day of LOTRO's ninth anniversary event! Today is the day to log all your alts and spend their anniversary tokens. Maybe you want to get some extra for that one really cool thing. In that case I have a post up with fast ways to gather anniversary tokens that might be of use to you.

Today is also a good moment to spend your steel tokens: you know, the ones that occasionally drop from mobs of all levels around the world - but only during the event. I have some tips for how to spend them.

Six times green

I'm deeply ashamed to admit that I've missed yet another edition of the 6 on 6 challenge last month. My lame excuse: it's not so much a shortage of screenies (I'm drowning in them), rather me plain forgetting about them. It's just that there's a whole month in between the 6 on 6 posts. Yes - goldfish - I know.

Also, it was very tempting to post six screenshots of grass here, but all the other pretty green screenies started staring at me with those cute imaginary eyes of them, so, fiiiine.

Ravalation's Star Wars fashion giveaway (closed)

Last week, I was totally overwhelmed by you all responding in such masses to my Four years of Ravalation post. Blogging started out as a way to do something with my screenies and improve my English, but has become so much more - and not in the least place due to you support. It was about time to do something back, so I've decided to do another giveaway!

As an extension of my Fashion Friday posts I'll be giving away some fashion - Star Wars style, of course. Major thanks go to Constant Warfare for posting my referral, so I had spare cartel coins to fuel this giveaway. You rock!

Writing about game characters

Ravanel writing about Ravanel - so meta

Some posts are easy to type away, others take days to pull off. When I read about Pizza Maid's ARPil challenge - a month of answering 30 questions about your game character(s) - I knew it would fall into the second category. I was bummed by this, because I found the idea so charming! The past month, I tried to spread the word as much as I could, even enthuse some people I knew liked the topic, but I didn't manage to write a single post about the background of my characters myself.

My ARPil failure left me with a question: where does this inner resistance against writing about game characters come from? Why can't I just get it done? Searching my soul - yes, this all on a Monday morning! - I came to two answers.