What do YOU do During Downtime?

I know I’ve written about this before. Inspired by the abundance of downtime in World of Warcraft three years ago I wrote Toque’s WoW Fitness Program, which was recognized on the official site. Now my question is what else do others do? Lately I’ve been trying to get some knitting done (not WoW related… yet! Stay tuned) and I also discovered that there are some great in-game addons to help you pass the time while flying, while dead, etc.

This weekend I was doing some badge farming heroic runs on Amoo and Culling of Stratholme was the daily. No sooner had I added myself to LFG I received a whisper and invite. However, with issues like members who got disconnected or had to go and finding a tank, it took 45 minutes for the group to get organized. Instead of pulling out my hair because my guildmates had already run it and I was stuck with the PuG, I pulled out my knitting. With CoS being the daily, I know I would’ve found another group fairly quickly, but just when I think I’m at the end of my rope waiting on group members, they get their act together. But then 5 minutes later someone else had to go and then it would all fall apart again. And I’d wait a few minutes… nearly leave again, and then we’d find a replacement. Rinse repeat. I almost gave up on CoS this weekend but knitting while I waited helped.

I don’t know why in-game addon games never really occured to me; this weekend a guildmate of mine mentioned the Bejeweled addon and it nearly blew my mind. Genius!  Playing Bejeweled invokes memories of working in the Student Loan office at Indiana University Bloomington years ago. It was how we passed the time. While I’d prefer a Frozen Bubble type addon game to pass the time instead, I do enjoy having Bejeweled at my fingertips. The settings make it really convenient: it pops up instantly when I take a flight path or when I die, and I like trying to beat the clock before I land. These days with epic flying mounts, taking a flight path isn’t always the most efficient route, but sometimes the idea of a little Bejeweled is inticing enough for me to make the choice.

So what do YOU do during downtime? Is there a certain addon you recommend? Is there something like my knitting that you keep near your computer to help make the wait on the rest of the raid interesting? Let’s hear it!

P.S. I realize that when I updated to the latest version of WordPress a week or two ago some of the text got garbled; it seems the copyright symbols or other alt code symbols didn’t make the jump. I’m trying to get in there and correct those as I can :) Thanks for letting me know!

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I Don’t Know How it Happened…

… but it did. It sucked me back in.

and P.S. – thanks for making my day, Ranbodan :)

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World of Warcraft Study

I know I haven’t been updating as often as I’d like, but I’m still around! I’ve been actively playing my Warlock alt, Tuque, in between raids with Amoothyst. Mostly because I need a character to be able to farm with easily, as a resto Druid just doesn’t farm as effectively as a DPS class. Then came dual spec. How fun is that? Now I can spec between Moonkin and Resto as needed for solo stuff and raids. But you know… after setting my secondary spec as Moonkin, I realized that perhaps what I really want to do is go feral as my alt spec. I kinda miss the prowling around in cat form. We’ll see. Either way, it has helped to breathe new life into Amoo, since I can now switch quickly to a better solo spec for grinding out that 5k needed on Tuque for epic flying *cough*

This weekend my husband and I participated in a very interesting World of Warcraft study by Kelly Bergstrom of the University of Calgary. As you can read from the article, Kelly is focused on interviewing couples who game together in MMOs, specifically WoW. We got together with her at Starbucks on Saturday (Outside? Real life? I know… what are those things?) and talked about our general gaming experiences and WoW experiences together. Though Lucas doesn’t play WoW these days, we have played it together in the past and we play other games together, too.  Kelly is very interested in the idea that the virtual world in an MMO like WoW can be a “third place”  for socialization, and that perhaps couples who game together stay together because they have that extra place to retreat to and stay connected. 

Kelly’s research is fascinating, and one topic she brought up in our discussion that really hit home with me was that a lot of times, the class that you choose to play is reflective of the type of person you are or your personality. In looking at this possibility, I think there really are some parallels there. What do you think? Are you the in-your-face type who enjoys being in charge of the aggro of the conflict, such as a tank/toe-to-toe DPS, or are you more of a support role, helping to keep others afloat? (Like a healer.) Maybe you’re even more of a hang back and support without getting in direct contact with the fray, such as a ranged DPS class type? The concept is very interesting, and I think that your favorite/main class choice says a lot about the kind of person you are in real life. (There’s that ‘real life’ thing again… does that really exist?)

Anyway, Kelly is still gathering research on her topic, but once the results of her study have been posted, I’ll be sure to point you in the right direction to read what conclusion she came to. I personally can’t wait!

Have a great week :)

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Tuque, the Other Warlock

As most of you know, this site name came to be because my old Alliance main, a Warlock, was named Toque and she had pink pigtails (because pink is my favourite colour.) … well, now that I’m Horde-only, I thought it only fitting that my Horde Warlock’s name be Tuque.  “Toque” was taken on my realm, but it’s ok because “Tuque” is the French/alternate spelling anyway. For nostalgic reasons I gave her pigtails. It’s just unfortunate that blood elves can’t have pink hair ;)  Tuque is a mere one level away from Outlands finally… she’ll hit 58 tomorrow.  This is great because I recently had my old WoW friend, David, rejoin the game, and he created his Death Knight on my realm. Now we can quest along in Outlands quickly and get on to Northrend.  While I’m not particularly fond of the idea of running Outlands again, having a friend to do it with who hasn’t been in game in a loooong time will make it fun, and for some reason the idea of getting into Northrend again so quickly is exciting for me. I mean, I could go anytime I want with Ameythyst since she’s just sitting there at 70, but I’m not as excited to play her as I am the Warlock. *shrug* I guess that means Tuque is now my official alt. Poor Ameythyst!

I don’t know why, but I was unable to get into the Lunar Festival or the in-game Valentine’s Day event. My RL Valentine’s Day was wonderful, however, and I hope yours was too. As for the events, I wanted the titles, but the list of 75 elders seemed daunting, and I was tired of having to switch to Amoo every hour to give a love token to someone in a major city and hopefully get lucky and get some rare item. Never fear… my favourite in-game event of all is coming up in just a few short months: Children’s Week! I will be sure to complete it on all of my characters then ;)  Congratulations to all of you Elders and Love Fools out there!  <3

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A Warlock Alt and Ubuntu

It’s been rather quiet here at pinktoque.com.  I’m still here, though!  My kindergarten teaching job has been going really well, but it’s taking a lot of my free time.  By the time I get home in the evening, eat dinner and prep for the next day, I’ve only got a good hour or so to play before I’m ready to crawl into bed.  That means I’ve been playing alts a lot to keep me busy during the week when I don’t have a lot of time.  Most notably is my new Warlock alt, Tuque.  She’s only level 38 right now, but she’s coming along when I have a spare half hour or so in the evenings.  Most of you know that my old Alliance main was Minty/Toque the pink-pigtailed gnome Warlock, and she is where the name of the site comes from.  Since abandoning my Alliance toons nearly a year ago and going Horde, I’ve recently been starting to miss having a ‘lock around.  Thus the new baby alt was born.  Tuque is a blood elf, and she’ll be fun to have around alongside Amoothyst at the end-game.  Whenever she gets there ;)

Speaking of my current main, Amoothyst, she got lucky and hatched Reins of the Green Proto-Drake from her cracked Oracle egg this morning. Woot!  Though she’s a Druid that has epic flight form, she sure does look nice riding on the back of the green proto-drake, too!  She also collected her 50th pet in last week’s cracked Oracle egg and received Stinker the skunk pet in the mail.  How exciting :)

So my updates are a bit spread out, but I’m still kicking.  I recently switched operating systems to Ubuntu and was surprised at how smoothly the transition went and how easy it was for me to set up WoW running under Wine in Linux.  Hooray!

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