My Dru I.D.
Last night I spent hours grinding Cenarian Circle reputation in Silithus. Silithus, as you probably know, is the armpit of Azeroth. There is nothing pretty there. It offers nothing at all to redeem itself. You fight bugs and worms in desolate, harsh landscapes. It is tedious and lacking in anything close to reward. Except… if I grind Syll’s rep there to exalted she will have the title “Guardian of Cenarius.” And that is a damn fine title for a druid to have, don’t you think?
So as I was fighting the Twilight whatever-the-heck-they-are into the early morning hours, it occurred to me that I would never, ever, ever grind this rep on my mage or any other non-druid alt. Not for all the Honeymint Tea in Northrend. This revelation led me to thinking about how, although I in no way consider myself a role player in WOW, I still do what I can to honor what I believe to be my druid’s nature and allow her to express it. Weird, right?
The crazy rep grind for the Guardian of Cenarius title is just one example of me honoring Syll’s druidic nature. I just finished yesterday the grind to get 75 mini pets. I spent tons of gold on them, ground crazy reputations like Sporregar, dragged my friends to Zul Aman to ring that gong to get me in to get Mojo the Frog, fished in Dalaran Sewers for hundreds upon hundreds of casts, all in a pursuit not to get the 75 pet achievement, per se. I did it because I thought that Syll the Druid really ought to have a little fawn to keep her company and help her to calm her soul.
Whenever there is a druidic option over a non-druidic option for Syll, I immediately go the route of the druid. The first pet I got with my Argent Tournament seals was the Teldrassil Sproutling. The second was the baby bear. I don’t remember the order of the others because it didn’t matter to me. The baby tree and the bear were druid pets. The other three pets were just steps along the path to getting the baby fawn druid pet.
During the Lunar Festival Syll got the green dress because, all things being equal, I think she would want to wear green. (It’s my favorite color, incidentally, but I do not always make that choice for my other toons. Green, it seems, is Syll’s favorite color, too.) For a while she had white hair, but it inevitably morphed to green. For a while she had no facial markings, but when she sat in the barber chair and I saw that she could have leaf markings over her eyes, there was no choice but to get them for her.
I find my behavior in this regard to be really intriguing. I sit here and wonder what it says about me. I have to reiterate that I am not a role player. I am horribly bad about not reading quests. I know next to nothing about the lore of the game. Syll has no back story of which I am aware. She has no personality when interacting with other toons other than my own. When she opens her mouth to speak, it’s all me that comes out.
And yet there is something in me that still wants to honor her for what she is. It seems to make me happy to work for and give her things that I think would make her happy if she were real. I guess she deserves it. I really put her through the ropes in order to have fun. I send her into dank, poisoned dungeons to fight frightful opponents because I like to fight them. For all I know, she’d be just as happy sitting under a big tree listening to the earth turning. But this toon, these pixels, have provided me with a vehicle to have hours and hours of fun, to make new friends, to start a new creative outlet of expression in this blog. So even though I don’t necessarily give her a personality or a story of her own, I still seem to enjoy building this druidic aura about her and surrounding her with things that she would love. I think it makes us both happy.
There are 15 Comments to "My Dru I.D."
Actually, I’m somewhat the same, though I do -kind- of RP my Shaman. But not in game, just on my blog and in my head. Despite not RPing her in game, the personality I’ve built for her – a fiery temperament that complements her Shamanic affinity with fire – leads me to grind titles (Flame Warden), collect clothing (Tabard of the Summer Flame) and Mounts (Turbostrider!) that follow the firey motif.
Oh, and pets, kind of. I’ve yet to get a Mechanopeep, but she is keen on the Engineering Pets – Tranquil Yeti, Bombling, etc.
Also, Silithus would actually be the desolate genitals of the world. I say this because Silithus is amusingly similar to Syphallis. -coughs-
Faulsey´s last blog ..Heavy Handed? (Warning – explicit opinions. Parental guidance advised)
Make sure you keep your eyes peeled for the Twilight Prophet in Silithus. When you kill him, he drops like, 7-10 encrypted twilight texts, which is an instant 500 rep. Trust me, I’ve ground CC rep twice. Once on my mage, because he’s the pet / mount / title / achievement collector, and once on my Druid for the same reason as you: the Guardian of Cenarius is the PERFECT title for him. After all, you see your tank for a PuG with that title and you think, “He guards Cenarius, he’ll probably guard me pretty good too!”
Twilight Prophet. Got it. going to keep my eyes peeled for that guy for sure! Glad I’m not the only druid crazy enough to do this just cause it’s a good druid title. lol!
lol @ Faulsey. Duly noted. Silithus = syphilis. desolate genitals. /nod.
Strangely enough i think that most of the long term druids I know, including myself have followed the same path as you. It must just be a Druid thing….
@allowyn have you ever noticed how many bat shit crazy druid NPCs there are in the game? Maybe this is where it starts. =P
I entirely agree with the concept of druids doing druid things. I always wear either my guardian of cenarius title or else salty because “salty sunkist” just looks silly. I also never attack a druid in world pvp, bg’s are a different story because they choose to battle there. Even though I’m horde I also have my little sproutling that comes with me on raids. I also don’t do the “blood is thicker” fishing daily because it hurts poor nature.
I don’t consider myself a RPer at all but these little things are fun to help create character for your druid in the game I think.
Sunkist´s last blog ..Healing Spells!
lol sunkist I would dearly love to be salty syll, but the chances of me winning the fishing tournament are… slim. lol! I also do not attack druids even when flagged, although I admit that I’m not above doing the blood is thicker daily. lol! I just tell Syll to look the other way.
I think I have a bit more of an inner RPer than you do (I actually do have, in my head, an incredibly rough backstory for Kahleena – I don’t do anything with it, but I keep it in mind), so I totally get what you’re saying. To some extent, I needed a mental justification to have a human warlock in the first place (warlockiness being, y’know, evil and stuff.) But since then, I sort of use that mental character guide to think about what she does and doesn’t do (jousting being a great example of what she doesn’t do)
I wonder if part of it is that different players seem to have different levels of distinction between their characters and themselves. I think some people, when they walk/run/ride around, are (as they perceive it) steering themselves (or an avatar representing themselves), while others are (as *they* see it) steering a character whose story they’re manipulating. Does that make sense? It’s part of why it’s always a little weird for me when people refer to me (say, on our guild’s vent) as Kahleena. It’s the custom, so I deal with it (after all, I’m fairly sure Syll’s not your actual name either), but it’s weird because to me, Kahleena is a character, and in my head my characters are very distinct from me (in Kahleena’s case, gender and an astronomical body count being fairly nontrivial differences
It would be an interesting subject for a paper, actually – how people (psychologically) process avatars in virtual worlds. When is “Syll” (or “Kahleena”) “I” and when are they “she”?
Hi, another level 80 druid here. Who has done the same CC / CE rep grind. I just had to get that Guardian of Cenarius title.
The fastest way to get CC rep in Silithus is to just kill Twilight’s Hammerwhatsits over and over and over and over and over and over and over (and then over and over), and turn in the Encrypted Texts. As I’m sure you’ve seen, this gets very boring. To make it a bit more tolerable, look into the quests you can do to summon elementals and the elemental bosses at the Twilight Hammerwhatsits’ camps. These enemies are an absolute cakewalk at level 80, but you do feel like you’re making a a little bit of difference in Silithus.
(Unfortunately those quests will probably slow things down and cost money.)
Note – something you can get when you’re exalted with the Cenarion Expedition is a Cenarion War Hippogryph. Yeah, I know, we’re druids, we have Swift Flight Form, why do we want a flying mount? Well, it felt very druid-y. I explain it in-character as a way to travel long distances while giving my wings a rest.
(I just flew all the way from Howling Fjord to Borean Tundra, and boy are my wings tired.)
I think this a great way to enjoy the game – whether you end up getting into the lore behind what our characters are doing or the little things to make your character more complete (like a title or pet fawn) – these things make it more than just a button-mashing attack-or-heal-a-thon. They allow the game to be a story and an imaginative adventure as well.
It’s not really role-playing, per se. I think of it as a chance to personalize your character and keep it interesting. As you’ve already found, having Syll-related (and druid-friendly goals) gives you game goals you might not otherwise attempt. Continue expanding upon Syll, and she’ll continue to be more and more fun to play!
Tazha´s last blog ..Top Secret Azeroth Appreciation Project (TSAAP)
Wow, you’re, uhh, green. But very appropriately druidic
I’m kind of the same way myself (not green, inclined to personalise characters to ridiculous extents, even though I’m not a RPer as such) – although much less organised about it. And I’m glad to read that other people indulge themslves in whimsy about their character too.
I tend to find that after you’ve been playing a character for a while I develop a strange affinity for what I think the character would “like” – and now I’m sounding like a crazy person, hurrah.
I have a bloodelf ex-bankalt, actually, who I’ve actually lazily levelled to 56, just being having him spanner about the place, squandering all my money (he was a *terrible* bank alt) and levelling jewelcrafting (his muse!).
Tamarind´s last blog ..Just lie back and think of Azeroth
Perhaps I’m just weird, but I find that the character I’m playing colours pretty much my whole perception of the game. I find that I genuinely enjoy stuff more if it feels like it’s the sort of thing that character would do.
I found Stranglethorn kind of tedious on my warlock, because damnit she wanted to be out there slaughtering innocent farmers and eating their corpses, but I really enjoyed it on my shaman because she felt like she fit right in with the scenery. I’m having trouble doing Hillsbrad on my cowdruid because it just doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a nice young cow would do…
Temitope´s last blog ..In Praise of Trash Pulls
I have a story in my head about each one of my toons, my previous “mains”. Whether the story developed because of how I played the toon or because I had a story in mind already, who knows. I do know that each toon I play (my current and I think final main is my Resto Druid) takes a large chunk of my personality and runs with it. I love the fawn and one of my goals is to have it this fall perhaps. I will be tackling the Silithius nightmare soon enough. I hate that place…
Ysinnia´s last blog ..<insert catchy title here before publishing>
Oh. My. God. The more I read, the more I feel glad that there’s someone in the world who reacts to WoW in almost the same way as I do!
I am not a role player, but I do feel like I need to “honour” my druid by getting the title, etc. This reminds me, I’m gonna grind it again after the maint today me thinks…! Thank god for dual-speccing (although, even before dual-spec came out, the resto druid’s attacks were MUCH better since WotLK! Thank you spellpower)!
I have interesting things come into my mind too, such as appreciating the colour “green” and “purple” more (since they are the druid colours – especially for Night Elves). I’m sure it has made me think differently in real life – appreciating nature more…strange stuff!
I’m currently doing the daily quests to eventually become champion (which I don’t even know how or whatever) and get myself that tree pet!
You’ll probably kill me for mentioning this, but I really REALLY want the Raven God mount too (has to be done on Heroic mode, Sethekk Halls, once per day). It’s SUCH a druid item! GIEF!