Home is where you hang your hat -– so when you're not raiding or PvPing or whatever your thing is and you've hung said hat on a hook, where might said hook be located? Do you head to a utilitarian hub like Stormwind to breeze through your in-game business, or have you chosen a spot farther off the beaten path to while away the moments between queues or before raid time?

For many players, home base is less about an in-game hangout than it is the place where they indulge in their secondary interest. When these players aren't actively grouped, they're playing the auction house, casually leveling archaeology, or working their way through dailies or another goal. Home is where the personal activity is.

Other players kick back in a spot that's become more like a traditional home for their characters. Instead of filling every last minute with activity, they'll cool their heels in Stormwind while they chat in general or trade chat. Or they'll make their home in another city, puttering about and making small talk in guild chat while they wait for their queue to pop.

Are you an efficient exemplar of perpetual motion every moment you're in Azeroth, or is there a place your character heads to hang out? Where's your off-duty hangout?

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

When I was struggling not too long ago over what race to make my new caster, the collected wisdom of Twitter seemed to distill into one simple principle: Choose whatever race you think has the best casting animations. Ultimately, I made my choice based on a corollary, choosing a race whose casting animations carried whiffs of a nostalgically sweet time in my WoW life. Objective achieved: What I see over and over while I play makes me happy.

Here's your chance to represent with your favorites. Casting animations, melee animations, resting animations -– cast your vote in multiple polls after the break.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Knights in shining armor or divisive zealots? The roleplay opportunities for a group of paladins in Azeroth are fierce, either way you look at it. The catch is how they are perceived and manage to interact with their fellow players. Are they protectors of the faith and guardians of fellow citizens, or a fearsome hammer of intolerance to be brought down upon anything that deviates?

Amelas Langston of Caelestis Templares, a guild of paladins on Silver Hand (US-RP), walks that line regularly with a guild of roleplayers who've become known for their devotion to eradicating any opposition to the Light. Has its hardline approach made pariahs of its players? Or has its stalwart stand against the forces of evil made heroes and saviors of its characters?

WoW Insider: Most readers will probably assume that a guild of paladins is portraying a knightly, noble mission, but in fact, your roleplay focus is quite different. A recent recruiting post on the realm forums noted that many of your members roleplay "gruff, jackass characters," and the words "zealotry" and "intolerance" have been used to described the group's approach to its roleplay. Does your mission cast guild members in danger of becoming pariahs among the Silver Hand RP community?

Amelas: It's a fair thing to assume. I've found that the majority of people that role play as paladins have that sort of a character. The Caelestis Templares, however, are dedicated to a goal, that goal being the eradication of all that stands in opposition to the Light. Intolerance and zeal are actually key virtues of our guild, so to describe us as zealots would be pretty accurate.

If our characters encounter something that the Order dictates is heretical, then they are obligated to take action against it. It becomes a bit of a drag when the actions of our characters make people think that the player behind them are as hard and unfriendly as they are.

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Filed under: Interviews, 15 Minutes of Fame

When it comes to our avatars, some of us are better than others at handling anthropomorphism. I don't personally have anything against the non-humanoid races, but I find I don't ultimately bond with a character that looks like a bear or a cow or a wolf. These characters end up feeling like cartoon game pieces that I move around on the game world rather than "my girls," even if "my girl" is undead or has gigantic tusks or a tail. Unbridled fantasy elements? I'm totally down with that. But big, furry critters feel like caricatures that I just can't take seriously -- and if I'm not taking my character seriously, I'm not taking the rest of the game seriously, either.

Are you comfortable reaching outside the humanoid comfort zone by playing goat-people and walking cows? Or do you need a character that's plausibly humanoid?

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

It's the last straw: After a long day toiling in the salt mines, you come home to settle in for some stress-relieving World of Warcraft, only to find yourself transported back to The Barrens –- not only the latest patch's Battlefield Barrens, but the trollish Barrens-style general chat you've come to loathe. Your chat box is scrolling ceaselessly with "Douchebag this!" and "$%^& that!" and you can see that any hope of a restful evening is slipping inexorably beyond your reach.

What's a poor profanity-pelted player to do?

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Filed under: Drama Mamas

Plugging into a level 25 guild after a period of solo leveling is like being loaded into a slingshot and catapulted into a candy shop of delight. More XP! More rep! More speed! More travel! Suddenly, basic game business turns EZ mode. Who wouldn't want that? Last year saw adjustments to guild leveling that made it easier to push a guild up to level 25. The changes helped boost many guilds up to the level cap, allowing their members to reap the benefits of guild membership.

The question is ... now what? Should there be something more to enjoying guild benefits once you've reached the top? Once members have helped the guild reach the level cap and pushed their individual guild reputation to exalted to earn the available rewards, is there enough incentive to keep contributing? Should there be additional benefits for consistently active players? What might those rewards look like?

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Surprise! I'm not into battling pets -– and I don't really understand why not. When vanity pets first started picking up steam in WoW, I scoffed at them. Eventually, though, I encountered the One Pet, the Captured Firefly, that captured my heart. That prompted me to begin collecting, but I never made it to the highest achievement rung at the time before I realized that as long as I had my little firefly friend out and about, I was quite content. Still, I always assumed I'd enjoy capturing and caging pets, if not the actual minigame of pet battling, and I eagerly anticipated the release of pet battles.

Nope, not doing it for me. The itch to catch 'em all remains dormant. I continue on my merry way with my firefly, and I'm happy as can be. Nobody who knows me well understands why I'm not animatedly capturing and caging my way across Azeroth, but it just doesn't click for me.

Is there something you eagerly anticipated in WoW that didn't turn out to float your boat? What do you suppose made it fall short of your expectations?

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

I recently fired up a warlock, something I've always meant to do (I'm a long-time arcane pet class lover and an experienced necromancer) but never managed with any serious effort in WoW. Character selection seemed obvious: Evil class, evil faction, right? Only I don't have an active Horde guild anywhere at the moment, and I was mortifyingly lonely after only two brief play sessions.

Of course, once I remade my character in a happily guilded Alliance version, I was reminded that the guild also runs a Horde alternative guild. Frankly, I'm just as pleased to be tucked safely into the active, happy sprawl of the Alliance-side main guild (especially since I plan to focus on soloing with this character), but I did kick myself when I remembered the Horde alternative. Oh, well. Evil is as evil does, right?

Does your guild maintain an active group on the other side of the faction line? If so, do you belong to both? Are they equally active, or is one guild definitely the primary group?

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

Since the typical WoW Insider reader has been around the block in Azeroth more than a few times, when we hear about a guild that's been going strong for many years, we tend to intuitively grok the associated ramifications. We understand the strength and adaptability it takes to weather entire gaming eras of personalities, patches, and expansions. It's the strength of the willow that bends in the wind yet does not break -- or, say, the steady strength and focus of the night elves as they traverse the centuries in harmony with their environment.

Gazing into the legacy of Nature's Grasp, a kaldorei-exclusive guild on Defias Brotherhood (EU-RP-PvP), we see a guild that has seen many different shapes and leaders over the years. "On our server there have been a number of night elf guilds that have been established," notes GM Arkil, "but all have been absorbed into Nature's Grasp at some point, making us the go-to guild for any night elf involvement in events, and we're frequently considered as 'the' guild that represents Darnassus."

As we've seen from our interviews with race- and class-specific guilds such as wry blood elves, adventurous rogues, and fiercely opinionated orcs, the personalities of specialized guilds can become quite narrowly focused. One has to wonder if the players behind Nature's Grasp might be as reclusive as the kaldorei they play. Apparently not. "We've been active a lot during Mists, we have a hefty constant playerbase, and we have weekly events most weeknights and retro raid runs during the weekends," Arkil says. "There's a great sense of community in the guild with a number of artists and musicians who share their work on our forums at natures-grasp.net, and we have an annual RL guild meet in some European location, which is a lot of fun."

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Filed under: Interviews, 15 Minutes of Fame

Temper tantrums aren't really my style. Thanks to years spent onstage in the theatre, my first reaction to any sort of problem is to make sure the audience never knows anything unusual is going on. If something in game irks me that much, I tend to grit my teeth and get through it for the moment. After that, of course, I may well choose to never go back and do that particular thing ever, ever again.

But nothing sends me into a rage faster than those clueless types who bat their eyes while innocently murmuring, "It's just a game, people. It's just the internet. This isn't real life." Players who still manage to think this way even in today's connected age are typically the first ones to thoughtlessly pull the plug when they get their panties in a twist over one thing or another. That whole attitude? Grrr. Stay away from me. If I even so much as get a whiff of that attitude, I'll ... I'll ragequit on you before you ragequit on me.

Have you ever ragequit a WoW group or raid? We're not talking about slipping out of a dysfunctional situation based on sheer frustration; we're talking a full-on, spittle-flecked ragequit with slamming keyboards and turning off the computer power button. What was the thing that broke you down? That bad? Yeah, that bad.

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics