Posts with tag indiana-jones

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we start digging.

You guys remember the Dalaran fountain, right? I loved that thing. It was a wonderful, idiosyncratic little peek into the thoughts of an array of Azeroth's lore figures, both the important and the obscure. It added a number of little touches to the game's story that we never would have seen otherwise, and Blizzard even gave you an achievement for getting all the coins. I thought that whatever mad genius came up with the Dalaran fountain should have been chained to a desk at Blizzard and left there until he came up with more ideas like it.

Well, they can finally let that guy off the lead. Archaeology is kind of like the Dalaran fountain, except instead of being crammed into a tiny corner of Dalaran, it's everywhere in the world, and instead of concerning 53 people who made wishes, it affords you a peek into seven civilizations and the world's fossil record.

Pretty sweet, eh? Well, you're going to have to work for it. If you're completely new to archaeology, I've included a short set of instructions here, but otherwise, we're going to head straight for the civilizations and achievements related to WoW's newest profession.

No matter what your playstyle or what you're doing in World of Warcraft, I'd say chances are you reach a point where you want to get down to business.

It can be any number of things. Maybe you finally want to grind out Exalted with Warsong Gulch. Maybe your raid group is in dire need of a good clean boss kill. Maybe you just want to head to Silithus and grind out that Guardian of Cenarius title. Whatever the reason, you have a goal, you have a plan, and you are not going to stop until you get enough.

But one thing remains: You have to keep yourself focused on your goal. That's when you put on your game face, and that's when you have those little rituals that keep you pumped up and motivated.

All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, suggestions, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening.

You've probably heard that no story is completely original, that everything is copied from somewhere, and nothing anyone ever thinks or says is really unique. It's an awfully pessimistic way of looking at the creative endeavor, but there's a degree of truth in it.

Any time you make up a new character, you are sure to be inspired by something you observed somewhere else. Perhaps you wondered, "What if there were a dwarven rogue, whose personality was a mix between Sherlock Holmes and Jack Sparrow?" or "My undead warrior is a lot like Frankenstein's monster, not evil so much as tragically neglected and rejected. He also likes to play with dolls." All this is fine and good for roleplaying, as long as you recognize the essential differences between your character and his or her inspirational anscestors.

After all, every creative endeavor basically consists of mix-and-matching pre-existing knowledge in new and useful ways. In the same way a painter doesn't need to invent new colors, color palettes, or even new color matching techniques to make an beautiful, a storyteller doesn't need to create entirely new characteristics for each character in his or her story, only mix-and-match qualities real people already have in order to create someone compelling and interesting for other characters to interact with.

Jump on in to find some great inspirations for WoW characters.