Hi boys, Ming did it again.  First was Anna, then Verdak, and now me.  You have yet another female to torment.

A little bit about me

I have played wow since release.  Through the years, it has been the typical on-again, off-again love affair.  I have had my fair share of ups and downs with the game.  Like my predecessor, I have also met up with people here and there that I’ve played with.  There will be more about that later.

When I’m not playing wow, I lead a pretty uneventful life.  I spend time watching Star Trek, knitting, and I’ve just gotten into cosplay.  In fact, I have plans to try to make it to Blizzcon this year – but I will need some suggestions on what to dress up as. 

A little bit about my history with WOW

Throughout Burning Crusade, I spent most of my time in the arena circuit playing my shaman (resto).  I will honestly say that BC was the most fun I had with the game.  I did just enough pve to get trinkets, etc. and help out my buddies when they needed a healer. 

I will be honest, I just returned to the game.  Pvp has been calling me, just as it always has, and I look forward to getting that adrenaline rush that arena brings.

Represent Thunderlord

I have always played on Thunderlord and I am well aware it is a no name server.  For this first blog post, I wanted to start with an interview close to home.  Tonight I spent time talking to Rippar, a warrior who is currently rocking the 2s and 3s brackets on Vindication.  Rippar is paired with Amoux (recently faction changed from alliance) playing warrior/druid 2s.  Rippar’s 3s team includes Amoux and Dropdon, a prot ret pally.  Neither of the comps he runs is overly common, so I sat down to talk with him about his experience with the current season.

Rippar's Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thunderlord&n=Rippar

Q: I guess I should start with a little background info for the WOM readers as to who you are and your history with WOW and arena.

Rippar: Well, I started playing wow back in the good ol’ days of pre-bc, on a dwarf priest in a raiding guild on Thunderlord. After killing a bunch of dragons, I realized that pve was easy and rerolled an orc warrior on Thunderlord to pvp with some buds.

Q: You have had a great season so far with 2s and 3s; compared to other teams, what do you feel sets you apart since you run a less common comp?

Rippar: The 3s comp we run is far from ideal (warrior, prot-ret pally, resto druid). It has its strengths and flaws (like most 3s comps out there), however, I feel that the biggest strength of our team is the fact Dropped on (the pally) is on the ball with the cleansing. The fact that he can control the other team's healer with silences and stuns, as well as put out deeps and dispel CCs of myself and Amoux make him the cornerstone a well-executed match.

The fact of the matter is that any comp can be played by any people; however, the deciding factor which separates the good from the bad is how good the individual players work with each other. Any idiot can play a warrior/pally/druid and zerg something. However, what happens if one thing goes wrong? Can the team recover? What happens if someone gets feared into the open on a wizard cleave? Can the team recover from the misfortune of RNG? That’s what distinguishes the well-played teams from the bad "facerollers" in my opinion.

Q: This is a bit off the topic of arena, but how do you feel about the pvp community and how it has changed over time? How involved are you in world pvp, group pvp, and other ways to blow off steam that support the arena grind (such as pve)?

Rippar: Thunderlord has drastically diminished in decent arena players over the years. Sadly, the amount of comps which can be formed here with good pvpers is extremely limited, therefore, the good pvpers who couldn’t find partners xfered off to other servers which started a vicious cycle of server xfers, leaving only a couple of us here on Thunderlord.

World pvp itself is dead, however, farming Ironforge during primetime with 5 or 10 good players is always fun.

Q: Is there anything else regarding arena, pvp, or wow in general you'd like to talk about?

Rippar:  Hopefully the upcoming xpack will make a new attempt to balance what we saw in these past couple seasons of arena. However, I think the biggest issue with wow will always be the scaling of damage with health. Abilities should have dual damage values, which differ in pve and pvp, so that way we won’t be seeing issues of damage being nerfed in pvp and having an effect in pve.

Q: I have to ask, how was it taking Shinaniganz down the other day?

Rippar: If by fun you mean facerolled, then it was very fun.

In summary

I look forward to making this an interesting blog for you to read.  I want to bring my own sense of humor regarding WOW to the WOM community to keep you boys entertained.  I am also sure that some of you are wondering what I look like, so here goes:

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