Immortalized Through FigurePrints

Eszti, General, Teca 7 comments.

FigurePrints is a company that came up with an interesting idea a few years back.  It provided World of Warcraft players with the opportunity to immortalize their characters by creating one of a kind statues that rely on information from the Armory to create.  According to their website:

FigurePrints are one-of-a-kind, custom statues of your World of Warcraft® characters created using high-tech 3D color printing machines. Our artists pull your character from the virtual world and bring it to life.

Status are printed, relying on equipment capable of taking three-dimensional models from the computer and then created layer by layer.  People who have worked in any of several technology industries — particularly those that deal heavily with prototypes — may be familiar with the equipment.  I’ve personally seen machines like that twice and was fascinated by the shapes the evolved as each layer was carefully and precisely added with machine efficiency.

FigurePrints are unique in that you can’t just place an order to acquire one.  Due to the popularity of the company’s service and the limited amount that its eleven employees are capable of producing each much¹, customers are chosen by lottery each month from a pool of interested individuals.  Out of the pool of potentially over 25,000, up to 1,400 win the right to have their characters immortalized through the FigurePrints process.

Original prints were met with an underwhelming success, as many customers complained about the dull appearance of their characters or even paint entirely missing from the models in splotches.²   This appears to have been somewhat rectified over the past year, though this increase in quality — or the number of statues that were sent back due to defects or damage — has resulted in a thirty dollar increase from the original price tag, resulting in a 130USD price tag.

When I learned of FigurePrints over a year ago, I quickly jumped on the bandwagon with many other World of Warcraft players and eagerly waited for the email that would announce that I was selected to create my characters on their site.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  After reading about the many problems people had had with their company³, seeing the price increase, and then still not having received an email, my interest in having one waned.  Compounded with the fact that I rarely check the email I signed up with due to the overwhelming amount of spam that has inundated it in recent months, I was rarely reminded of the fact that I had once expressed interest in having one created.

Until I received this in my mail last month:

I find my interest piqued again.  The best part of having finally received this email is that I get to play with their website and see the possible results of my efforts  And, despite having acquired all of Tiers 4 and 5 for a handful of my characters, I find that I’m outfitting them in their normal, everyday outfits because that’s what really suits them.  In other words, there’s not an epic — and, in most cases, not even a rare — to be found on my girls.

I have a few more that I would like to test, but the Armory is being finicky and I can’t properly view the gear that the characters are wearing.  So, at the moment, I’m left trying to consider if I want to spend the money for my girls⁴ or if I’ll just spend my time playing with the creator.  The overwhelming word has been that these statues aren’t worth it, but I’m having fun imagining what it would be like to have a miniature Eszti on my desk!

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Blissfully Bonded with Your Spec

Eszti, Hunter, Roleplaying 7 comments.

Yesterday Pike of Aspect of the Hare made a post that caught my attention. In “Feelin’ it: A Manifesto“, she describes one very interesting way to decide which spec to choose as a hunter. In her advice, Pike says:

Close your eyes for a moment, forget the world around you, forget your day job or your classes at school and feel that you are a hunter. What does that mean to you?

The goal, from what I can tell, is to pick the spec that suits to your perception of that class best. For example, if you envision a hunter as being intimately tied her to animal companion and benefitting from the synergy that the two share, it should make sense for you to pick Beast Mastery. If, on the other hand, you envision a hunter as wirey and agile, capable of using her knowledge of the terrain and her opponents to survive, Survival is the best of the three for you! Finally, a Marksmanship hunter would most likely be the one interested in the intricacies of being a hunter; she’s meticulous, skilled, and extremely precise.

Aside from how unusual this may sound to some people, I was actually drawn to the post because I used the same methodology in selecting my hunter’s spec years ago when I first rolled her on Feathermoon. As a roleplayer, I have very clearly defined personalities for each of my girls tumbling about in my head and their conduct in-game is heavily influenced by that perception. For example, my perky priestess Csilla is the middle child of seven. As neither the youngest nor the oldest, the brightest nor the dumbest, she didn’t get an overwhelming amount of attention in her youth; as a result, her driving goal in life is to be noticed — mainly by selfishly¹ helping others as frequently as she can so that she can feel needed or important. In-game, this translated into being a healing priest, because — as she’s wont to say — them healer fellahs, they’s always needed!

My kal’dorei huntress is much of the same. Having spent her initial five centuries of life living in the forests of Ashenvale in almost total isolation, Eszti has an almost feral quality to her. While not lacking in basic social necessities, she’s always had this feeling that she doesn’t really belong well in the company of others. She’s aloof, feral, and tends to move with a coiled readiness — when she’s not moving in her traditional loping gait. Therefore, it just made sense for her to be a Beast Master, even if it was at a time when the tree was considered ill-suited for anything outside of the Battlegrounds.

Furthermore, Eszti has the habit of trying to relate normal, everyday things to her perception as, well, a creature of the wild. For example, she considers her friends and guildmates² a natural extension of her pack. As the uncontested alpha female, she takes her repsonsbilities to her pack extremely seriously; it’s not unheard of for her to react with surprising ferocity when a member of her pack is in imminent harm. This has made her very adept at combat, especially back in those days when my friends and I used to roam around Azeroth perma-flagged.

Ask the level 60 mage who attacked Eszti, her lover, and his childhood friend while exploring the Eastern Plaguelands. The Forsaken tried to pick Mcdowl off while he was separated from the group³. When Eszti and Tanriel appeared to aid him, the cowardly mage mounted and fled. While Tanriel rushed to Mcdowl’s side to care for his injuries, Eszti took off after the mage — on foot, having switched to Aspect of the Cheetah⁴. She then proceeded to destroy him single-handedly, using Concussive Shot and Wing Clip to slow him enough to keep him in range while the screeching bird eviscerated him with his claws and she let loose with her arrows.

There’s a reason why her nickname is “Iron Legs” and it isn’t just because she has legs that would put Tina Turner to shame.

However, as I noted in “An Owl is an Owl,” Eszti’s relationship with her animal companion is not that of many hunters you may see in-game. She and Alatus aren’t the type to curl up together around a fire in the evenings or play games; the two are in constant in competition to see who will finally settle out on top and they frequently test the boundaries of their relationship. While Eszti may be aloof yet polite, Alatus is prone to nipping people, disobeying commands, and glaring dolefully at those around him. Despite this added dynamic, the kal’dorei and the bird work extremely well together and are boon companions.

Thanks again, miss Pike, for the insight. While I remain Beast Mastery now due to the amount of damage it does and how it suits my playstyle, it was nice to remember again those carefree and innocent days when I first was exploring the hunter class.

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An Owl is an Owl

Eszti, Roleplaying 2 comments.

An owl is an owl, of course, of course. And no one can talk to an owl, of course. That is, of course, unless the owl is the famous Alatus!

– and then you pray that the wretched beast doesn’t speak back. Oh, Elune, if that owl could speak!

I am, of course, speaking of my hunter’s pet of choice. Eszti “Iron Legs” Nightwing, former Captain of the Swashbuckler’s ship Sparrowhawk, former General of the military organization The Regiment, and skilled huntress befriended a strigid owl hatchling in her youth; that venerable creature has been her animal companion for quite some time now. However, Alatus is a cantankerous creature more apt to nip the kal’dorei than play nice.

An aged strigid owl, Alatus is a temperamental beast prone to frequent outbursts, excessive doleful glances, and even the occasional nip. Their relationship is one of extreme give and take, since Alatus chaffs at even the perception of obedience and Eszti is a firm taskmaster. Despite all this, the two are boon companions and are rarely seen apart. The bird’s overwhelming personality tends to complement Eszti’s more reserved one.

Alatus’s personality was created in defiance of the relationship I see that many people roleplay with their characters. Often pets are portrayed as the hunter’s best friend or the lovable-yet-fearsome companion that can tear out a man’s throat in one moment and then cuddle with his master — bloodied paws and all — the next. I’ve always enjoyed being contrarian and an animal companion¹ who doesn’t always listen or will bite when agitated appealed to me; and since he’s frequently distressed you can imagine how frequently that may be.²

The bird, as Eszti is want to call Alatus, was a infamous member of my previous guild, The Regiment. His personality was well-known and even neophyte members were wary to approach him. However, he was oddly enough recognized as an able and contributing member of the guild, often moreso than the hunter. I fondly look back on those carefree and innocent days prior to The Burning Crusade when my friends and I had a core group that would bravely traverse the continents or explore the world’s numerous dungeons, caverns, and ruins. Oddly enough, this was back before we managed to befriend a tank and so the bird often served in that capacity in our groups; as a result, Alatus is extremely fond of one person and one person only — Tanriel Vassily, our group’s healer and Eszti’s former lover.

And, as if the bird weren’t notorious enough, he’s the only bird I’m aware of that had a notable part in a Feathermoon US battlegrounds movie!

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