New looks for Highmountain Tauren :D

Wowhead has datamined some new looks for Highmountain Tauren on the Patch 9.1.5 PTR.
I like the wider range of body colors, especially the new gray option — I confess that I’m having a bit of trouble telling the difference between some of the new brown options and between some of the new brown options and the existing brown options.
The facial jewelries are fun, though I don’t think I personally will use any of them. The headdresses, necklaces, and earrings are comparable customization options to the ones introduced for Mulgore Tauren in Patch 9.0, so not really any surprises there. Can we get that expanded range of bangs options for Mulgore Tauren, too? The horn accessories seem kind of silly to me. The options called “sideburns” in the Wowhead post just look like new regular hairstyles to me, so why the funny nomenclature? The tail wraps are cute; I think I might use the fourth one. The hair decorations (the first category in the Wowhead post) are probably my favorite new customization options; I think they’re all cute!

Sunday on the Promenade 132: belated 5th Anniversary Edition

This year marks five years of the Sunday Mog Show!
Because the first Sunday on the Promenade was on August 21, 2016, I like to try to get an installment of Sunday on the Promenade out for the Sunday in August that is the closest to the 21st. I must have been procrastinating working on getting my courses ready for the start of the school year that first time; ever since then, I have grumbled at myself about needing to squeeze putting together the Sunday Mog Show Anniversary Post into my semester prep scramble. This year, there was family stuff on top of the usual school stuff, so the Sunday Mog Show just had to wait.

Municipal Functionary



Tasteful Eyeglasses, Mystical Armor/High Councillor’s Tunic, Dreamer’s Belt, Darkweave Breeches, High Councillor’s Boots, Formal White Shirt, Ancient Measuring Rod + Bureaucrat’s Handbook/Befouled Staff
This handsome fellow is Kaelinda’s “special someone”, Ianestin. Less adventurous than Kaelinda, he works in the Silvermoon City Ministry of Finance and pursues esoteric mathemagical research on the side. He has previously appeared, uncredited, as a male model for Kaelinda’s outfits 92, 88, and 72. This outfit is the in-game kit that I was imagining when I drew Kaelinda and Ianestin here and here, except for the boots, which are more like the leather Slippers of the Unruly Fairies in my drawings. The items in the wand + off-hand version of the kit were chosen not for their coordination with the rest of the ensemble but rather for the RP value of their names!
In the top row of pictures, the haircut & facial hair in the left picture are closest to how I have drawn Ianestin; they are apparently the default male Sin’dorei appearance in my brain. The haircut & facial hair in the middle picture are the result of using a Transmorphic Tincture on Kaelinda’s appearance; the haircut is serendipitously the same as Fabulor‘s hairdo (though not his facial hair), which makes it the epitome of fashionable male Sin’dorei grooming. The haircut & facial hair in the right picture are the appearance he chose after Sin’dorei men got new grooming options in Patch 9.0.
This one’s for you, Fabulor.

Temperance, Ascended


Heroes’ Crown of Faith, Mantle of the Avatar, Garments of Temperance, Sash of the Unredeemed, Gloves of Unfailing Faith, Elementalist Boots, Communal Staff
Having dinged level 60 at last, Keliora needed something appropriate to wear to her official Kyrian induction ceremony. I’ve had this robe for ages, but hadn’t used it yet, and it seemed like just the thing for the occasion.
Might that be the Aspirant-formerly-known-as-Taelorien-Dawnstrider in the background of the last picture?

Wild Hunt Messenger


Sorcerer Drape, Bridenbrad’s Sash, Squallshaper Leggings, Pure Aspirant’s Gloves + Fireflash Bracers, Pure Aspirant’s Treads, Winterwoven Bulb, Tabard of the Wild Hunt, Staff of Radiance
This Classic chestpiece and these BfA pants were just the thing to coordinate with the Tabard of the Wild Hunt — and with each other. I love it when I find items from such widely disparate expansions that go together so nicely!
Although the Frost-Touched Cord coordinates wonderfully with the rest of the ensemble —

— it doesn’t line up properly with the waistline of the tabard, so a different belt is needed when the tabard is worn.

~*~*~

This series of posts began because I set myself a goal to document new Transmogrification outfits in a more timely fashion. As soon as I create a new outfit, I write it up in a draft post. As the weekend approaches, I start working on taking fashion screenshots, processing them, and updating “Things my [Class] Wears” posts. On Sunday — though not every Sunday — I publish the collection of my recent efforts. Then I begin the next “Sunday on the Promenade” draft post.

Occasionally, I have ideas for themed Transmogrification collections that take several months to completely assemble. Thus, some of these outfits might get re-posted at a later date as part of such a themed Transmogrification collection.

Things my Blood Elf Mage Wears, part 12 (outfits 111 – 120)

A collection of Transmogrification Kits actually worn in-game by my Blood Elf Mage. Outfits are listed from most recent to least recent. Items that are no longer obtainable are marked with an asterisk (*).

111) Municipal Functionary



Tasteful Eyeglasses, Mystical Armor/High Councillor’s Tunic, Dreamer’s Belt, Darkweave Breeches, High Councillor’s Boots, Formal White Shirt, Ancient Measuring Rod + Bureaucrat’s Handbook/Befouled Staff
This handsome fellow is Kaelinda’s “special someone”, Ianestin. Less adventurous than Kaelinda, he works in the Silvermoon City Ministry of Finance and pursues esoteric mathemagical research on the side. He has previously appeared, uncredited, as a male model for Kaelinda’s outfits 92, 88, and 72. This outfit is the in-game kit that I was imagining when I drew Kaelinda and Ianestin here and here, except for the boots, which are more like the leather Slippers of the Unruly Fairies in my drawings. The items in the wand + off-hand version of the kit were chosen not for their coordination with the rest of the ensemble but rather for the RP value of their names!
In the top row of pictures, the haircut & facial hair in the left picture are closest to how I have drawn Ianestin; they are apparently the default male Sin’dorei appearance in my brain. The haircut & facial hair in the middle picture are the result of using a Transmorphic Tincture on Kaelinda’s appearance; the haircut is serendipitously the same as Fabulor‘s hairdo (though not his facial hair), which makes it the epitome of fashionable male Sin’dorei grooming. The haircut & facial hair in the right picture are the appearance he chose after Sin’dorei men got new grooming options in Patch 9.0.
This one’s for you, Fabulor.

Alliance High Elf, Horde Blood Elf, Alliance Void Elf

Hmm, hmm, hmm — now that brown will be an available hair color for Void Elves in Patch 9.1.5, I’ll be able to make Kaelyla’s pre-Telogrus Incident appearance with the toon Kaelyla herself. This opens up some interesting storytelling possibilities — Kaelyla as her pre-Fall of Quel’thalas self, with brown skin and brown hair and blue eyes, in Alliance locations; Kaelinda as Kaelyla’s post-Fall of Quel’thalas-pre-Telogrus Incident self, with brown skin and brown hair and green eyes, in Horde locations; Kaelyla as her post-Telogrus Incident self, with blue skin and blue hair and blue eyes, in Alliance locations.
Hmm, hmm, hmm — but I think I’ll still end up creating a new Alter Ego of Kaelyla who will be an Alliance High Elf through and through.

habit/routine, playing dress-up, story…?

My WoW playing lately has been driven or dominated by what Kaylriene has recently discussed as the time-wasting or “hamster wheel” aspects of the game. I’m still logging in almost every day, but I’m just doing Anima Conductor Treasures and my favorite super-easy WQs to get my 1K Anima each week. I’m marking time, making minimal increments of progression toward Transmogrification collecting goals (by the proxies of collecting Renown and Anima and Grateful Offerings) between the widely-spaced opportunities when I feel like I have enough time and attention to do a segment of story progression.

Transmogrification is where I get the most fun out of WoW, as you might guess from the persistence and prominence of “Sunday on the Promenade” as a feature of this blog. I love designing new outfits & looks for my characters. With each expansion and patch, I am most interested in finding out what nifty new things there will be to wear and what interesting new character customizations will be available. I catalog which items are both awesome looking and not overly difficult to acquire relative to the comfort zone of my playstyle, then focus my gameplay toward obtaining those items and making outfits with them.

Although I am so, so far behind on experiencing the current storylines, I’ve appreciated and agreed with posts about how the story of WoW is struggling in Shadowlands such this one by Kaylriene and this one by Redbeard.

I’ve found that I engage with the story of Azeroth most at what I think of as the “middle” level — the zone and Campaign storylines. The “little” side-quest storylines can be quite interesting, but I don’t make the effort to search out all of them. As for the “big” overall narrative, well… it lost me in Warlords of Draenor.

For me, the premise of Warlords of Draenor was just a little too reality-warping, even for a fantasy universe. By interacting with the Draenor of the other timeway in such drastic ways, we essentially pulled it out of its original timeway into our own timeway. Between that and the magnitude of the differences between Draenor and Outland, I am more comfortable thinking of Draenor as just another continent (that happens to be on another world) than as a version of the past of Outland. Then there was the “boys’ trip” kerfluffle, which was only tokenly addressed by the roles of Draka and Yrel — and was a clue to Blizzard’s now very public internal woes.

Legion had a good overall premise and narrative. I think that we could have gotten to the premise of “the Burning Legion comes roaring back to Azeroth and we have to make our Final Stand and Stop Them For Good This Time” by another route that didn’t involve timeway shenanigans and alt-Gul’dan.

Battle for Azeroth‘s main premise and Sylvanas and N’Zoth narratives lost me again. I also couldn’t ever quite get over the cognitive dissonance of having the Zandalari be our enemies in Kun-Lai Summit and Isle of Thunder, then our buddy-buddies in Dazar’alor with seemingly very few hard feelings — even with the handwaving that the Zandalari invaders in Pandaria were Zul loyalists whose activities were not officially sanctioned by King Rastakhan, and that Princess Talanji had concluded that the best folks to help her with the Blood Troll problem would be the ones who had thoroughly kicked the butts of that rogue group.

And then there’s Shadowlands, in which I will be more interested, when I finally get there, in how the 9.1 Campaign advances the smaller Covenant narratives than in what it discloses about the larger Sylvanas-and-Jailer’s plot narrative. Because I don’t really care about it, I’ve let myself get spoiled about the Sylvanas-and-Jailer’s plot narrative while trying to stay only minimally spoiled about the advancement of the Covenant storylines.

In each of these expansions, because of my playstyle, I’ve felt like my character’s actions and interactions have mattered the most on the zone-leveling and Garrison/Order Hall/Suramar/Covenant Campaign storyline level. I feel like I could, if I so desired, write an in-character RP story about how my character(s) participated in and thought and felt about these events. The Battle for Azeroth War Campaign, however, was just a vehicle for showing me what was happening in the faction war because the events that happened weren’t things I was particularly enthused about having my characters actually be participants in doing (except for rescuing Baine from Sylvanas — Kamalia did help out with that!). I feel the same about the Torghast questchain and the Sylvanas-and-Jailer’s plot stuff in Shadowlands — it’s a way to show me what is happening with the faction leaders, but it’s not really stuff that my characters would be personally involved in doing. I may be a Big Damn Hero, but I’m not that much of a Big Damn Hero.

Kamalia and Karaelia, get ready to pack your bags!

Come Patch 9.1.5, the Maw Intro will be skippable at last! Time and time again I’ve thought about bringing Kamalia and Karaelia into the Shadowlands so that I’d have a character of each armor class there, but just couldn’t stomach doing the Maw Intro again.
Once one character has completed a 9.0 Covenant campaign, alts who join the same Covenant will be able to skip to the end! I intend to have Kamalia join the Night Fae and Karaelia join the Kyrian immediately upon arriving in Oribos using Threads of Fate. When they eventually reach level 60, it’ll be great to not have to run them through the Campaign storylines before I can get to the business of Mog collecting.
Covenant swapping will be easy to do once a certain Renown threshold has been reached, and all unlocked Covenant rewards will always be accessible regardless of current Covenant affiliation! This means that once Kamalia has acquired her Night Fae set(s) and reached the required Renown level, she can hop over to the Kyrian and get their set(s), then hop back to the Night Fae, and be able to use all of those awesome appearances!
Even if I don’t do anything with Kamalia and Karaelia in the Shadowlands until much later in the lifecycle of the expansion, I’ll still be happy to have them settled in with their intended Covenants.
~*~*~
I’m also pretty spiffed about the new customizations for Void Elves. We’ve got warm silver, platinum blonde, honey blonde, red-gold, and cherry red as “natural” hair colors for Void Elves. I suspect that a new Alter Ego for Kaelyla will show up who will have “natural” skin tone and hair color — a proper Alliance High Elf!

gratuitous art post: Mama Elf

Keliora with her husband, Taelorien, and her daughters

Keliora and her youngest

Sunday on the Promenade 131

Thinking about moving ahead into Korthia after I’ve managed to finish the 9.0 Covenant campaigns, I’ve decided to temporarily retire my Druid. Thus, she’ll probably be in the outfit shown here for some time. The others all have at least two outfits queued up in my mind…

When I created Keliora, I took her to New Dalaran and got her Discipline Artifact weapon, but didn’t pursue the Order Hall campaign any further. I chose the “Crusader” title for her. Over time, I began to feel that that title didn’t really fit her. Over the past several weeks, I’ve been going back to New Dalaran occasionally to work through the Legion Priest Order Hall campaign a little bit at a time. I recently finished it, so Keliora is now “High Priest Keliora”.

Winter’s Hope



Winterborn Regalia with Crown of Everlasting Fortune, Winterwoven Bulb, Springrain Staff
Kaurinka finally collected enough Anima to buy this lovely recolor of the Night Fae armor set, which also requires Exalted reputation with the Court of Night. Though I’ve mostly preferred to stick with the “Archdruid” title, it seems appropriate to use the “Winter’s Envoy” title with this outfit.

Minerva



Dazzling Spectacles, Mantle of the Tribunal, Labor Camp Frock, Mana-Cord of Deception, Sorcerer Slippers, Drape of the Loyal Vassal, Cauldron Dredger
Minerva McGonagall hits many of the same character notes as Morwen. I caught the Harry Potter wave just before Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was released in the US; I was about nineteen at the time. Professor McGonagall soon became another of my favorite literary role models. Aspiring to be like Professor McGonagall is perhaps a little more within my grasp in my RL role as a Professor, though I still don’t really come close.
See also Human Mage #43.

Fae Darter


Sprite Darter’s Shawl, High Councillor’s Pants, Tinkmaster’s Spare Shoes, Night Courtier’s Branches, Meadow Guardian’s Staff
The Sprite Darter chestpiece and this Night Fae backpiece just seemed like they ought to go together.
I love the extended tunic design of this chestpiece, and would like to see this rigging used for other extended tunic chestpieces in the future.

Scarlet and Silver



Whitemane’s Chapeau, Imperial Red Mantle, Infernoweave Robe, Eyestalk Waist Cord, Black Mageweave Gloves, Astralaan Boots, Jina-Kang, Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade, Staff of Forsaken Faith
This handsome coloration of the Gossamer Robe style was used for fire resist gear during Burning Crusade. It seems to be less well-known, or at least less well-used, than the other colorations of the style.

Etoshia’s Elegant Ensemble


Charlotte’s Chastizing Pauldrons, Robes of the Burning Acolyte (N), Belt of Arcane Storms (N), Etoshia’s Elegant Gloves, Cushy Cenarion Walkers, Flamecaster Botefeux
This outfit is a riff on the Bastion of Twilight/Blackwing Descent Priest Tier lookalike set.

~*~*~

This series of posts began because I set myself a goal to document new Transmogrification outfits in a more timely fashion. As soon as I create a new outfit, I write it up in a draft post. As the weekend approaches, I start working on taking fashion screenshots, processing them, and updating “Things my [Class] Wears” posts. On Sunday — though not every Sunday — I publish the collection of my recent efforts. Then I begin the next “Sunday on the Promenade” draft post.

Occasionally, I have ideas for themed Transmogrification collections that take several months to completely assemble. Thus, some of these outfits might get re-posted at a later date as part of such a themed Transmogrification collection.

the scandal in Irvine

It is said that to not speak up in support of the oppressed is to tacitly assent to the oppression, so I suppose I had ought to say something about the recent news concerning Blizzard’s corporate culture and the experience of working for Blizzard. I didn’t read the lawsuit itself, but I’ve read most of the coverage from Wowhead and Blizzard Watch, the article about it in the New York Times, and various thoughtful posts by the small list of active bloggers I currently read. Like others, I am saddened and sickened, disgusted and disappointed that such acutely and chronically distressing things have happened at Blizzard — somehow I’d hoped that Blizzard would be better than that. I thought for a bit on whether I should cancel my sub, and stop playing World of Warcraft for awhile — I do have other games to play now, Horizon Zero Dawn where I still haven’t made it out of the starting area, and Bloons Monkey City which is mostly for my kids but in which I could get more involved if I wanted, and it might be fun to run through Portal again and see if I can get past that one level where I stalled out a decade ago… I decided to keep playing; I agree with the sentiments expressed by Gnomecore and Wrath of Kubla Khan about the value of continuing to support the “normal people” at the company — the 2500+ employees who signed on to the open letter rebuking their company leadership, the artists and animators and code writers, etc, who actually do the nitty gritty nuts and bolts work of making the game that I enjoy. Besides, at this time of year I always have to make myself take a break from playing WoW while I’m scrambling to get my courses prepared for the impending doom of the beginning of Fall semester, now only a month away. So for me to say that I was taking a break for ethical protest reasons seems like it would be kind of disingenuous.

Sunday on the Promenade 130

I created all of these outfits except the last one in the game during the first week of June, before my Baby was born. Since then, however, doing anything Azeroth-related, whether in-game or working on a blog post, has usually required sacrificing that most precious of resources — sleep — so I’ve only been able to work on finishing this post a little at a time.

Blue Queen




Crown of the Righteous, 7th Legionnaire’s Amice, Sorcerer Robe, Shadowlace Cord, Sea Sculptor’s Cuffs, Eelskin Flippers, Crafted Cloak of War, Blue Linen Shirt, Court of Farondis Tabard, Replica Lion’s Fang, Sinister Combatant’s Etched Vessel
This coloration of the crown originally dropped by Opulence in the Battle of Dazar’alor raid is a Shadowlands Jewelcrafting design.
My original Human Mage, Kinevra, gets to wear this special outfit because it is outfit #100 for “Things my Human Mage Wears”!

Weald Wanderer


Shadowbrim Travel Hat, Hateful Gladiator’s Silk Amice, Blue Overalls, Willow Belt, Elder’s Gloves & Boots, Green Workman’s Shirt, Faewoven Pack, Meadow Guardian’s Staff
For whatever reason, it seemed like my first outfit to go with this particular Night Fae backpiece style should be an outdoorsy hiking-type kit.

Gilded Gossamer


Gossamer Headpiece Shoulderpads & Robe, Wild Gladiator’s Gloves of Prowess, Ringo’s Blizzard Boots, Sha’tari Anchorite’s Cloak, Staff of the Faithful*
The Gossamer set from Classic… with a few pieces from other expansions. Although this ensemble looks quite nice with the default appearance of Light’s Wrath —

— I felt like the Classic staff was more appropriate.

Charlotte’s Spellbook



Simple Glasses, Charlotte’s Chastizing Pauldrons, Spellbinder Robe, Cushy Cenarion Walkers, Squirgle’s Deepstone Wand, Book of Many Blessings
Although the ringlets are my favorite Kul Tiran hairstyle, there are some others that I also rather like, so I thought I’d show them off, too, as I go through this series of outfits using these shoulders with different robes.
I’ve done this particular pairing of shoulders and robe before (see Warlock #24), but I’m doing it again for completeness in this series.

Shattnik



Onyx Glare-Reducers, Shadow Council Tunic, Shadewarped Sash (LFR), Legwraps of the Master Conjurer, Plaguebringer’s Gloves, Slippers of the Forgotten Heretic (LFR), Staff of Deserved Tranquility
An outfit for Kishalla to wear to open mic night at World’s End Tavern, because bad poetry is a special kind of Affliction all its own.
Kalaneia will be back, wearing her previous outfit, when I’m ready to level her through Maldraxxus.

~*~*~

This series of posts began because I set myself a goal to document new Transmogrification outfits in a more timely fashion. As soon as I create a new outfit, I write it up in a draft post. As the weekend approaches, I start working on taking fashion screenshots, processing them, and updating “Things my [Class] Wears” posts. On Sunday — though not every Sunday — I publish the collection of my recent efforts. Then I begin the next “Sunday on the Promenade” draft post.

Occasionally, I have ideas for themed Transmogrification collections that take several months to completely assemble. Thus, some of these outfits might get re-posted at a later date as part of such a themed Transmogrification collection.