First impressions are the ones most often remembered.

[Anu]

• 1. First things first! Did you read the rules, policies, and FAQs?
  
  
• Yep...
  
  
• Oh, I was supposed to say more about it. Alright, Well, I saw you had a wiki section, and seeing as this seams to be a somewhat "exclusive" sort of place, I decided it was best to read what you had there. I ended up reading most of it, at least the parts pertaining to rule, requirements, and expectations. I have for the most part seen it all before in other places. I always took these to be the general rules of roleplay. The 4th wall and all that sort of stuff. I am told by many that I am an extremely easy-going, and agreeable sort of person. I do like helping people out were I can, and it is actually really difficult to make me angry, and generally can get along with just about anybody.
  
  
• But before I get too sidetracked, I will get back to the subject at hand. I actually ended up reading the most important information last. But I finally got into the forum stickies and instructions on how to apply for the server. So here I am. I even read some of the character profiles, in order to get an idea of how in-depth a roleplaying environment this is. While I am waiting for my application to get looked at, I will probably be reading many of the other character profiles to get a better feel for the characters around here. So ya, I'm pretty sure I read all of the rules, unless you are hiding some.
  
  
  2. How did you hear about us?
  
  
• So there I was, hand hesitating, eyes fixed on the search engine known as Google. My fingers then hit the keys one by one, and a link to this previously undiscovered heavy role-playing server appeared before me. I fumbled for the mouse, my steady gaze fixed intensely on the words "WoW Private RP Server." I herd the click of the middle mouse button and my breath caught, a new tab was being created. A moment, a heartbeat, an eternity... It was as if fate had just whispered in my ear.
  
  
• Well ok, it really wasn't that intense. But, you get the jist of it...
  
  
  3. How did you get into RP?
  
  
• First of all, I would like to apologize in advance for this horribly long, and undoubtedly boring story that you are about to read. I didn't mean to practically write my life's story here, it just sort of came out that way. I am actually in a very introspective mood today, and tend to ramble sometimes. Anyway, here we go...
  
  
• For this one maybe I should start back when I was in school. I absolutely hated English, Spelling, and Writing classes. Ya, I know that isn't a very good way to start out a story of how I like to read and write for fun, but bare with me for a bit. As I was saying, I didn't like reading and writing in school, got Cs and Ds on average compared to my As in the other subjects. Time rolled on, and I got more and more into things having to do with math, and computer science, and did less and less purely creative, artistic things with my time.
  
  
• It was at some point I realized how dull I was becoming, and I decided I needed to revisit my creative side. The side of me I had lost from childhood. So I got into 3D computers graphics at first. It is actually very similar to sculpting clay or stone. The modeling eventually brought me to an open-source mmo project called "planeshift" that to this day is largely unfinished. Because of it's unfinished state, it mainly became a huge 3D chat room world, and roleplayers flocked to it in abundance. That was my introduction to casual roleplaying, and the possibility that something didn't need to be scripted into the game to do it in-game. This opened up an infinite world of possibilities for me, and I began to hang out more in irc channels just goofing off with emotes. I still had not grasped the concept of what roleplaying really was though, not exactly the hole of it.
  
  
• I left planeshift, mostly due to the development of the game not progressing very fast, and the finding of other, more interesting MMOs out on the internet. I drifted for some time, not to re-visit roleplay, until one day I came across a play-by-post roleplaying community. This community was much more then I was ready for, but I stuck with it for a while, determined to better myself through exploring the possibilities that creative writing, and roleplaying had to offer. It was rough at first, but once I really got into it, I discovered how interesting, fun, and rewarding the experience can be. I wished I had known how involving and interesting writing could be, back when I was in school. I definitely would not have done so poorly in my linguistic studies.
  
  
• Unfortunately, other things in my life were crowding out my pbp time, and I eventually quit, moving on to other activities. I got back into roleplay again on various message boards that had RP sections to them. I got involved in an interesting one from time to time, but not on a consistent basis. I tried to get into some muds, but I couldn't seam to ever get my foot in the door. All were ultra exclusive, were you fairly often needed to know someone from the mud, and if you didn't know how to connect, they didn't want you. I figured most muds were dead or dieing at that point, so I abandoned my search for a good mud and moved on.
  
  
  4. How did you get into Warcraft?
  
  
• Let me back up for a moment, back before the time of Warcraft III. My cousin gave me his old copy of Warcraft II, and Starcraft, and that sparked my love of rts. I played through all the story modes, but wasn't much for the online play, preferring Age of Empires II and Homeworld instead. My cousins had moved on from Diablo II to Warcraft III then on to City of Heroes, since they got in the CoH beta, and not the WoW beta. I however did not have much contact with them at the time, so I did not know they played anything online. I played through the story of Warcraft III and expansion, but no online play.
  
  
• I was involved in a free, Korean golf mmo at the time, and didn't think the big mmorpgs were worth the $15/mo. My cousins had switched to WoW and had been playing for some time. That is when I really got in touch with them on a regular basis and they got me to play WoW with them. Unfortunately, a short time after we all switched to City of Heroes. We played that for a time, but there was no roleplay. We bounced back and forth a while. I however did not know there was any roleplay to be had, despite us playing on RPPvP servers. They sort of quit playing all together, and I found out about the existence of private servers.
  
  
• New interest sparked when I found one with an RP section in one of the message boards of a really large servers. I did some poking around in there, and was surprised to discover a small roleplaying community, hiding in little nooks and crannies of a large server, almost completely populated by noobs, griefers, and all around stupidity. Despite the rather hostile environment, it was a cozy little place. I stayed with them for a few months until for no reason whatsoever, my wow client suddenly refused to connect to any server, even official ones. I re-installed but it was no use. It was at that time my cousins had gotten back into City of Heroes.
  
  
• Dismayed by my inability to connect to WoW, I decided to join my cousins once more. But this time, I went to the forums and found that the Virtue server was the place to be for RP. I convinced them to switch, and I was in. This server was packed full of roleplayers. As someone put it, "You can't throw a stone without hitting a roleplayer there." I quickly found a heavy roleplaying group and went crazy with the roleplay. After some time I realized that it was consuming my entire life, and that I was hopelessly addicted with little chance of escape. Not that I really minded at the time, but my cousins had long since lost interest again. It actually took my wifi card frying and thus my internet going out and me being stranded without a car for a while that gave me the chance to wake up and break away.
  
  
• I got into some of my programming projects and have been working on them since. But now is the time. Now is the time to get back into roleplaying. I really miss the heavy roleplaying experience I had going back on Virtue, but decided it was probably best not to go back. That is when I decided to look for an RP server on WoW and maybe join WoW again, but then I remembered that private group I had going. Well, I accidentally upgraded my client to WotLK, and that server does not currently support it. It was just a few days ago when I came across this server and from what I read, this is a much better place then I could even find on retail wow servers. A server dedicated, and customized to meet the needs of heavy roleplaying!
  
  
  5. What is your favorite race/class?
  
  
• That would have to be the Night Elf Druid hands down. In second place would be the NE Hunter. I was an alt-o-holic when I played retail, Played just about every class to the 20-30 range, or theres about. However I never got a druid past 10 for some reason. When I got into that roleplaying group I decided then was the time to give the druid a chance. I hit cat-form at 20, and never looked back. At first I found roleplaying a druid was a little challenging, but the shapeshifting aspects were fun.
  
  
• As for never getting into the horde side, I know it's not exactly black and white in this war, but I was never much for playing the "bad guys" so to speak. Perhaps I will try rolling a horde if I can get an interesting character concept put together, but for the most part I really enjoy playing the "good guys" side of a story. I do not think I could pull off an Undead. I could never really match the kind of twisted humor I would have wanted if I were to play an Undead. And I do not know why, but for some reason, I do not really like hooves. So I probably will not play Taurens or Dreanei.
  
  
• Gnomes on the other hand are really fun. You can be eccentric and creative with there personalities. My little technomage always assumed everyone knew what the heck she was babbling on about, and was surprised when people always looked confused when she tried to explain herself. I have been thinking of making a Blood Elf, probably a hunter, but there were just so many blood elves every ware. I really didn't want to contribute to the sudden population explosion right after they came back from the brink of extinction so to speak. There were theories going around that they had found a way to duplicate themselves with magic, but I generally like to stay away from contributing to stereotypes...
  
  
  6. What is your favorite kind of character to play?
  
  
• There are actually two kinds of characters I tend to play most often; The introverted, intellectual, philosophically minded types, and the extroverted, outgoing, air headed types. I generally have quite type, but once you get them talking, they can be rather long-winded, have extensive vocabulary, and put great care and thought into what they say. This kind more reflects on my own personality, and are very interesting for me to go in-depth with. They are also mentally taxing with there extensive vocabularies, and deep pondering, and get exhausting after a while.
  
  
• On the complete opposite end, when I want to let loose and have fun, I usually roll with a character that never thinks to think before speaking there mind, often has very good intentions, and tends to mess things up frequently. I find this challenging to play, because it is the exact opposite of my own personality, but it can be extremely entertaining. I generally do not have to think hard on what to say, but I usually tend to pick the funniest, or most ironic thing I can think of. If I'm on a roll sometimes, it's really fun to bend the boundaries of obscure commonsense and illogical reasoning.
  
  
• My most challenging character I have had was a very stupid individual from an alternate future. It got scary sometimes, because I ended up correctly guessing the main story plots that people had privately planned for there characters. Even predicted pregnancy once with surprising accuracy by saying I met there daughter in the future. It was scary how accurate I was getting sometimes. I wasn't powergaming though, because as I always explained in ooc before going ahead that she was from an alternate future, so it probably won't happen the same way as she remembers. Perhaps I will try for a fortune telling character, but it is probably best not to do stuff like that right away.
  
  
  7. What is your favorite kind of RP?
  
  
• I really do enjoy exploring all forms of RP, but it really depends on what sort of mood I am in. If I am feeling lazy, I will go with a quite sort of character and just hang out in a tavern with friends, or spend time with someone in a more secluded setting. If I am in a board mood, I will try to lure people out of the taverns, and go explore some new places, or just generally make mischief on one of my more entertaining characters. But really, it depends on my mood and who is online at the time.
  
  
• I am in general up for just about anything you can throw at me, casual or serious, as long as the serious is not to scripted that I can not get a good foothold in the storyline. I have encountered times were people had very, very specific things in mind, and did not make room for more then bystanders to watch the RP between two or three out of the ten gathered. I've been ignored because those few had it mostly scripted in there minds at how they wanted the RP to go. As a general rule, I try to think about bring bystanders in on my RP, or at least giving them an in on it if I can. I try not to plan too far ahead, as that tends to lead to excluding people that would probably make things more interesting that you will miss out on. I've never seen a really good RP that went exactly as planned.
  
  
  8. Do you have any hobbies (outside of Warcraft)/talents/stupid human tricks?
  
  
• Yes I do as a matter of fact. I am double-jointed, so that means you can't use as many holds on me in martial arts. The kind were you bend the wrist and they are supposed to beg for mercy, doesn't work on me. Also, when I was a kid, I knew a lot of yo-yo tricks, and could ride a bicycle no-handed. Then I did yo-yo tricks with both hands whilst riding my bicycle. I even rode my bicycle across the ice of a frozen lake. Did I mention I can actually jump through flaming hoops too? At least I think I can, I have never tried it before.
  
  
• Anyways, most of my hobbies are related to one thing, computers. Computer art, computer programming, and last but not least, poker. I actually do not currently play poker online much, A lot of friends once a month round up around 15 or so people. We have a no-limit hold'em tournament I usually place 3rd(ish) at. There is also usually a more casual game going, Saturday or Sunday evenings mostly.
  
  
• Besides poker I am an avid programmer, master of javascript, and much of the web-browser. I am getting more into c# with the current project that I am working on, I just do not want to deal with c++ compilers right now when visual studio using c# can do all that work for me. I could give you a big sales pitch on c# and an object database being easier to work with then c++ and sql, but I will spare you. I am actually kind of interested in what codebase you use here, but I already have too much on my plate as it is right now to get involved in another programming project at this time.
  
  
• It's enough that I will probably get sucked back into some bugfixing of my favorite lua addons in WoW, but I am actually am interested in mmo design. Game-design research has been my hobby for many years now. I just never got around to gaining enough momentum to continue coding a game, always getting hung up on writing the most optimized 3D engine possible, then never getting very far. I've learned since then, that if you want to get something done, you have to just go out and do it, learn from the experience, then start over completely from scratch and do it right, rather then trying to endlessly bugfix the monster you had just created. That seams to be the best way to go at it.
  
  
  9. What country are you from? (Or, if you're uncomfortable with that question, what is your first language? We don't need to know exactly where you live, just what general time zone you're in and if you need some wiggle room on your spelling and grammar.)
  
  
• I am from the land of 10,000 lakes, don't cha know. We Minnesotans don't really say, "don't cha know" very often, ya know? Ya know, we do pronounce the word "you" as "ya" though. And we have a habit of saying "ya know" at the beginning of declarative sentences, and the like. Anyhoo, there is this region of Minnesota we sometimes call "Canadia." It's just so close to Canada, that it might as well be. I'm not from there, but I have friends that are. Central Standard Time is my timezone (-6GMT.) And I speak Minnesotan. Which is to say, I speak English with a bit of Minnesotan slang. I'm cool like that, don't cha know.
  
  
• Oh ya, I also fluently speak many common computer programming languages as well.
  
  
  10. Remember question #1? Do you agree to abide by the rules and policies?
  
  
• For some reason, I get the feeling like I have herd this question before some ware. It just sounds so familiar. Wait, is it one of those trick questions? If it is, I should probably say "no" just to be safe. But if it is a trick question, you might of wanted to trick me into saying "no." If that is the case, I should just say "yes" and risk it. So yes, "yes" is my final answer. I legally agree to abide by the terms and agreements set forth that I have read thus far. I really do hope this was not a boring read, and I thank you for reading it to the end.
  
  
  
  ~ Anar'Dol ~

[sasail]