Forever and a day

I know it's been several months since I added to the draenei words. Kind of ran into some time issues with work. I'll be back to this shortly and have quite a bit to add.

I'm considering how to break apart the word "Shattrath" right now. See, "rath" and its cognates actually means home in a couple different real languages. And starting it with "tt" is just... inelegant. I know wowwiki did that to avoid the obvious of having "Shatt" or "Shat" = Light. I can understand that. But unsurprisingly, they are not taking noun declensions into account. If Shattrath is "Dwelling of Light" that means the "Sha" half of the word is likely to be genitive (think of that as being possessive or "of X"). So it is entirely possible that the root is "Sha" and it's declined to Shat or Shatt as genitive. I used "-as" for feminine nouns but it's not out of the question for it to be dependent on the letter that follows.

Using that root and theory, that makes the word for Light "shar" and the word for home "trath" or "rath". I am not entirely satisfied with that but it IS the only Draenei word that ends with "th" so I'm just going to write it off to an irregular noun (for now).

I was asked for advice on running tavern-style events over on our Venture Co Realm Forums, and I thought it might be useful to log my response here as well:

The logistics of it that are different [from text-based taverns], are to make sure you've got a good selection of alcohol ahead of time (very few people ever order food, though for a [Lunar Festival] party you might want to bring a few stacks of the Lunar Festival food) and plenty of bag space to carry it! I use my mailbox to hold a warehouse-worth of supplies, so if my stack of Molasses Firewater runs out, I don't have to send someone to Dire Maul to pick up more (that's also a good way to keep event-specific stocks. I've got one mail message with 12 stacks of Greatfather Winter's Ale, one with 12 stacks of green tea, etc). I usually carry a Halaani bag and a Frostweave bag's worth of different kinds of food and drink. Don't forget to leave a space so you can separate the stacks. I've done that a couple times *facepalm*

Other than needing to make sure you've got all your supplies on hand ahead of time, it's pretty much the same as a text-based Tavern. My experience before the Golden Apple was bartending the Wolves Glen Pub (I played Mahri for those of you who are likely to go look that up) and it's a lot the same, just faster because it's real time.

Oh, and if it's cross-faction, Vent is a life saver. If you're having Alliance and Horde waiters/waitresses, it's probably best to have everyone who's working the event in the same vent channel.

I find it helps to make sure that you've got a couple players who are good at starting things for those times when the typical player-generated happenings hit a lull. Someone who can tell a good story, or start an argument or make everyone laugh. I'm blessed by having quite a few of those people in Keepers. But even with the best players, there WILL be lulls and it's important not to let that get to you. View it as a welcome chance to take a breath because there will always be something new incoming any minute.

One down side of text-based chat for running this kind of event: Tell hell. In RL, when you get lots of people who want your attention, they can tell that you already have twelve people talking to you and will stand there and wait. In game, most people will /w you if they need to talk to you and they will think they are the only one talking to you and want an immediate response... and it's easy to get swamped by that. Last night I had two vent channels (mine and I could hear the one my husband was in), my husband talking to me across the desk, and literally more than twelve people /w me all at once, at the same time as I was dealing with people in /s and trying to waitress. Don't be afraid to put up your /dnd tag with a message that says something to the effect of "too many people whispering, can't keep up, please come talk to me in /say". (if you don't know how to do that, you literally just type "/dnd too many people..." and then when people whisper you they'll get a message that says whatever you typed.). You may get to a point where you have to ask someone else to "watch the bar for a minute" and withdraw from the stream of /say to get through the whispers, so it's good to have someone in mind who is capable of taking that spot for five or ten minutes.

It's good to have that in case you need to take a break as well.

Starter Resto Shaman PVP gear

If you are not a leatherworker, find one and make friends. Your first set of high-level pvp gear is available at lvl 78 and it's made by leatherworkers. If you are elemental or resto, your choice will be the Stormhide Set (which wowhead doesn't consider a set, so here's a link to just the chest). Unfortunately, the set lacks any spell crit rating, and has no gem slots where you can add the crit, so it's not ideal for elemental.

Compare this to the Savage Gladiator's Ringmail, which is the best Honor gear you'll get without an arena rating. The Savage Glad is better, but only because of the resilience increase and the gem sockets; it's inferior in several other respects. Considering the relative costs, you should compare the different pieces in the two sets; a mix might be the best results for your time (I'll post my choices between pieces and my reasoning when I have had a chance to make the individual comparisons).

But you've got two whole levels before you need to worry about that. First, you want the Stormhide. You sweet talk your leatherworker into agreeing to make the set for you. Now what?

Leather. Lots of leather. Unlike a lot of the BC patterns, the "non-leather" components for this set are minimal -- just 8 Eternal Water for the whole set. But boy, did they make up for it in leather costs. First, the patterns cost 3 Heavy Borean Leather apiece from a vendor just outside the leatherworking shop in Dalaran. That's 8 patterns for 24 Heavy Borean Leather... and the suit itself? Another 84 pieces of Heavy Borean Leather, for a grand total of 108 pieces of Heavy Borean Leather... ok... that doesn't sound so bad... until you do the math. 1 Heavy = 6 Regular... that's 624 Borean Leather. At one a minute, no breaks, no scraps, that's still 10 and a half hours of your skinner's time. Generally, even in Sholazar you're looking at something closer to one per 3 minutes on average (and you wondered why leather was so expensive on the Auction House...). So remember, you don't just owe your skinner a drink, you owe them a few kegs.

Up next? Early and (relatively) easy-to-get enchanments, as well as filling those other gear slots.

Earthbind Totem

Gah! Look! Earthbind totem no longer knocks rogues out of stealth. There are plenty of other reasons to drop it in pvp but please, all you people writing shaman guides, stop putting this in your pvp info! It hasn't worked for a long time. This isn't something new with 3.02!

Shaman PVP guides

Most of the Shaman PVP information out there is pure crap. What isn't, hasn't been updated with the changes in 3.02. The one place with info I trusted, pvpgg.com, has had all it's old info removed. All the discussion centers around what spec to use... but just as important is what stats you should be carrying and there's no post-3.02 information on that anywhere.

So I guess I'll be doing some experiments over the next few weeks. Let you know what I find.

Pronunciation

As much as possible, I tried to match the sounds to their corresponding English equivalent. Here are a few that are not as obvious:

Kh - Greek X, scottish ch. The sound comes from the back of the mouth, the throat rather than the front as in English ch.

oh - Greek omega. This is a long and round O.

eh - Greek eta.

ei - like "eye"

eu - a dipthong. Try saying eh-oo quickly. This is not pronounced like "you".

dj - Egyptian dj, as djet. similar to English tch as in watch.

Other (Pronouns, Articles, etc)

Here are a few other useful pieces:

Diminutives:
Feminine: -oeg, oula
Masculine: -in, -akehs
Neuter: -aki

Definite article: koh, keh, kor. Corresponds to masculine, feminine, neuter declensions, but is not declined. "The journey": koh Poros.

Pronouns, declined as masculine regardless of gender they refer to, except er'ar and er'ad, which are declined as fem. and neut. respectively.

I- emos
you - edos
formal you- edjeyos
he - erehos (er'os)
she - erehar (er'ar)
it - erehad (er'ad)

Capitalization: I have taken to capitalizing nouns, as in German. I find it easier to keep track of what I'm saying. I don't see this as a general rule of the language, but it IS very convenient.