Import/Export
How long have you been playing your character? Not the toon, your current main’s avatar on WoW, but the character itself? Its not a silly question. A number of RPers import their old characters, quirks and classes combined, into MMOs. In fact, the initial character I was going to roll for WoW was a hunter based off a game my friend ran WAY back in the day. By way back in the day, I mean, “BLIZZARD IS MAKING AN MMO?!” back in the day. While Tauren still had “long running” and not Kodos…
That particular character’s story ended, but I thought a version could live on in WoW. The mechanics of the game prevented the RP (no human hunters), so I went with the bastards paladin idea. However, while discussing this with other RPers on Feathermoon (again, before the big nerf of 1.9!) it turns out that I wasn’t the only one to import characters. They had imported their paladin and mage couple. That couple had started out on another MMO. Before they were an item, they were individual characters from their college era Table top RP.
I suspect there are two kinds of imports:
So fill us in: How many characters have you imported to WoW?
Filed in Alliance,Class,Factions,Horde,Info,Open Thread,RP,World of Warcraft 6 Comments so far
Lilitharien on 01 Jun 2009 at 3:52 pm #
I’m pleased to say that all my WoW Characters are original. I try hard not to recycle/reuse old characters—it’s much more fun for me to create and play something new!
falconesse on 01 Jun 2009 at 4:37 pm #
I don’t have any full imports, and I’m not even sure this counts as a partial import, but…
Once upon a time, I was running my first ever Mage game. There was a Dreamspeaker NPC named Mia, who I never intended to actually play. She was friends with the PCs, and was more a plot hook than a character at first. Then my adventure finished and another GM took over for those same PCs. Rather than roll someone new, I played Mia. She was, in her original incarnation, fairly happy and carefree.
And then a succession of GMs (including myself) did horrible things to her, and left her rather broken by the end. She was pretty badass! But also pretty broken, emotionally.
So, when I was trying to figure out Threnn’s personality, I wanted to have a character that was generally happy with herself and the world. Davien, though generally amiable, is still a rather dark character. Threnn needed to be far lighter. She was, personality-wise, a reboot to Mia 1.0, though outside of that the women have nothing in common. They don’t share a backstory, they don’t resemble one another physically, and even a lot of their religious/moral beliefs are wildly different. But, for pure outlook on life, there was a similarity.
Only, knowing that eventually I’d probably put her through one kind of hell or another, I built something into Threnn that I’d left out of Mia: Threnn is for the most part unbreakable. There are definitely things that could devastate her, especially with where her story has gone over the years, but in the end Mia was cold and detached. Threnn wouldn’t turn out that way.
So, I don’t think I’d necessarily call that a partial import. More like, I took certain traits from one of my favorite tabletop characters and used them to flesh out my WoW character’s initial concept.
Beltar on 01 Jun 2009 at 6:44 pm #
Linedan is a partial import. My warrior in Everquest was named Linedan Granite. He was a barbarian. Tauren Linedan is somewhat similar in personality; I took out the EQ barbarian-specific stuff from his personality (the dwarf-like love for booze, some of the specific mannerisms, etc.) and substituted in some traits from Daelen Red-Tiger in Neverwinter Nights, such as the lack of a sense of humor, the utter obsession with honor and prowess in combat, etc. So basically he’s as much of an import as I could get away with given the difference in the two cultures.
Now Beltar, he was originally supposed to be an import from an ancient D&D campaign I had. The character back then was named Baltor Felondiar and he was a dwarf fighter; I had an idea to create a dwarven paladin named Baltor. I got bored with paladinininining after about level 8, deleted the character, and when I went to re-use the name for a hunter, Baltor was taken. I changed the name to Beltar, and when I did that, the personality changed completely. Baltor was lawful good, Beltar…isn’t. Baltor was serious and young, Beltar is crotchety, sardonic, sarcastic, world-weary, and on the downside of middle age. I guess you could call Beltar a failed import.
Illi on 01 Jun 2009 at 7:39 pm #
“Nattaelyn” has been a fairly standard PC name for me. Popped up in a few SATT RPGs, occasional character name in various PC games. It was my first character name back when I first tried FFXI, running around and learning that the game was hard and that it resented me as a player. Then I tried EVE Online, in which she picked up her last name “De Roux” – she was a Gallente pirate. When I finally decided to give this “Warcraft MMO” a go, she became a undead rogue – the race appealed, and the class looked fun to play. Nattaelyn never had a continual personality throughout all her incarnations – her current “bitter murderess” is a Warcraft specific development.
And Illi? Illi was a mistake. Illi was a final ditch effort to try and engage in a game I was thinking about unsubscribing from, less than a month into it. I got lucky, started getting some in-game interaction (that I had not found Hordeside, nor been able to find A-side with the dreaded Lagforge), and stuck around. She’s been a completely new development, growing solely from Warcraft. Who would’ve thought?
Yva on 01 Jun 2009 at 10:52 pm #
Yva is an amalgom of a couple characters I played previously, most notably a water aspect dragon from an exalted game named Lucilia. Interesting fact, I tried to get Lucilia as a name but it was taken. QQ.
Like Lauren, this is /not/ a carbon copy. Lucilia was more of a slutterific socialite, and I don’t think anyone would accuse Yva of being that. What I did lift directly from her, though, was Never Accepting No. I loved that about Lucilia: when she wanted something, she went and got it regardless of the ‘morality’ of the acquisition. Yva’s much the same. She will stop at nothing to get her way and it’s made for some amazing rp for me.
Bricu on 04 Jun 2009 at 12:58 pm #
Bricu–my one and only toon in the game–is actually a partial import. Bricu’s concept was “a paladin that wasn’t the perfect knight in shining armor.” I’ve tried to play this character for *years* in various RP settings (D&D, Storyteller) but the games always fizzled. I saw an opportunity in WoW, and when I reloaded WC3 to do research, I fell in love with the idea of a kid who joined Lordaeron’s army, only to have his world destroyed in the ensuing conflict.
Bricu is also heavily influenced by John Constantine. This is technically a partial import as well. He’s definitely a working class paladin.