The Know Your Blues Series

To start off this azure-overload, I’m going to begin with Nethaera. Why? Because she is well-known for playing a priest, and all three specs to boot. She’s also a rare Blizzard chick. And I’m a priest. And a chick. And this is my blog. So I’m biased. CHICK PRIEST POWAH

Who is She?

Her icon is a candle, blowing in the wind. She plays a priest (among other classes). She is known for her creative use of smiley-face emoticons, even when people are being characteristically rude on the forums. And she is also one of the few women popularly known to work at Blizzard.

Now, I’m not saying there are no girls at Blizz. But, when I think of women at Blizzard, the only one that comes to mind is Nethaera – and she is an awesome representative. I am very close to someone who works at a gaming company, and when he started his job there, he was required to sign a waiver in order to secure his employment that essentially said he would not sue the company if he were offended by potentially sexist or extreme female stereotypes in the act of doing his job. Think that’s completely unfair? Have you played Grand Theft Auto? Just sayin’.

While I doubt any such extreme policies exist at Blizzard, I still stand by the fact that Neth gets a hat tipped to her from this chick for no doubt putting up with a lot of crap. I wonder what she would say about Archetypes of the Female Gamer?

Her Posts

Are you looking for Priestly advice on the forums? If you have a question, Neth might provide your answer. In fact, depending on the current level of her caffeine consumption, she may provide even more!

· Holy vs. Disc

· Disc Priest Needs Advice (wherein Nethaera gives us a nice buffet of her various smiling emoticons, and informs us that coffee is her RL mana pool. Amen sister.)

· I am Your Tank. (This post was cute because a tank came and posted in the Healing forums… and was welcomed with open arms by the rest of us healers in addition to Neth!)

· I Am Outraged. (In which Nethaera admits that she has not farmed quite enough trolls to be at the level where she can offer up ponies)

· PSA Re: Vote-Kicking Healers. (Even Neth admits that sometimes she just can’t resist doing a LITTLE damage whilst healing…)

· Shadow Priest single target dps still too low. (This is the post where Neth tells us a bit about her experience as a priest.)

· Sometimes Zarhym likes to put on his Nethaera mask, and pretend he’s an awesome chick priest as well.

· One of the few instances I’ve found in which Neth actually gets a little irritated when someone calls a little piece of RPing a “girl thing”.

· She politely declines a creepy forum gnome trying to hit on her.

But I think out of all the posts that Nethaera has made or in which she has participated, this one is the best. In it, Nethaera tells us a little about her philosophy - one that manifests itself in the patient, emoticon wielding CM we know and love.

I prefer to see the positive side of people even when they are being negative. I'd rather people be invested than be apathetic. Apathy adds nothing to conversation and yes, too much negativity draws away from it as well, but apathy is probably the worst of it.

If you don’t read the forum, you may still have read the interview and announcement when Dual-Speccing was released. Nethaera was the official interviewer asking community questions about Dual-Speccing from Ghostcrawler.

Supposedly she is also involved in Blizzcast, but I confess that ever since being spoiled by the quality of Save or Die, I don’t listen to many other podcasts. I may start listening to this one in particular though – and I will confess that one of the main reasons will mostly be to listen to Nathaera. FANBOI ALERT

On the Wowwiki page for Nethaera, there is also a link to an unfortunate incident in which Nethaera herself was victim to some hacking/mimicking/insert relevant internet badness term here.

Why I Love Her

Obviously, I relate to her because she’s a girl, and I love that she’s a priest. But more than anything else, I love her attitude. I’m sure you have to have a pretty thick skin in order to survive as a CM on the forums, but she goes above and beyond by always sporting some smiley faces (maybe they are grimaces, I don’t know for sure), and giving more class-based help than most other CMs. I don’t see a lot of other CMs giving direct aid to people asking for advice. They are usually too busy moderating, banning, locking, trying to deal with a feisty troll population. Nethaera, however, takes the time to respond to requests for help.

As someone who loves helping others who have questions myself, I respect anyone who takes the time out of their day (I don’t even think it’s a requirement of her job as a CM) to cheerfully offer help and advice to those who ask.

So here’s to you Nethaera! From one priest to another, thanks for doing a great job. Don’t let the trolls get you down – you are admired and respected by many others in the WoW community.