A few weekends back, Blizzard had a sale on race changes - 25% off! It was fortuitous timing, as I'd been considering a race change for a while now. Which, for me, is a huge, huge step.
I'm not sure why this is, but I've always had an extremely firm rule against spending any extra money for WoW things, whether it be vanity pets, special mounts, race/faction changes, etc. Since I started playing (in January 2008) I believe I have purchased two extra things - one was a vanity pet (I forget which one) where the profits went to a charity (which I also forget), which I gave to someone, and the other was Tyrael's Charger when it was absurdly cheap (I want to say $5?), for the convenience of having an account-wide flying mount. That's been it.
The closest I've come to paying for one of the character services was joking about race-changing Morgion into an orc for Firelands because HEY WHAT DO YOU KNOW axes were BiS for Firelands and Dragon Soul. (Never went through with it, of course. She HAS to be a Forsaken.)
However, I'd been contemplating changing Khyron, my undead priest, into a lady goblin for a while now. While I did enjoy the male undead look (especially the "dead eyes" face combined with tier 13's "dead eyes" shoulders - see picture at top) and animations, I didn't love them, not like I do Morgion's ninja flips. And conversely, I DID love everything about female goblins. Their casts, their style, their emotes.
I was actually kinda disappointed that I didn't have a goblin yet! Of course, it was for a very good reason - I loathe the goblin starting zone. SO. AWFUL.
(Sidenote: I really do love the "White Godfrey" look combined with the tier 13 shoulders and the undead pale skin/yellow bones. Probably one of my favorite transmog looks so far.)
Finally, as the icing on the cake, goblin priest was the last thing we needed for Classy Goblins. So when the sale was announced, I figured, "why not?" and paid for the change.
...then it then took me almost a week to decide on a name. THESE THINGS ARE IMPORTANT!
Naming characters is always the hardest part for me. I usually expect to get timed out at least once or twice as I deliberate names, and this time was no exception. I wanted something appropriate for a goblin (short and/or cute sounding), and maybe connected to any of the following themes: green, healing, art, design, or fonts.
Naturally, most of the good ones were taken. I tried various options for a few days, and got really excited when I learned that Pixel - which was perfect - was taken, but had fallen into "inactive" status on the Armory. I opened a ticket, but unfortunately whoever had the character was still playing on the account, just not on that character, so the GM couldn't free up the name for me.
Note: Rather than set up your appearance and try names at the Character Selection screen, it's much easier to be logged in on a character and try to add names to your Friends list. You'll get one of three results - you'll add them (name taken, same faction), you'll get a message saying you can only add friends of your faction (name taken, other faction), or the name will not be found, meaning it's either available or one of Blizzard's disallowed names.
Undeterred, Narci and I tried dozens of names one night and came up with some good options, such as:
- Ligature
- Lig (a three-letter, pronounceable name?!)
- Italic
- Underline
- Pica (strong, but everyone would think Pikachu's "Pika".)
- Eggnog (funny)
- Marshmallow (funny, but long)
- Feels (extra funny because Narci has a goblin rogue named Feelings)
In the end though, I decided to go with Sans.
Short, easy to say and spell, could be a fantasy name (unlike Eggnog or Marshmallow), while also referencing my interest in design (Sans Serif, though I assume most will think COMIC SANS).
The first thing I noticed upon logging in? That witch hat was ENORMOUS on goblins. Far too big. So it had to go. And the "head" shoulders didn't make as much sense, without Khyron's eyeless face. So, back to the normal ones.
Of course, after like an hour I decided to throw it all out and whip up a new look.
Now if you need me, I'll be rocket-jumping all around the T-Spot (tauren area of Org), simply because I can.
