Category Archives: Society

Some truths about raid guilds

I love raid guilds. The truth is, had I not plunged into the world of raiding and guild administration so early on in World of Warcraft, I would have never played the game for as long as I did. Social mechanisms intrigue me, their dynamics and politics. Raid guilds are in so many ways perfect reproductions of a “mini-verse”, a complete representation of a society on small scale. I don’t know much of guild structures outside WoW because I’ve never played another MMO to the same extremes and length, but I don’t think the differences can be significant. Guilds are all about how people work: groups of people trying to get along to reach a common goal. Plus a smaller group inside that bigger group, trying to establish some structure and direction. Like small states or companies, they have become very professionalized in their approach, with their recruitment strategies, raid agendas and dedicated departments, from “personnel” to “marketing”…. running a raid guild and playing in one can almost resemble a second job. It shouldn’t feel that way, mind, but in terms of organization there a stark resemblances – after all, why change what works?

There are plenty of raiding blogs and websites out there, run by experienced players and guild leaders, all full of great advice, “do’s and don’ts”, class-/setup-/raiding strategies and whatnot. But they hardly speak of that other side of raid guilds: the intriguing social mechanics that happen behind closed curtains, the sober and cold side of leadership, the calculation and logistics, the unhappy choices and secret dramas that occur. Or in short: the reality of running a raid guild with all the good, bad and ugly. Not the successful stories with shiny heroes and self-sacrificing martyrs, but the less brilliant but necessary work that is being done to keep an enterprise running. And the attitude that goes with it.

Matticus is one of few GMs that come to mind who is a long-time blogger and has, over the course of the years, let his audience take part in less shiny bits and pieces that come with leading a successful raid guild. The reality of guild politics, the need for strict rules, disciplinary action and that constant struggle for balance while trying to be competitive, are things that frequently shine through his articles and guides without much pampering and without silly drama. Beruthiel is another blogger who ponders the less convenient sides of leadership every now and then. In general however, guild leaders and officer teams rarely spell out for you what they put so bluntly in their private meetings – for obvious reasons.

From where I am standing now, I can speak freely without many restrictions; I actually believe that I have done so in the past when I was still a raider, guild founder and healing leader for the raid guilds I have been in. There’s a time for diplomacy and there is a time for blunt truths in guild leading and I’d like to think that I have often been the bearer of inconvenient truths. But some things are easier to spot at a distance now; and some insights grow over time. You become calmer about what might have infuriated and blinded you in the past; less passionate maybe, but more composed. Less afraid to call a spade a spade, too.

I miss that in many articles I am still reading on WoW by raiders and raid leaders – the courage to blunt truths. WoW is such a fantasy world where everyone likes to present himself a little more epic and heroic than he truly is and that’s fine, for that’s what escapism is there for. We have that “idea” of ourselves in MMOs. But I recall many situations where some sober truths on raiding would have gone a long way – maybe even prevented certain struggles I watched unfold before me in the guilds I haven been part of or have seen come and go. Or maybe these are simply the truths that I personally would have wished for a lot sooner. The dispassionate facts that are good to hear for anybody, raider and leader alike so they don’t go down that unhappy road many have gone before them. No matter what raid guild you are in and what position you hold, sooner or later you will face the same situations and crossroads and a lot will depend on your grasp of reality.

Guild leaders all know how it feels to struggle filling raids, to work with lacking setups, to try and recruit along with fifty other guilds. How it feels to update guidelines and sad looking rosters late at night, to write that third and last PM to an unreliable member, to tell a weak raider he needs to improve or go. And raiders (that includes guild leaders) all know the situation to feel better or worse than their team mates, to be frustrated about officer choices and canceled raids, or to look back on a horrible raid week, wondering why they even bother playing the game. We all experience the human feelings, failings and mechanisms that occur when personal dreams and illusions clash with the reality of our guilds. Then, we will whine a little or analyze ourselves vs. “the others”, all the things we do, the things we’d like to have and the things we don’t get despite being our due.

Three truths for raid-/ guildleaders / officers / first ranks

The truth is: you are doing this for yourself. You should be. There will be times when you’re doing all the extra work for yourself more and there will be times when you’re doing a lot of extra shit for others. There will be times when you enjoy it more and times when you don’t. But you choose to do that extra every day when you’re logging on, nobody is making that choice but you. And it’s your responsibility to keep a balance between the two and not burn yourself out. If you do, you have only yourself to blame. Don’t go talking about “I did all of this for you people for little in return”. If you feel like that indeed, you went wrong somewhere and maybe should take a step back or three.

The truth is: you should not expect much appreciation or thank-yous from others. Firstly, they will never know and cannot possibly know how many extra hours of discussing, writing or just thinking things over in bed at night you have done over the guild. So don’t expect them to know. Secondly, you have chosen this path yourself for any combination of reasons, enjoyment, necessity and maybe being a bit of a control-freak too – so, don’t ask the world for a big thanks. Yes, you are doing a lot for your guild, yes you probably keep it running for the moment, maybe even keep it from breaking apart – and from time to time that deserves note and a pat on the shoulder. But you should never forget that you’re investing that much time because you have that much time to invest, whatever the reasons for that may be. A year from now, your life might have changed so considerably that you too will not be able or willing to do it anymore.

The truth is: you Sir or Madam are replaceable. The world won’t end if you quit. Your end and the guild’s end are not one and the same. And if they are indeed, you went wrong somewhere or things are just altogether over. Nobody should shoulder so much that he feels irreplaceable, nobody should have to. And in 9 out of 10 cases you are not. You might think you are because the thought flatters you, but you are not. And maybe it is “your” guild as you did start it all, but it can go on without you, if you actually did a good job in sharing, delegating and building a functional team of officers. You might be surprised at how well your guild picks up without you: how unexpected new people will fill the gap you have left, because your presence does not take up all that space any more. Yes, maybe your guild won’t be the same guild after you, most likely it won’t – but it will go down a new path and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it’s even something you can watch with pride.

Three truths for raiders (=everyone)

The truth is: raid guilds are a contract. Raid guilds are a deal. And if you are or become a constant burden and liability to your team mates at some point, for whatever reason from attendance to performance, you should have the grace to quit. If you join a raid guild, you sign a contract: the guild offers you something, you offer something in return. You are bound to fulfill this. And while you might be a great guy or fun gal and have a wonderful personality, what your guild is looking for first and foremost are raiders to reinforce their team. They want to kill bosses, they want to progress, they want to loot. They will want these things today and tomorrow. And it’s cool if you can help with all that and be a character too; but if a character is all you are, you are putting your mates and officers in a constant dilemma they shouldn’t have to be in. They should not have to choose between you the nice guy and you the raider they must carry. And no, it doesn’t matter if you have good reasons to suck or not, you probably do but that’s beside the point. Save your guild from unhappy compromise and choices by doing the right thing yourself. Leave, for god’s sake, find a more suitable guild – there are so many out there. Also, there is no shame in quitting. Alternatively, go inactive/veteran or whatever boon your guild might grant you as a way out.

The truth is: if you have never formed and/or lead a raid guild yourself, you will never know how much extra time and work your guild leaders put into the game, what pressure they shoulder at times and what secret dramas and screwups they deal with that you will never hear about. Maybe you have some past experiences at leading a raid or heroics, maybe you’ve even been an officer in some casual guild – still, this applies to you: you will never know how much extra time and work your guild leaders put into leading a successful raid guild long-term. And for that you don’t owe them eternal gratefulness, but it wouldn’t hurt at all to remember this every now and then, when you go to sleep at night looking forward to the next raidweek with all the blissful ignorance that one enjoys who is not in charge. It wouldn’t hurt to take some note and have some respect and trust in those that keep organizing things. This is what you really do owe them if nothing else.

The truth is: you are a big fish in a small pond. Yes, really. You’re not the greatest player in this world, of your class, on your server – chances are, you’re not even the best player in your guild. And if you are or feel you are, there are many explanations of why that may be – be it that your competition is rather busy, pitiful or your head simply too big to perceive your own flaws. No matter in what guild you play and on which server, 99% of the time your “guild fame”, your class pride or personal e-peen has the significance of a dust speck. Feel free to check the world’s guild ladders sometime. Yet, should you still feel your greatness is shamefully wasted on your peers, the best advice I have for you is to leave. Don’t make your guild miserable for not meeting your expectations, go and test yourself against other waters and see if the grass is truly so much greener on the other side of the fence. You might get surprised. Either way, it’s not just better for you but a whole deal better for your current guild too, if you hit the road. While progress drive is a fine thing, nobody needs jerks around that have clearly missed their bus stop.

Addendum

These “truths” are very simply based on personal experiences I’ve made through the years in WoW, difficult people or situations I have had to deal with as a raider and guild leader. They’re my insights, based on mistakes I have made myself or seen others make – traps we can easily fall into or see others step into without the ability to prevent it, that worst of feelings. They might be humbling points too, smashing an illusion or two; and while nobody enjoys such feelings (much), I think this applies to any given (competitive) raid guild and is good to realize for yourself and at times necessary to point out to others. May be it offers a more sober and realistic perspective on some things, one that will help you not to lose the ground beneath your feet. Maybe it can even be liberating.

At the very least, it can put your momentary struggles into perspective. You see, you are not alone. I realize that these are not the sort of rosy red and comfy truths people like to talk about in public, the ones that make you feel fuzzy about yourself or raiding; but they’re the sort of points I often wished people had considered before they joined our own guild (which I might want to add, was a very tolerant place considering its progress orientation) or had been pointed out more often when necessary. I still have the firm belief that in the long run a transparent and honest way of dealing with the reality of raiding will make your guild leaders and raiders a more down to earth, streamlined and humble group of people. And ultimately a more successful team.

The spirits that I called

From the spirits that I called,
Sir, deliver me!

“Back now, broom,
into the closet!
Be thou as thou
wert before!
Until I, the real master
call thee forth to serve once more!”

When reading Tessy’s final blog post last night, I was instantly reminded of this famous poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. Goethe is to German literature, what Shakespeare is to English and so back in school we would naturally read and analyze this formidable piece of literature quite meticulously – and years later, when standing in front of my own students teaching German classes, I was happy to return the favour (muaha). While Goethe’s work is probably not widely known in an English speaking society, that particular poem is definitely a well-known one and that’s not just thanks to adaptions like Disney’s Fantasia opening.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice has a very simple message even the youngest can understand: be careful what you wish for – and: don’t go behind the back of your superiors (the part I will shamelessy ignore in this article…I think). While his master is away, the spiteful apprentice dabbles at forces of magic he cannot yet understand or control and as a consequence, creates utter chaos in his study, nearly being drowned to death in the process. That’s what the poem’s most famous citation stands for, having become a frequently used proverb in the German language: “die Geister, die ich rief, die werd’ ich nicht mehr los” – which literally translates into “the spirits that I called, I can lose no more”.

In her goodbye post, Tessy draws another analogy from fairy tales she enjoyed as child, to explain why World of Warcraft is slowly but surely losing its shine for her. She says “All the bumps in the roads have been smoothed out and all the detours have been made unnecessary” and concludes later: “I’m not saying the game has become too easy – I just think it has become a bit too smooth.“

And that conclusion is only an arm’s reach away from a rather ranty article I wrote some time ago, when starting off with this little blog, complaining about the decreasing difficulty level in WoW and how it can kill what makes adventure come alive to many (not all) MMORPG players. It’s a natural law: challenge and sense of achievement go together. To take away the first, is to take away the second. To overcome challenges and hardship together fills us with a sense of heroic satisfaction and enjoyment we can never get by other, more forgiving means. A rep or daily quest grind can never be a challenge in the same way, much rather than being a test of your mathematical skills – it’s all a matter of time and easy enough to calculate. Well, another matter of time is when removing all the pebbles on the road will start vexing players.

I’m not speaking of painful gameplay and mind-numbing, idle tasks and downtimes here by the way; I don’t actually believe in the virtue of suffering. I do however believe in a balance between challenging and rewarding game features. To define “challenge” in online games is obviously another can of worms, but for simplicity’s sake let’s just assume that we all want to run and scream in terror every once in a while.

Are the whiners always the same people?

The missing link between Tessy’s observation and Goethe’s poem is of course this: a playerbase wishing for changes long enough and whining about anything that makes the game a little hard / unfair / unsatisfactory to them in a particular moment in time, might end up with exactly what they wish for (given the master’s willingness to listen). And before knowing it, they have spoiled all aspects that made the game fun to them in the first place. You know, a little bit like lovers who over the course of their relationship attempt to change one another, until one day they wake up beside a completely different person – one they don’t recognize and don’t love anymore.

MMOs, like other real or virtual worlds, are rather delicate works of design; to meddle with balance, fixing a little here and there and changing things on one end and not the other, can easily cause disaster. I’d never claim that Blizzard didn’t do substantial amounts of calculation and testing in their re-balancing and patching acts, of course they do – but every change, no matter how small, actually changes something. And very often, players do not actually know what they want: they think they do, but they should really leave it to those who know better (y’know, those who do this shit for a living). Because the thing that players will not and cannot consider (and apparently some devs can’t either or will ignore), are long-term consequences. You might not see the greater picture when you complain about classes not having enough solo-ability (and then, in a year’s time, complain about all classes being way too similar); for short-term and long-term change are quite an unhappy couple in MMOs.

How many times have we not witnessed class or content difficulty whining in WoW’s official forums, only to read a diametrically opposed echo of said whining a year down the road? Really, this is erm….what you asked for? Now you figure, huh? But then, there’s really no way of keeping the whiny voices on any gameforum apart: they might sound exactly the same, but how can you tell they go back to the same people? (No, I don’t feel inclined to track nicknames.)

Which is something justly pointed out to me by Chastity of Righteous Orbs, a few months back when he wrote an article on linearity in WoW and how he didn’t enjoy all the cut-scenes during Cataclysm’s quest lines. Personally, I felt the short ingame movies were a brilliant addition to the game, making quests and lore feel more immersive. It’s certainly been a common complaint among WoW players for years that the game really lacked this sort of player inclusion (the way you find yourself inside the clips with Harrison Jones for example). But there you go: “among WoW players” – which ones exactly? The ones screaming loudest on the forums at the time? The ones simply louder than those who didn’t wish for ingame movies (and therefore had no reason to speak up before)?

When we hear “the players”, “the PVPers”, “the druids” (loads of’em…) moan on gaming boards, we don’t actually know who they are. We don’t know which players were whining before and we don’t know which players whine later (after change happened). All we know, really, is that there will be whining. Ample empiric evidence has been given!

Yet, maybe they exist? Those players that did ask for XY in the past and only later realize the gravity of their wish? Players who cry for buffs on today’s forums and then cry the same be nerfed later, in an even louder voice because hindsight is such a beautiful thing? Are there any sorcerer’s apprentices in today’s WoW community or is it always different people?

I’ve no clue, I’m usually rather consistent in my whining (and I avoid official forums like rabies – way too many whiny hybrids around). But if the waters are rising all around me because the apprentice is messing with his absent(-minded) master’s work, there’s one hope I cling to – that it’s all just a story in a book and everything will be fine in the end. Alternatively, I’ll grab another book if the old one got wet beyond repair. Yep, I can always do that.

Where do you go to die?

A while back, I stated in a post that when people leave their longtime MMO community, most will do so swiftly and abruptly. If you’ve spent many months or even years playing with the same folks, it’s always hard to turn your back on them, no matter how good your reasons for quitting might be.

In retrospective however, I think I wasn’t quite correct in my reasoning; not everyone leaves a game in the same manner. As often as a departure might baffle others, many players plan and prepare for this last moment, thinking about when to leave for a long time. And how.

There are some famous examples on Youtube: the players that will capture a video of how they disenchant or dump all their gear and then delete all their characters, before the eye of the world. Proving to everyone that they are finally leaving – the person they’re trying to convince the most being themselves.

Then there are those like my ex-guildie of few years back, the funniest kid, so funny that Blizzard decided to mention his fanmade WoW video series on their EU frontpage at the time. When he left us shortly before the end of vanilla, he created a short clip that had a striking resemblance to this farewell movie, where he orchestrated the suicide of his ingame character with a heart-tearing tune playing in the background. A very literal death. Not so far-fetched an analogy.

Many players don’t create quitting videos, but they still choose a sort of ritual when they go. Some send gifts to all their best mates, others hold goodbye-parties or run their favourite 5-man for the very last time, in the company of friends. Or they give away all their gold, to the joy of whoever might not expect it. A last nudge given to those who walked the road with them for a while, a last smile put on somebody’s face before pulling the plug. When Grumpy Dorf decided to finally retire his paladin tank of many years, he envisioned a place for the old dwarf to go and spend the rest of his days in peace.

Most of us don’t get to choose the time and place of when we die in the real world; but most of us get to decide when and where to put their virtual alter egos to rest. This is a very special thing. And while the comparison might be over the top, it is a death of sorts to many players and there are real feelings involved. They end a chapter, taking with them whatever their bottom line might be. And those they leave behind might remember them, feeling the loss more acutely at first until the sting fades away gradually over time and nothing but fond memories remain, or a wistful sigh late at night when all their channels have gone quiet…

Whereby I found closure

When I logged Sylvara out of World of Warcraft, for what I still believe was the last time, I didn’t raise much attention. I guess I could have done, having co-founded and acted as officer and healing coordinator of my raidguild for so long, but then I had already written that ‘one post’ at the end of Wrath of the Lich King and I didn’t think I had it in me a second time. Nor would it have been the same for others. It simply didn’t feel right to me. No drama, no tears and long goodbye posts, not this time.

What I did instead was inform the rest of my officer team obviously, speaking to guildies that I caught online those last few times I was logged on and sending a PM to each of my closer mates, to thank them and wish them the best. I sent out one single item, a very precious gift an extraordinarily generous guildie of mine had given me not long before and which I felt obliged to return, given my somewhat unexpected departure. That’s all I touched though and it would never have crossed my mind for one second to delete my character of 6 years, I could never bring myself to do that. I don’t feel like denying anything about my time in WoW, there is no shame and no regret in having spent that time as Syl in Azeroth. Every thing I did during that time was my decision.

I did choose where to log out – somehow that was the most important part to me. I had to smile when Larísa mentioned in her recent, final blog post, that one day she will go to Elwynn Forest and log out the pink-pigtailed gnome for good. Syl is sitting at the bank of mirror lake, my favorite place in all of Azeroth. She’s decked in Tier 5, wearing the one staff in all of WoW that tested my patience far beyond its limits. The pieces all match, of course. While putting the gear on one by one, I felt oddly reminded of Colonel Markinson in “A Few Good Men”, suppressing that thought swiftly. I logged my character out quietly one evening, with only 2 or 3 guildmates being online, attentive Kashim almost instantly whispering me “are you logging out at that lake?”

And so I did. In Elwynn, my lovely, where the journey began. In Elwynn, where my personal anniversary event quest for Adrenaline was stationed. In Elwynn, where the Crazy Cat Lady will go on taking in strays and the murlocs will gurgle forever at the riverbank of Eastvale Logging Camp, long after I have left. In Elwynn, with Goldshire at its heart where all paths lead to greater adventure.

A good place to rest.

Absolute Zero

Returning from holidays (which turned out to be shockingly snow-less) never fails to leave me slightly wistful – oh ye blessed free time, such a sweet life it could be without work! People keep saying that we need to work in order to appreciate our time off properly, you know all that ying-yang rubbish. Sometimes I wonder if these people have ever actually been off for longer than a few weeks? I could do with more spare time. Lots! I never get bored.

Anyways, back to work and the blog, I noticed that trolls without a Rent-a-Troll© approved certificate of authenticity have been busy in my absence – I guess I should’ve known the competition strikes when I’m not around! Over 10 people (shockingly anonymorons) felt the need to post the exact same thing in an older post of mine about the silly item names in Cataclysm, pointing out how utterly stupid I am for not getting the actual meaning of “belt of absolute zero”. Squirrel did of course make quick work of them and while I’m way more inclined to get amused about comments such as these and make fun of their authors rather than getting upset, the occurrence inspired me to take up a topic I’ve been wanting to blog on for a while now. What a nice opportunity.

Bridges, Walls and Language

The WoW blogosphere can seem daunting to freshly starting bloggers: such a huge playfield of well-connected blogging veterans and regulars, so many blogs to explore, so many bloggers and commenters to get to know. Over time however, you realize that it’s actually quite a cosy place to be in, a village much rather than a mega-city. Oh, every now and then a wave of wild guests from WoW Insider and Co. will find their way into this part of Azeroth and its inhabitants too, like to tease each other and even brawl sometime; life gets boring and stagnant without the odd argument. It’s really up to you though how much you’d like to engage in the more active and maybe heated part of things – there’s room for pretty much any type of blogger, just like there is an audience for every writer.

If you’re a fairly regular blogreader in this village (and a nosy person like me) you will gather more demographic information about the blogs you like to frequent over time: maybe what age the author is, what he or she is doing for a living, what their geographic location is. Some bloggers are more forthcoming in this respect than others, either by leaving an about-section or writing more personal posts sometime where the reader can glimpse a little of the person behind the screen.

Personally I enjoy getting to know authors more personally; it’s not that I actually care if they’re male or female, 20 or 50 years old, but I’m naturally curious about people and the background they’re coming from. I’m also not ashamed to admit a slight tendency to groupie-ism, or rather enthusiasm in following news and background history of authors I enjoy reading (I love you, Neil!). Writing and reading are about connecting for me.

A particular thing I’ve always enjoyed about the blogosphere is that unlike to when we’re playing on our servers, there’s no separation between EU and US players. A large group of the blogs linked on my blogroll are authors from across Europe, probably as many as there are American writers (I don’t think I noticed anyone blogging out of Asia yet but maybe they’re just good at hiding?). We get to communicate and share our experiences – and we realize just how little it really matters where somebody is from. That is not the determining factor about people, no matter what those who like to build walls instead of bridges would have us believe.

What I’ve always loved most about online gaming and MMOs is this “global village”; talking to somebody halfway across the globe whom you’d otherwise have never ever met and realizing just how much you can have in common. And a shared language is of course the central means for this; it is the meeting stone, it sets the stage for more interaction. In this case English which serves as a lingua franca worldwide.

I’m sure we’ve all met WoW gamers that actually struggled with speaking the accepted, official server language, be it that they weren’t native speakers or were suffering from some other cause that would impede their ability to communicate. While many guilds use voice comms, the main communication in MMOs still happens via written chat. That can be a big disadvantage depending on the environment of the player and the requirements set before him, for example by a raidguild that expects its members to actively and vocally participate in ongoing discussions. I remember many occasions when the guilds I was in would turn players down or at least heavily debate their application on grounds of not being able to communicate properly. And I think that is a legitimate concern – even if it felt a little lousy to me each time.

In the WoW blogosphere too, your language skill can be to your advantage or disadvantage. I would argue that it’s directly connected to a blogger’s success, but if written language is the central medium and in the spotlight like it is on a blog for example, then your background and level of literacy adds to the impact of your posts and the appreciation you might receive from your readers – especially, if you manage to impress with both content depth and writing style. I’m not talking about things like typos here, I doubt a lot of people care for them nearly as much as I care about mine. What I mean is the actual “high end” of literary skill: stylistics, rhetoric, semantic finesse.

Now I’d never claim that these accomplished skills actually go hand in hand with native speakers; I’ve studied language learning and linguistics and I’ve taught languages for several years at different schools and on different levels, to all kinds of students. Quite often a non-native speaker would match or surpass his class mates: talent and passion aren’t things you can teach. Also, if I am to believe my English WoW mates, the “worst English” can be found on the island and of course everyone likes to refer to the horribly incorrect, clichéd American English we get to watch on youtube and co. (which of course is totally representative for all Americans..). Just because I’m not a native speaker doesn’t mean all native speakers speak or write better English than me – no argument there. Still, there are natural “gaps” that will come up sometime from not actually living or having grown up in anglo-cultural background or an English-speaking society.

A big part of language knowledge is based on pragmatics: that affects how we understand each other in relation to all sorts of non-linguistic knowledge and psycho-linguistic factors. Another important role play sociolinguistics: factors like cultural background, but also age, sex, level of education etc. all shape our perception and ultimately how we understand, judge and value not only the world around us, but all ongoing communication.

Blogging in a second language

I think sometimes WoW players on English-speaking servers (no matter UK or US) forget that not all the people they’re playing with are actually of native English background. That makes for some funny puns at best and unhappy misunderstandings at worst. I’ve seen a player take serious offense at a well-meant joke, either because his level of English was beginner or because what was said simply wasn’t very funny where he came from. That can be a tricky situation to deal with and it’s usually not made better by defending the maybe harmless intention with a smug and arrogant air of “lingual leadership” (“my language, my server, punk”).

The same can be said for blogging. A while ago I wrote an article on how we tend to forget that the other bloggers and readers we’re talking to aren’t necessarily playing the same WoW that we are playing. This extends to language as well: sometimes people forget that speaking English doesn’t mean somebody’s English (or alternatively, they don’t realize the world reaches farther than the end of their nose). I guess to some extent this can be seen as a compliment, a testimony to a writer’s skills if you will. Yet, I’ve cringed many times when reading through a fellow European blogger’s article, seeing readers pick them apart for literally misreading a patchnote or leaving petty, formal attacks rather than commenting on anything substantial to the article.

Than can of course happen to any author: nobody’s safe from stupid, not even the most glorious writers. To me, it’s usually overly apparent though when a reference, idiom or jargon term is being misunderstood because the person lacks either cultural or colloquial knowledge or special lingo, rather than linguistic knowledge. Especially if you know little about someone, it’s an option to consider. Then again, if you already fail to tell these things apart, you probably cannot be expected to know what you’re dealing with anyway..

Just to clarify: I don’t mind a commenter who rectifies me on an error or educates me on something in the process of an exchange – in fact I find this helpful and enriching. What I find rather pitiful however, are people who nitpick for nitpicking’s sake, or make a comment section sound like a broken record. A close friend of mine is an outstanding writer himself but shies away from giving English blogging a go exactly for this reason. And I know bloggers in this blogosphere too who are very self-conscious about their articles because they aren’t native speakers. And they really shouldn’t have to be: not only are they producing brilliant texts, but they’re doing it in a second language. 

And yeah, I know: if you can’t take the heat, you probably shouldn’t be out there blogging. I still think it’s a little bit sad though – way of the world or not. As a sidenote, I also find such uninspired comments almost offensive in their lack of finesse and commenters who lack any sort of imagination or creativity so entirely in their trolling, are an incredibly boring lot. Maybe I can help once more?

Dear fellows

To the boring, uncertified trolls, a few kind words:

• I’m not native to English so it can happen that I miss an existing reference from within the field of physics – shocking, I know. (I speak 5 languages fluently by the way. You?)

• Repeating the exact same thing like the 9 people above you, doesn’t make you look very clever. I know some people actually don’t comment on blogs for the sake of exchange, ignoring everything else; find my special Email link for you at the bottom of that page.

• Semantically speaking, “absolute zero” is funney. But of course, if very smart people in history named it that changes everything. Mea culpa! That means “my bad” in latin, by the way.

• It looks to me like you could use some training. Find a selection of properly educated, sophisticated trollery on my page here. I am accepting beginners, although your clear lack of trollish language skills might prove too great a handicap to overcome!

To all of you out there who blog in a second language or are overly self-conscious about writing errors:

Don’t worry. It’s not about the odd mistake but what the person on the receiving end likes to focus on the most. You know, pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Or maybe just dickery.

Don’t waste your time on such things, they matter not, nothing – absolute zero.
Happy blogging everybody and a good weekend to all the creative and the inspired.

P.S. I have deliberately placed 3 errors in this article, of either grammatical, semantic or textual nature. If you can spot them all and send me an Email with the correct answers, you shall be awarded an exclusive Raging Monkey’s “Blogger-Sherlock of the Month”-Award©!

Shut up and play

I have to get something off my chest as I’ve been increasingly annoyed by certain comments from some people ever since Cataclysm launched. The posts I’m referring to are typically by ex-WoW players getting back to the game right now, the sort of more casual gamers that only show up for the first few weeks every time and bugger off to other games again after. The ones that will write how addictive and wasteful WoW is and how good it is they stopped each time they have left, and still re-subscribe for every new expansion until content becomes old and boring for them again (which happens soon).

I frequent several more general gaming boards that are crowded with re-subscribers like these and read how they publicly try to “justify” playing Cataclysm there, adding lines à la –

“Oh noes I’m such a freak, I just resubscribed to WoW! /facepalm”

or

“Me too, I’m so weak! But I promise it will only be for a few weeks!”

……….

Seriously, can you people just shut up and play? Enjoy the expansion maybe and let others enjoy it? I’m all fine with people unsubscribing and re-subscribing to WoW when they feel it’s lost its glamour for them or they simply can’t find the time – I’ve been there myself. What I can’t stand is all the cliché nonsense that follows when some ex-WoW players leave the game, making a scene how much the game sucks or the people still playing it are such sad individuals….and then actually come back every time to play new expansions! If you need to act like a jerk, do me a favour and at least be consequent.

I know it’s an alien concept, but a lot of people play WoW because it’s a great game. And maybe you re-subscribed because Cataclysm looks awesome and like lots of fun. So how about leaving it at that and cut your pitiful attempts at self-redemption? It would make sharing our servers with the likes of you much more pleasant.

It might sound weird (though I’m sure many WoW players out there know exactly of what I speak), but “visitors” like these make me feel like I am hosting guests in my home who sit on my chairs, drink my wine and eat food at my table and then smash the bowls after they’re fed up, ruin the carpet and kick the cat on their way out. The sole difference being that the lock on that door ain’t mine – more’s the pity.

Or in short: Just shut up and play Cata, mkay?

Raidguilds with entry fees

The social structure that is guilds has come a long way in the history of online gaming. If we take World of Warcraft as an example, which is handy since the game has been around and evolved for a longer period now, we can see the same has happened on Azeroth – the founding of guilds is as frequent as ever, but the reasons why they are joined and the ways they are run have changed gradually over time, as a consequence of the game changing. There’s a vast variety of guilds these days, catering to every imaginable playstyle. There’s true ‘professional guilds’ and there’s guilds with all sorts of requirements. The other week I read about the rise of a ‘super guild’ on World of Matticus, a new form of guild that has sprung from Blizzard’s featured guild perks system for Cataclysm.

If I think back on the early days of my own server, there was only a handful of 40man raidguilds around. If you wanted to raid seriously, there was a limited choice and we all knew each other on that block, just as you generally knew your opponents in a battleground as a more frequent PVPer (which made for many a fun interlude at Xroads). There were hardly any so-called ‘casual raidguilds’. There were far less non-raiding guilds than today and there was certainly a lot less going on in terms of public chat pugs and lose alliances.

My very first raidguilds also had a rather modest structure and set of requirements and guidelines in place, compared to the well-oiled business machinery run by many guilds these days. Officer teams were chaotic bunches more often than not, recruitment happened in much more legère a fashion and if you wanted to raid on Thursday night, the way to sign up was to be there on time.

Oh yes, we’ve come a long way with our guild organisation; with our lootrules and raid calendars, our recruitment procedures and attendance monitors, guild ranks and officer departments. In Adrenaline we make use of all these options and more. Over the years, Blizzard has introduced more tools to help guilds organize and monitor themselves better. I can certainly say that the implementation of guild banks for example was a huge relief to all the officers out there, used to re-logging constantly to some guild mule.

Another change that has evolved over the years in WoW, is a guild’s need for security. Almost all of us have had at least a guildmate or two who’s account’s been compromised in the past. Even worse, many guilds (ours included) have experienced their guild bank raided because a member and/or officer has been hacked. Using a login authenticator has become pretty much standard in WoW’s community, even if some still resist (for what I personally find very weak reasons) to get one attached to their account.

The other day, Alas wrote an article about an officer guild-quitting on her, because of her guild’s authenticator requirement for raiders. It’s not unfrequent for guilds to have safety requirements like this today – but she goes on to ask the more fundamental question of “how far can guild requirements go?” without becoming unreasonable.
Personally I believe that the sky is the limit. Guilds are always about joint ventures and just like it’s up to every guild leadership to decide on their own type of guild and guidelines, it’s your freedom to join or leave a guild that is not to your liking or found a guild of your own. If there is enough people interested in a certain type of guild, chances are such a guild will be created.

We might have a hard time thinking out of the box right now, but if we look at the long way guilds and online communities have come, I wonder how their structure is going to evolve from here: how are things going to look like in a world like Azeroth, 10 years from now? What procedures and requirements might future guilds employ?

Paying for membership

I have an aunt and uncle who love to golf. They’re average middle-class citizens, they don’t own a house of their own and they only drive one car which is 15 years old. They might go on a short vacation every other year, but that’s about as much as they can afford. Pretty standard where I live, one of the so-called richest countries in the world.
In order to find a shared hobby for their retirement, one that allows them to be together outdoors and be active without the ability to hike or run marathons anymore, they settled for their mutual wish to take up golfing together – a much more difficult endeavor for two average people like them, than meets the eye.

The few golf clubs available around here are the same as pretty much everywhere: damn expensive to join. For those of you that might not be aware of this system, the majority of playgrounds like that are not public and come with entry fees and membership fees of several thousand euros, ranging from 5000-10’000 per year, up to more astronomical numbers such as 50’000 euros and more. Entry fees do not include yearly membership, nor any further services or equipment – they’re only payed for well, entry.

A big stash for ‘normal’ people. A reason to say fuck golfing maybe and look into mini-golf. Certainly a reason to go vote and prevent more of these places to pop up and claim public spaces and wildlife habitats. But I’ll leave the snidy side-remarks at that because I really don’t want to talk about the sense or non-sense that is a few select ones claiming leagues and leagues of public countryside for themselves and their private leisure, pushing out all other people and animals alike (not to mention the gazillion galleons of precious water required to maintain the supple lawns every week), to mingle in exclusive country clubs because life is so hard and they really need some luxury every now and then to relax in peace. Ooops, have I already done it now? Oh well, there’s only so much quiet sufferance I got in me, and it’s Julian-week after all.

The logic behind golf club policy is of course most comprehensible: they’re about exclusiveness as much as the need to limit the number of visitors in order to maintain the courses and keep them a clean and quiet experience. You can’t and don’t want to have places like that crowded by hundreds of people. The high maintenance costs a lot of money and you want things to be profitable after all – none of that is possible if you opened it to a wider audience who’s never gonna spend cash in the same way, while ruining the whole point. Also, many golf clubs around here do business with the excess money, investing into financial projects and so forth.

The business model works for the ones running it and their clients alike: both parties get what they want from the deal.

The guild with the entry fee

In the year 2012, Leprechaun, an imaginary tauren warrior from the imaginary Stormglade EU server, is the founder and GM of an ambitious raidguild called -Decadence-.  Decadence is safely established among Europe’s top 5 raid progression guilds and home to a force of 45 regular raiders with a 99% attendance or more. 
The guild runs a strict raiding schedule and transparent guidelines, monitored by a very dedicated staff of officers who look after all the guild’s needs 24/7. Joining Decadence is rather simple: willingness to commit to all raid nights, profound knowledge of your class and game mechanics (yadda yadda) and: submitting a membership fee of 60’000 gold upon joining.

When Decadence set out with this unique recruitment requirement, they were initially met with an outrage in their thread on Stormglade’s public forums. By now, the guild is one of the most respected and favoured places to be in their battlegroup. Raiders are switching servers only to get a shot at a trial in Decadence. One more notorious rumor tells a story about a smaller raidguild’s former GM, who disbanded his own guild and sold off the entire guild bank, in order to be able to submit the membership fee.

During this time, Leprechaun has been accused of being an elitist and worse by many haters, as much as being praised a genius by his own guild mates and fans all across other servers. In an interview with MMO-Reportz.com, he had the following things to say about Decadence’ unique approach to recruitment:

“At some point the number of applications was just too overwhelming to deal with. This was on the brink of hitting EU’s top 10. The officers were working all around the clock and our guild’s expenses skyrocketed in order to support our swift progression and minimize our members’ need to spend time on farming for mats and consumables.
In Decadence, we provide for everyone: everything is guild funded and free, down to individual playstyle / consumables, repairs and extra gear sets. All of this is funded through membership fees and business done with it.”

“We felt that with the 60’000 gold entry fee we were killing two birds with one stone: a smaller selection of recruits who put in the extra effort of depositing a reasonable sum of money the guild needs in order to function.

“We don’t believe the amount of gold is too high; if anything, it shows a member is dedicated and knowledgeable enough to farm this kind of money in the game. It’s not hard to come by in my opinion, at least not if you’re playing a lot. And that’s the sort of players we want to attract.”

“We’re furthering the goldseller business – are you serious? [laughs] Now that’s a pretty ludicrous claim, in my opinion!  Decadence is a small guild after all, we hardly influence this kind of global enterprise. Also, the types of raiders we attract are probably not the kind of casual players that are more likely to struggle with gold in the game.”

“Asking everyone for the same deposit makes our members feel they’re contributing in the same way, it’s an even share among everybody. Already upon joining, this allows new recruits to feel they are actively partaking in Decadence and have a ‘right to be here’. This is easing them into becoming an established part of the guild. In return, our members get a unique and all-inclusive guild experience. Decadence is run professionally and provides for all our raiders’ needs without any further guild requirements that other raid guilds have, such as donations or material farming. Even our excess loot is evenly distributed, rather than hoarded by us. I don’t see how our policies are so much worse from other guilds, we’re simply doing it differently.”

“We provide our raiders with the experience they’re looking for. In return, we use entry fees to do guild business and ensure a smooth progression. Besides that, members leaving us are eligible to a refund of a 50% of the initial sum. This is an additional security for us in terms of guild drama: we don’t have rage-quitting in Decadence. People treat a guild very differently if their own money has been invested. And a potential refund makes for much more amicable parting, we have learned.” [chuckles]

I admit that while my initial reaction to the membership fee was very critical, much of that if not all has been dispersed through the course of the interview. There is a solid logic behind this guild model: it allows the guild to function the way it does and there’s a few very interesting pros in Leprechaun’s reasoning. His points on members sharing ‘ownership’ and including newcomers straight away for example, makes a lot of sense to me. So does his point on guild drama, as sad as it might be. The 60’000 gold fee is a measure of security for Decadence and it provides members with services in return.
The only ones that really get excluded are those unwilling or unable to make such a deposit – but then these players would probably not be able to commit to such a raid agenda anyway (much less want to).

I don’t think Decadence is different or necessarily more elitist than other guilds: it is just one joint venture among others, catering to one type of raider. And unlike the golf club analogy, it does not harm anyone else by its exclusivity which is probably the most important part.

What does the future hold?

I can definitely see more evolved ‘business models’ like this hypothetical one, exist in the future of online guilds. There are already enough signs out there, maybe there’s even a few raidguilds around already that require deposits of this sort. Guilds are here to stay and as long as MMOs continue to grow, guilds will follow that progress and become more professionalized, with more elaborate concepts and membership requirements. I guess you can like that or not, but then the freedom of choice is still yours.
Would you pay to join the ‘perfect guild’, if it enhanced your gaming experience? I don’t see why not.

Dear guild applicant, what’s your weakness?

There I sat at one of my job agencies last Wednesday, feeling horribly out of character. I am looking for a new job at the moment, that is to say for a new new job, one that is hopefully as unlike to my last few jobs as possible, but there’s a desert to cross first, an annoying phase of explaining curricula and dealing with administrative bullshit.
And I notice these job agencies all look the same: gray and impersonal bastions of corporate capitalism, “help us to help you, so we get money from you working”, it’s a modern version of slave-trade really. Nothing to make you feel the ordinary human resource you are quite like job agencies. But to get where I want to go apparently they’re my best shot.

So, I sat in that small cubicle office waiting for my agent, some way-too-young, teeth-bleached sunnyboy in a way-too-expensive suit. Instantly I felt under-dressed. The whole procedure took about 30 minutes, half an hour of jolly good fun trying to explain to Ken why I am looking for a change of scenery and what salary I deem appropriate, given the fact that I lack experience in the field while holding an academic degree that probably surpasses the education of most people I would be working with. There’s something horribly depressing in realizing those 7 years at university were worth so little. Maybe I should mention my epic WoW skills and guild leadership experience? No?

Anyway, halfway through the exercise Ken caught me slightly unawares as I wasn’t actually prepared to do a full job interview, all I expected was some administrative stuff – yeah, call me a noob. So when he got to asking how I see my future or what my strengths and weaknesses are, I actually didn’t know what to reply to the latter straight away. My weaknesses? Errr…right that’s the standard phony question you can expect in every job interview. You know, the one where you’re supposed to display how much of a self-critic you are, oh-so capable of self-reflection. And that’s why everyone answers with some wanna-be weakness that isn’t a weakness at all, but a strength too really, like “I am such a perfectionist” or “I’m overly punctual”.

HA-HA…!

I hate things like that. They’re part of what (the brilliant and ingenious) Billy Connolly calls”beige-ism”. Everyone knows how utterly stupid and empty these questions (and answers) are – as if you were gonna tell your future boss that you’re a messy slob or like to steal cookies from the cafeteria. So I just sat there for a moment contemplating a potential answer vs. my utter disgust for the procedure, before I told him I was a little impatient at times (which is actually true), but in the way that I “really like to get jobs done fast and efficiently” (which is again actually true), ya know! He seemed to be perfectly happy with this answer and the conversation proceeded to other topics from there. Phew.

An exercise in phoniness

On my way home, the whole experience got me thinking about what a hilarious thing it would be to incorporate the more nonsensical parts of job interviews into the standard WoW recruitment procedure. Most guilds, ours included, already run a questionnaire that will touch on matters like playtime, goals and expectations in their application form. What if we included the awkwardness of real interview questionnaires in them, could we expect to get similar cringe-worthy answers? What would we expect our applicants to say?

Question #14: What do you consider your weaknesses as a player?
– Answer 1: “Sometimes I am just so focused on downing a boss, I forget about my CDs or taking a potion.”
– Answer 2: “I’m a total perfectionist. I always want to be the main puller and clear every pack in an instance.”
– Answer 3: “I’m a little impatient. I always want to start raids on time and hate wasting time on bio breaks.”

Question #15: Where do you see yourself 2 years from now?
– Answer 1: “As a valuable member of your raid guild and one of your top DPS”
– Answer 2: “As part of your officer’s team where I can contribute in the guild’s best interests.”
– Answer 3: “I’ll be celebrating our success of having become one of the server’s top 2 progression guilds.”

Question #16: Why should we take you instead of that other applicant?
– Answer 1: “While I don’t know the other person, I assure you I am better than him.”
– Answer 2: “Because nobody can heal like I do.”
– Answer 3: “I am a 100% committed and fit your guild’s profile perfectly. We have a great future together!”


Now wouldn’t that just be a blast? I really think we should include these questions in our guild’s recruitment questionnaire for shits and giggles if nothing else! A lot of players already think that WoW feels like a job rather than a game sometime, so let’s go the whole nine yards I say! =D

P.S. Dear job agents, please don’t be offended. I do not actually dislike you, it’s not like you invented the system. And I like keeping the pen!

Mi warcraft no es su warcraft

…or English for: my warcraft is not your warcraft.

In a past article of mine I wrote that gamers are not a community, a fact that has often grieved me on my journey through the gaming world. Even if we love the same MMO that doesn’t mean we have a lot in common, our views and values inside and outside of our cultural backgrounds and upbringing can be entirely different, even if gamers often wish to speak of themselves as a community, a group to belong to and identify with. My heart jumped a little at Metzen’s “Geek is…” speech at the Blizzcon 2010 but in reality many of these geeks will give other geeks a hard time because playing golf is so much cooler than playing tennis, ya know. Even in the world of geekdom there are nonsensical pecking orders.

Yet a facet of this that often strikes me, and on a much brighter note, is the diversity in which MMO players can and chose to play the game. When you look around in the WoW blogosphere you can already see the multitude of different approaches to the game, different interests and playstyles. For all I know, some WoW players are playing a completely different game than me! Every time I read an article on improved goldmaking or the many-colored world (and drama) of pugging or finding the right guild, I am strangely fascinated about the experiences and issues of some players, feeling oddly remote from them.
I actually love reading such articles because they show me how diverse an MMO really is and what “sub-cultures” there are entirely untouched by myself, existing like some parallel society.

Inside our own bubble

When I read this article by Spinks some time ago, I was reminded very strongly of the disparity in which all of us experience online games. I play WoW in my own little bubble which is the safety of my PVE raidguild of many years with its stable, longtime member base. Some of my guildmates have been around me since vanilla. I play on a European PVE server on which I have played my holy priest since day one. I’ve a long friendlist of people that have shared this server with me, acquaintances in other guilds and resources I can rely on if required. My entire outlook on the game and my future therein is safely founded on this.

I’ve no idea how it is to play this game as a more casual player, a non-raider, a role-player, a trade seller, a pugger or a frequent guild-switcher. The last time I filled out a guild application form was in vanilla WoW because ever since I have been an officer in raidguilds I have helped founding myself. I do not know how it is to feel “homeless” in WoW, I don’t need to pug and I don’t get scammed after paying a stranger to do my enchants. If people talk about the trolls in tradechat, I don’t know who they are – I haven’t followed any public chats in years. In my guild everything is available to me, access to content, free services and most of all shared companionship and laughter. I couldn’t imagine playing WoW in any other way and I dare say I would’ve quit ages ago if I had not found and created this space for myself.

We all live inside our own bubble when we play MMOs – the “massively” is actually only so much true. If we’re lucky, we find like-minded people to share them with. Sometimes we meet players who live in bubbles different from our own and when we do, we’re impressed or surprised at best, although irritated or annoyed are an option too. One such “clash” I’ve experienced myself was when Adrenaline established a temporary raiding alliance for lack of active raiders during our very first summer in TBC. All too soon we realized that our partner guild (which had a somewhat similar progress orientation, or so we thought) had an entirely different and (from our standpoint) less serious approach to raiding – it was two different worlds colliding, much to our own dismay. Of course they felt exactly the same way about us with our set standards and quiet, militaristic raid style. Needless to say our alliance didn’t last for long but it got us through the worst weeks of summer. It also taught us that lobotomy is probably preferable to raid alliances, even if a common enemy is great for building team spirit.

MMO subcultures

The more sandboxy an MMO is, the wider the potential spectrum of bubbles or sub-cultures becomes. I’ve played MMOs where big groups of people dedicated themselves entirely to trade, running shops of their own and spending huge amounts of time harvesting and crafting all around the clock. The most remarkable such example I have ever seen was in Ultima Online on the Atlantic Shard, where a player had set up his own gateway station located in his house where he provided teleports leading to all the different corners of the world for a fee. He had undertaken extensive traveling himself first in order to provide this service and it was widely used and appreciated.

While World of Warcraft is far off from a sandbox game, it still offers space for a variety of “sub-cultures” to develop and play the game to their own ends. By default Blizzard gives players the choice to experience their content from a PVE-, PVP- or RP-centric perspective. While I like PVP in WoW, I have never ever ventured into RP and I admit that it’s a very curious thing to me that I don’t feel comfortable with (whatever floats your boat tho!).

Then there’s the greedy goblins, fully dedicated to the mammon in WoW and it’s quite a fulltime endeavor if you choose to delve into it fully, goldmaking guides and respective mods included.
There’s the crazy collectors of mounts, minipets or whatever other baubles. There’s the achievement hunters that spare no expense for another 10 points. There’s the dedicated arena teams. There’s the daily PuG organizers in public channels (I noticed that one time I looked!). There’s the perfectionist alt players desperately out of character slots. There’s the explorers and the lore masters. And there’s pretty much every flavor of guild.

Indeed, WoW can be many things, also in the way we look at it and what we appreciate most about it – Larísa has written a post on this just the other day.
And I wonder what other groups there might be in WoW playing the game from their unique angle, different from others. Do you know of more niches or sub-cultures in World of Warcraft, remote from the standard PVP or PVE oriented endgame playstyle? Are you one of them?

There’s no reality..

…there’s only perception. Many of us enter a different micro-cosmos when they log into WoW. This gets most noticeable when we discuss features and aspects of the game or share experiences, also very often on our blogs. We forget that the other person we read about or talk to might come from an entirely different WoW than us: with a different lookout, different people sharing the game with him and hence different experiences. And in all these differences things are not so different from the real world.

I’m sure that my way of playing this MMO might seem strange to somebody else. I know that my opinions and attitude toward it are merely a product of my personal experiences. It’s a small and fragile world we call home.

So when’s the last time you /played the game?

All MMO players and WoW players especially, know about the significance of the /played command in the game. In World of Warcraft it is often subject of running gags, guild mates teasing one another or daring each other to do a /played. Not rarely does it happen that a player will outright refuse to tell you his number and even those that do, usually cringe at least for one moment before going over to long justifications about the result, explaining how “this isn’t the net time played after all, a lot of it is also AFK” or “but I have no alts beside this” and so forth. Really, /played is a bit of a taboo in the game and it makes me a little sad because that shows us one thing: that most MMO players still feel a certain amount of shame or guilt regarding their hobby.

I’ve been reluctant to check my /played time in WoW myself in the past and really need to ask myself why – I’m most certainly not ashmed of being a gamer. I’ve been involved in video games all my life, briefly even professionally. I’m a self-proclaimed proud-to be gamer and geek. I run around wearing Leeroy Jenkins and “Green is the New Purple” T-Shirts (yes, outside my home) and there’s nobody in my family or wider circle of friends that doesn’t know about my hobbies. At my workplace I am happy to inform whomever likes to know too. There’s a shiny figureprint of Syl sat next to the monitor I’m writing this article on.

Yet and despite all of that, apparently something’s wrong with /played. I don’t know if it’s the ingame mocking à la “you addict!” that usually goes with it, even the friendly one, but somehow there’s a semi-conscious part of me deep down inside, that still believes the time I spend in WoW is outrageously too high “for a useless hobby like that” – huh? OH JUST SHUT UP!!!

The thing is, I don’t actually believe that’s true. For one, I probably have a very average playtime in WoW and the game has never created any form of issues or impacted negatively on things in real life for me – in fact quite the opposite. There’s times when I haven’t played WoW and times when I’ve played it lots. I don’t see how it’s different from enjoying any other hobbies or pastimes that aren’t directly “useful” but entertaining. I believe WoW is a great deal more social than some other activities the way I play it. You can also actually learn a lot in this game, if you chose to.

Many other WoW players will share these views with me. So why is there still this controversial, guilty feeling about the /played command among gamers? Have we simply heard the negative stereotypes for too long? After all the media are ever-eager to convince the world that online gaming equals drug addiction and causes babies to starve in Korea.

What’s the point of /played anyway?

Have you ever asked yourself what the use of the /played command in the game might be? I am wondering about this a bit. I know the feature can be found in other MMOs too and I can’t help but marvel at the idea behind this – why did Blizzard install it in the game? Why this focus on “time spent” in the online gaming branch especially?
You will struggle to find many other hobbies where measuring quantity is actually a concern; the guy that spends several nights a week in his football club, avidly plays the piano, is regularly hanging out with buddies in bars or watching TV in the evenings, wouldn’t do a /played or /drank or /TV every few months to double-check and question his favored activities. Even for most other games on PC or console there is no such data – at most you’ll find a time indication on your saves that counts net time. Nobody would ever bother to ask about it.

It almost feels as if the game you love to play is agreeing with those trying to tell you that you spend “sooooooo much time!” by storing this ever-increasing number as if it was important. I fail to see a dev’s reasoning here; in any case if they thought it would serve as player-epeen or decoration in WoW they have utterly missed their point.

Laughing in the face of /played

Anyhow, I do hereby protest against the tyranny and taboo of  /played in WoW and all other forms thereof in other MMOs! I refuse to feel guilty over a number that can never express the myriads of emotions and experiences I’ve had and made through this game, the countless adventures, moments of epic win, the endless fun and joy shared in the great company of friends over the past few years. If my time spent on the game is all that interests you about it, then GFY. ^^ I happen to enjoy this game. I’m having good times with it.

As for the number, writing about it actually got me intrigued and since we’re kinda at the doorstep of Cata, it feels like the perfect time to have a look –

*quickly logging into WoW*

–  253 days.
That’s since the EU launch in February 2005, counting my main character and also the sole lowbie alt I am rumored to have. Assuming that I’ve played the game for 68 months, that breaks down to 12% of that time or 20 hours a week. If a player’s active time in the game (=actually being ingame at the keyboard) is roughly 80% of the total number, that means I’ve spent an average of 16 hours of gaming and socializing in WoW per week.
I enjoyed every minute of it (ok, not so much that one exalted grind in Silithus) and I would never wanna miss that time in my life. Yeah, I could’ve learned a sixth language instead or restore world peace – I could also have done a lot of silly or stupid things instead, so make of that what you will. I’ll say 253 days of good fun – wohoo, YAY, /cheer!

If you ever want to know my playtime in WoW again at some point in the future, I’m happy to answer your question without cringing. I also dare you all to check your /played next time you log into the game and tell all your friends (feel free to add it in a comment too!), not because it matters but exactly because it does not!

P.S. It is highly probable, if not to say very likely, that I made a calculation error somewhere in that last bit, in which case I’m happy to be rectified. It is rather late here and I’ve never been much for maths – there be dragons.

Update: I need to thank all the trolls that have repeatedly tried to derail the comment thread to this topic, spamming me with wild accusations or threatening me (on my own blog) that I have “crossed the line” – you have all proven my point better than I ever could have. It is no wonder so few WoW gamers publicly admit to their hobby or time spent in the game. Further spam or trolling will be deleted – my blog, my rules, ya know.

“He who judges does not define that which is judged, but only defines himself as someone who needs to judge.”

Gamers are not a community

I have been a longterm member and mod over at a videogame forum that is rather big where I live. It’s a very active place where gamers of every flavour, but also people professionally involved in the business are posting and there’s yearly gamenights and other events being organized for the “community” to meet. Over the past 10 years that I’ve been there, I have made a few friends and met a lot of people. During my student years it even got me some marketing jobs for our national Nintendo publisher.
Yet the one thing that still makes me cringe after all this time is that even though you’d like to think that ‘gamers’ are a community of sorts, they really aren’t. I’ve had so many experiences and keep having them, that remind me how delusional this is.

On our board you’ll find all sorts of ‘special groups’ and segregation wherever you turn: there’s the mainstream gamers, the platform fanboys, the anime/manga fans, the retro fanatics, the RPGers etc. and they all make sure not to get confused with one another. And right down at bottom there’s the MMO players. Oh beware to be one of those, even if we got a whole subforum dedicated to this genre, you’re bound to listen to false stereotyping and trolling. Because really, even if the others play Xbox live every night over voice-comm with their buddies and buy a new game every 2 weeks, at least they aren’t playing MMORPGs. They’re not that asocial – they do ‘stuff on weekends’ and have a girlfriend!
I actually had to deal with a guy once writing down an entire list (with bullets) of the things he did every week besides gaming (it included things like playing tennis and drinking in bars), trying to point out how sad we all were for playing WoW. I have probably never been more embarrassed on somebody else’s behalf in my life. The funny thing is that a lot of these gamers are actually secretly jealous of you; I had one or two admitting to me that they would actually like to play WoW but couldn’t, because they’d get “too addicted” or their girlfriend “wouldn’t approve”.
Then there was that other post once where a guy stated how upset he got when a co-worker at his workplace referred to him as “our gamer” and how insulted he felt over it. Because to him gamers were real life losers and sociopaths. All of this coming from someone ‘within the community’ who is active on the same online gamers board for years and attending gamenights. I had a thing or two to say to him in that topic, for what its worth.

Even though I know this is how things really are, it makes me sad every time I note them; be it ingame or via forums or blogs. I guess it’s that naive part in me, thinking that gamers as a whole get enough stigma already from people outside their interest group that they wouldn’t need to continue the segregation amongst themselves. It’s probably human that we reach out and long to be part of a community we’d somehow like to identify with. But the truth is that this doesn’t exist, just because we play games doesn’t mean we have anything in common. If you’d like to feel at home among a group of people, you will have to keep picking the gems out of the pile of trash.

When we log on to World of Warcraft, we think that we enter some sort of fantasy. But unlike any other games, the content in MMOs is highly player generated – the whole point of them requiring social interaction and longterm teamplay is created by the people playing them. And all of these people bring their load of personal beliefs, attitude and prejudice with them – they don’t leave them at the door when they put on their mage robes or paladin armor. You got your judgmental and biased trolls, your sexists, homophobes, racists, fascists and any other flavour of social superiorists – in fact the internet is kinda big for trolls creeping out of their caves that usually would never find an audience in real life. And no matter how hard you stick to your own folks, you’ll get your share of bullshit whether you like it or not, right there in your pink fantasy dream. Even if you manage to steer free of most, you still get your casual gamers vs. hardcores, your “I’m better than you because I play less when I’m really just jealous”-people, your drama queens and psychotic real life-compensators (or both).

And I don’t actually dig ‘-isms’ at all. I don’t think we have an issue with ‘-isms’, we can spare ourselves the fancy terminology: the world has an issue with idiots. It has issues with lack of common sense all across the board. If we cannot even share our fantasy worlds, I foresee a dark future for the real version.

So we do ingame what we do elsewhere – we retreat to our own small circle of friends or guilds and play the game from inside our social bubbles. Just because we play the same game doesn’t mean we have anything in common with the rest.

World of Warcraft is an exact mirror of the real world – just with better furniture and background music.