Category Archives: WoW

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.

The invincible mage

Ever since my article of last week, I had this idea for a comic in my mind and last night I finally found the time to have a go. I’m not a versed comic maker like Liala (check out her awesome Orc detective story), but it seems like a great way to close some of this and last week’s hottest blog discussions (and was loads of fun to create). I don’t think much explanation is needed. 😉

A very happy weekend to you – and all you tanks, healers and damage dealers out there!

Tired of the Holy Trinity – Guild Wars 2

I admit that I’ve never been much into Guild Wars. When the game launched in spring 2005, I browsed some previews and while it looked visually impressive, things like play style, non-persistent world and the initially very low level cap put me off. Also, there was another very promising MMO title just about to launch: World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment. The rest is history.

6 years later, I’m looking back on my time in Azeroth with a very fed-up feeling of “been there done that” which is a natural thing, I would think, after playing the same game for such a long period. I had a great time with WoW for as long as it lasted, it’s been a formidable ride – and an eye opener, in more ways than one.

But I’m a gamer; I’ve played games before WoW and will be playing them after WoW, I’m not looking to stick to a company. I want good games. Several times during my ride, I’ve ventured into other realms, sometimes for a week or two, sometimes for months. On the way I’ve fallen in love with aspects of other online games, like the vast and beautiful maps in Age of Conan or the wicked race that are the Arisen in Allods. But MMOs need to be more than a great race or nice world – they need to be a polished package.

So now that WoW is the past, what do I want from the next AAA-MMO? The other day, Tesh asked what themes outside the classic fantasy genre might attract the crowd. I’d certainly be intrigued to see promising Steampunk concepts realised someday, but I’m not all that fussed about a change of setting: I love fantasy RPGs and MMOs. I would play Eve Online in a heartbeat if it wasn’t set in space; I want magic and swords and dragons. I want fairy woods and dark caves.

I’m not even sure I want all that many big changes in this genre; I think I want small changes and innovations. I probably know a lot better what I do not want from my next MMO than what I do want. When I draw my conclusions on World of Warcraft, the most pressing matter that comes to mind is that I want future fantasy MMOs to outgrow some of the genre’s most stale mechanics: I want them to outgrow the holy trinity.

Tired of the Holy Trinity

The Holy Trinity – tanks, healers, damage dealers. The bane of guild recruitment, the disturber of peace in raidguilds, the headache of group setup, the killer of spontaneous cooperative fun. But “players want class identity”, they say…….and playstyle versatility, and group flexibility, and be able to solo, and do well in PVP.
WoW solves the obvious dilemma with hybrids and dualspec, by abandoning key abilities or handing out an even share of everything to everybody – their famed “bring the player, not the class” credo. Yet with that, class identity is down the drain, 10 classes or not.

The saddest part is, that for all their good intentions, the “bring the player not the class” concept couldn’t be further from reality in WoW: raid guilds are still struggling to recruit particular classes for a balanced roster, a DPS still sits in the LFG queue for 20 minutes easily on an average weekday and if your mates want to run a 5man heroic and happen to be a rogue, mage and 3 warriors, they’re out of luck and better have alts. Bring the player? I don’t think so.

The existence of hybrids or dualspecs does not automatically make for versatile gameplay or flexibility. Never has an MMO been more about cookie cutters and min-maxing than World of Warcraft. Never have classes been more about just one thing: healers staring at healthbars, DPS tied to fixed rotations to squeeze out every last bit of damage, tanks playing aggro whack-a-mole. Never have raid guilds been more pressed to make the constant, unhappy choice between good raider vs. friend.

A breath of fresh air

During my 6-months visit to Hyboria, the thing that I enjoyed most about playing a priest, was that healing in Age of Conan is so limited: you have three direct healing spells only: 1 direct heal, 1 AoE, 1 HoT. Some heals come with a CD, most of them are local rather than having you target a specific health bar. None of the heals is strong enough to make healing an essential part of an encounter. That’s why priests in AoC are also main CCers, fulfilling a lot more functions in order to prevent and absorb potential damage. And they add needed extra auto-healing via damage dealing.

Quite a lot of jobs for one class only – quite a refreshing versatility for a healer. Now, you could say that a hybrid in WoW can perform 3-4 roles as well, but that’s the question really: when do they? How many times does a hybrid actually get to play like a hybrid during a 5man run or raid, inside the same encounter (let’s forget for a minute, that you can’t switch specs in combat anyway)? I’ve healed WoW raid bosses for almost 6 years; I know healers get to stare at healthbars, with the odd cleansing on the side and very rare, insignificant CC job. A good old resto druid could be in a raid for 4 hours and never switch out of treeform once.

If you want players to make use of their versatility, you need to design gameplay to require it in a meaningful way. WoW does not require players to play that way: healers are healers, DPS optimize output, tanks tank. And they better all excel at the one thing and be efficient. If you respec from healer to tank, you do this outside an encounter, like relogging to an alt.

Summing up

“Bring the player, not the class” is an illusion in WoW. Despite featuring 10 classes, it doesn’t provide you with class identity so much as with role identity. This role identity is so strong that it’s limiting players more than ever, despite Blizzard trying to balance the game to bring players, rather than classes. Potential flexibility and versatility both suffer in the process and players and guilds are constantly forced to make decisions between whom they can play with and whom they’d like to play with. How is this what MMO players want?

Not that other MMOs haven’t failed at either or both before; WoW has done a lot more than most here. But what it’s really shown us is that identity is not synonymous with different classes available and having talents and specs is not synonymous with versatile or flexible gameplay. The only thing we know is that players want many things. Maybe the future lies in a different approach.

Why can’t we have fun like the FPS players?

Somewhere down the line it was established that MMORPGS need to be about archetypes in order to allow for class identity and character development. So far, so good. Classes aren’t the same as roles though – where does it say that you need the holy trinity in order to guarantee for identity? And how is it fun to wait on a healer or tank for 30 minutes when you could be playing with friends?

Half of the challenge to raid in World of Warcraft or beat the average encounter, is not actually about mastering the fight itself but about setting up for it. It starts with recruitment and roster headaches and goes right down to raid night preparations and balance checks. Did you bring the right setup? Are there enough tanks/DPS/healers for this or should somebody respec? Are the right classes doing the right thing at the right position? Can’t that hunter squeeze out a little more damage?

What about the boss? Do you remember his name and how he looks like?

Which finally brings me back to Guild Wars, or more precisely to Guild Wars 2 and a fascinating and insightful article on what they intend to do about healing (and death) in their upcoming MMO sequel. Some of it has struck such a chord with me that I want to highlight a few quotes in more detail in the next paragraph.

Spinks recently asked why MMO players cannot have the same cooperative fun like FPS clans do. I’ll ask the same: why can’t we? Fantasy MMOs and online shooters might be different in player character approach, but there’s no reason why MMO gamers cannot develop and be fond of their avatars and have what other gamers enjoy.

Guild Wars 2: The answer to the dilemma?

NC Soft announced the launch of Guild Wars 2 for 2012, planning to dedicate all of this year to intense testing and modifications. Like its first installment, the game art is visually stunning and things like animations and spell effects already look out of this world. The overall concept and races are not everyone’s cup of coffee though – neither is the active combat system which frightens many a classic RPG gamer. Still, if you have any interest in the MMO market and game development as a whole, you will want to risk a second glance and see what the devs there are up to. Here’s what they have to say about the holy trinity and why there won’t be a dedicated healer in Guild Wars 2:

[…]Simple systems like this, along with cross-profession combos, and the dedicated healing skill slot, help free players from the MMORPG shackles, and let us break the mold even more. We’re making players more self sufficient, but are also providing appealing ways for them to effortlessly work together to create a more inspired moment-to-moment experience. That is why Guild Wars 2 does not have a dedicated healing class.
Everyone take a deep breath. It’s going to be OK.

(If you’re already worried, I suggest you follow that advice now. Breathe.)

Support players want to be able to say, “Remember that one time when I saved you from certain death?” They want to stand in the line of fire and block attacks. They want to surround their allies with a swirling dome of air that keeps enemy projectiles from passing through it. It’s not about clicking on a health bar and watching it go up, it’s about being there for your friends when they need you.

Finally somebody said it: Healing is only one aspect of support – the last and most reactive part of it. What about all that time that passes beforehand? Why are healers just standing there, waiting for the inevitable to happen? Why is there an ‘”inevitable”? What about debuffs, interrupts, CC, absorbtion – why are these things not the main focus of support, making a job much more diverse and fun in the process? Why would a supporter only stare at his ally?

Heal: Don’t belittle the SUPPORT role by calling it heal. Healing is the least dynamic kind of support there is. It is reactive instead of proactive. Healing is for when you are already losing. In Guild Wars 2 we prefer that you support your allies before they take a beating. Sure, there are some healing spells in Guild Wars 2, but they make up a small portion of the support lines that are spread throughout the professions. Other kinds of support include buffs, active defense, and cross-profession combinations. […]

We keep hearing other MMO developers espousing the “holy trinity” of DPS/ heal/tank with such reverence, as if this is the most entertaining combat they have ever played. Frankly, we don’t like sitting around spamming “looking for healer” to global chat. That feels an awful lot like preparing to have fun instead of having fun.

A thing that never seizes to baffle me personally, is the strict separation of abilities between roles, in WoW and most other MMOs: You have this powerful caster standing next to you in a 5man party, that magic spellweaver – and all he really does for the group is deal damage, besides few more mob-centric abilities. While his allies fall left and right, while his healer is about to die horribly, he stands there hurling firebolts at the enemy, unable to do anything about much more pressing matters.

As a child of fairytales, sword & sorcery books, tabletops and classic RPGs, I need to ask: in which fantasy setting is this “realistic”? If I hear “mage”, I see Raistlin from the Dragonlance series; I see a magic wielder capable to do many things for his group, from grilling or sleeping foes, to casting shields on his allies and calling them back from the dead. I’m also pretty sure Gandalf didn’t wiggle his finger at the fellowship, saying “sorry guys, arcane spec only”.

Fantasy classes can be defined and still be a lot more dynamic in their roles than what I’ve seen these past few years. MMOs should be about players vs. the encounter, not players battling the boundaries of their individual class or role.

Ultimately, DPS/heal/tank just didn’t cut it in our book…er, game. Our players demand more from Guild Wars 2 and we intend to deliver on that demand instead of delivering more of the same. Not only is the trinity very formulaic, but it leaves out a lot of gameplay elements that make many other games so much fun.

Fun. It seems to me that NC Soft got this one right: games should be about fun. And more than anything, MMOs are about cooperative fun – fantastic settings, classes and personal investment yes, but these things should not restrict one another. You should never have to choose between setup and playing with whom you’d like to play. You should not have to sit around waiting for the game to actually start. You should have to fight bosses, not yourself or each other (PVP aside).

Remember how much fun it was to play a coop game in good old Mario Bros? Or to clear stages together in Metal Slug or Contra? Why should this kind of pick-up play be exclusive to genre or platform?

You can be a mage, a warrior, a hunter, a bard, with clear distinctive mechanisms and abilities and still be flexible enough to party with any combination of other players. You can be self-sufficient and have a variety of skills available that do not only enable you to fulfill a role but react in a smart way to whatever the encounter demands, rather than blindly following one rotation or script. You can be a complete player, rather than a fifth of a whole – and this will force developers to create interesting encounter dynamics that actually challenge the players, not their group setup. It will force them to think about proper cooperative challenges.

You can have all these things if game design does not only allow but require you to. You can have all these things without a holier-than-thou trinity.

The future is change

It’s way too early to judge where Guild Wars 2 will be a year from now; but I am excited and dare say this is good news – possibly the best news I’ve heard in a long time. If you take some time to go through the entire article on their official site, you will see that the developers do not only have plans to change how healing works, but make adjustments to the tanking role too and the significance of death in the game. I’m suprised to hear myself say it, but I’m open to that concept too.

I hope we get to see more developers thinking out of the box, especially in the fantasy MMO genre – looking to keep core values while adopting and improving what makes online and cooperative gaming so much fun for millions of players worldwide. Learning from others is just as important as learning from the past. I welcome the changes ahead and salute those who dare to move forward.

Rift souls for WoW brains

I had this long wall of text ready to publish yesterday, on how much I look forward to play future MMOs without the holy trinity – and then blogger ate my post and I couldn’t find any way to recover it – of course. *sigh* That convinced me I should rather be playing Rift than write silly posts, y’know basically a sign from above, and now I’m not even sure whether I have the heart to rewrite it all. I hate it when that happens, where’s the time machine when you really need it?

Anyway, there I was trying to break down Rift’s class system in a comprehensible way to one of my mates the other night, feeling ready to jump off the next cliff after approximately 10 minutes. Yeah I get it, the class system is a little more complex than in World of Warcraft – that’s why it’s fun. But it’s really not all that hard to understand, a trained monkey could grasp the concept pretty soon. To which my mate then replied: “what about Warcraft players?”.

Ummmm..

Before you reach the inevitable conclusion that said comment was actually offensive, it was made by somebody who’s played WoW himself for a long time – and arguing with such deprecating self-irony is kinda hard. I have also been told that I am made of pure evil for successfully luring people into giving Rift a go, making one of them buy an new shiny PC just to be able to run it properly, so apparently I don’t get to argue. Riiight, don’t blame me now, MMO players are all the same desperate bunch, muah muah!

I get where this is coming from though: when you jump into Rift, there’s all that talk of callings, souls, roles, subclasses, planar charges and ye olde Warcraft player that you are, you’ve simply forgotten all about how it feels to start a brand new game and that initial confusion is part of the experience (and fun).

That’s okay! /pat

There are currently a few Rift resources in the making, but nobody likes to go and search half-baked databases when starting off with a new game. Also: Wiki articles are often cryptic and have the potential to scare you off rather than to help – now that would be a real shame. So, what is it with this class-soul-role mumbo-jumbo in Rift? Here’s my breakdown in 3 easy steps.

Rift – Callings, Souls and Roles

1. Callings (Azerothian: classes)

There are 4 main callings or class archetypes in Rift: Warriors, Rogues, Mages and Clerics. This is the initial choice you will make when creating your character and cannot be reversed at any point in the game. Each of these archetypes offers 8 sub-classes or talent trees which are called souls in Rift.

2. Souls (Azerothian: talent trees)

Your very first quest at level 1 will let you gather your first out of 8 souls. Don’t worry about that choice too much because already at level 13 you will be able to get them all and switch around.

Your character can equip 3 souls at any given time. That means your talent chart looks very similar to WoW where each class has 3 trees to fill points in. The main difference is that you have 8 trees available in Rift and it’s your choice which ones to play with and when. The game wants classes to have access to a lot of variety in playstyles and encourages you to experiment and respec often.

So, if you roll cleric in Rift for example, you can play any combination of 8 souls: you can be Druid/Cabalist/Warden or an Inquisitor/Justicar/Sentinel – just to name two options. It’s up to you what “trinity” to set for. That makes for a stunning 56 unique build combinations available (more including PVP souls) per class. And then it’s still up to you how you spread your talent points within those combinations. Ideally, you still want to focus on one main tree at least, in order to get access to the powerful endtalents.

3. Roles (Azerothian: specs)

At some point you will tire of respeccing in order to switch or re-build your specs; you will want to have different talent and soul combinations ready to play, depending on whether you play solo, in a 5man or PVP. Every Rift class has variety of functions available, from tanking, to dps, support and healing. This is where roles come into play: a role is Rift’s equivalent to WoW’s dualspec, it let’s you save more than one talent spec at a time and switch between them easily, anytime and anywhere. Your first extra role will cost you 30 gold which roughly equals 30 WoW silver – so it’s very cheap.

You can both respec and purchase extra roles at your class trainer. Note that while you’re leveling up, you must buy your new skill ranks individually for each spec and can only do this while the role is active (so it’s a good idea to switch while you’re at the trainer).
Furthermore, you do not only have two roles available in Rift, but can get up to a total of 4 saved talent builds which you can re-name individually to keep track. This is another testimony to Rift’s class versatility and flexibility. Knock yourself out!

Useful resources (Azerothian: wowhead & co.)

That’s pretty much it! Not so hard now, is it? If you’re still looking for more info on something, have a look at the following, more and less useful Rift resources and Wikis. Keep in mind that the game has only just launched while browsing.

You might want to visit:

If anyone is using different pages or has other tips in general, I’m happy to hear about them. I have not actually had the time yet to look into any Rift forums and I don’t even know whether there are official realm and class forums or not. Exciting times! ^^

Frivolous Friday Roundup

It’s Frivolous Friday time and I dare say the blogosphere needs it, what a gloomy week it’s been in places. Or maybe you took time off from it all and had fun exploring the world of Telara, like I did – but that doesn’t really solve the issue of the major apathy and disillusionment WoW players are currently facing over Cataclysm. Is this really all that’s left of World of Warcraft? 25man raiding dying, guilds struggling to recruit, Blizzard recycling old content while a few more vanity items and achievements are being installed on the side?

“Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow. The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. How did it come to this?” [The Lord of the Rings, King Theoden]

How did it come to this? What has happened to Azeroth, that colorful, perfect second world for so many players worldwide, once so filled with wonder, camaraderie and adventure? Is the time of WoW coming to an end, as so many of us have felt on a personal level lately – or have we as a generation of longtimers simply outgrown the game? Every MMO, even one as popular as World of Warcraft, can only attract a playerbase for so long. No doubt this is not the end for Blizzard, but maybe it’s simply the end for many a veteran who feels let down by Cataclysm.

Frivolous Friday Roundup

Well, some bloggers are still enjoying themselves out there in Azeroth. They choose to focus on what’s there rather than on what there is not – on little things, mysterious and cheerful as can still be found by those who look for them. Among all the gloominess their posts have stood out to me this week, so entirely untouched by what almost sounds like the end of days. It’s not all bad raids and lackluster patches. And since my own Frivolous Friday contribution would only convince you to buy Rift and go dye all your gear in various colors, I shall let these three speak for me this time. (I will tell you about those wonderful dyes soon enough!)

While the future of WoW might be uncertain, one thing you can always count on is Issy putting a smile on your face. Sunny and cheerful, she lets her readers in on what makes WoW real to her and still worth playing, so check out her most recent articles of this week.

Strange things are afoot and Zinn has a special gift to spot them. While countless players are rushing through the game, never taking a moment to ponder the world around them, Zinn keeps her own mystery files on what’s being quirky and odd in Azeroth – from floating catheads to strange glowing men, uh oh!

Angelya is saving baby murlocs in Blasted Lands, a quest I must admit I never heard of myself. As the murlocs embark on their journey across the sea, she wonders about what might lie across, distant places yet to be discovered on the landmap of WoW. To think that we might not have seen and explored all of that world is a strangely encouraging thought, a space to dream in this otherwise so exhausted fantasy.

A good weekend to you all – be it on Azeroth, Telara or planet earth. Wherever you are, don’t forget to take a look around sometime for the little things that make your world good and special, no matter how tiny or silly they may be.

Your blog on the world map

What started as a creative brainstorming between myself and Larísa a few days ago in a topic on second language blogging, is beginning to take shape in the hands of enthusiastic Rebecca at the MMO Melting Pot. The crew over there has been very busy the past weeks, giving the page layout a basic overhaul and adjusting their blogroll – and that’s why clearly, they needed more work on top of it!

It’s great to see at what speed this idea was taken up, but what’s needed for this to happen now is your input and support. Do you want to add your MMO blog to a united blogosphere world map? Did you ever wonder who your blogging neighbours might be? Then it’s time to head over to the Melting Pot and leave your feedback and suggestions for Rebecca and the rest of the team!

Personally I’d love to see this in action and I hear there are cookies involved.
Leave your vote today folks (no vote makes Squirrel sad)!

Guild application forms – A thing of the past?

A while ago we had a rather interesting debate among the officers in our guild, regarding our current application form for 25man raid applicants. As you can see we’re pretty standard in that respect – our form covers all obligatory bases such as age, location, spec and raid times, and also a few more things that we believe should provide us with some useful information on potential tralists. As simple and similar as these forms usually look, we’ve actually talked about ours time and again the past years and alterations were made over time, or rather a lot of cuts. (Personally I still think we’re missing the really essential questions, but that’s another matter!)

What stuck out in the last dicussion however, was the suggestion to consider abandoning our guild application form altogether. No more written forms to fill out, rather grab potential members on ventrilo for a personal chat and invite them to a trial 5man heroic or other run to see how they do there and then. Quite a drastic change of procedure and one I have thought about ever since.

Sense and non-sense of application forms

I can see why a more personal approach to the whole application process is beneficial for more serious raidguilds. Written forms only tell you so much and more often than not, an applicant will leave blank spaces or important questions unanswered or ambiguous, so that the time investment to get back to him and all the subsequent emailing take up lots of extra time. This makes the efficiency of the whole procedure debatable.

I’ve also raised an eyebrow before at forms on other guild pages: I’m all for a bit of jolly good fun, but a questionnaire with half the questions revolving around what my favourite color is or whether I prefer Robocop or Batman, makes me wonder whose time is being wasted more here – mine or the guild’s.
It’s obviously very depending on your guild style and purpose but if you ask people to go through a written procedure, you shouldn’t stretch things for no good reason in my opinion.

A questionnaire should be as long needed and no longer than necessary; open questions provide more in-depth information than multiple choice or yes/no and personal questions should serve some guild-related purpose. I guess here too, specific questions on sex or age for example are debatable: what exactly do you expect to get from this answer? Does it influence a decision in any way at all?

A good application form certainly takes some time to work out and ponder over – and yet it will never achieve to satisfy all a guild wants to know. Nothing beats personal contact and experience. And yet in this case, I am for keeping written forms for the following reasons:

Show of effort. Over the years I have seen huge, baffling disparities between the effort and attention applicants were willing to put into our questionnaire. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you take 15 minutes to think about why you want to join your future raid guild. We don’t ask you to come up with stuff of your own, the questions are already there – so how hard is it really? The written application is the very first impression a member can make and it’s an important one. I’m not saying it speaks a 100% for all else to come, but if a person leaves half the form empty or includes leetspeak in every second line, I’ve seen enough. On the other hand, I remember several WoT-applications from the past which were some of the most dedicated texts I’ve ever read; all of them became valued, longterm members of our guild.
Dubious participation. I’m a big spokesperson of this: guildmembers are required to read a forum regularly and also participate actively in ongoing, important discussions. What are the chances really that somebody already too lazy to fill out an application form is going to regularly participate in a guild forum? Filling out an app is only the start, pal!
Rough pre-selection. If nothing else, a short questionnaire helps you to sift the painfully obvious non-candidates. If somebody can already not attend your raid nights, is unwilling to use voicecomm or turns out to be a major asshat for some reason, there’s no need to continue the exchange. Save yourself and him time. Also: minimize the risks to yourself (and your guildbank).
Member feedback. In our guildforum all applications get re-published for member feedback. Sometimes members do actually know applicants from past experience or have some other valuable information to share. Their voice is always considered in our application process. Without any written form it’s unikely that you get a larger part of the guild to review your applicants.

Nothing’s to say that you cannot have a more personal chat with a potential trialist besides this – if your team is willing and able to regularly dedicate extra time to the process, that’s great. Realistically speaking, I still think you want to hold on to some way of written information and pre-selection.

A look ahead

All things considered, I’m all for thinking out of the box when it comes to the future of guild applications. In a more hypothetical past article, I’ve mused on raidguilds using entry fees in order to pre-select potential members. Certainly the whole process between opening a guild recruitment topic and making first contact with new members, can be refined and simplifyed a great deal more.

So far, I’ve not actually heard of any guild who’s managed a groundbreaking progress in this department though, at least not without a substantial increase of officer time involved. Maybe the good old application letter has survived this long for a reason?

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©!

The end of the road

Checking back on the blogosphere halfway through my little holiday break, I was gutted to read that Tamarind and Chastity announced their resignation from Righteous Orbs (if not from the blogosphere entirely…yeah you better not, we know where you live! or something) the other day. And I can’t help but find myself sigh a “not again” in resignation, because I’ve been reading far too many farewells this past week.

Beruthiel suggested a great way to honor the passing of such a cherished blog and its widely respected writers, is to include some cheerful or fun article of your own in the days to come, in honor of the witty and funny articles we were used to reading from RO. And while I agree with the sentiment wholeheartedly, I simply cannot be cheerful right now. I know, I will at some point, but it’s way too early for me – I want to sulk and mourn.

The truth is, I am a silly and frivolous person; I like making fun of others, as much as of myself. I love sarcasm and puns and generally delight in silly things and dark humor. Life is way too short and ridiculous to be so damn serious all the time. If you can make me laugh, you’re pretty much in my good books.
So, as a blog reader too, I keep scouting for WoW blogs that make their readers smile. There are more informative and commentary blogs out there than I can keep track of, good ones too and I read them regularly – but there’s only so much information and advice I need on WoW or Blizzard.

The posts that will always stand out to me are the daring; the personal writers that share their joys or loathing (and both in equal quantity) with their audience, the ones that allow themselves to be silly and creative, witty and funny for the sake of entertainment. Needless to say what a loss RO will be in that respect. When I created this blog, it was for the sole purpose of enjoying myself – and that someday somewhere, one of my articles might make a reader laugh in a similar way I have laughed reading their blog every week. If I achieved this, if I could say that at some point in the far future, a few readers enjoyed a post of mine that made them smile or chuckle in the morning on their way to work, I would be happy. That would be enough for me – and it still is. RO was a great example for me, a source of inspiration to look up to and find motivation for my own writing.

The end of all things

The reason why I am dedicating a whole, rather long article on a goodbye is not just me being sulky and selfish – luckily the blogosphere is full of fellow writers I respect and enjoy reading for my own reasons. I am only just beginning to get to know some of them better, while I discover new and great blogs every week that will hopefully stick around. Oh and: hereby I encourage all of you to dare be silly and playful on your blog sometime and whenever you feel like it!

The underlying theme for me is the topic of goodbyes in and around World of Warcraft. Saying goodbye is such a controversy in most MMOs; it’s almost like a taboo not to talk about leaving the game until you leave it – and then disappear quickly from the midst of everyone else, short term and long term buddies alike, popping like a bubble in mid-air.

We all know that we will not play this game forever. We all know in general, that all things must come to an end. And yet, for as long as people are playing WoW in their casual circles or raid guilds, they never utter that most feared and loathed of words: we all act as if we’re here to stay forever. If we read goodbye posts of guild mates that take us by surprise, we joke and secretly think “he’ll be back”, and often we are quite right about that. If we refer to “that time” after WoW, it’s some obscure era in that “real life current” that sucks everyone back in sooner or later. Mates leave and sometimes we mourn their passing for a while, wondering about the true nature of online friendship, until our time has come and we disappear too.

“None of us will play WoW forever”: this overly obvious sentence has the potential to leave a shocked silence depending on where you say it and when. You do know that, right? That includes you, too. But for now, let’s not speak about it. Let’s be those “other people”, utterly free and remote from the course of time, life’s constant changes and changing expectations.

I’ve a hard time thinking of similar social behavior for other activities or clubs where leaving is such a break of contract, happening so entirely and abruptly like it’s often the case when members leave an MMO community. Maybe it’s because most of us do plunge themselves so fully into their alter egos after all, that illusion of a second life and world in which, RPers or not, we are all a little bit “in character” for as long as we’re playing. And if someone leaves that circle, he better be gone entirely; half-assed departures are usually frowned upon as weird as it seems. You could think that if you enjoyed somebody’s company, any casual logging in or sign of that person would be better than nothing – but that’s not how it works usually. You’re either with us or not, pal! Uhhh…

Do you know when you will stop playing WoW? Do you think about it sometime and does it make you feel uncomfortable to leave people behind? Or do you already think about what will come after, like I’ve actually heard some of my guildmates do when they talk about their life and plans for “post-WoW”?

Ripping off the plaster

In the past week, two of my longterm WoW guildmates and core members have announced their leave from the game. I doubt they will be the last ones, Cataclysm just doesn’t do it anymore for many raiders. Both were rather abrupt announcements, even if thinking about it some longer made it somewhat less of a surprise.

When it comes to leaving your longterm WoW guild or online community, the best option for most people seems to be to do it quickly: like ripping off a plaster from a wound. You know it’s gonna hurt, you know it’s always gonna be uncomfortable – it’s not like you’re enjoying yourself. So do it quickly. Then, get the hell away from everybody, catch your breath and sigh out in relief. That’s when you know it was the right thing to do: when leaving feels like a load lifted off your chest.

I’ve seen the plaster ripped off many times in these past years of WoW, I’ve seen it done at least four times over this week. And as quick and harsh as it might be when it happens, I dont blame anyone for it one bit. To all of them, I wish the most sincere and best of luck with whatever they might be doing in the future – in that new era of “post-WoW”. All of their reasons I can understand very well.

But I will still be gloomy and sulky for a little, staring at their empty spot and wishing they were still here with the rest of us. Until one day it’s time to rip off my own plaster and hit the road.

Busy times and meta ramblings

In the midst of Cataclysm tribulations, 25man progress and recruitment, our raidguild Adrenaline has finally launched their new shiny website portal, mark 3.0. Stumps and myself have been struggling to get this live for a while and after long discussions and browsing for a new portal software that delivers the whole guild package, we’ve moved away from EQdkp Plus and on to Guildomatic.

The site is still undergoing some technical overhauls but I absolutely love the much slimmer layout and simple funtionality. I’m happy that the original Adrenaline logo I created for the guild some years ago, has made it into the new era – I spent a couple of hours shaping this up and moving away from frosty WotLK. In the meantime, Stumps got us our very own domain name and the entire guild is currently partaking in the ongoing recruitment process. Things are looking up there a little with a few promising candidates having applied just recently (we’re still looking for a couple more though! /hinthint)

This Blog here

Raging Monkeys is due its regular header overhaul real soon. I’m getting tired of Santadorf now (no offense, Grumps!), I am thinking Easter is going to be the upcoming theme. And I realize most of you, my dear readers, actually access this blog by feedreader and never get to see what I’m doing there. But I’m having fun with it myself, so it’s all good. I’d like Raging Monkeys to be a living thing that changes along with the seasons.

While a dedicated domain for the blog too is maybe worth thinking about in the future, I’ve gone and made sure Raging Monkeys is friendly towards mobile reading. I only just recently got (had to get) a smartphone myself and after realizing how tedious blogreading gets on small screen, I rushed to fix this.
Like Windsoar says, making your blog mobile friendly shouldn’t only be a standard but it’s actually really simple. WordPress has some fancier options, but Blogger offers the same basic function – so techfreak or not, you have no excuse not to do it!

For my fellow co-Blogger-bloggers, how to make your mobile audience happy in 2 easy steps:

1) Log into the Blogger draft version of your blog.
2) Go to “Settings” – “Email & Mobile”, press YES for “Show mobile template” and save settings.

Done! All it does is basically add ?m=1 by default to your blog’s URL for mobile readers. That’s right, in essense and for any blogger blog, adding ?m=1 enables mobile mode and the blog owner isn’t even required to turn it on for you to see. You can obviously help your mobile readers though by enabling it for them.

We’re off exploring!

The posting pace on Raging Monkeys is going to slow down a little for the coming 2 weeks. That’s not because we’re tired of blogging, we aren’t going anywhere – but it’s lovely snow season down here in the alps and since our last holidays together have been over 2 years ago, it was high time Stumps came down for some bobsledding action (I hear them Brits never get to see a proper sledge run!).
Meeting in World of Warcraft is a peculiar thing; you might be friends with someone in the game over the course of many years and never meet, or you might figure out that life is too short and friendship too precious in this life not to try and see whether it can transcend the boundaries of ingame.

We all need a break from work and guilding sometime – we’ll be back fresh and hopefully in one piece to take on the world of WoW once more in mid-February! In the meantime, Grumpy Dorf is going to keep vigil here, warm our seats and feed the squirrel.

Frosty greetings to all of you and enjoy your weekend everybody! We’re off exploring!