MMO Gypsy

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!

Bogus Belt of the Silly Nonsense

So we got ourselves some more shiny loot on Tuesday, as we cleared our way through Bastion of Twilight after a week of many kills and clearing everything up to Nefarian in Blackwing Descent. And I gotta say the raid loot in Cataclysm is a little funny all around..

Almost since week one, we’re sharding 25-30% of the drops. I don’t know if we’re just majorly unlucky (maybe my bad standing with Lady RNG is taking over the guild?) on repetitive drops, but it hurts to already be sharding gear this early into fresh content. Extra shards or not, it’s wrong!

Then, there are the oddly unbalanced loot tables and itemization. It seems Blizzard’s armor department had jolly good fun creating belts of all shapes and colors and headpieces for the expansion and totally forgot about creating more and better choices for other item slots maybe! As a priest healer, stuff like bracers, wands and main hand weapons for example, seem very hard to come by. Jewelry isn’t exactly being sold out on the streets of Stormwind either.
The current BiS staff for probably priests and druids alike (and I fear some DPS too) is a trash drop (!) in Bastion of Twilight. The alternative to that is….a staff from archeology! Riiiiight, do you see me getting that one?

And it’s not just that – have you noticed the names of some of these items? We had a laughing fit last raidnight in the healers channel, reading some of the names our supposedly epic drops of heroic awesomeness are carrying:

Scorched Wormling Vest

Ew! I don’t even wanna imagine how that looks like! Were they at least really shiny, epic wormlings that went into that chestpiece or are we talking gooey sewer dwellers?

Sky Strider Belt of the Faultline
Soul Breath Belt of the Feverflame
Belt of Absolute Zero

Absolute zero? Wait.. as in zero zero?? Really absolutely absolute zero???
And what’s with these clunky long-winded names: Sould Breath Belt of the Feverflame? Whoa, my tiny mind is boggling under the exercise!
And what on earth is Faultline? AM I PLAYING FOOTBALL AGAINST MY WILL NOW?

Gale Rouser Belt of the Undertow

Erm….help me out here English people: Undertow? Now, I know what this word means, in theory, but what exactly is this belt doing? Anyone?

Anyway, we ended up deciding that Bogus Belt of the Silly Nonsense really was as good a name as any for the items currently dropping in Bastion of Twilight and Co. Would you notice much if that belt dropped among Sky Strider Belt of the Faultline and Gale Rouser Belt of the Undertow? And can you say this last sentence 10 times in a row real fast?

Whose MMO am I playing here?

There are innumerable examples of such failed nomenclature to be found on current WoW loot tables. It makes me wonder whether the “naming department” over at Blizzard has been sent off to work out item names for Diablo and Starcraft, along with their music composers. Clumsy, far fetched name-giving like this is one reason why I chose to play the original version of WoW 6 years ago. Right now, it sounds as if English WoW has actually been translated, very badly, from somewhere else. Is the “real World of Warcraft” secretly in Chinese these days and we’re all just playing a bad translation?

Or maybe they’re just running out of ideas in a fantasy MMO. Now that’s not very comforting, is it? “BUT Syl! WoW has been there for 6 years, that’s thousands of ingame items, one can only come up with so many fantastic names!”

Really? I don’t think so. I can’t obviously prove it very well and send you a list of a couple of thousand item names, but I’ll just claim that if it was my job to design things such as these, I would still try and do a little better than some random fantasy-name generator on the internet!

It’s oh so quiet

When I set foot into Bastion of Twilight three weeks ago with my guild, I was excited. I was so curious to see what Blizzard had done with the new instances in Cataclysm. And then, approximately 10 minutes later, I was stunned – by silence.
“Is my headset broken?”, I wondered, checking my USB hub and ingame sound settings. No, the music was definitely turned on, it was even on loop, as it usually is. Ummm okay, maybe the music comes later, you know when we get further in or face our first encounter.

Nope. It stayed silent in the raid instance and now, four dead bosses later, it’s still quiet. And not just that: it’s the same in the other instances too – there is no soundtrack at all! Where is the music in your new raiding content, Blizzard?

Now you might chuckle at this, because you never have your ingame music turned on in WoW. I know many raiders don’t, they consider it distracting or even annoying. And very rarely, when we’re discussing the most complex fight during a wipenight, I will turn my music off too. But most of the time and certainly by default, I enjoy my music in MMOs. It adds immensely to my gaming experience, it makes a raidnight twice as epic and memories of awesome kills last twice as long (we love you, Raggy!), if they were accompanied by an exciting, bloodrushing score. Never will I forget the dark and wonderful symphony meeting us in Black Temple, when we stepped out of the sewer on our way to Supremus; suddenly clearing all those draconic packs on the way didn’t seem quite so tedious. Even Stumps turned his soundtrack on for that part (and that means a lot).

The silence in Bastion of Twilight or Blackwing Descent is absolutely unnerving. I could take long and boring trash or meager decoration, but the acoustic “nothing” I am met with as I enter these places is vexing me in a way I can only describe as wrong.. Soundtrack is an essential part of MMOs, well at least MMORPGs. It adds depth and wonder to fantastic worlds, it makes us sigh in awe the first time we walk through Elwynn Forest. Music and sound satisfy one of our major senses and shape our reality, inside and outside of games. And Blizzard has always been top notch in this regard: WotLK was a wonderful expansion for soundtrack lovers. Up to date I have collected all the music compilations for WoW.

Yet in Cataclysm, music seems to have become a mere afterthought? I already noticed while leveling in the new zones, that there was no “Grizzly Hills” in Cataclysm and no “Stormpeaks”. The only place I can remember for its music, is Mount Hyjal which has lovely tunes in places. But really, is that it? And: am I the only one noticing or caring about this?

It seems at least one guy did notice on MMO Champion’s forums. Overall it seems however, and I probably shouldn’t be surprised, that the vast majority of the playerbase does not consider the lack of music any loss in Cataclysm… For me, the shiny world of WoW, the beautiful maps and soundtrack, have always been essential – the one big veto for WoW; if all fails, there is still that art in the game I can enjoy.
I don’t know what I’ll do if Blizzard slowly takes that shine away too.

Have a good weekend everybody. And remember to listen to some music sometime.

Accepting World of Warcraft

Maybe you know the feeling of stumbling upon a line in a book or quote on a webpage, in a moment when it seems so fitting to your personal situation that it makes the hair on your neck stand erect. As if someone out there in the cosmic pattern of things reached out to you, echoing what you think or feel. As if that line had been written just for you, no matter how long ago or by whom.

I’m sucker for words and language. I carry a mental library of quotes and poems in my head and take them with me wherever I go, like precious jewels helping me on the way (“may it be a light for you in dark places”). In moments where a well-timed word hits me like a truck, I get the proverbial goosebumps. Some might consider me a geek because I play online games but oh, you’ve no idea where my real geekdom lies, it’s in literature.

It’s difficult times in WoW at the moment, for our own raidguild that is currently struggling to recruit and keep a 25man agenda going, but also on a larger scale many players and guilds currently ask uncomfortable, inevitable questions about themselves or the game. The ever-lasting dilemma of the “social and friendly guild” who’d still like to attract serious raiders, is one of them. Another is the old question about class balance in WoW versus identity and loss of immersion. Yet another that will always wind us up, is the question of accessibility in your mainstream MMO and how that has killed the sense of epic achievement for the average gamer – or to put it even more extremely, like Wolfshead does, has created the worst MMO community ever in the history of the genre.

While players will never agree on these matters (and it’s probably a good thing or WoW blogs would be posting a lot less), we can agree that Blizzard have changed the face of the MMO genre forever, by opening WoW to a mainstream audience with a low gaming background on average. The genre has taken a big shift and it’s true that compared to classic MMORPGs, WoW has simply decided to go down a new path, for better and for worse (I can easily think of improvements here too).
To sum it up for the oldschool players and all those concerned, vexed or outraged:

Yes, WoW allows for more casual play than any MMO before. It also has a lot less annoying timesinks, to be fair.
Yes, there’s not much “RPG” in WoW.
Yes, WoW is very item/loot-centric, rather than lore-centric for example.
Yes, WoW favors bringing players rather than classes, thus inevitably gimping the identity associated with “class”.
Yes, WoW is more solo-friendly and therefore, by design, enforces a lot less cooperation, a lot less “MM” in the MMO. This doesn’t mean it discourages cooperation.
Yes, so much freedom has probably lead to a wild mix of players in WoW of whom many do not actually care for the same values a classic online gamer cares for. They pay subscriptions too though.
Yes, all of us are subject to these changes, whether we like it or not.

I won’t disagree with any of that, I have been disillusioned with some of these aspects in WoW just like other, long-time gamers have. However, I am not grumpy anymore and I’m not disappointed by Cataclysm. I am in fact surprised that anyone would be: did you really expect Blizzard to change their trend of 6 years in the new expansion? Huh?

Which brings me back to the quote I read this morning. It’s doubly dear to me, for it is in fact taken from my alltime favourite fantasy series on which the name of my WoW avatar (and nickname of many years before), Syl, goes back. I haven’t read them in a while (I usually re-read them at least once or twice a year though), and this just seemed so fitting –

“Hope is the denial of reality. It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse to keep him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it.”

“Are you saying we shouldn’t hope?”

“I’m saying we should remove the carrot and walk forward with our eyes open!” [M. Weis / T. Hickman; The Dragonlance Chronicles]

If there’s something humankind is good at, then it’s the denial of what we don’t want to see or be. If we don’t accept reality a little longer, surely things won’t be quite as bad – maybe they will even magically change and adapt to our will. And while we’re doing this silly exercise, we lose something very precious: we lose time. Time to face the truth and act. Time to look for options maybe, that can still resolve our situation. Sometimes, living the dream is preferable to reality; reality however, is going to catch up sooner or later and when it does, it hurts doubly so.

I don’t believe in prolonging the inevitable. That said, judging when the “inevitable” applies, can be hard. I have colored glasses of my own, just like everyone else does, I am not the master of things to come. Yet, if I have to choose between accepting a sucky truth or standing around dreaming a little longer, I will always prefer the first option. Just like I would rather have you tell me how much I annoy you rather than blowing smoke up my ass (bring on the hate mail!).

Removing the carrot

How does all this rambling lead to WoW? My message for the day goes to Wolfshead (whose critical articles I appreciate very much) and all the unhappy WoW players out there:

Time to face truth, friends. You’ve had 6 years now and surely, that is enough to accept and understand the basic concept of WoW. Years of proof have shown that WoW is not your classic MMORPG and that it will follow its own course in the future. The things that annoy you about it, they will only get “worse”. Blizzard does not care to serve an older definition of the genre. You can stop hoping now and face reality or you can be disappointed after every content patch or expansion. Why do this to yourself though? Why chase the carrot?

By all means do criticize; but winding yourself up over fundamental aspects of the game is waste of breath. You need to accept they are there, and there to stay. You won’t change Blizzard’s mind. It might hurt to accept it, but: WoW is not designed to suit you – and it’s not personal. Once more with feeling:

WoW is not designed to suit you!

I remember back in vanilla WoW, I had a few classic gamer buddies all leaving the game sometime before TBC hit, for the same reason: “This game is only about loot. This game is not our MMORPG.” They figured that out 5 years ago and they were consequent about it. WoW failed to be what die-hard UO, EQ or DAoC players were looking for – and so they left. They’re playing other games now, like EVE Online which is possibly the geekiest and most elitist MMO out there at the moment. And it’s sandbox. And the devs do not care one bit about players whining that things are too hard.

You can make the same choice, the customer’s ultimate statement: stop paying. Or you can accept reality and still enjoy the few aspects in WoW you care about, if there are any.

Personally, I am done making myself unhappy: I choose to take WoW for what it is in Cataclysm. I know that WoW is a chatroom with epics, I know it’s a world of collectors and whiners, I know it’s a parodist fantasy world at best, the Discworld of its genre.
WoW will never be my perfect MMORPG; but it still holds some attraction for me and things I enjoy doing, like exploring a shiny world or raiding with friends I’ve known for years. I can live with that and kiss my carrot goodbye. I can probably even accept the reality of 10man raiding, if that is what the future holds for Adrenaline. I will go into it with open eyes and make the best out of it, just like we always have. For now, we’re evaluating our options.

P.S. To all those who were crossing their fingers on behalf of my loot luck after my last posting, I can update you that Lady RNG has of course not changed her mind about my case (thanks though!). I have however successfully “farmed” the auction house since then and finally added that Oozeling to my collection. Accepting reality ftw.

Lady RNG hates me and I hate her right back!

Disclaimer: The following article contains an excessive amount of foul language. And loathing. Lots of loathing. Hide the kittens.

I am insanely frustrated with my loot luck at the moment. And I know what you must be thinking right now, “we’ve all been there” – but NO, you really haven’t. Trust me! On a scale of 1 to 10, my loot luck in WoW is a reliable infinitesimal. If there’s something I want real bad, it will absolutely take me ages to acquire, no matter how frequent everybody else claims the item’s dropping or how damn easy it supposedly is to farm. That is, if I’m going to get it at all: I have been known to return in the next expansion (yes I am looking at you, Staff of Immaculate Recovery!). I might have loot luck from hell but I got a persistence to match it.

I don’t know what it is with me and Lady RNG (to whom, by the by, I’m referring to in broad generalization for all that is random in WoW, for the nitpickers out there); somehow we’ve never been close friends. As far as I remember I’ve never stepped on her toes, but I’m starting to wonder if we’ve worn the same dress to the same party or something.
I probably should admit here, that I’m an excessive ‘google-scientist’: Yes I do google….everything! That starts with checking on why that headache I got since last Monday has a slight sting on the left part of my skull, just so I can properly freak myself out (OH NO, I HAVE CANCER!) and get scared shitless reading all the posts which the other self-diagnosing and totally not paranoid strangers out there have left on the subject, in some dodgy webforum (with animated gifs).

And really, it’s the same with wowhead comments and similar sites too: if you wanna get real miserable real fast, go and read just how lucky some people are with loot drops and how “easy peasy this dropped for me after 5 minutes”. Take courage from their words and dispair later. In his novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the brilliant Jonathan Safran Foer writes “…I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it”. My personal equivalent to this goes: “I’ve googled myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it!”

The immediate reason for my current discontent are the new Cataclysm minipets acquired through Archeology and also the Tol Barad fox pet that can be obtained by killing foxes on the northern half of Tol Barad Island. I don’t know how many damn holes I have dug all over Azeroth by now, but it’s not just that I haven’t gotten any pets yet when everyone else around me, including the crazy cat lady from Elwynn Forest probably, seem to have them by now – it’s that I’m getting NOTHING! As in nada, niente, rien, nichts.
Not a single rare so far, just common fragments enough to fill a museum of lousy fossils nobody would pay to see. And I hate archeology! It’s fucking boring!!! The pets are the only reason I’m putting up with this stupid shovel monotony, just like they’re the only reason for me to touch a fishing pole sometimes or a PuG (eeew..!). I don’t know how people could call this profession addictive. Oh look, the telescope is blinking faster now!…Oh, just get a real hobby already!

Also, I must have killed a thousand foxes or more and they’re not exactly swarming the area. Of course there are plenty of those lovely people on warcraftpets.com sharing their success with the other readers, letting them know just how quickly this dropped after only 30 minutes and how it’s really “not a hard pet to farm at all”. Oh really?! How about a nice cup of STFU with that fox kit?

Yeah, I’m talking myself into a bit of a rage here, bear with me. This is typically my stage three, which means I am somewhere between utter loathing and denial, but I definitely haven’t given up yet. That makes me wonder whether I’m the only WoW player out there with a psychological pattern for loot farming….it’s always the same emotional roller coaster for me – well, maybe you know it too.
Typically, when I start farming a so-called “rare drop” in WoW, I do some research first. Then, once I am properly convinced I know exactly where to go and how to best farm my object of desire, that little voice in my head will start to speak.

For the first 200 mobs or so, the voice goes something like this:

“It’s gonna be fiiiiine! People keep writing how easy this is to get, so I really shouldn’t take me too long. Doesn’t seem to be the rarest drop after all, yeah, an hour max I’d say. I can do that. It will drop tonight, I know it. Yay, go me! Lalalalaaa.”

Then at some point, between 250 and 300 kills, the voice starts taking a slightly edgier tone:

“Easy drop, my ass. I can’t believe I’m still here! Hmmm…it should really drop any moment now, I can feel I’m getting closer! Must not miss a single mob now, every kill is crucial – I’m almost there, YESYES! Come on, my preciousss!”

Past the 500th kill, things start going downhill fast:

“WTF is this shit?! God damn those silly comments on wowhead, oh how I hate them all! I can’t believe they call this an easy drop..hahahaha…riiight! SRSLY? Same shit for me everytime, oh I hate this, I HATE Blizzard!! Is that orc mage just killing my fox over there?!”

Stage 4 is typically the denial stage.
It’s also where utter loathing meets humiliation and where I start bargaining with Lady RNG, as silly as that sounds (it sounds a little bit like Calvin’s letters to Santa). And just like Calvin, I’m also giving reverse psychology a shot, because y’know, you can totally coerce and trick randomness:

“Ahh, I don’t even care anymore! That’s right, just dont drop you piece of shit, I couldn’t care less! Am just killing a few more before going to bed now, and I know it won’t drop – so, watch me prove my point! My loot luck sucks, just like I always say!! &!*(&ç”*)%* /doom !!!

That’s right, I’m actually challenging the arbitrary as if it was some sort of fate. Doesn’t make any sense at all? Won’t stop me. I detest luck in WoW just like in real life: I’m a maker. I don’t know how to lose even though I’m good at saving grace (losing is one thing, being a bad loser is utter fail). The truth is, I absolutely hate failing and I’ll do anything to avoid it. Fortuna however, is laughing in my face; I am utterly helpless there (and frustrated….and spiteful….and sulky).
So usually, after stage 4 or approximately 4 hours of focus-farming, I throw in my towel – for the day. I will return of course, to repeat the silliness from stage one just like Sisyphus and his rock (I bet he hated archeology too). God, I hope I’m not the only WoW player with a little voice up there…surely you got your own weirdo mechanisms to deal with shitty loot luck in MMOs? Anybody??

A prayer to Her Fickleness

This time around, I’ve also resorted to some more extreme measures (no, not the special rain dance, I’m way past that). I figured if Lady RNG hates me so, a little extra effort can’t hurt, heck nothing hurts at this point! So I remembered that Tam and Chas over at Righteous Orbs have this shrine where Lady RNG is basically y’know living, and where common folk can go and offer their prayers and donations to appease the will of the fickle deity. How handy! It appears the shrine has been somewhat deserted of late, in fact Rhii was the last person to pay Lady RNG a visit back in October 2010. Maybe that’s why she’s in such a foul mood (Lady RNG, not Rhii)?

Anyway, I paid my respects there and gave her a little heads up on my situation. And since it can never hurt to say the same prayer twice, here it goes:

Dear Lady of the R-N-Gee
(I’m not sure you’re still listening to these, but here’s my plea:)
I’ve been trying to get these pets for a while,
Y’know to get my collection in style.
I’m really not much of a collector in WoW,
But them minipets, I just need them, NAO!
I’ve killed foxes in Tol Barad, a thousand or two,
Yet the fox pet wont drop – what have I done to you??
I’ve dug holes across Azeroth, enough for Swiss cheese,
And yet nothing I found there, you’re so hard to please!
Oh, and that ooze in Felwood, you never dropped it for me,
Nor the phoenix in pink elf land, how cruel can you be?
It’s Cataclysm now, that means change, amiright?
So, how about being a little less tight?
All I’m asking for is a pet or three,
So how about you stop hating me??
I’m not a bad person, I’m not greedy, not rich,
NOW WILL YOU GIEF ME MY LOOT ALREADY YOU……WITCH!!!

/gently place poppy flower on the altar

Wish me luck folks, I’ll need it.

25man blues, Holy goodness, oh noes I look like Aladdin, Critternation, I still don’t PuG and community highlights

I’ve been wanting to produce one of those ‘incredibly long topic list’-titles like Spinks does so well for a long time now and today I finally got the chance. That’s another goal for 2011 out of the way, go me!

25man blues

Times are being so-so in WoW at the moment; it appears that 25man raid guilds have pretty much disppeared from the face of the earth which makes recruitment for Adrenaline a bit of a MAJOR PITA right now. We assumed it was gonna be harder in Cataclysm, but by now I’m amazed how Blizzard has managed to kill off the 25man mode so completely and it’s not just happening on our server. It makes me sad and wonder if people really do only raid for loot…What happened to more epic scale battles? Or is the hassle of trying to coordinate a stable 25man team just too much work for people nowadays? That second reason I can understand at least. All that said, I miss you 40man WoW! We will see what happens, I guess.

Raiding goodness

On the bright side, Adrenaline first raidweek has been very successful, 4 bosses went down for us in BoT and BWD and also: holy is officially awesome! While we really didn’t look so great in the new heroics, holy priests still rock the raidhealing boat and there’s lots of holy love to be shared in these new encounters. I’m not surprised to see PoH get a minor nerf soon; it’s already very powerful and my mastery rating isn’t even very high yet. All in all we got some really sweet patches incoming (Chakra, SoL, CoH) and the slight nerfs to PoH and our regen will matter little in the long run, even if we might feel them right now.

I got my first epic loot drop too and…oh noes, I look like Aladdin! The matching carpet was the obvious consequence. Matching dress and shoes – so last season!

“A whole new woooorld…”
(and I’d still rather be sitting, srsly!)

Critternation

In other news, I have successfully coerced enough of our guildies to join me on a 50k CDSC (critter death squad campaign) this last Sunday – finally my subtle convincing attempts paid off. It took us approximately 8 clears of Terrorweb Tunnel in Eastern Plaguelands which is swarming with bugs and spiders aplenty. We had jolly good fun on ventrilo, even if most of us realized later on that we can’t buy the armadillo pup yet, lol!
If anyone of you is looking to get this achievement done with his guild soon, I can really recommend that spot. Respawn time is every 3-4ish minutes and easily adds another 5k+ to that body count in a raid of 15 people. The more you are, obviously the faster you’ll be. And no bunnies or squirrels involved, promise!

Community highlights and another guest post

The WoW healing community has been spilling over with the whole “healing heroics, yay or nay”-topic these past few weeks and I’ve been following many articles with great interest, especially one by Ophelie where she tells us how healers can make a difference in PuGs. I’m always amazed to read how fellow healers still put up with the LFG madness in Cataclysm….I can’t say I do (I know, it must come as a shock to you) and so naturally, I had to share how much of a difference I’m not making:

Watch me NOT healing any PuGs over @ World of Matticus where Matt has been so kind to publish another one of my articles (and not just that, I’ve officially gotten my own mugshot on the page, how cool is that?). I had great fun writing it and I’ve tried to include all the related and inspiring articles I came across myself before (though I clearly failed to mention them all), so you might find yourself link-loved!
Judging by some of the reactions and also a look around the blogosphere this morning, the topic will definitely keep WoW healers and bloggers occupied for a while to come.

Another highlight of the week were definitely also Larísa’s PPI Awards for 2010, so in case you missed her great summary of what’s been hot and steaming around WoW and the blogging community in 2010, there’s your chance to catch up! A very detailed and informative read with many great nominations and well-deserved winners, and this silly blogger here even got mentioned too. I can’t say more than thanks to everyone who might have mentioned my articles or this blog, thank you so very much indeed whoever you might be, the bloggers linking us and all our regular readers (you’re sure this is the blog you’re meaning to read, right? just checking!). It’s a great joy to have been included.

Now let the weekend come, it’s already been the perfect week. Congratulations again to all winners and enjoy your weekend everybody! ^^

Priests, the great manipulators

[Alternative title: The truth about why people choose to play a priest in WoW]

“May be that you are a tank in WoW, mighty shield-bearer and wrestler of foes. May be that you play a melee class, trained to duel and trick the enemy in close combat. Might be that you command the will of fire and frost to drive the crowds before you, or that you chant dark rituals under a waxing moon. Or you might be a healer, drawing upon the blessing of the light, bestowing nature’s greatest gift on those in dire need.

But you are naught compared to me.
I am the all-powerful Priest!
The special powers I was given surpass my greatest talents, my healing’s warm embrace and my worst shadow’s doom. I am not one of you – I am the bender, the pretender. All things tremble under my will!

You cannot hide from me.
No matter where you are, I’ll find you.
No matter where you run, I’ll follow. My /target reaches wide and far.
If you slack during a corpserun, I’ll see it. If you get lost on your way back, I’ll guide you.
If you think you can disappear with that flag, you think wrong.
I AM WATCHING YOU!
And there’s nothing you can do about it. Well, not much anyway.
[/cast Mindvision]

Resistance is futile.
If I catch you off guard, I’ll intrude your body and mind.
I’ll take your strengths and abilities and I will use them against you.
I’ll turn you on your allies while you’re watching, I’ll play you like a puppet on a string.
Nobody breaks your defenses down like I do.
Nobody steals your agency and power so completely.
YOU ARE MINE!
[/cast Mind Control]

You cannot escape me.
If you run away, I’ll command you back to me.
If you linger for too long, I’ll make you move.
Just like the Deathknight grabs his foe, I’ll grab my ally.
I might catch you before you fall – I might turn on you.
I might save you from burning – I might let you burn.
IF HERE IS WHERE I WANT YOU, HERE YOU SHALL BE!”
[/cast Leap of Faith]

[/open parenthesis]
Priests in World of Warcraft are second to none when it comes to tools of manipulation or heteronomy. A tank might stun his target, a rogue might sap it for a while, a mage might sheep, a druid might root – just like a priest can shackle or fear or chastize. CCs are very limited in WoW, easily countered and not further controllable by those employing them.
A hunter might use Farsight just like a warlock has Eye of Kilrogg, but none of these spells impose on another player in the same way Mindvision can serve priests as a spying tool.

Is…this…reality?

Nobody breaks so literally into another player’s privacy like priests, to the point where their very own avatar is no longer theirs to command. The few times I have been MCed in battlegrounds, I’ve felt immensely annoyed and bewildered; it almost feels like a violation when some stranger takes over you character, controls it and presses buttons on your spellbar. It’s not a program doing this, it’s not an NPC as part of a quest: you’re being controlled by another player. There is a real, breathing person somewhere out there sat at his PC, commanding or monitoring my character – WHO ARE YOU?
[/close parenthesis]

“I am your big brother, I’m watching you.
I am the possesser, I’m turning you.
I am the commander, I’m catching you when I please.”

I am a Priest – the great manipulator.
[God I love priests!]

Tol Barad, the second

Shortly after my post about the silly honor gains in Tol Barad of last week, Blizzard announced their hotfix for the outdoor PVP zone which has settled all outcries about servers win-trading swiftly and effectively. Winning an attack game now awards players 360 honor points, as opposed to the previous 1800 (a successful defense still awards 180 points) – a change of astronomic proportions which now makes many a player think, why oh why he didn’t play Tol Barad in its early weeks of Cataclysm.

Yet, not all is well in Tol Barad: the general disproportion in difficulty between winning an attack or a defense game persists, to many a PvPers dismay. I’ve had time to finally join a few more Tol Barad games this last weekend and I haven’t been in a single one that won an attack. Keeping your defense is substantially easier which is doubly frustrating, considering that the zone is not only about honor gains but more daily quests for tokens and the Baradin Hold instance. Where players did not care to defend before, they are now doing their very best to keep their keeps; so we have pretty much switched one extreme for the other.

In a most recent blue post by Cory Stockton, Blizzard assures players that the re-balancing of Tol Barad is far from over: they are aware of the attack game issue and are looking to fix this in a future patch. What’s more revealing about the article, are the comments on how Blizzard have tried to learn from past mistakes of WotLK’s Wintergrasp and what their intentions for Tol Barad were initially, when designing the new outdoor PvP Zone –

Tol Barad is intentionally balanced so that it’s a challenge for the attackers, because we want to make sure that control of Tol Barad matters. For the defenders, there’s a sense of urgency that Wintergrasp didn’t have — if you lose it, you’re going to have a hell of a time taking it back. For the attackers, there are a number of rewards at stake — such as access to the Baradin Hold raid and additional daily quests — that we hope players feel are worth fighting for. That sort of tension is what we wanted from Wintergrasp, and what we believe Tol Barad can ultimately offer.

While the devs’ initial realization of this has failed, it is clear that they were looking to give the battle for victory a much greater meaning by adding more incentives to play well via the big honor difference, and also balancing the games in terms of player slots. I salute Blizzard’s decision to make attacking a challenge of consequence. Wintergrasp was never a meaningful, let alone epic place by any standard; if you lost a game, who cared? You would get a win sooner or later – the only time I was ever annoyed to be denied access to Wintegrasp was when I wanted to go buy some PvP gems or enchants.

This time around, Blizzard wants to add more meaning to conflict. And: they want a lot more people to join in. While you can decide to quest on the northern half of Tol Barad island exclusively in order to get your Baradin Wardens reputation and rewards, conquering the southern map is a considerable speed bonus for PvPers and PvErs alike. The reputation vendor sells a variety of special items (from vanity baubles such as a companion pet and two mounts, to useful blue items and epic trinkets) to attract a wide range of WoW players. There is also the commendation to convert extra tokens to more reputation, which means the more daily quests you can do, the faster your way to exalted and epic rewards (which all require to be bought by tokens too).

I absolutely love the look of the Drake of the West Wind (it looks a lot better live than on pictures) and I will obviously have to get the seagull. Apart from that the trinkets are actually quite nice, especially if you have no immediate access to epic raid loot (the healer trinket has been announced to receive a slight buff soon).

All things considered, I look forward to Tol Barad receiving another patch asap, as confirmed in the blue post and that they will find the right way to balance a battle which can be a great dilemma to balance.
And I also have high hopes that this time around Blizzard’s new PvP Zone will encourage a much greater player base to join in and fight more meaningful battles, rather than being “for them odd PvPers only”.