While rummaging through several old WoW screenshot folders for an upcoming article, I came across this super weird snapshot I took of my character screen a while ago – quite possibly the oddest graphX glitch ever??
I have been a longterm member and mod over at a videogame forum that is rather big where I live. It’s a very active place where gamers of every flavour, but also people professionally involved in the business are posting and there’s yearly gamenights and other events being organized for the “community” to meet. Over the past 10 years that I’ve been there, I have made a few friends and met a lot of people. During my student years it even got me some marketing jobs for our national Nintendo publisher.
Yet the one thing that still makes me cringe after all this time is that even though you’d like to think that ‘gamers’ are a community of sorts, they really aren’t. I’ve had so many experiences and keep having them, that remind me how delusional this is.
On our board you’ll find all sorts of ‘special groups’ and segregation wherever you turn: there’s the mainstream gamers, the platform fanboys, the anime/manga fans, the retro fanatics, the RPGers etc. and they all make sure not to get confused with one another. And right down at bottom there’s the MMO players. Oh beware to be one of those, even if we got a whole subforum dedicated to this genre, you’re bound to listen to false stereotyping and trolling. Because really, even if the others play Xbox live every night over voice-comm with their buddies and buy a new game every 2 weeks, at least they aren’t playing MMORPGs. They’re not that asocial – they do ‘stuff on weekends’ and have a girlfriend!
I actually had to deal with a guy once writing down an entire list (with bullets) of the things he did every week besides gaming (it included things like playing tennis and drinking in bars), trying to point out how sad we all were for playing WoW. I have probably never been more embarrassed on somebody else’s behalf in my life. The funny thing is that a lot of these gamers are actually secretly jealous of you; I had one or two admitting to me that they would actually like to play WoW but couldn’t, because they’d get “too addicted” or their girlfriend “wouldn’t approve”.
Then there was that other post once where a guy stated how upset he got when a co-worker at his workplace referred to him as “our gamer” and how insulted he felt over it. Because to him gamers were real life losers and sociopaths. All of this coming from someone ‘within the community’ who is active on the same online gamers board for years and attending gamenights. I had a thing or two to say to him in that topic, for what its worth.
Even though I know this is how things really are, it makes me sad every time I note them; be it ingame or via forums or blogs. I guess it’s that naive part in me, thinking that gamers as a whole get enough stigma already from people outside their interest group that they wouldn’t need to continue the segregation amongst themselves. It’s probably human that we reach out and long to be part of a community we’d somehow like to identify with. But the truth is that this doesn’t exist, just because we play games doesn’t mean we have anything in common. If you’d like to feel at home among a group of people, you will have to keep picking the gems out of the pile of trash.
When we log on to World of Warcraft, we think that we enter some sort of fantasy. But unlike any other games, the content in MMOs is highly player generated – the whole point of them requiring social interaction and longterm teamplay is created by the people playing them. And all of these people bring their load of personal beliefs, attitude and prejudice with them – they don’t leave them at the door when they put on their mage robes or paladin armor. You got your judgmental and biased trolls, your sexists, homophobes, racists, fascists and any other flavour of social superiorists – in fact the internet is kinda big for trolls creeping out of their caves that usually would never find an audience in real life. And no matter how hard you stick to your own folks, you’ll get your share of bullshit whether you like it or not, right there in your pink fantasy dream. Even if you manage to steer free of most, you still get your casual gamers vs. hardcores, your “I’m better than you because I play less when I’m really just jealous”-people, your drama queens and psychotic real life-compensators (or both).
And I don’t actually dig ‘-isms’ at all. I don’t think we have an issue with ‘-isms’, we can spare ourselves the fancy terminology: the world has an issue with idiots. It has issues with lack of common sense all across the board. If we cannot even share our fantasy worlds, I foresee a dark future for the real version.
So we do ingame what we do elsewhere – we retreat to our own small circle of friends or guilds and play the game from inside our social bubbles. Just because we play the same game doesn’t mean we have anything in common with the rest.
World of Warcraft is an exact mirror of the real world – just with better furniture and background music.
So I have canceled my pre-order for Square-Enix’ upcoming Final Fantasy 14 two days ago, being utterly put off by their intention to limit gamers playtime via diminishing returns on XP gains. Or rather, they are trying to control character progression by forcing you to switch class every few hours.
No thanks. While I can understand SE’s endeavor to keep their player base closer together by limiting the time you can spend on your character’s base level each week, I don’t think it’s up to developers to regulate communities in MMOs in such ways. I’m totally aware that this is just my opinion and probably an interesting topic for debate, but I want to level a caster when I feel like it without having to go and knit socks because it’s suddenly “Crafting Time!”.
The fatigue feature is however only the last straw for me. I admit to having hyped this sequel on other boards, partly because I did play Final Fantasy 11 before WoW and was really excited to hear SE’s focus on more solo-ability in the upcoming game – and also because me and Square-Enix RPGs go a long way back. If there’s any other videogame company besides Blizzard that I trust to design a well-rounded and well-designed MMO with a genuine feeling for fantasy worlds with a unique atmosphere, top graphics and soundtrack to go with, it’s them. They’ve been delivering true fantasy RPG experiences for over 20 years now. If someone knows how to tell a story and deliver polish at the same time, it’s them. After reading the initial FF14 overviews and previews, I was looking foward to see their new concept that aims to learn from previous errors, but it seems that their intention to create a different, more ‘mass market’ MMO is taking it too far for me.
The combat system in FF14 will not feature the typical real-time action based MMO experience, but rather a mixture of real-time and classic round-base / strategy junction that is apparently inspired by FF13:
“Contrary to what people thought when news of the game first emerged, battles will occur in real time but will not be ‘action-style’ battles which require on timing and a high tempo. Instead, the new battle system will be heavily strategy based. This is furthered by the Armoury job system which allows players to change classes on the fly thus allowing them to adapt to many different situations.”
If you watch combat videos from the FF14 beta on youtube, you will notice that the mobs actually wait for their ’round’ and that the combat is going real slow. I’ve talked to several beta testers and they’ve all confirmed that the combat system is horribly boring and clunky at the moment. We’re talking about a game that is due to launch this September 2010. I really can’t relate to this type of slowed combat in an MMO which reminds me too much of the more scripted encounters in round-based offline RPGs.
And then there’s the worms. Have a look at the following picture:
This is myself and my party sometime in 2004 trying to battle down a worm. Yes, we are trying to 4-man a single worm. I might wanna add too, that this is inside a dungeon and that we were around level 25 at the time. Which in the original 1.0 version of the game was at a much higher time/level-spent ratio than for example in vanilla WoW. From the very beginning you were battling not just nightcrawlers, but bees, beetles, bats, rats and goddamn sheep! And as if that wasn’t bad enough, these critters aren’t restricted to your newbie areas but will actually re-occur frequently on higher maps of the game with different colors.
WOW, I get to fight a blue worm with purple stripes this time!!!
Thanks so much Square-Enix!
Duhhh… this is really screwed up. I don’t want to fight worms in MMOs, I want something that feels a bit more epic or at least ‘authentic’ to what I, as powerful magic-wielder in a fantasy world, would deem worthy to kill. Let alone with a party. Having watched all these clips on youtube recently, it seems absolutely nothing has changed in that department.
While we’re at it: I would really like to see Blizzard implement more multiple-mobs fights in World of Warcraft too; I appreciate their effort to create harder mobs in Cataclysm, but I still don’t think a party of 5+ lvl 80 heroes should be hitting on a single target unless it’s a dungeon or raid boss.
Apparently the devs of the upcoming Star Wars the Old Republic MMO have made this a focus for their featured ingame combat. Too bad the game looks like something Blizzard chewed up and spit out 5 years ago.
Yours truly,
This morning after breakfast I actually managed to put the cottage cheese back on the kitchen board and the bread into the fridge instead. I don’t know if I should be worried, but it’s definitely one of those days.
In other news, I had a browse over at WacraftPets and got all excited over the mass of new minipets announced for Cataclysm (I know they’re out for a while)! That bushchicken is absolutely hillarious and ZOMG there will finally be monkeys! I know at least one other person on this blog that’s gonna get himself one of those.
Not me of course, I’ll want them all. Yes, I do hereby declare that I collect minipets and I’ve collected a fair few of them by now. As you can see I too am still missing the Disgusting Oozeling – I actually tried farming this toxic waste of a pet, but at some point I was ready to drop myself off a cliff rather than opening another of those shitty grey bags, so I quit. I’ve spent quite some time farming recipes in the past but this was too much for me. It is also a really ugly and stupid pet and why would I want it anyway, it doesn’t even look good and kills fluffy bunnies in Elwynn Forest, so I really don’t need to have this really not …Right.
Anyway, while browsing some more I came across this year’s Blizzcon 2010 pet and – now wait a minute! What does this remind me of?!
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| Blizzcon 2010 “Deathy” – Wrathmouse 2006 |
To the right a picture taken in 2006 of my beloved, passed-away gerbil “Kleiny”.
If I remember correctly I was making fun of Stumps’ tanking abilities on his gnome warrior (or rather his size) in Black Wing Lair at the time. =D
I can’t believe they stoled my idea! Do you see it??
To the left side: small animal with a poor choice for a helmet.
To the right side: small animal with a poor choice for a helmet.
SAME THING!!
I should send them a rant via E-Mail and demand compensation, I hear suing companies for horrendous amounts of cash is kinda big in the US.
Alternatively, I’d also settle for one of those pets…I am that forgiving!
I give up – I can’t stay away from the last weeks’ blogging hot topic that is female gamers and gender issues. I know there’s been a lot of great points made already by a lot of prominent WoW Bloggers and that’s why I don’t want to rephrase it all. But there is something I am missing after all of this – I miss some sort of conclusion. Especially with topics like these I find it so important to ask the final question: “And now what?”
Also, I really just like to share what I think – I know it’s probably much ‘cooler’ to be quiet sometimes with a superior smile on your face or something – what can I say, I’m kinda weak that way.
What’s been established
Many of the blogs I’ve read and left far too many comments on (now wait, Bloggers love that actually, hah!) the past few days, have taken a close look at the subject and given a lot of thought to the different layers of complexity. It is hard not to lose yourself in some of the arguments and stay away from overly generalizing statements and labels. At the same time this doesn’t mean we should shy away from such discussions.
At this point I also need to vent a little and say that I really do not understand female gamers that say things like “I don’t know what the big deal is about sexism, I am an officer in my guild and don’t see its a real problem”. I’ll say that I find this not just ignorant but about as insightful as a privileged person claiming that there’s no poverty in the world or your grand parents telling you to stop whining because they “did it the hard way” too. I don’t know why that vexes me more than male ignorance, probably because you really should know better.
I think what most will agree on is that female gamers do have a harder stand in online worlds reflecting their cultural and social status in the real world. And why would it be any different anyway. Women who dare to enter ‘male terrain’ will have to put up with a good fight and most likely put in extra effort to gain equal respect from male colleagues. And if you have to wait twice as long or work twice as hard to get your rank or title that’s not really equality.
What’s also fair to say is that while men get the ‘better deal’ in power and status, that doesn’t mean by any means that they are actually ‘free’ or do not have to struggle with sexism and injustice. Men are equally bound by cultural restraints and stereotyping. There is a big discussion going on about this currently at Righteous Orbs. So even if a woman, by whatever means, reaches equal social or economical success in today’s society, what she can hope for at best is a shift in dictation – that she gets measured like a man instead of a woman.
Is that really where our striving for equality ends?
When equal is not the same
The ultimate goal for both women and men alike is probably when we can set all the labels, the feminine and the masculine, as much as all the do’s and don’t aside.
It’s problematic for both genders that for now we strive for an ‘equal’ that means we have to act the same in order to be successful and accepted. A lot of men cannot actually identify with many so-called ‘male qualities’ any more than women do. True freedom it will be once we can be unlike one another and still be of equal worth. The ultimate equality lies in freedom of choice.
I like to wear bunny ears on my female priest when I feel goofy and I’d like to split horde skull in battlegrounds when I feel like kicking ass – without these things making me either girly or masculine or anything but a human. Or to put it the other way around: what’s wrong with acting ‘like a woman’ or ‘like a man’? Do we really need to associate certain qualities with gender in such ways? I’m sure men have plenty of similar examples they can come up with.
And women shouldn’t shy away from playing DPS or tanks in WoW, any less than they should start avoiding rolling a healer in order to be forcefully ‘not stereotype’ (funny enough in numbers most healers are still male anyway).
I play a priest because raidhealing is actually a challenge, ok?! I don’t know who the mastermind was that established that DPS in WoW is more demanding but the responsibility and multitasking effort required to deal with healing is a lot bigger for me than (face-) rolling a warlock, thank you very much! Plus I get to boss people around, tip the outcome of battle and laugh in the faces of the morons I chose not to heal. God I love healing!! Ooops, that was offtopic.
So what’s your conclusion then?
So far goes the theory and overall state of affairs. And as much as I love philosophizing with friends over a good glass of red wine, I’m a practical person in the end. What are you gonna do with all these blog posts and comments now, all these great insights – where’s the part I can actually do something about and act on? If anything this is the most important part.
I know the answer for me. I know I’m a spiteful person with an uncanny taste for conflict. I agree that women “shouldn’t have to” fight twice as hard to prove themselves, but I will continue all the same while treading a fine line between following code and staying authentic. Just because something is twice as hard won’t stop me from trying. I will call for help against injustice whenever I can but I will also continue to make my own luck relentlessly.
Women have stayed passive for way too long. While you wont be able to change it all at once, it sure as hell doesn’t help to sit back silently in your corner either. I’ve seen so many women getting overlooked in guilds because they were timid or overly apologetic about things like mistakes or shortcomings. If you like others to have confidence in you, you need to have confidence in yourself first and look it. I believe that we can make changes in the small worlds we live in. In this we are actually privileged as citizens of the western world, which makes it all the more important.
When I started raidhealing in vanilla, there was a certain co-healer I didn’t like at first because he already patronized me on my first MC run. I know he didn’t like me either but as time works, we came to know each other better and played during such long and intense periods that we ended up buddies. Sometime in early TBC he said something to me one evening that got me totally by surprise. What he basically said was that he had always thought women were a bit ‘shitty’ players, but coming to know me (and 2 other women in our guild) he felt positively corrected. He could see that some women were indeed awesome and fun players.
Uhh…I think every woman understands how one feels in such a situation and how hard it is to react to something like that. While that statement is no doubt meant as a compliment it is rather bitter on a different level and if you chose to, you could undoubtedly take offense.
But I took the comment the way it was meant. Knowing my friend to be somewhat clumsy with words, I understood the praise there. It had taken him over a year of playing with me to say something like this and in essence, he was just being honest.
This was an achievement. Not because he had acknowledged my skills even though that is undoubtedly nice to hear; but especially because playing with me and other female players had actually managed to change some of his outdated views. Experience is the best teacher they say. I was really happy about it because I knew that in the future he wouldn’t dismiss female players as fast as he had done in the past.
These are small changes, trifles maybe. But they do count on the way to greater equality. You can touch those you live and play with. Or you can chose to go the distance and maybe one day find yourself in a position where you have the means to bring even bigger change for those that follow after you.
If you make it to officer or GM in your guild, you can make sure the women get treated fairly or tell the bigmouth, sexist trialist in your guildchat just how happy you are to end his misery. Whatever rank or position you hold, inside and outside of the game, don’t accept discrimination. That doesn’t mean you cannot laugh about a silly joke.
But my question isn’t exclusive to our female readers, it goes to both you gaming ladies and gents alike: What are you gonna do with it?
And thus I close with a quote I have used as a forum signature in the past. It just seemed to fit so well.
“Theres two kinds of people in this world when you boil it all down. You got your talkers and you got your doers. Most people are just talkers, all they do is talk. But when it is all said and done, it’s the doers that change this world.
And when they do that, they change us. And that’s why we never forget them. So which one are you? Do you just talk about it, or do you stand up and do something about it? Because believe you me, all the rest of it is just coffee house and bullshit.”
I am a big sucker for atmosphere in games and I have always loved the world maps, soundtrack and the overall graphical style and level of detail in WoW. It was a big part of playing the game for me in the first place and with a new expansion at our doorsteps I like to look forward by looking back and getting a little mushy (don’t get used to it ;D).
Of all the wonderful maps WoW has to offer Elwynn Forest will always hold a special place in my heart. No doubt Outland introduced some of the most nicely designed areas in all of WoW back in TBC – Zangarmarsh or Nagrand being two of the most popular maps at the time. Later on WotLK graced us with the snowy mountains of Storm Peaks and the woodland beauty of Grizzly Hills. But as wicked as glowing mushroom thickets and flying islands might be, as much as I loved the nordic idyll of the current expansion’s maps: there is no place to me like Elwynn Forest. Elwynn with its light, peaceful tune, its soft river banks and silver ponds, Elwynn with Goldshire at its center from where all paths lead to greater adventures. Elwynn where I stationed my quest giver ‘NPC’ for Adrenaline’s 1st Guild Anniversary.
How many times have I taken the Dalaran portal to Stormwind late at night (when raids were over and you weren’t doing anything really but chatting in guildchat or talking to friends on Ventrilo) and parked my character somewhere in the middle of Elwynn Forest. Every now and then a lowlevel player would pass me by, finding that priest geared in ICC epics sitting alone on a grassy hill, and wonder slightly what she was doing. She was taking a break.
I’m sure that we all have a special place in WoW that is ladden with memories and nostalgia. Often players will talk that way of their starting area because it’s there where their first memories of the game were shaped. It’s there where they cast their first spell, handed in their first quest, got lost for the first time (of many more times to come) and had their very first corpserun. And there is only one first time to all things.
Having leveled a human priest when the game was still young, Northshire Abbey, Goldshire and the whole of WoW from there have created my first impressions of the game. I have picked my first peacebloom in Elwynn Forest, bought my first vanity pet from the Crazy Cat Lady (those 40 silver hurt sooo much!), slain my first notorious villain, the ferocious Hogger – though I admit he killed me first. It is also where I formed my first friendships with other players. Whenever I go back there I am instantly cast back into my noobie days and there is a deep longing in me.
I think that’s why many of us look forward to expansions: we look foward to be an explorer again, to be a noob that doesn’t know what to expect around the next corner with the odd ‘whoa!’ and ‘ooops!’ – feelings ever so often. I am sure many are looking at the Cataclysm beta screenshots right now and hoping that the expansion will give them something back of the thrill and excitement of doing something for the very first time, walking down untrodden roads into unexplored maps.
May it all hold true for Catacylsm, may it fill you with wonder and bring back some of those rookie feelings that are so overdue after a long wait. But as wonderful as new places may be, I will never stop returning to my starting area from time to time. There’s no place like home.
Where’s yours?
