Picking a class – a matter of personality?

Part Time Druid recently published a great post: The Psychology of Class Choice in WoW.

He elegantly pictures different kinds of personalities who are generally found in the role as tank, healer or dps. If you love to lead you’ll probably end up as a tank, if you’re competitive or oven a bit “ego”, you’ll make a great dps, if you care most about the team effort to succeed you’re better off as a healer, to simplify it. He’s says that most of the players he’s met fall into those categories. To be fair he’s also made a positive side and a negative side for each category. For instance tanks can either be true leaders or arrogant control freaks.

I think PTD describes the different shapes players come in quite on the spot. I could easily put many of the ones I’ve encountered in either of them.

The post raises questions about my own choices. Why have I fell in love with my mage? And when I finally rolled an alt – why did I pick a rogue, which I instantly liked as much as I love my mage? Is it because I’m competitive – or possibly plain lazy, according to PTD, the negative sort of dps:ers? Honestly I don’t think so. Of course I love to compete, but I know I could fit into the other roles as well. I’m just as much of a leader and a selfless take-care-of-the-group person. And I’ve run quite a few personality tests through my RL career and gone through some quite harsh get-to-know-and-improve-yourself-programs, so I’m pretty sure about it.

Still it hasn’t crossed my mind to roll a tank. Why? Simply because it would be a too steep learning curve for me to climb. I wouldn’t only have to learn a completely different kind of playing - as PTD points out, I would also be supposed to lead instance runs. And though I partly think I could do it I know too well I lack an essential part of it: deep knowledge not only about my own class, but about all the other classes and about the different mobs we meet, their abilities and the best ways to deal with them. It’s just too much of information for me to handle, to many new things to memorize.

Although I’ve had a leading role in my RL for years, I don’t in the game. So, being a lazy dps:er, I lean back in the chair, wait for the sheep sign and the skull to come up and then start doing as I’m told, to simplify it a bit. I’m not a leader in the raid, I’m not a heroic lifesaver, I’m just a plain soldier in the background, trying to do her job, and sometimes secretly fighting for a good position on the dps-chart (unless the sheep duty becomes too heavy and mess things up).

Am I unhappy with this? Am I feeling that I’m making violence on myself, staying in the background? No, on the contrary. Actually it’s quite relaxing to play a different kind of role than I do in my real life. I’m less exposed and less responsible for the outcome of an event (even though of course everyone in a raid is supposed to do their best to achieve the goals of the night). On the other hand it’s probably easier for me, since I’m sort of a multiple-role-personality in myself, just like a druid or paladin. Depending on what the group needed I could be a leading tank, a group-caring healer or a pusher and dps:er. In the game I’m running the dps-side of “me”, and I’m OK with it.

Maybe it’s harder to pick up a different role if your personality clearly is in a totally different direction. Haven’t we all heard of people who with a deep sigh start levelling a healer or a tank as a sort of sacrifice for the guild, to make it possible to progress? Sometimes it means violating your personality, playing roles you’re deep inside not comfortable with.

On the other hand – a little bit of discomfort doesn’t hurt. Sometimes it’s just what we need: to get out of our comfort zone and actually try a role which doesn’t come naturally to us. Suddenly the timid, shy girl, put in the position as a steady, tough tank, can step forward, raise her voice, turn out to be an excellent leader and become confident in her own abilities. And that may be just the push she needs to dare to do the same thing in real life.

The roleplaying WoW offers doesn’t just include the possibility to play in character, create background stories and such. You can also literary try to play with different roles, different sides of your personality. Why not try them all out? Try a leading role, try a competing role, try a teambuilding role. I think we miss a great opportunity to get new experiences and discover new sides of ourselves if we just thoughtlessly pick the class which seems to fit with our personality.

Beta tester – what if they pick me?

Suddenly the news flashed last week– you could volunteer for beta testing of WotLK. And I couldn’t help myself, I got caught by the rush and tried to get into the website where you could sign up. It was pretty crowded, but at last I made it. I threw my name into the huge beta testing lottery and now I keep my thumbs crossed they’ll pick me.

Or do I really? I’ve never ever been a beta tester myself, for heavens sake, a year ago I had no idea what a beta tester was.

Generally I’m a bit suspicious about doing things on beforehand. Like excessive playing on the PTRs, what’s the point really? It doesn’t help your character a bit – you invest game time into something which won’t help you gear up or progress in any way at all. As a matter of fact, you take part of content on beforehand, which will take away a lot of the sense-of-wonder-feeling, the surprise effect I’m hoping to get from the expansion.

Thinking that way you can wonder why I even entered my name – am I just doing like everyone else, without thinking for myself?

But on a second thought I’m attracted to the idea of being a beta tester myself.

I’m curious. After all I’m a gnome. It seems the expansion still is pretty far away and sure, it would be fun to get some new content to enjoy. Grinding primals, flowers, dailies and running heroics for the 1 000th time isn’t quite as exciting as exploring unknown territory, is it?

It would give me a little lead to non beta-testers when the real expansion comes. For once I would know a more than some fellowplayers - I could be a source of information. Wouldn’t that be a great boost for my self confidence?

The idea that I actually could make a difference - that my input possibly could affect the way they design the game is really thrilling. Though my picture of what being a beta tester actually means is quite vague, I guess that’s what you do. You test things – you give opinion about it, and they listen to you.

They say that beta testers are chosen by hazard. Probably it’s the wisest thing to do. If testing only was done by the most initiated and dedicated hardcore players – they wouldn’t really get much information about how the game works for the more casual ones. On the other hand I wonder if the very casual players really will hear about the beta testing – or of they would care about it if they did. Maybe not. So when it comes to it, the testing group probably won’t be representing the average of the player population after all.

If they actually elected beta testers, would I be a good candidate for it? Yes – and no.

I’m pretty new to WoW and to gaming, which means that I’m not qualified to make in-depth analysis of game mechanisms and such. But maybe that’s not what they need from the beta after all? On the other hand I’m a speed writer and can easily formulate my opinion, if that’s what they need. And I think I’m pretty average as a player when it comes to experience and progression, which probably is good – they need input from ordinary people like me.

The fact that I’m running a blog speaks against me. They could suspect me for being one of those annoying leaks they want to stop. But since I don’t chase for huge numbers in my visitors counter, I actually won’t say a word more than I’m supposed to in my blog.

I don’t know how secret the whole business about beta is. Maybe you’re not even supposed to tell anyone if you’re picked as a tester? In that case you’ll never know that I actually won in this lottery.

But be assured. If I’m picked I’ll do whatever I can to help the expansion to turn out just as awesome as we hope.

Larísa's off for vacation

Larísa’s off for vacation. She’s going to Tanaris, sorry, I meant Tunisia, to lead a lazy life on the beach, not touching a computer for a week or so. But The Pink Pigtail Inn will still be open, you won’t starve, since there are a couple of prewritten posts upcoming if Blogger works as it’s supposed to do. It's just that it will take a little longer before I'll answer comments, if you feel like writing any.

During my absence I’d really like to recommend you another blog, a jewel I found the other day. Go and visit Cope, hosted by James Wallis. He has written a hilarious essay in several parts about the geography of Azeroth seen from a purely scientific perspective, trying to make sense out of how the natural laws work. At first he comes to the conclusion that it’s a spherical planetoid with a diameter of 12 kms. Then he changes his mind and argues that it’s flat – possibly resting on a pillar.

I can’t enough recommend it, it’s the most witty piece of WoW reading I’ve seen in a long time, written by someone who clearly has a great knowledge and big heart in the game as well.

I’ll print it out and take it with me to the beach, study it a bit further and see if I can make any sense of the logic of natural science in Azeroth!

See you!

Growing old

Larísa has grown up! As a matter of fact she’s like an old lady, despite her young and cute appearance.

I was struck by the thought as I recently visited Kalimdor, in a long journey where I and a friend went to every single fire – alliance as horde (which actually is quite a nice way to get gold, as long as you ensure you have someone to rant with during the endless flights and riding tours.)
It was a nostalgic tour, where I revisited places I hadn’t been to for over a year, but I also went to many spots for the first time, especially in horde territory. It’s great that Blizzard helps us to get our feet moving, get out of our comfort zones and have a look at the parts of the game we’ve missed out of sheer laziness.

While I was riding through Stonetalon, trying to cope with the horrible machine sound from my bird (I’ve now made me promise myself to finally get up my Stormwindrep up to exalted to get a silent mount), I was thinking about the last time I was here.

I was new to the game, a very scared and innocent and lonely little gnome girl, who didn’t have a clue about anything, not about playing my class, not about game, the world, not about what was awaiting me around the next corner. This young and unknowing way of seeing things lasted for a long time. I can’t say I was much wiser at level 40 – or even when dinging 70. I think I’d been playing endgame for quite a while before I started to feel that I had aged a bit as a player.

Travelling around for the midsummer event I kept pondering upon the subject. In fact, this thing that Larísa’s become old isn’t truly reflected in the game. It’s not only that she looks young – as a matter of fact WoW is created so that your char always is improving in every way – getting stronger and more powerful, learning more and more spells, getting better and better gear. The progression possibilities for a char seem endless. But how would it be like if the process reflected real life more? Would it be possible to create a MMORPG where the characters actually became physically weaker when getting old? On the same time they could get wiser, learning more abilities, like we do in life… Maybe you could assure that way that you wouldn’t lose motivation for levelling it – it’s just that the char becomes different. Priests and Mages could get only better as they become older and wiser – while you would really need young and strong tanks and rogues.

As you probably realize I don’t know much about game mechanics and design. This is my first and only online game. So it’s just a thought experiment – still I think I’ll be back to it in my mind, just for my own enjoyment. Developing this kind of ideas give me some kind of mental and creative exercise.

It helps me too keep my mind young – as I’m inevitably growing older in RL…

Was knowing your weakness what made you strong?

This is a shared topic of BlogAzeroth. The topic of the week is pretty odd: you’re supposed to take the heading of a post from someone else’s WoW blog and write a different kind of post than the original one. It’s sort of like spellstealing the title. So being a mage that’s what I happily do now. I spellsteal this title from ReNoobed. Actually without his permission - I've tried to contact him through his blog but haven't got any answer so far. Suiting enough he’s stolen it in his turn, from a song title (of course he has, he’s a mage after all!).

I honestly didn’t quite understand what the topic of ReNoobed's original post was about (blame my lack of knowledge in English perhaps). Mostly I think it's about some fun links. Anyway this post will have a slightly different approach to this title, as I think it points out a great way to achieve personal progression.

Signs of professionalism
First of all I’ll bring an example from real life. Writing has been a part of my professional life for almost twenty years now. You could expect me to be an expert at spelling by now (in my native language, not in English, which the readers of The Pink Pigtail Inn know very well). But honestly I’m not. There are words in the Swedish language which I simply cannot learn how to spell, no matter how many times I look them up or check them in the grammar-and-spelling-program. The difference between me and an amateur writer though is that I know which those words are. I know when I should look up things – I know my weaknesses, and that makes me a good, or at least decent, writer. It makes me strong.

The weakness of your class
Next: how does this make sense out of a WoW perspective? Well, one evident thing is of course that you should get to know the weaknesses of your class. For the beginner it’s quite a painful process (at least if you’re a mage, dying if the mobs even throw an evil eye at you or breath at you ). After identifying the weaknesses, the next step is to find ways to deal with them. Desperately stacking up any stamina gear you come by may not be the best way to overcome the health problems a mage is suffering from. A better approach is probably to try to maximise your damage and learn tricks to keep the mobs at a sound distance, by kiting them, using frost nova, putting up shields, blinking or whatever you find handy.

This may sound very basic, but I believe that even players who’ve been around for a while can benefit from this way of thinking. Once you know the basics of your class, make an analysis of the available talent builds. Which are the weak sides in different situations – in five man instances, in raid, in BG? Are there ways to compensate it? For instance, I came to the conclusion that being a deep fire mage with a built maximized for raiding purposes, I had the weakness of getting huge aggro problems in five man instances. I compensated by always having a Subtlety enchant on my back and by being extremely careful in the beginning of every fight.

The weakness of your gear
I won't spend many words on this one. For many players improving their gear is one of the reasons for playing the game, the force that keeps them hooked. To analyze your gear and to look for the easiest, most essential upgrades, to look what can be done to improve it by enchants and gems is quite natural to most of us. It's just something you do, like washing your hands or brushing your teeth. Or at least it should be. So let's move on to something more interesting.

The weakness of your skill
For making personal progress I think you need to have an ongoing evaluation of yourself as a player. We all have our flaws - but as long as we’re conscious about them they won’t harm us quite as much as they would else.

Many of your weaknesses are actually easily compensated by addons (I guess that’s why they were invented in the first place). I for one used to have KLM threat meter. But from time to time I missed that I was running way too high on it – one of my weaknesses is that I can find it a bit hard to split my attention to a number of panels all over the screen as well as actually watching the fight. To overcome this weakness I changed to Omen, which in quite a brutal way flashes AGGRO all over the screen. There’s no way I can miss it.

If you’re weakness is that you always forget to bring enough of reagents – well as a mage at least you can install Crylosis, which will make it for you automatically whenever you come by a vendor selling that stuff. If you tend to miss to rebuff people after they have died – get yourself a buff addon, which will remind you.

Has it happened to you more than once that you have miss-clicked in an instance, taking need in stead of greed? Well, why not try to make it the safe way next time and suggest using master loot so you and your friends can feel comfortable?

The weakness of your personality
There are weaknesses though which can’t be compensated by technical devices. Maybe your weakness is a bad temper, running berserk when things won’t work exactly the way you want them to, and you from time to time say and do things which you sincerely regret afterwards. Then you should learn to handle it of course, use breathing techniques, having a pillow beside you ready to smash or do whatever you can to control or let out your feelings outside of the game. But you could also try to prevent a little of the damage by actually acknowledging the problem – tell the people in your guild or raid that you actually do get a bit emo from time to time. Ask them to be tolerant if that happens and to remind you if you’ve gone too far so you’ll sober up and get back on track.

If you’re a guild leader perhaps you’ve got a weak spot when it comes to administration. You just seem to be unable to keep track with applications and trials of new members, keeping your website up-to-date or to arrange guild and officer meetings? Acknowledge it and learn how to delegate.

Another kind of weakness could be that you’ve got bad situation awareness, that you’re not moving, targeting or reacting quickly enough. That’s one the things I’m constantly struggling with myself – I’ve even started to attend the WoW gym in order to improve. It’s hard to overcome this kind of weakness, but I’m convinced it’s doable.

Why knowledge makes you stronger
A final thought: remember the ending of the title. Knowing your weakness is what makes you strong. This means that you at no time should fall into the trap of getting bad self confidence or even starting to hate yourself for your weak spots. Just don’t! Always remember that you’re actually getting stronger, little by little, and that you’re constantly working on improvement.

If I was recruiting for my guild I would definitely rather pick a player who was well aware of his or her weaknesses and could discuss in an intelligent manner how to deal with them. Then I’d know I would get a strong and committed player, open for suggestions, always on the move to get better.

In my opinion there’s nothing weaker than a player who isn’t aware of his weakness.

The importance of the blogging archipelago

By now I think many of us have seen the wonderful map of the WoW Community, drawn by Tim Howgego.

I’m totally fascinated by it myself and keep coming back to it in my thoughts. I did have the feeling that the community was huge and varied, but this really helped me to sort things out, to see the big outlines of it.

Of course there’s one area which draws my attention a bit more than the others: the southwest corner, where the Blogosphere’s dwelling – a lot of small spots scattered over a huge area, with WoWinsider as a sort of central huge island.

We’re all there like small spots, nameless, hardly viewable at all. Even well known bloggers, read by many, such as Matticus and BRK haven’t got any named island of their own. An exception is Mania’s Arcania, who proudly could announce that she had got one, but on the other hand, she’s not categorized as belonging to the blogosphere, but rather to the Niche Class and Topic Archipelago, which is slightly different.

From this picture you could easily get the impression that the Blogosphere is something you could easily disregard of. After all it’s known by only a handful of people if you compare it to websites and tools such as Curse, WoWinsider, Thottbot, MMO-champion and Wowwiki. Can a blog with 3, 30 or in best case 300 regular readers really play any roll in the community at all?

Actually I think it can, and I think that the WoW bloggers shouldn’t be totally discouraged by this map. Even though most of us are so small and insignificant that we’re even not what I would call islands, but rather small cliffs, hardly viewable above the water, I think some of us (not me though) have more influence than we imagine.

I like to see the best of the blogs as a sort of think tank for the whole WoW community – and to Blizzard as well. (I imagine they actually care about comments from the community when they’re planning for further development.)

Many great ideas are originally born in the blogs – to be distributed and spread to the masses, after they’ve been picked up by the more established channels, such as WoWinsider. Sometimes bloggers are credited for the work they do – sometimes I’m afraid they’re not. But the ideas originated in the Blogosphere. We who belong to it know where we read it first. And even though we won’t get all the applauses we deserve, we keep on thinking and producing. Because, just as WarcraftBloggers puts it – we can’t shut up.

A last observation about this map: I really like how he has graded the community from “nice” to “evil”. In the very right corner are the gold sellers, while the blogosphere is perfectly well situated on the west border. Most of us are non profit amateurs writing just out of passion and of the pleasure we get from this ongoing exchange of thoughts. We’re facing the frontier, always exploring new territories of the WoW phenomena, boldly going were no man has gone before.

I’m proud to be an island in the Blogosphere. Even though it’s just a nameless cliff where the birds only land occasionally, seemingly by accident.

Reasons for staying underdog

Is it really important if you define video games as art? Isn’t it just a matter of trying to be socially accepted, to become one of the “cool kids” rather than “unpopular”? Blessing of Kings just wrote an insightful post about this, in a respons to Lume the Mads quite heavy, but very read worthy post Video Games as art. Now it’s my turn to take up the baton and add a few thoughts.

Even though I’m new to video games I’m not new to the discussion – I used to be a member of the science fiction fandom, where many people were just as frustrated as some gamers are – banging their heads against the wall trying to get science fiction accepted as “good literature”. The most annoying thing about it was that it actually happened that some great science fiction books finally were acknowledged by the critics – but once it happened for some reason the “SF tag” got lost on the way and they were presented as “idea oriented” “futuristic” or something else – anything but SF.

Myself I was brought up in a family where we never put up any borders classifying literature as “high class” or “trash”. My parents happily consumed everything – they praised the cartoons of Carl Barks one day and the next day they were reading the latest work of a Nobel Prize winner. They didn’t care if I read crime fiction or Sartre, as long as I enjoyed it. To take part of different sorts of artistic expressions was just as natural as to eat and breath and sleep – a basic need if you put it that way.

But clearly society in general until now hasn’t looked on those branches of art and literature with such a broad perspective as my parents. People love to arrange things in hierarchies, unconsciously if nothing else, and for a long time SF and fantasy literature and movies, comics and video games clearly have been considered “lower class”. But unlike Blessing of Kings I actually see signs that we may expect a change in this classification in the future. The quite conservative Swedish national morning paper I read, which has a clear middle-upper class academic profile, actually publishes in depth articles about video games in the art-and-literature section of the news paper, starting a couple of years ago. They don’t only do very serious reviews about new games, sometimes written by the same guys who do book reviews – they’ve also had a number of long essays analyzing video games from an artistic perspective.

From my point of view I really welcome the change. I want to read well written, intelligent analyzes of video games, targeting a well educated audience and not just kids. Currently I’m especially annoyed about a magazine dedicated to World of Warcraft published in Sweden, which is pure crap, which seems to written for 10 year olds who’ve flunked school. If we can get video games into the art section of the newspapers maybe the chances to find WoW writings intended for grown ups elsewhere than in the WoW blogosphere, which currently is the only place to go.

On the other hand you can look on it from an opposite way: do we really want to become socially accepted? Thinking about that the WoW playing is so common, that there are millions of players out there, that grannies and neighbours and colleagues and just about anyone you know may be playing it makes it a bit plain and ordinary, doesn’t it?

There is a pleasure in being an underdog actually, to be misunderstood by society, to find comfort and friendship with the other “unpopular” kids, to find a gang of your own to hang out with. This feeling may get lost, as the playing becomes more and more socially accepted and widespread.

It’s just like the SF bookshop in Stockholm. 20 years ago it used to be in a cellar, run by a few enthusiasts who had ordinary jobs beside it to make a living, open just a few hours in the evenings and in the weekends. You went there only if you knew on beforehand that it existed. It was an oasis where the misunderstood underdogs of SF readers could meet up, a sort of hideout. We looked upon any other kind of literature as “mainstream”, sometimes with a slightly prerogative undertone.

Nowadays I can’t help feeling SF has become the mainstream. At least it’s become quite accepted in Sweden. The SF bookstore has moved into the major tourist shopping area in a huge store, it’s got a huge hired staff, it’s open everyday of the week. You’ll find all sorts of people there, and they don’t look like underdogs at all. As a matter of fact I suspect they could have been some of the “cool kids” at school.

This post is starting to become rather long and rather rambling, it’s time to get to the point. I think that the conception of art is changing. And video gaming is probably going to be more socially accepted in the future than it is today. We’ll see it entering the art and literature pages in the newspapers. And we’ll see all kinds of players. Not just the unpopular kids at school, but also the cool ones.

This evolution is inevitable and mostly it’s for the good. Still being an underdog isn’t only bad – sometimes it’s quite enjoyable – you feel like a part of a secret society, a few enlightened people who’ve found something that others haven’t found. Actually I think there may come when we’ll miss the time when we were the underdogs.