Introducing my co-innkeeper

I see an upcoming trend in the Blogosphere: several bloggers are currently introducing or looking for guest writers. It could be interpreted as a sign of fatigue, that the original writers get a bit tired from time to time and want some assistance to keep the blog going and new content incoming at a good pace. But you can also see it as a wish to broadening the content of the blogs, making them more interesting and varied by adding new voices. It’s also a great way to let people, who’ve got interesting thoughts to share but for some reason don’t want to run a blog of their own, get the opportunity to meet an audience and try out the wings of their thoughts.

Anyway, I’m doing the same thing now, introducing a guest writer, who will appear whenever he has something to share – and maybe he’ll also serve from time to time as some kind of stand-by innkeeper when Larísa’s off for vacation (at least that's what I secretly hope, dont tell him...). I’ve asked him to contribute, simply because I like his writing and because it will add some new spicy dishes into the menu of The Pink Pigtail Inn – bring you some other flavours from the game than the ones Larísa can offer. A little more of salt to this rather sweet blog. And since he doesn't want to run a blog of his own, I thought this would be a great match.

So soon you're about to meet Zakesh, who’s been playing WoW since the beta and currently is playing on the US server Stormrage. He’s a 30-something years old gamer with a huge experience not only of WoW but from other online games. With his rogue he’s cleared Black Temple and started on Sunwell. He’s also got a T6 raiding shaman, and has raided with most of the other existing classes.

In his posts you can probably expect a more hardcore approach to the game than I have. Maybe you’ll also get some good theorycrafting. It’s a specialty of his; if I ever wonder anything about how to spec, gem, enchant or anything that’s got to do with theories and maths – I just ask Zakesh. He’s sort of a WoW Encyclopedia in human form.

The posts by Zakesh will be labelled properly, so there won't be any risk for confusion about who's the author of a post. But seriously I think there won't be any doubts about it, since we're so different from each other.

Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy his writings and treat him well!

My Alternative Achievements Window

The blogs are flooding over with news about the arrival of the Beta and the WoW community seems to be bouncing around in exaltation, just like popcorn. So far most seem to be concerned about the new talent trees, especially for paladins and other classes which seem to go through some pretty radical changes. The change list for mages is saddening short so far, and quite disappointing, it mostly seems like nerfs to me, at a first glance. So I’m not so excited about that.

But what really made me smile and cheer on the other hand was the new achievement reward system. What a brilliant idea! It’s nice, motivating and player-friendly for players at all levels, with all different kind of styles and conditions for their playing. Even players with very limited time, who maybe get their sessions cut into small pieces due to the needs of small children or other circumstances, can find fun things to strive for, to get the feeling of accomplishment, that until now mostly has been rewarded through levelling, raiding and ranking in the PvP system (to simplify it a lot).

What made me even happier about it was the playfulness of it. Like that you proudly could have it recorded that you have given out ten hugs, that you’ve got yourself a new haircut or fallen from a great height. Cheers for that! Though I may admit at the same time that I’m a little bit concerned about those lines:

Every time you earn a new achievement, your accomplishment is announced to your guild and everyone in your immediate vicinity -- and the custom achievement animation and sound effect are unmistakable.

Seriously, with 500 achievements around, and many of them not so hard to complete, don’t you think it will become a bit annoying after a while?

So far they’ve only given us a few teasers when it comes to what achievements that will be rewarded. But my imagination is already at full work. I couldn’t help thinking about some truly epic achievements we’ll probably never see in the official achievement window. Here are a few ideas for Larísa's Alternative Achievements Window:

• Sticking to the end and completing a PUG, lasting a minimum of 6 hours. During the run you must have faced at least 10 wipes and used up three different tanks/healers who’ve all left the group in anger and frustration.
• Setting up your 10th Karazhan raid for your guild, preparing for it and turning up in time, full of hope and energy, even though the 9 first runs all have been cancelled because of lack of players.
• Volunteering as a mentor for an obvious newbie player who seems a bit lost, giving them free lessons about talent choices, spell rotation, gear and other basics.
• Staying around in a guild in crises, giving the officers a hand and helping to rebuild it, in stead of just jumping the ship like everyone else, giving the guild another chance for at least one month.

Feel free to complete the list with further suggestions! I'll make it a list and turn it over to Blizzard (at least if I'm let into the Beta).

Why do I WoW?

This week Blog Azeroth ask all the bloggers to share our motivations for playing the game. Why do we WoW at all? What keeps me coming back to Azeroth night after night, instead of knitting, tendering to my plants or ironing shirts or doing other stuff that you expect from grown-ups?

I’ve got a vague feeling that this topic isn’t entirely new in this blog – though I can’t pinpoint the post where I covered it. Maybe it’s just that I keep coming back to it all the time – I think a great deal about what’s motivating me and what gives me the most joy in the game.

Still – I’ll sort out the thoughts on this once again, under this shared topic headline. Of course there are short and easy answers to it: Cheap, price worthy entertainment. Escape. Just a Bad habit or even Addiction if you want to put it that way. But I’ll try to elaborate it a bit more, and I appologize if it's partly a repition from some previous posts.

Basically I think you could group my reasons for WoWing into five categories:

To experience the magic of team work
At school I just hated it whenever the teacher told us it was time to do some kind of team project. I knew it just meant that I would do all the work and then four other lazy guys would get the same cred for it as I did. Unfair and annoying. And I was never any successful player member of a sports team - on the contrary I’ve got quite painful memories of how it was to be one of those who were picked last when it came to forming teams for playing basketball at school.

As a grown up I’ve of course been into or lead teams at work, and seen that there are other sides of it – that team work can be fun. And WoW really gives me the opportunity to make up for what I missed when I grew up.

To form a good team and to make it work not just for one raid (or other kind of guild event for those that aren’t raiding), but for months – to take it forward through wins and losses, joy and sorrow, to knit it all together.. it’s just awesome! There’s no way I can describe the feeling you get sometimes when all the pieces sort of slip into the right spots and you know that you’re a great Team and you’re a part of it.

To enjoy the process of improving myself
Isn’t it a great feeling when you realize that you’re actually learning something, that you’re improving yourself? I’ve done this kind of learning journeys before. Like when I started to learn how to ride a horse. The first time I sat up and the horse just moved his weight a bit, leaning over to one side. I almost panicked, convinced I’d fall off. A few years later I wasn’t any elite horse rider, but at least I could jump over some barriers, ride comfortably outdoors or indoors and make some nice moves that looked pretty good.

Starting out playing WoW was the same thing – I was totally lost in a world that was totally alien to me and entered a new learning curve. One and a half year later I’m at least a bit more comfortable in it. And I still challenge myself all the time and I see that I improve – not just that my char’s gearing up, but that I’m actually learning. Every single day.

To escape and explore
I’ve always loved science fiction and fantasy – call it escapism if you want to, I don’t mind. I can’t think of anything more relaxing than to drift away from ordinary life and be somewhere where things are totally different. I used to explore and be thrilled and entertained by new worlds through books and movies. WoW offers the same thing, but through another media, and combined with interactivity, which makes it even more fun.

I’m aware that the development is going fast – probably there are other games around with even better graphics, environments, monsters and so on – but for me, with my limited experience, WoW is just amazing the way it is. It’s huge, it’s varied and there seems to be no end to it.

To get the kicks
I guess this is the chemical side of the game – I’m not sure whether it’s adrenaline or dopamine or both – I’m no physician – but you know what I mean. Being totally focused, all alert, struggling with the endless 1-percent stage of a boss fight – and odds are really against you, but maybe there’s a small chance you can make it. It really gives me a kick – the tension and stress in itself – and the relief when you finally actually get the boss down.

To be honest, loot may give some kicks too from time to time but not the same way as kills do, when it comes to me. But I’m pretty sure you all know what I mean about the kicks. I guess you can get them in PvP as well, especially when it comes to Arena matches, though that area so far is unknown territory for me.

To socialize
In real life I’m not one of those people who own a Facebook page crowded with friends. I don’t know why, but I’ve never been any good at getting new friends or keeping in touch with the one’s I’ve had. Socializing at home really isn’t one of my strongest sides (work’s a different thing though.) WoW really has been a big improvement in that aspect. For some reason it’s so much easier to get to know people online. Some of them become friends – some of them are people you just chat with like you’d chat with someone you happen to sit beside on a journey – you make that nice PUG and then you part and will never meet again. But still it’s socializing in a way that fits me very well.

There’s something so relaxing and refreshing in this possibility to look beyond what’s on the surface – age, looks, class, status, gender. I refuse to think of the online friendships as inferior to real life ones – they’re different though. And perhaps in one way they’re more honest. You can be true to who you really are without fearing anything.

These were my five motives for playing WoW. Pretty good ones I think – so I guess I’ll stick around for a quite a while (unless Armageddon's coming, servers closing down, you know).

The taste of exclusivity

For a couple of years I've been trying to educate myself about wine. We're a bunch of people who've been doing blind tests, where we always have to guess about grapes, countries, prices and such before we get to know what kind of wine it is. I must confess that I seem pretty uneducable, since I've hardly improved at all during those years. I could distinguish a Zinfandel from a Cabernet Sauvignon I guess, but that's about all. However I've found one pattern which makes me a bit embarrassed: there IS a connection between the price of the wine and the taste in such a way that once you found out how expensive a certain wine is - you'll find that it tastes so much better.

It's predictable but quite human I guess. That's how we work - whether we want it or not we're coloured by how exclusive we think things are. Once we think something is expensive it will taste better. Or look better for that sake. You could take exactly the same garment and sell it at 10 $ in a bargain store or at 100 $ in a brand store. I promise you - you'll think it looks so much better if you paid 100 $ for it.

From a WoW point of view I'm afraid it's pretty much the same. Even though you may appreciate a piece of gear for its stats or usability, you're likely to like it even more if you know it has a drop rate on 0.01 percent. That's why I just can't love my badge gear or quest reward the same way as I love thing that have dropped for me. They're not exclusive at all. Anyone could get them. The wine is too cheap.

The same thing goes with pets of course. There's no really good reason for it, but a pet which you know must have been either bought at AH at a fortune, or be the result of an endless hunt for it to drop, will absolutely look cooler than the almost identical pet which you can buy at a few silver or a gold at most from a vendor... No matter how hard I try to resist it and think for myself, appreciating my little ordinary vendor cats and birds, I'm drawn into it myself - into the spinning wheel of vanity.

What is it that makes us stop thinking, becoming helpless victims of the chase of status, suddenly loosing our willpower and imagination, starting to think that a wine tastes better just because it costs more, without trusting our own senses? It's kind of annoying. I hate following the masses.
Still there are things in the game that I love even though they aren't exclusive. I think it's fun to play with tonks every now and then - even if though they're available at just a few gold each. I like my little chicken from Shimmering Flats, bought at 1 g when Larísa was young and innocent (and at that time it was a fortune, I'll tell you). I doubt that I would have loved her more if she had cost me 200 g. I still think my Nifty Stopwatch was an awesome trinket, even though it was available to anyone by simple questing.

But I must admit I'd do almost anything to get the knowledge to polymorph turtle...
Goddamn it. It tastes so... exclusive.

From fire to arcane - an evaluation

I used to be a dedicated fire mage. Actually so dedicated that I think I could very well have qualified for the secret society of sworn fire mages that I’ve actually heard exists somewhere out there. Until this very day I’ve never ever played frost and never felt any longing to lock myself into a circle of ice or sending away a frost creature to help me attack things.

Until two months ago I had never stepped any further away from the Path of Fire than playing Arane/fire for a while. That was great too and I didn’t notice any big difference, since fireball still was my main spell at that time. Since so many theorycrafters seemed to agree that fire was the best raid spec I didn’t see any point in trying something else.

But then I started to reconsider. I think what made me start hesitating in my passion for fire was the constant aggro problems I was experiencing. It felt like if I was spending most of my time standing beside, not participating in the fights, since I knew that if I did I would end up not only grabbing aggro from the mobs, but also from the tank, getting furious about me grabbing aggro. And tank’s aggro is worse than mob aggro, trust me.

As I always do when I try to sort my thoughts out, I wrote a post about it, Fire mage is a way of life, and the answers I got helped me to finally take the step. I became an arcane/frost mage. Now after a month or so time has come to make an evaluation.

Since I respecced I’ve been using a standard raiding spec, 40/0/21. This means that I’ve got Cold Snap which gives me an extra Iceblock and Icy veins on every cooldown. But I don’t have Slow, which can be a handy arcane spell at times.

So far I ’m totally happy with the change. It gives me:

1. Less aggro. An obvious answer, after what I wrote above. It’s more fun to be able to participate in a fight from the very start and to be able to put attention to other aspects of the fight than just staring at Omen…

2. Decent damage. I think most theorycrafters still stick to fire as the best overall raiding spec, but still arcane really isn’t bad and I can compete pretty well on the damage meters with other mages.

3. A few candies to enjoy. I didn’t realize how much I had missed Presence of Mind when I swapped back from arcane/fire to pure fire until I became arcane again. I don’t use it for pyroblast anymore (I don’t even have that spell since I deserted the fire talent tree), so there’s no cool PoM-Pyro-macro for me. But it’s really handy when it comes to sheeping. I use it a lot, in instances and raids for quicker and more controlled sheeping, as well as life saver when I’m questing on my own, accidently pulling too many mobs. The Ice block x 2 as mentioned is also extremely handy whenever in a party with a healer. When you’re on your own it doesn’t help that much, it just postpones things since you can’t heal yourself while frozen.

And what about the drawbacks about going arcane?
Well, I don’t know if I want to call it a real disadvantage, but I’ve certainly got to get used to a different style of playing. Instead of staring at Omen I now find myself always supervising my mana pool, anxiously, always trying to make the most possible I can out of my cooldowns.

As a fire mage I hardly ever used evocation – now it’s quite common. Going for a raid I need to bring whopping 40 mad alchemist potions to make sure I’ll manage the whole way. I find myself constantly chasing more mana, putting mana oil on my weapons instead of damage oil, always hoping to get a shaman or shadowpriest in my group to help up my mana regeneration.

After every single pull I throw myself down to the floor hoping to be able not to go to 100 percent, but at least to have a mouthful of mana biscuits to get a long a few more mobs. I love chain pulling since it keeps me focused, but it IS a challenge for an arcane mage to cope with. I’ve even started to use some odd beer for the bossfights, Kreeg's Stout Beatdown, which is kind of hard to get, you need to make a tribute run in Dire Maul to find the vendor.

Still this mana management issue of course keeps me alert and it’s quite fun to try to figure out how to best handle it. Most theorycrafters these days seem to think that you should spam Arcane Blast as much as possible, just throwing in a few frostbolts as fillers if it seems too hopeless to keep up the mana pool. But I never get bored out of the single spell spamming - it takes a lot of skill to play an arcane mage properly and I’ve still got a lot to learn before mastering it to perfection.

A while ago I got two pieces of T5 gear, which has a set bonus making my damage from AB increase 20 percent – as well as the mana consumption. It makes this spec even more fun – and challenging at the same time. If heroism, icy veins and other spellhaste increasing cooldowns are popped at the same time I can make awesome burst damage – but also empty my mana pool in no time at all. So timing is more essential than ever.

All in all – I’m a very happy arcane/frost mage at the moment, so happy that I’ve regemmed my gear to fit better with the new spec. Arcane requires a lot less spellhit than any other spec. I’ll definitely stick to it for a while.

(This post I dedicate especially for my reader Ghostboci, who wrote that you’ve been following my blog since I’m one of the few blogging arcane mages out there. For once I wrote some magerelated stuff! I can’t help wondering though… There are loads of excellent druid, pala, hunter and priest blogs out there, but mage blogs seem to be rare, especially arcane mage blogs. Aren't we the blogging kind of people?)

Warcraft novels – crap and pleasure

The other week I went on vacation, spending a week on the beach. But actually I spent a couple of days in the Warcraft universe as well – even though I was completely offline. For the first time in my life I read a couple of Warcraft novels.

Until recently I honestly didn’t know those books existed. It was when I was doing some last minute book shopping for my trip that my eyes fell on those titles on the sf/fantasy shelf in the local book store. Afterwards I realized my picking was rather random. As a matter of fact I didn’t have anything to choose between – there were just two titles, both written by Richard A Knaak. There seem to be some more Warcraft writers around and quite a few books, but this was what I found in my little shop. In the hurry I thought I had got part 1 and part 2 from a trilogy. It turned out that I was wrong – the first one, Day of the Dragon (first published 2001) was from another trilogy than the second book, The Demon Soul (from 2004), which turned out to be the middle part of The War of the Ancients trilogy. Well. Things happen. Actually it didn’t matter much. Some of the main characters appear in both and I got the hang of the plot pretty fast anyway, so the only thing I really regretted was not having access to part three in the War of the Ancients series.

I guess there are a lot of connoisseurs out there who know a great deal more about the Warcraft novels than I do, so you’ll probably think I’m quite stupid and unknowing, but I’ll use my blogger privilege and write about my experiences from reading those books anyway.

First of all – the whole concept felt a bit weird. I may be a bit old and conservative, but when I grew up you usually first read the book. Then you saw a movie based on the book. If you had read the book first you’d probably get disappointed since you had all the pictures in your head and the movie rarely could live up to it, with all it’s limitations when it came to special effects as well as the very short format. No matter how great job you do with the movie you always have to kill the darlings… (like Tom Bombadill who sadly but necessarily disappeared in the Lord of the Rings movies, which I by the way think were excellent on the whole.)

And after the movie you would read the cartoons and play the games and the toys and wear the clothes and chew the bubblegum… you know. But the book was always the original, which everything else came from.

Now the world seem to have turned upside down and for the first time in my life I’m reading a novel where the cover tells me it’s based on a game. Mind you, I don’t complain about it, but it makes me realize how different it is nowadays. And that’s for good. Why couldn’t a game be the artistic original and the book a sort of copy? When you think about it.

Secondly: what did I think about it? Was it worth the money and time I spend on them? Well, to be honest, those books aren’t the best examples of fantasy I’ve read in my life. If you’d compare them to the classic, recognized fantasy eposes I think they’re meagre, written in haste by a very, very productive writer. They lack depth, especially when it comes to portraying people – they’re all sort of plain, flat and show up a lot of clichés. The language isn’t beautiful or original in any way and the plot doesn’t make me go wild. History is told rather clumsily in longue ranting parts sometimes. That’s the negative side of it.

BUT (here comes the twist)

I loved to read them! I really did and I don’t regret reading them at all, on the contrary. It’s just that it’s unfair to compare them as fantasy books to other fantasy books – because they aren’t – you could rather see them as companions to the game, the extra material you’ll find in any good dvd box.

I must confess that I’ve never until now been able to understand much of the lore until now, to conquer it and make it to a part of my own game experience. I don’t know why, but I found the descriptions in the manual that accompanied the game when I first bought it rather boring. I was eager to start playing and didn’t pay much attention to the glorious passed of the dwarves or whatever it spoke of. And once in the game I read at least some of the quest texts and dialogues properly, but I found it hard to put anything into my memory and to get the full picture of it. The world was too confusing, the game so huge and new, that I couldn’t grab that side of it too.

Of course there are an abundance of websites where I could catch up. Wowwiki would be a great start. Whenever I’m looking up tactics on the next raid boss I tend to come to the lore department by mistake, but then I’m usually in a hurry, so I quickly go forward to the strategy part of it. When it comes to reality I’ve never taken myself the time, and reading huge chunks of text on a screen isn’t really enjoyable.

Those books offers a solution – they’re far more accessible to me than heavy websites. By reading those novels, no matter how crappy written they were, I can now see the game from a slightly different point of view. Even though I’m not actually roleplaying, it’s quite a lot more interesting to go and take down a raid boss if you can think that you’re actually part of an ongoing war, and know what’s he been up to so far, and what this event actually is about. If you just ignore the lore altogether, I sometimes get the feeling that we’re rather technically trying to beat a PC-game just like Pacman or Lemmings, just a bit more technical. If you get the difference.

Especially the book from 2004, The Demon Soul, made me happy and excited. I was reading about how they were defending Mount Hyjal, where I hope to go very soon (typically I missed the guild-first kill of Rage Winterchill the other week when I was on vacation.) I’ve followed how Illidan grew up and I know why he turned evil. And my server, Stormrage, turned out to be named after his twin brother, a nightelf druid – I had no idea about that before! Maybe everyone else does, but I didn’t, noob as I am. Now that I’ve met Archimond in the battlefield through the eyes of this young druid, I just can’t wait to see him in the game as well.

Of course it’s a bit disappointing that no gnomes whatsoever appeared in the novels (I guess there are historical reasons for that which I’m still unknowing of). But there are mages! And trust me, there’s something special to read about how they counterspell stuff, conjure food, mount their gryphons and do other things you recognize from the game.

Everything in the game becomes a bit bigger and more amazing after reading the books. It’s all in the eyes of the beholder. The game can be just as thrilling as we want it to be. For instance you can chose to see the flying from point A to B, not just as another boring waiting for the next fight, but as a thrilling, dangerous journey, like in the books.

My conclusion is: if you ever like me stumble on those novels – give it a chance – for what it is: companions which can add a lot of pleasure to our beloved game – even though they may not be the greatest fantasy novels ever written.

Thoughts about guild mums

Are you a guild mum? If you are, do you always enjoy the role or do you sometimes want to get out of it since it’s become a burden?

A lot of questions came into my head as I just spotted a new blog, named no less than Guild Mum. (A blog which seems promising – I’ll definitely keep an eye on it and hope you keep posting, so no offense about this post!).

The blog author Sephrenia is a mum in RL and says she’s taken it into the game. She spends more time in the game chatting than playing, and all of her guild seems to confide things to her. She obviously enjoys this role and has even taken upon herself to try to contact personally every guild member at least once a week to catch up on how they’re feeling, if they need help with anything, how their RL is”

First of all I must say that I really think what Sephrenia’s doing is awesome. I think all guilds could benefit from this kind of people and roles. It’s so easy to focus on appointing class leaders, raid leaders and other officers, forgetting about who will make sure that people actually enjoy the game, that they’re comfortable within the guild, that the glue that holds the guild together is strong. It doesn’t matter if your guild is about raiding, levelling, pvping ore roleplaying, mums are always in need.

But… (yes, of course there’s a “but” coming, you were just waiting for it).

What makes me a bit worried is that you only hear about guild mums (this isn’t the first one I hear about). I’ve so far never ever heard about a male player describing himself as a “guild dad”, talking about how he’s performing the kind of work Sephrenia does.

I can’t help worrying that some female players are assigned this kind of role, more or less against their will. You bring patterns from RL into the game (it IS quite common that women are the ones in family who keep in touch and nourish the social network of the family) rather than grabbing the opportunity to explore other sides of yourself.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see some loving, tendering guild fathers who care about the social atmosphere in the guild, while some hardcore female players plan for the next raid?

About myself, being a mother in RL, I really try to avoid slipping into a “mum” roll in the guild. Yes, I guess I’m quite social and I do chat and get to know people quite a deal. But I’d never ever take upon me the role of actually mothering people within the guild. Not even the teenagers, which would be quite easy to do since my own children are in that age.

I want to be a player just like anyone else - a raider and a mage, exploring and enjoying the game. Not a mum - in another environment than usual, but still put on doing mum duties.