When did you last tell a fellow player that he’s great?

Have you ever met someone in the game who excelled in some aspect? I bet you have.

Maybe it was that frost mage who could kite a mob around all of Azeroth if you asked him to. Maybe it was that officer who stepped up and saved the guild when it seemed to be on the verge of collapsing. Maybe it was that guy who made the guild chat into stand up comedy scene and could turn a dull grinding session into pure entertainment.

Did you ever tell them how much you appreciated what they did? Maybe you didn’t?

Speaking for myself I know that I walk around in Azeroth taking too many people for granted. All those nice things I think about them for some reason stay in my head, unspoken.

What it means
A few words of appreciation can mean much more than you could imagine. Here’s an example from my own life.

A few days ago I received an e-mail. It was just a few lines, but I all but cried when I read it:

Your articles are consistently great, and I'm always looking forward to reading what you write. I guess the acid test is that when I see you pop up in google reader, I stop what I'm doing and get reading. Just wanted to pass that on. :)

A fan mail. Have you any idea how happy I was? Well, at least I think my fellow bloggers out there have. This letter should be framed and put up on the wall.

Sometimes blogging is easy, the posts sort of write themselves. Sometimes it’s not and you struggle a bit and wonder why you’re doing this and how long you will last as a blogger. How long can you really write about a single game? Getting close to 200 posts… at some point you should probably run out of things to say? In those times, when the blog feels a bit fading greyish, rather than shining pinkish, I can just throw an eye on this letter. My blogging means something to someone else. Suddenly I’m filled with energy and lust and this will keep me blogging for a long time to come.

Look around in your surroundings. Look at the people you love to play with, the ones that make this game worth playing. Your guild master, your main healer, your arena partner, your pug friend – don’t you think they could need a bit fuel too, to keep doing what they do so good?

Feedback as a tool
Now, giving feedback can be more than just being nice and friendly to people. If you’re in a leading position, it’s one of your best tools to move the guild in the direction you want. If you want a player to develop in a certain direction – start to recognize the things he does right.

I’ll give you an example: let’s say you have a mage that often is slacking on sheeping, not being on his toes when there’s a pull. Don’t just complain about the slow sheeping. Try to find the moments when he does it right (hopefully it happens at least sometimes) and then give praise: “Nice sheeping!” I can assure you this mage will feel motivated to try to do it right again. It’s pretty basic, an instinct to please others that I think we carry along since we were children.

Of course you could – and should – give “negative” feedback as well – or rather suggestions how things can be improved. After all it’s a gift. If no one tells you about your faults, there isn’t much of a chance that you’ll develop. But you should make sure that you have built a foundation of trust before you give it. If you’ve given generous (but honest, no flattering lies please!) positive feedback, you can feel confident in giving suggestions. It will neither break your relationship, nor the self confidence of your guildie. The ground is solid.

A waste
A final thought about this topic. I wonder how it comes that we sometimes are quick to complain and point out how others could improve, and so slow to praise.

Are we shy? Are we envious? Are we so self centred that we simply don’t notice what good the other players do? Or maybe we’re afraid to be misinterpreted as we’re making a pass or just flattering them to get some kind of advantage?

I don’t know. But it’s silly and it’s a waste. So why don’t we just change it?

When you find out that you had it all wrong

Does it ever happen that you find out that the things you thought you had figured out was way wrong – that you have lived in an illusion? It happens to me. Often. Luckily enough I’m old enough to find it amusing rather than embarrassing.

WoW offers excellent opportunities for this kind of self entertainment, especially when you’re a beginner. I still remember two brutal reminders of my ignorance in the beginning of my WoW career, one and a half year ago.

The strange disease
The first one was the meaning of the strange man who suddenly appeared on my screen. He was yellow to begin with, a sickening colour. So I was convinced that my paladin, the first char I ever rolled, had caught some disease from the evil defias people in Elwynn Forrest. I just prayed it would wear off by time. It didn’t. It got worse. Helplessly I saw the man turning red, at first a part of him, and finally the whole guy. And my character started to die constantly. Finally I deserted her and rolled Larísa. It took me a few more days of playing before I realized the truth, feeling utterly stupid.

The Gnomegaran encounter
The next “Oh, THAT’S how it is-experience” was in Gnomegaran. I was around level 10, a happy little gnome on her first exploring expedition in Azeroth. I had just found Ironforge and was enthusiastic about the place, even though I felt a bit foreign among all those dwarfs. Since I had seen Stormwind with my deserted paladin, I imagined there should be a home town for the gnomes as well. One town for the humans, one for the dwarfs, one for the gnomes. It seemed logical. So when the map showed me there was a spot called Gnomegaran, I was delighted and thought I should pay it a visit.

I must admit I thought the entrance was a bit strange. It wasn’t really as welcoming as Stormwind or Ironforge. The guards outside were hostile, trying to kill me. But I shrugged and continued, convinced that I’d meet friendlier faces once inside. I just had to pass the dangerous passage to get there. So I went into the elevator. I took the ride down. I went out, prepared for a hearty greeting. And then the truth dawned upon me in a quite brutal manner.

I could only laugh at my stupidity and laziness. How came that I, brought up in a home where reading was as natural as drinking or sleeping, couldn’t manage to read the brief manual book accompanying the game? I could have got the whole background there, ever so easily.

The mage in the water
We’ve all had those “Oh, I’ve been stupid”- moments and I can’t get enough reading about them. The funniest misunderstanding I’ve read about so far was a mage confessing on a forum that he (or she) for a very long time was convinced that in order to be able to conjure water you actually had to be standing in water yourself. So whenever he needed some water he had to find a lake to stand in! I can imagine how relieved he must have been when he found out the truth.

Spelling
But it isn’t just newbies that suffer from misconceptions. I’m totally convinced that I still regularly show evidence of my lack of knowledge, giving other players the opportunity to smile behind my back. And I’m OK with it. The other day for instance I made a blog post about reputation. I consequently used the word “fraction” in it. Then Zakesh asked me why there wasn’t any mathematics in the post, since I was talking about fractions. I didn’t quite get what he meant but when I checked it out I saw that it should have been “faction”, just as it’s spelled in the reputation sheet in the game. And all this time I thought it was spelled with an “r”. To my defence I must say though, that in Swedish, for instance the terror group The Red Army Faction is called the “Red Army Fraction”. It never occurred to me that it was different in English. Anyway I’ll let it stay that way in the blog post, spelled the wrong way, as a reminder to myself that you never can check out the facts and spelling in your post too many times.

Pronunciation
Pronunciation is another area where you easily can get used to something that is way wrong. I remember when the kids were younger and we read all the Harry Potter books aloud to them. Then a few years later the first of the Harry Potter movies were made and within seconds my reputation with the kids as a storyteller was lost forever. The brilliant girl hero was called HermIone, with emphases on the second syllable! My own invention of how this never-heard-of-name should sound was… well… it’s enough to say: very different.

With that lesson in mind I avoid to be the first one to pronounce new NPCs and places in the game. When WotLK arrives I’ll definitely listen to what the other say first, before I open my mouth. Trying to save at least a little of my dignity, if I still have any.

Now I’m eager to increase my collection of interesting misunderstandings. Please, share your secrets with the other guests of The Pink Pigtail Inn!

Learning boss fights by other means than reading

Read tactics before the raid takes off! It’s one of the basic not-to-be-broken rules. Before a raid you always do the three R:s: you Read, you Repair and you Refill your reagents and consumables. It doesn’t matter where you are in terms of progression; it’s just something you do.

The strategies from Wowwiki and Bosskillers are so commonly accepted, that if you’re pugging a raid, you expect that the tactics suggested there are the ones you’ll be following, unless someone has a really brilliant other idea and some pretty convincing arguments for it.

But reading isn’t the only way to learn. And it isn’t necessarily the best way. In this post I want share my view that we sometimes put to much attention to the written descriptions of the boss fights and that we should look for other ways to increase our knowledge.

Learning styles
In educational matters, you talk about different learning styles. Some people learn better by seeing, others by hearing, others again by doing or feeling it with the help of their senses.
Do you know what kind of learner you are? If not, there are tons of websites about this, many of them offering free self tests. If you’re curious, this is a good starting point, providing links to many test sites.

I always considered myself a reader, but at least one of those tests suggested that I may learn things better aurally. And when I thought about how I act in the game, it did make sense. I’ll give you an example:

When I switched guilds a month ago I also switched arena for my raiding. I had to quickly get the idea about a number of new encounters. So I read about them, but found it pretty hard to get a clear picture of what I was to expect in my head. It wasn’t until I spent some time watching videos – while talking to an experienced gamer, who commented everything we saw on vent – that I really got a proper understanding of the fights.

Learning by discussing
I think I’m not unique. You can read ever so many tactics on beforehand, but if we don’t add short explanation of the fight from the raid leader, many raiders will find it hard to apply the written instructions to the actual fight. There’s nothing as clarifying as when the raid leader puts a mark on him (so that we can see him properly) and quickly shows the positioning. “This is where you tank him! This is where you go if you die”. If you’ve done an encounter several times this is unnecessary, but if there are new people in the raid, giving this a few minutes will really save you some pain.

Sometimes there is no time for explanations and demonstrations. You need every minute you can get for real boss attempts. If you know this is what the raid will be like, and you tend to bang your head into the walls of text, without really understanding or remembering them, I suggest you try a new approach. Find a friend to discuss the fight with before the raid. Do you read the strategies the same way? Have you got the same set up as they or will you modify something? Explain the fight to your friend and you’ll learn it at the same time.

Learning by doing
Reading and discussing are great ways of learning, but in my opinion it doesn’t beat the third way, which is to practice. Learning by doing is very efficient, especially when you can do it out of the raid and save the time the entire raid has to spend on the learning phase.

The example that first comes into my head is the Archimond fight in Mount Hyjal. For you who haven’t been there, one of the crucial things about this fight is that all raid members need to master a version of slowfall. Every now and then raiders will be tossed up way high in the air. To come down safely they have to use a thing in their inventory – not too early, because the effect will wear off, not too late, since they’ll be smashed into the ground and dead. You get the item from a nightelf, and the wonderful thing is that he’s standing right next to a steep. So anyone coming new to this fight has a perfect opportunity to practice the tears clicking, to see how close to the ground you should be before using it. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve read about it – it isn’t until you practice that you learn it.

Another example of fights that you can practice out of the raid situation is Gorefiend in BT, where you’ll be turned out into a ghost and expected to take down four mobs on your own or you’ll wipe the raid. The pressure if you’re the one who’ll get this random assignment is huge, but luckily enough there’s a free online simulator you can play to get the idea of what it is all about on beforehand. (Sadly enough I haven’t been able to beat that game yet, but I guess I’d be even worse off without it.)

Now it’s your turn. I’m sure there are some of you visiting The Pink Pigtail Inn who have been practicing raid bosses out of raids. What did you do? Please share your ideas about how you can learn raid strategies by doing rather than by reading!

17 excuses to play WoW when you know you shouldn't

Have you ever felt a bit bad about dedicating so much time to WoW? Have you ever deep inside known that there were other issues in real life that you should have dealt with before logging in, but just ignored your own objections and played anyway?

If the answer is “no” you can stop reading now. (Liar!) For the rest of us, I’ve composed a list of excuses to keep ready whenever you risk to be critically hit by a guilty conscience.

1. I’m really not going to play! I’m just checking my auctions and my ingame mail, I’ll be done in 10 minutes so it really doesn’t count like playing. (This excuse will be erased from your memory 5 minutes after logging in, so have no fear; it won’t keep you from joining a “quick heroic instance run”).

2. It’s just this night, OK? I’ll make up for it tomorrow!

3. I’ve had a terrible day at work/school/whatever. The boss was yelling at me, the customers hate me and I fluked the test. I deserve to relax.

4. I’ve had an awesome day at work/school/whatever. I got a new contract/raised wages/passed the test. I deserve to celebrate.

5. If I didn’t play I’d just watch TV anyway. WoW is better since it’s interactive.

6. The more I play, the better value I get for my subscription fee. It’s a waste of money not to play.

7. I contribute to improving the world economy playing. I feed Blizzard, Blizzard employs people and even some poor Chinese people will get their income from people playing WoW, like it or not. I’m happy to whatever I can to make the world a better place.

8. I’m saving the environment! If I didn’t play WoW I’d probably take a ride in the car and pollute the air. WoW is climate friendly. It’s just takes some electricity to run the computer, and that is so little that you can probably just ignore it.

9. If you think about it this is rather a language course than a computer game. My English has improved immensely since I started. So this is serious business, education rather than entertainment.

10. Following the guild chat will improve my knowledge in management and group psychology. Who knows, one day we may end up putting WoW playing on our CV!

11. I think well while I’m grinding. It’s like meditation; I’m sure I’ll solve some major life problems while playing.

12. I’ve played so much this week anyway, so an hour more or less won’t make any difference.

13. My toon needs to get some air, she’ll be disappointed if I don’t let her get out and have some fun.

14. I can’t miss my daily transmute. It’s free gold!

15. Actually I’m not going to play. I’m just logging in to say hello to my mates. It’s no different to use MSN, so why hesitate?

16. I could do so much worse. At least I’m not going to a pub and grab a drink. Thinking about it, playing WoW is pretty good to my health.

17. Who will care about what I did this very night in 100 years?

Now over to you! Can you come up with some more well working excuses to keep ready when you’re debating with yourself?

The trinket I think should be banned from the game

I’m a huge fan of trinkets. Especially the ones which offer a bit unusual abilities, not just pure spelldamage. Like the three little gnomes, which I’ve written about before, or the lovely nifty stop watch, my lifesaver when I levelled my mage.

But there is one unusual trinket which I don’t like at all. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I hate it. As a matter of fact I’d rather see it banned from the game.

By using this trinket you can harass other players of your own fraction. It’s the perfect tool in the hands of a bully minded player.

Yes, I’m thinking about the Piccolo of Flaming Fire, which dropps from Hearthsinger Forresten in Stratholme. The trinket by which you can force players in your neighborhood to dance, either they like it or not.

I got it recently at my little rogue. A nice pala tank I now has taken upon him to boost her, aoe-levelling in a couple of instances. (It’s amazing to see how quick it goes). I was looting my way through the heaps of dead mobs, when he suddenly said: “OK. Here’s a trinket. You may have it, but only if you promise to never ever use it on me”. I gave him my promise and picked it up. And I can assure you I intend to hold to my vow. I know playing the flute would be then end of our friendship and I wouldn’t risk that for anything.

But thinking about it a bit further, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t use it on any other person either. How could I? The thing with this flute, which annoyed my friend so much, is that it makes the victim of it loose control over his toon to someone else.

You could argue that it’s just the same with sheeping or rooting or trapping other players and that after all it’s a part of the game, to take control of your surroundings, may it be bosses or other players. But there is a significant difference. You can’t sheep another player unless he or she has agreed to play that kind of game, either by picking a PvP server, or by flagging PvP on a PvE server. It’s tough luck, but it’s voluntary to take part in that kind of game. The flute on the other hand can attack anyone. Some people may appreciate it and even think it’s a bit fun. But others won’t. They are ridiculed and there’s nothing they can do about it.

I’ve seen the flute in action only once, ages ago. I was at AH, when I and several other who were in there suddenly burst out in dance. I didn’t mind it a lot – it looked fun, and at that time it was just another of those surprises which the games holds for you.

Nevertheless, the more I think about the principals – that you should have the right to keep control over your character – the more I feel like my friend: this trinket is evil, or rather: it’s made for evil people.

Players who pick it up should use it only with great carefulness, on people they know, who agree to such things. But the best thing would be if it was eliminated from the game altogether.

When it comes to me I’ll probably disenchant it. The fewer of these things there are around, the better.

Are healers responsible and dps just having fun?

Last week Rohan of Blessing of Kings wrote a post about Warhammer. I just threw an absentminded eye on it, since Warhammer honestly doesn’t interest me a bit – I’m totally stuck in WoW as it is. But then there was a passage, which wasn’t just about Warhammer, but about WoW as well, which made wake up, abruptly:

“The healers are the ones being responsible, letting the DPS have fun. When I'm DPS in a group, I feel bad that I'm making the healers work, while I'm having fun.”

I’ve never played a healer myself, but it felt like if I suddenly got access to the brain of a healer. It was ust like the guy looking out of the eyes of John Malkovich, if you remember that brilliant movie.

So that’s how it is! You healers are feeling responsible. All the time. You work. And we, we just mess around mindlessly, having a fun time.

Ouch.

That could explain the “healing burnouts” I’ve stumbled upon a few times in the game – healers claiming their job is boring and monotonous (especially if you’re asking a paladin). They say they’re just doing the same thing over and over again, and keeping their focus on the raid they sort of miss out much of the encounter, they don’t seem to enjoy the scripts, the actual encounter with the boss, the same way as I do.

Yeah, I suppose they miss some of those fun parts because of the overwhelming feeling of responsibility.

Healers in power
Now, Rohan didn’t just moan about the role of the healer. He admit it’s fun and challenging, but it’s a different sort of fun, as he puts it.

He doesn’t state what’s so fun about the healing, but other healers have told me it’s about the feeling of having it all in your hands.

There may be a tank around who thinks he’s the raid leader, but as a healer you’ve got a solid influence of the outcome of the fight. You’re the master of your own fate, of life and death. You’re in charge, even though the other players don’t quite realize it. The dps classes may THINK they’re powerful when they’re on top of the damage charts, but in fact the real power belongs to you.

The working dps:er
So how do I see this from a dps perspective?

Well, when you’re building a raiding team you can’t hide the fact that you always first of all try to find a solid core of tanks and healers. I’ve never ever heard of someone first looking for mages and warlocks and then “filling in” the raid with some random tanks or healers.

As a dps:er you’re one on the crowd, and even though we may have a few utilities, like cc or buffs, we’re pretty easy to replace. If a few go down it won’t necessarily mean a wipe, while a healer down is a huge problem.

This gives dps-players a feeling of non-exclusivity. I’m sort of faceless, one among many foot soldiers or like a worker ant, pulling the needles to the anthill.

But does this sound like fun? To me it sounds like work! It’s just that we’re the ones working on the floor, rather than in direction premises.

At the same time I can see where Rohan is getting. If you don’t feel directly responsible to the outcome of a raid it’s possible that you’re not quite as much on the toes as the healer is. You may take risks and do stuff in a way that is interesting or fun for you, but not necessarily the best for the raid. You trust that the healers will sort it out in the end, as they always do.

A new mindset
I think it’s time to switch mindsets a bit, and that goes for the healers as well as the dps:ers.

To the healers: stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re way up in the hierarchy; you can’t possibly be envious of a worker ant. And he’s working just as hard as you are, but with a different assignment.

To the dpsers: Even if you’re not a healer, pretend that you are in the sense that you’re just as responsible as they are for the outcome of the raid. The higher you go in content, the less room there is for individual performances that are less than perfect. You’re not there for a fun ride, provided by tanks and healers, You’re there to do your share. No less, no more.

In the best of raids there’s no difference between the healers and the dps:ers. We should all be responsible. And we should all have fun doing so.

Keep the fun and focus with a fake enrage timer

A lot of players seem to be affected by the pre-expansion blues. Not all, but many of us, judging from the comments on my The World has changed post a while ago.

Where we used to fly forward, full of adrenaline, passion and fighting spirit, we now seem to be stuck in chewing gum or slowed downed by the chilling effect of a well placed frostbolt.
It’s boring and frustrating for all of us who are used to get our kicks by raiding.

Unless you want to have a break from the game, you must find new ways to challenge yourself.

I think we need to start to think like high jumpers. We can’t rely in Blizzard raising the difficulty for us by offering new instances. We need to challenge ourselves and try to break our own records.

One way to do this is to put up strict time limits for yourself and your party - to make a fake enrage timer. This is what this post is about. I suggest you to start to play against the stopwatch.
A new experience
The heroic instances nowadays aren’t really any challenge for many players, geared as we are, in badge items or PvP rewards if nothing else. But do it quick and dirty and I promise you’ll see it from a new side.

Being under time pressure you’ll limit your marking to the most necessary. You’ll keep cc:ing to a minimum. You won’t wait for full mana regain after every single pull. You’ll take more risks and play on the edge in order to break the record.

Recently I made Black Morass in 18 minutes and I had more fun there than I’ve had in a long time. It was full speed from the beginning to the end, except for the two forced-on-breaks after the bosses (very annoying).

If you rush the chances are bigger that you’ll make a tiny mistake and then get the opportunity to deal with the consequences and improvise.

Now, unfortunately, except for in Zul Aman, Blizzard hasn’t any special loot to award speedy players. So it’s up to you to motivate yourself:

• Put yourself into the state of mind that there’s an enrage timer that you’re fighting. To your aid you’ve got the new Stopwatch feature that was introduced in the last patch. You get access to it by typing /sw. Let everyone in the party start it at the same time and make sure that you’ve got the same goal.
• Be hard on yourself if you fail. And cheer if you succeed. The more seriously you take it, the more you put your heart into it, the more fun you’ll have.
• Keep record of your achievements. I wish there was some kind of addon where you could keep track on how quick you’ve done an instance historically (maybe there is one I’ve just missed?). But a paper and pen isn’t a bad alternative. Take notes and put up golden goals for yourself.
• Compete. If you’re really lucky you may find another five man-party to fight with. Who will clear the daily heroic instance in the shortest time? Or which party could make the most number of badges in 1 hour?

An exemple
I think most instances could be brought back to life using this technique.

Karazhan, for instance, is pretty dull after running it so many times, at least if you do it slowly and carefully, not taking any unnecessary risks. But let’s make an illusion. Imagine there’s a gnome-engineering experiment going on in a secret cellar below the animal bosses. In fact the whole place will explode in 2 hours unless you clear the place, turning the pretty nearby Stormwind into a ghosttown. You and your party are the last hope, you’ve got to clear the place quickly to stop the process.

Do you feel the pressure? Do you feel the pulse? Good. Switch on the stopwatch and enter. Let’s rock, let’s sweat, let’s conquer, let’s have fun. Just as we used to.