Why the “casual” word has lost its meaning

How do you define a casual player vs a (supposed) hardcore raider? Which group do you belong to, how did you end up there and what do you think about the other groups?

This is the shared topic for the week of Blog Azeroth of this week, initiated by 2nd Nin at Life of a Nin.

I used to call myself casual. Until the other day you could read in my "About Larísa" description that this blog is about “casual” raiding among other things. Now I’ve erased “casual”. I write about raiding. That’s it. You can judge from my posts what kind of raiding it is, if it’s something you can identify with or not. But I won’t label it, neither as “casual”, nor as “hardcore. Why? Simply because I think the words are unclear, associating to different things to different people.

What is casual always depends on where your own horizon is. If you’re spending five hours five or six nights a week in Sunwell, you probably think that Larísa is casual, only raiding for 3.5 hours two nights a week. If you on the other hand just log on spontaneously to play an hour or two a couple of nights a week, never planning life so that you can raid, you probably would consider Larísa extremely hardcore with an unhealthy obsession with the game.

It’s all in the eyes of the beholder.

Is casual bad or good?
To some players the word “casual” sounds pejorative. It’s associated with a bad slacking attitude and lack of knowledge. A bit “dirty”, as Isisxotic at Musings of a Raider says in her post on this subject.

To others “casual” is just the opposite. They use the word about themselves in order to make themselves stand out a bit, to brag a little, in a very discrete and intelligent manner.

How do I mean? Well, let’s say that you raid Karazhan or ZA regularly with some success, insisting on that you’re just a casual player. Isn’t that a way to hint that you’re in opposition to other players are so skilled and talented that you don’t have to spend insanely lot of time on the game to get anywhere? You can show off that you are cleaver enough to manage to progress and still always let real life come first. You’re not caught in the spinning wheel of grinding like the other losers. Honestly I think quite a lot of players who call themselves “casual” actually spend more time in the game or thinking about the game outside of it then they want to admit.

Think about it, how many players do you know who proudly announce that they’re “hardcore”? It’s like loudly announcing: “I’m a no-lifer, my job sucks and I haven’t got any bf/gf, this is my big escape from real life”. Who wants to do that? Not that many.

Different mindsets
While not liking those words, I still have to admit that there are different mindsets among players when it comes to ambitions, goals and playing habits. And that’s natural; it’s no different to any kind of hobby. Look at people who have dogs as pets. There those who are perfectly happy to just pat their little creature with unknown origins, feed it, walk it and enjoy its company. And there are others who dedicate every single second of their spare time to it. They travel all over the world at exhibitions, they spend hours every night cleaning and brushing their dog, they commit themselves to voluntary work in organisations and train their dogs to do the most amazing things.

You meet exactly the same variation in WoW.

Maybe the cutting line goes between those who have WoW as their major hobby on one side and those who just see it as one of many sorts of entertainment on the other side.

The former, the “serious” players, spend as much time as they can on the game (no matter if it’s a couple of nights a week or every single night). They will also put some time and effort while not playing to improve by reading forums, blogs, downloading addons and trying out macros.

The latter, “careless” players, don’t do anything of this. They just play when they’re up for it and avoid making any kinds of commitments in the game since it may interfere with other hobbies which they consider more important.

To make it even more complicated, you can be more or less serious or casual about different parts of the game. When it comes to PvP I’m definitely casual. I’ve tried (and succeeded) to like it a bit better than I used to, but you won’t catch me watching a PvP movie or even picking talents for PvP. I won’t make any plans for PvPing, it’s just something that happens every now and then. My raiding nights on the other hand are sacred to me. I’m anything but casual about them. I prepare in every way I can, in real life and in game.

The same goes with my pet collection. I’m pretty casual about that one. Of course I think my burning bird from MgT is cute and I love my fishing daily croc, which looks like a centipede, but I wouldn’t break my bones to get a special pet. My focus is somewhere else.

Final thoughts

I've think I've made my views clear by now, that words like "casual" and "hardcore" are pointless and should be used as little as possible. And still I know I'll probably keep writing them every now and then, without thinking about it. And they'll continue to be debated in forums and in blogs. How come? What's in those words that make them so sticky, why do we bother?

I think one reason is the constantly ongoing discussion about where Blizzard should put the most of there resources for develpment. The words are used to define the needs and wishes from different kinds of customers who all want to feel that they get the gaming they want for their monthly fees.

People who argue that most money should go to making easy available content like five man instances and quests tend to categorize as many players as possible as "casual", claiming that the majority can't be wrong. People who want very challenging and advanced 25 man raiding instances on the other hand will argue that the hardcore players aren't as rare as you may think.

We also come back to the labels over and over again, because we use them as mirrors. Every time we discuss them we relate them to our own gameplay, if nothing else unconsciously. We want to identify with a certain kind of player in order to understand where our mental home is in this huge and diversified world. It's a way to sort things out, to see patterns where there is chaos.

I have made my decision. I'm not casual, nor hardcore. I'm just a player who has lost her heart to World of Warcraft and the community connected to it. And that's enough for me to know.

Me and WoW blogging – a love story

So I went on vacation to the mountains for a week. Not so surprisingly I felt a little loss, a slight debuff of abstinence. But do you know what? To my own astonishment the thing I missed most actually wasn’t playing WoW. It was reading and writing blog posts.

Sounds weird, doesn’t it?

I never...
There’s a shared Blog Azeroth topic this week, “I never”… which asks you to talk about things that turned out differently in the game than you had imagined. My blogging is definitely one of those things.

In the beginning of this year I had heard about that blogging existed as a phenomena. I had realized that I, being a professional PR and information officer, probably should try to learn the basics about it since it’s a medium that’s important and probably will be even more important in the years to come. But I never, ever, imagined myself as a devoted blog keeper myself.

One month later, on the 2 of February (yes, exactly 6 months ago), I wrote my first blog entrance. I was very insecure, fumbling in darkness, still not knowing what I was doing, why I was doing it or what direction this would take.

Since then I’ve taken step by step, getting more and more enchanted and involved in the WoW Blogosphere. The first and biggest one was of course that finally, after a couple of months, made up my mind and converted all of the blog to English, a decision I’ve never regretted. It is a bit painful to be aware of all those spelling and grammar mistakes I do (as if typos wasn’t enough), but blog readers seem to be more forgiving than I am, so I can live with it.

Just like a guild
While I was away this week I suddenly realized that the Blogosphere has become like an extra guild to me – it’s just that we’re spread out over servers, fractions and continents. By following blogs overtime you sort of get to know the people behind it. (Or at least you think you do.)

And now we’re offered to know them even better – thanks to Twisted Nether Broadcast. That was my comfort actually this week – during my long journey I listened to the nine first episodes in my mp3 player. It was just amazing. It was fun, it was interesting, it was inspiring – I swore to myself when I listened driving the car, since I had no means to take notes about all of the blog post ideas I got from listening.

Hearing those voices felt sort of familiar. I had heard them already in the blogs – now another dimension was added. (Who could possibly read Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick without hearing the laughter of Breana in the background after hearing TN?)

Of course this is quite a huge guild. And you don’t feel connected to everyone in it in the same way. Some guys you only know by name – and your interests in the game are so diverse that you barely say hi, you haven’t got much in common really. Others are guys that you whisper to when they log on, the guys you love to party with. We are the ones that keep reading each others blogs, keep commenting and inspiring each other to new posts. You know who you are, I’m pretty sure.

Then there are the Officers of course. The Big Names. The Well Known Blogs, with ten, a hundred or even a thousand as many visitors as the average WoW blogger can count on. I look upon them as some kind of bearing pillars of the community. I guess I could dare to speak to them. But I honestly don’t expect much attention from them. They’ve got full hands, developing the guild and maintaining their pillars.

Blogging about blogging
Oh dear, this seems to turn into another rambling, ranting post without any clear direction. And another meta-blogging post! I write too many of those, it’s just that I’m so fascinated by this medium I guess. It challenges me, it has made writing fun again; my lust for it had been turned off after years of pretty boring professional writing. This is something totally different. It’s playful, it’s inviting, it’s totally free and yet not altogether easy. You get immediate feedback all the time (even lack of feedback can sometimes tell you something). And you must be able to deal with it.

I guess that’s what’s uniting the Guild of the WoW Bloggers. The urge to express ourselves and the experience of performing publicly, of meeting an audience, however small it may be, day after day. And of course the love we share for the game.

Twisted Nether rocks
A final thought; when I arrived home from my vacation I downloaded Episode 10 of Twisted Nether. Krizzlybear had pointed out that I had some special reasons to do that. Believe it or not – a blog post of mine was mentioned and even discussed in the show!
Woot!!!

Words can’t express how I felt about it. I was totally incapacitated, a rogue couldn’t have done it better. Speechless. I can only say: thank you. It was very encouraging and inspiring. And I hope you get many listeners. Not just episode 10 actually, but every episode.

If any of you readers have missed it (I myself didn’t listen to it for a long time since I’m so lost when it comes to new technology, downloading and listening to podcasts seemed way to complicated to me – how wrong wasn’t I?) – stop hesitating.

There’s no excuse not to listen to the show. If you think you haven’t got the time – this programme will actually save you time, since it’s an easy, convenient way to keep up with news, both about the game and what’s going in the Blogosphere. It’s a time saver.

Download it, listen to it in the bus or the car or while you’re doing some insane grinding of Bog Lords, Primal Shadow or Fel Armament. TN will keep you company and make time fly!

What's next?
Six months of WoW blogging. I had never imagined it could be this fun and there were people out there who actually were interested in what I – a mage newbie – had to say about the game. But then I hadn’t met the Blogosphere. Now I have. I’m in love.

And if you ask me where I’ll be in six months I’m pretty sure I’ll still be around. But you can never promise, can you? A blog will always be a day-by-day-project. Without any ties, without any commitments. Written out of pure lust and inspiration as long as it keeps flowing. That's what's so charming about it.

The End.

PS I realize that my comparison with a guild lacks a guild master. I guess it would be Matticus, with his ambitions to rule the world, or whatever it was? Or are there any other suggestions?

PS2 As a strange coincidence Gnomeaggeddon wrote a post that was a bit connected to this one, where he as well compares the Blogosphere to a guild. I probably stole the idea unconsciously using the telepathic channel we switch to from time to time when the lines to Australia just are lagging too much. Thanks for giving it too me anyway.

What you (don't) need to know about mages

It’s time for another shared topic from Blog Azeroth, the wonderful source of inspiration and comfort and information for all WoW bloggers out there, this time suggested by Flux.

The heading for the week made me sigh a little bit though, I must admit. I can’t help I feel that I’ve seen articles on this subject a little too many times to get that kick of curiosity from it. Most of them seem to be written in an ambition to educate stupid, ignorant players, trying to make them treat you better, to behave. You can sort of feel the anger, frustration or at least the tiredness between the lines.

When it comes to mages the posts usually bring up things like:

• sheeping (don’t dot them, if you spank them – tank them)
• drinking (don’t rush off to the next pull, let us gain some mana first or we won’t be able to do our job)
• portals (no, we can’t make any portal at once, so don’t ask for a portal to Shatt from a level 20 mage. And they’re NOT for free, we pay for the runes ourselves and the training’s pretty expensive, so a little bit of tipping would be appreciated)
• food (making manna bisquets actually cost us some mats that we need to carry around, it’s got a cd and you need people to help you. Bread and water cost too – they cost TIME and mages really want to play the game just like everyone else, we don’t play it in order to become vendor machines)

Etc. You know the drill.

But let’s turn the perspective for once. Is it necessary always, in every single situation, better if everybody knows the basics about every class?

In a raiding situation the answer is obvious: yes. Raiding as such is so challenging that there is no reason to make it harder by being ignorant. It’s most of all a team effort and it’s impossible to work well as a team without some basic knowledge about other classes.

But for players who don’t raid - couldn’t it be fun to become surprised? To see other players and classes just like blank, unwritten sheets of paper – you have no idea what to expect from them. For instance in a role playing environment – imagine you’re duelling someone, you can tell he or she has some magic powers, but you’re not quite sure what those powers are – if you risk to be sheeped, feared or otherwise possessed by them. You have no idea about their weak points – that’s something you’ve got to figure out for yourself, by trial and error.

What if mages could turn into quite mystic guys, with superior intellect and secret knowledge that we refuse to share with anyone but other mages? Wouldn’t it be pretty cool to give another kind of answer (said in a deep, mystic voice) the next time someone ask you to inform them about mages:

“Stay away. The less you know the better. This knowledge was only meant for mages.”

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).

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.

10 top WoW-moments of Larísa

Blog Azeroth has come up with another shared topic: you're supposed to list the ten most memorable moments of your time in Azeroth. While I refuse to actually rank them from 1 to 10 - I find it too hard - I'll make a short list of what comes to my mind right now, not pretending that I've put any deeper thoughts into it. If you'd ask me about 10 moments to remember next week I'd probably give you an entirely different answer, depending on my mood and the shape of my memory resources on my mental hard disk. (unfortunately I've got a quite bad memory in RL as well - you could say that I prefer to live in the present to put it nicely).

Here we go:

• Seeing the movies that come along with the game after successfully installing it. I had no idea what to expect and I was thrilled! When I then zoomed in, sort of flying towards my char and then found myself standing there, not having a clue about what the whole thing was about... I was totally confused but in my heart I knew that very moment that this was a brand new world opening up for me.
• Entering Ironforge for the first time. The huge building, the guards standing there...the glory! The mystic river of fire, the people and creatures walking around. It gave me a true Sense of wonder-feeling! I began to realize this game was huge and offered so much more than I could grasp at the moment. I had only seen a tiny little corner of what was awaiting me.
• Getting my first mount. I was sick and tired of the slow walking, especially since the guys I played with at that time all had mounts. I hated running behind them and at last I could keep up pace with them. It was the end of the era of painfully making my way through the entire of STV. I rode around merrily, amazed at the incredible speed.
• Entering Un'Goro Crater for the first time. It was teaming with life, it was beautiful and mystic at the same time. Everywhere those crystals and seeds which I had no idea how to use. And still it wasn't bigger than that you could explore it without getting lost. I was so enthusiastic that I told a game friend of mine that he really had to join me, this was such a great place to explore. We did a crazy exploration ride, getting ganked by mean dinos all the time, still just laughing at it, it was such a great place to see.
• Entering a Teamspeak server for the first time. I had just joined my first bigger guild, based in Scotland, and they patiently helped me to make it work and cheered when they heard my voice. Until then I had never ever even used Skype... Just imagine the feeling of actually speaking to players from other countries! It gave me access to the game in another way than I had had before. It was the end of the walking-around-on-my-own-era and the beginning of my view on the game as a social teambuilding activity.
• Going through The Dark Portal to Outlands. An ex guildie of mine was my guide, dragging me through it and then running me through several areas of Outlands in order to get me some valuable fps a bit faster. It wasn't just out of kindness, I think he enjoyed hearing all those enthusiastic Oooohhh exclamations from me!
• My first run on my flying mount at level 70. It gave the game a new dimension - I just flew happily around over SMV for half an hour, thrilled by the feeling. The only thing that could compare to it is getting my epic flying mount the other week. The change of the game experience was just as big - another truly epic that will share this spot on the list.
• The first time the guild I was in at that time downed the Prince - and I got my dagger. A guild first kill in combination with getting a nice drop - how much better can it get?
• The night when The Suneater dropped for one of my game friends. We had run Mechanar a hundred times for it - or at least that was how I felt it. It was like if it was meant never to happen. But miracles do happen. It was an epic moment, the last one I brought with me before leaving that server.
• My first 25 man raid on the Stormrage server, which I wrote a blog post about. We didn't only clear Gruul easily, we also went to SSC just to clear some trash and have a look. Suddenly I was staring Hydross in the face (or whatever he has). I realized that a world of new adventures was awaiting me. I had just switched server, taking a huge risk, leaving friends and everything I'd fought for behind, not knowing if I'd taken the right decision. Now I knew in my heart that I had.

This list is quite predictable I guess. I think you'll probably find Entering Ironforge (or Stormwind, depending on your starting area) on most of those lists that the BA community now is producing, as well as Going through The Dark Portal. But I think I divert a little bit from others, since I actually don't have "dinging 70" on the list. I don't even know where or when it happened! Which is something a friend of mine just can't understand, she's even got herself an addon to help her keep track of xp and to ding exactly at the spot and in the manner she had planned. I didn't even take a screenshot from the event. On the other hand I remember my first flight on the flying mount which followed very clear - that was the glory of dinging 70 in my eyes.

Well worth mentioning are also a bunch of first meetings with people who became my friends in the game. You're not on the 10 top list, since I couldn't really chose between you. So no one mentioned, no one forgotten. Those random meetings actually have meant almost everything for how I enjoy this game. Maybe I didn't always know at the time for the meeting how important it would turn out to be. But many times I think I did. Sometimes it just "clicks" with people you meet out there and you know instantly that you've actually made a friend. You have just found a truly epic gem - and added a top WoW moment to your bank of memories.

Not preparing for WotLK

How are you preparing for the Wrath of the Lich King? This is the title for a suggested shared topic of the Blog Azeroth bloggers.


Honestly I've got to say I'm not preparing at all. Not in any cunning and organized way at least. Some players make a huge fuss about the information leaking out from the Alpha testing version. I just throw a glance at what's said about mages, but then I shrug, since I think things will change quite a few times before it's actually launched in the market. This isn't anything I want to waste my brain capacity on, I've got plenty of other things that I try to learn and remember about the game I play right now - about spell rotations, boss strategies, useful macros I should create - those things belonging to the future will only confuse me if they sneak into my mind.

Other players seem to be preparing by taking a break from the game until the sequel is available. They see no point in continuing gearing up their toons since the epics soon will be outdated when we start levelling towards 80. That's an attitude I can't understand either - unless you've actually seen and downed all the bosses in the game, including the Sunwell bosses, but how many of us has done that? Could it be one player in a thousand? At the most. To me the game is about seeing and beating content. Not about just collecting gear. (Then I could as well collect stamps or bookmarks or something less time consuming, heh?) Gear is mainly a tool to make it possible to beat more content. So if possible I'd happily keep progressing through TBC until the day before the WotLK is released. It remains though to see if there are others out there who think like me.

Since I started to play after TBC came, I've never experienced the effects of an expansion. Maybe that's one reason why I take it a bit cool. Thinking about it I realize that I'll probably throw myself into levelling my main, trying to keep a decent pace, not getting too far behind of my guildies, many of whom will probably have more playing time than I have.


Even though we won't be using our flying mounts to begin with, I must admit that one of the things I wanted to accomplish before the expansion was to get the epic flying mount riding skill - so I didn't have to worry about that anymore, but could concentrate on the levelling process. Now I've got it and I'm happy about that, I feel prepared in that aspect. I honestly can't believe it will turn out to be a waste of money.


Another thing that I'd like to accomplish before the expansion is to bring up at least one other char to 70. That would make me more flexible about professions. I can't help being a bit interested in the new inscription profession, but if Larísa should be able to pick it up, she must drop something else. Probably herbalism would be a better thing for an alt to deal with than for a main.


But pretty much, the game is business as usual for me. I don't stock up on materials, speculating about what will be necessary for levelling trade skills. I don't collect gold to be prepared to buy gear and skills, I just keep my bank account at a decent level, a few hundred gold, so I can repair and buy a few flasks or food for raid if I haven't got the time to make it myself.


My plan is simply to take the day as it comes, to keep enjoying the TBC just as it is, with everything it's got to offer. Maybe it's a bit naïve. But it's the Larísa way of doing things.