So my worgen will be a guy after all

My resto druid Arasil is probably going to get through a major surgery in Cataclysm. She has no idea about it now, but I bet it will be a bit of a shock to her as she wakes up from her digital coma once I've put the order to Blizzard.

She’ll go to bed as a pretty night elf woman, with bluish skin and bouncing breasts. And as she looks into the mirror, she’ll find that she hasn’t only switched race. She’ll be turned into a furry beast. A male worgen.

First time male
If I go through with my decision (I might actually bail out and stay night elf in the end), this will my debut. Believe it or not, but over my 3.5 years in WoW, I’ve never ever come around to play a male character.

I’m not sure what’s been holding me back, but somehow I reckon I’m putting a bit of myself into the toons I play. Maybe I’m just not enough of a roleplayer to break the boundaries. For whatever reason there is, I’ve always felt uncomfortable at the thought of rolling a guy with a neck that is thicker than his head.

It was the recent pictures of the female worgen dance that settled it to me. There just isn’t any way that I can make those moves go together with the image I have of what a worgen should be like. I’m not going to analyze why, or argue whether the dance is too much of a sex show or not. The point is that it doesn't click, because it looks like a senseless and unnatural thing for a worgen to do. Too artificial to fit.

No reason for dancing
“Big deal”, someone might say. “If you don’t like the dance, well, then, don’t dance! Dancing is a pointless activity for socials and it doesn’t affect your performance. As a matter of fact it’s more of a distraction than anything else, so there really isn’t any logical reason to ever do it!”

However I’m not a robot. It happens that I feel like dancing in the game, in the same way as I jump when there’s no reason to jump apart from getting a moral boost, or hug someone nearby that looks as if he needs one, or lit a camp fire because it’s cosy or put up a vanity pet because it amuses me. It’s not the main focus of my game play, but it adds a little something to it that I don’t want to be without.

I want to dance sometimes, but the female worgen dance doesn’t make it for me, so as it stands now, I can't see myself playing one. The male worgen dance isn’t splendid either, but at least it I don’t get embarrassed every time I see it.

The thought of playing a male character feels a bit weird, but hey, it might be an interesting experience. It’s really about time I try it.

By the way, did you notice that the female worgen dances in her bikini in the video from the beta, while the male worgen is fully dressed? You may wonder why.

My Friday Pint of Ponderings for all of you who stayed at home

It’s Friday night, but the inn is somewhat quiet, like the rest of the blogosphere, as Blizzcon 2010 is at full swing and that’s the bar where everyone’s gathering at the moment.

I’m still here though, and maybe there are a few more poor fellows, especially Europeans, who couldn’t find a good enough reason to toss up thousands of Euros just to attend a marketing event.

So if you’re still around, please come closer to the fire, slip into your favourite armchair end let us end this week as we always do – sipping a pint of ponderings over the state of the game, sharing what’s up in our gaming lives.

Ponderings over Blizzcon
To be honest I’m not that heartbroken by not attending Blizzcon. Sure, it would have been great to meet up with some of my fellow bloggers, to see the faces and hear the voices of those people who I somehow feel that I know personally after sharing thoughts with them for so long.

But as far as the official convention is concerned, it’s probably too commercial and big scale to suit me; after attending SF fan driven conventions, I’m used to something completely different to what Blizzcon can offer. Earlier this year I wrote a post about why I wished I could go to Blizzcon, but some of the comments made me change my mind.

Besides, if you’re mostly interested in the news that will be presented at Blizzcon, I honestly believe that you’re better off following them from your home. You don’t even have to buy the broadcast stream from the panels to get access to the content. The opening ceremony will be streamed for free(!). MMO-Champion will be live blogging, and considering how quick they normally are with news, I doubt they will fail us. Íf you want to see the happenings from different points of view, there are a bunch of other blogs and podcasts, such as Twisted Nether and Wowhead, who also will be posting and broadcasting live during the weekend.

Those media will not only give you an excellent overview, they will also add commentary to it, and you’re guaranteed not to find yourself stuck in a queue somewhere as they’re closing the doors to a panel you had planned to attend. Actually I think you'll be more informed in your armchair than most of the participants on spot.

So don’t be sad if you’re sitting at home right now, enjoying your pint with this pigtailed gnome as your only company. You should rather congratulate yourself to all the money and effort you’ve saved. Enjoy the free reports online – or do like me: ignore them and wait a few hours until someone has made a good summary for you.

I can guarantee you one thing: you won’t miss out ANY important piece of information just because you didn’t attend Blizzcon. Every inch of the premises, every second of the event will be covered.

A buggy week
Apart from Blizzcon, what’s up in the game? Well, I say like Syl: Bugs, bugs and more bugs. They clearly outnumber the ones who dwell outside Putricide's laboratory.

I suppose we could expect and should accept a few issues with such a huge patch as 4.01, but isn't this a little bit too much, especially since the amount of bugs rather seems to have been increasing than decreasing after the release? At least the EU realms have been plagued with dc:s, and flying from the graveyard in slowmotion after wipes became painful after a while.

As we've seen before in this kind of situations, Blizzard hasn't been too impressive in terms of communications. I've said it before and I say it again: it takes so little to keep the players in a better mood. A blue acknowledgement that they've noticed what's going on, that they're working on a solution and estimation about how long this might take. If it isn't possible to say when you can expect things to be fixed - well, you can at least give a time for when you will update the information.

It's all very basic, it doesn't cost much and they should totally be able to do this - if nothing else because it would save them some work, dealing with multiple posts from costumers who all put the same questions over and over again. I don't know what prevents them from doing this. Shall we blame the upcoming Blizzcon, pulling their attention elsewhere?

Relearning how to play
Despite the situation, I’ve tried to learn to play my characters again with mixed, or to be honest, pretty bad results.

First out was my mage, of course, and I'm afraid that the new version of the arcane spec was a disappointment. It wasn't fun or interesting or exciting at all, only difficult, confusing and frustrating. I just don’t get it. The mana juggling is counter intuitive; beyond my comprehension and not enjoyable at all. But who enjoys sucking?

Currently I'm trying out the fiery side instead. While it feels rather unfamiliar for one who has played arcane for ages, it's still got potential as "fun", and who can resist a free instant pyroblast? So I reckon I'll give this a chance and do it some more, before I'll consider sending my mage to retirement.

An overall issue, regardless of spec, is the new system, where any button you push will make you put that cast in a queue, from where there is no return, as far as I know of. The only way to maintain control is to break the habit of spam smashing buttons. You're not supposed to push anything until you're ready to cast.

This has turned out to be a way bigger issue to me than I imagined as I read about it. You don't mess around with your muscle memories that easily. It will take time to adapt. I'm glad we have the entire levelling in Cataclysm for practice. As we reach end game the next time, I should have learned the new manners.

Loving the green
Apart from struggling with my mage, I’ve also sneaked away into instances and battlegrounds with my resto druid, which has been a way more pleasant experience. The new "good green" goo effect is fun, even if certainly is a challenge for us to learn to love it, embrace it, stand in it and inhale it, rather than run away from it. Kae provided a guide, but I’m afraid that backbone reactions are strong, and it will take some time to change this pattern.

It will also take me a while to learn to remember to turn into a tree once in a while. Most of the time, I'm oblivious of the fact that I can do it, which is odd considering that I most of all wants to stay in tree form all the time. You would expect me to use the cd as soon as it was up. Once again it’s about learning new patterns and habits.

I try not to be too harsh with myself though. We have to give ourselves a bit of slack and have some patience with our own shortcomings as we slowly let the new stuff sink in.

A blind Kingslayer
I'll end this week with sharing a story about someone who really knows how to overcome difficulties. I stumbled upon this story about Hexu, an enhancement shaman at Dreanor, EU who recently earned his Kingslayer title. What makes him different to many other Kingslayers is the fact that his blind, after being injured as he served in the military. Here's a quote from the forum post, written by one of his guildies:

"Hexu tonight just killed the final Icecrown Citadel boss tonight with the aid of various mods, excellent Ventrilo comunication and the lovely function of Auto-Follow. He made it through all 3 phases without dying, even out lasting one of the tanks (/hate ardent defender not being passive).

So i would like to congratulate Hexu on a remarkable achievement which would seem so out of reach even for people with functional eyes! (no offence to people with
functional eyes!)

Kudos Hexu, he did awsome! and i really mean that, he wasn't carried nor boosted, he did all the hard work himself! (well and 9 others)"

Of course there's no way for me to verify the story, but it sounds credible enough, so I'll join the Polaris guild in their celebrations. It's an impressive achievement, not only by Hexu, but by the entire raid group. It's something to take inspiration from next time we're about to feel sorry for ourselves over something insignificant.

So big congratulations from The Pink Pigtail Inn! This toast is for you.

Cheers!

Now if you excuse me I'll retire to my seat by the fireplace, finishing my drink and waiting for the gossip from Blizzcon to eventually reach our little corner of the world. Hopefully we'll have something to talk about next week too. See you then!

A horribly long post about the week that was: Patch confusion, Mage goodness, Paragon glimpses and Earthquakes

Have you settled in the new Post Patch Landscape? Is your gear re-forged and re-gemmed, have you re-familiarized yourself with your class and successfully restored your UI?

To be truthful I'll answer "no" on all questions. But it’s Friday night and I refuse to panic about anything. It’s time for a pint and some ponderings over the past week. So expect one of those posts where I defy the idea about a red thread, letting my thoughts wonder freely as they come.

Ups and downs
There have been downs and ups. Mostly ups, actually. For all the annoyances and frustrations it causes, a major patch tends to have a revitalizing effect on the game. It may be broken, but at least it's a change.

Take Dalaran for instance. It’s lagging again. And I salute you, lag! It means that the players are back, running around, apparently busy and slightly clueless, trying not to get too badly tricked by the goblins that automatically will appear on those occasions.

People are coming back and I’ve greeted guildies who I haven’t seen for months, since they’ve been away playing in the beta or dabbling with other games. It’s really heart-warming, like an appetizer for Cataclysm. If it’s like this now, can you imagine the crowds and the lag once we get the real expansion?

I must admit though that even if I’ve been online a couple of hours after the patch, I haven’t really played my characters very much, in the sense of killing stuff. And no, I haven't harvested anything at all in the terms of gold, since I'm a moron and a slacker when it comes to those things. Sue me.

I’ve had my hands full trying to bring some kind of order into my house that the torrent storm smashed into pieces. My to-do list appears to be endless.

The specs have to be settled – two for my mage and two for my druid (the rest of my alts are left in the dust for now being.) The new talent interface feels a bit unfamiliar, but I say: “yay!” for not having to pay 15 gold as a punishment fee if you happen to set one point in the wrong spot. It’s wonderful that you can mess up as much as you like before confirming your new spec.

I’ve been glyphing (thank you my wonderful guild, providing free glyphs for all mains!), switching gems and going on a desperate hunt for hit rating. In case you didn't notice: the new requirement of 17 percent for everyone is brutal, at least if you're a spoiled arcane mage until now.

I’ve tried to restore my action bars back to something that resembles a little bit to what they used to be – but I keep failing as I use them. My muscle memory won't comply with the new conditions. Like Tobold I have to relearn how to heal.

And then there’s the new mechanism for spells queuing up that confuses me completely. I keep telling my finger to stop spamming the buttons, but alas, it's in vain. Spells keep going off, and not necessarily the ones I wanted. And is there anyone else who keeps pressing “O” , wondering why there isn’t any guild list?

Another issue: what’s with this new thing that buttons suddenly will flash up and keep blinking angrily until you press them? I can’t help wondering what happens if I’ll disobey. Will the computer explode? Will the Blizzard Gods put a note in the records: “Noobish gnome that refuse to follow the UI advice. Beware!”?

A smooth patch
All in all, most things have worked as intended and it has been a very smooth patch.

Sure, there are some broken addons and it was frustrating to enter a battleground just to find that I didn’t have any raid frames at all. Kind of hard to heal then. Lucky for me, I have a personal UI builder, who has promised to help me out in my distress, so I have hope for the future.

On the whole, I’ve been OK. I didn’t experience any unexpected critical errors during the download. I didn't have to visit the technical forums begging the blues for their attention to my problem, expecting no help but the harsh standard reply "wipe it and reinstall the game from the beginning".

There have been a couple of weird things. Like the Polymorph Monkey glyph that appeared out of nothing. I’m completely certain I’ve never bought or installed it. And why do I suddenly every now and then find myself wearing our hideous guild tabard, which I never use voluntarily? I swear I didn’t put it on and yet it shows!

But isn’t that what’s so charming with those major patches? Expect to encounter the unexpected!

Talking about the unexpected I believe I’m not the only one to freak out every time I start the game. Zarhym does too, according to a blue post.

“I jumped out of my chair yesterday when I hit the Play button to check on something in the game. This isn't an intended heart-rate check and we're looking to get it fixed in an upcoming patch”

I look forward to that too. Even if I can see the benefit of being alert and awake once I start playing, I prefer to get my adrenaline rushes in other ways.

New mage dresses
Enough about the patch though. I’m sure I’ll come back to it in the next couple of months.

There has been some other stuff going on this week, worth a mentioning. MMO Champion presented the new tier 11 armor set for mages, and I just have to talk a little bit about it because with one exception it looks absolutely amazing.

What isn’t there to love with the fire themed dress with the glowing shoulders? The thought of wearing this if you’re fire specced is irresistible. There are two other versions as well, one purple and one blue, and it's still a little bit unclear what they represent. Maybe it's about heroic and non-heroic versions? Or could it be that they show how the dress will look in different specs, the blue one being the natural choice for a frost mage? Probably not, but I like the idea.

And now to the exception from the awesomeness. Of course I'm talking about the head, which displays a glowing skull mask. And I just don't get it. Do they think mages enjoy running around like some kids begging for Halloween candy - all year round? It could have been a fun seasonal trick where you temporarily could get your head turning into something more festive. Like the mounts at Christmas. But this?

Oh well. I know where to find the checkbox to not display the head. I’ve used it so many times before. There just isn’t such a thing as a good looking head for mages.

Paragon interview
This post is running awfully long, but it’s my Friday night when I’m talking about whatever comes to my mind and there’s no way you could stop me.

So now I’ll just mention something completely different that I stumbled upon this week, namely a podcast called Nordrassil Radio. They did a mega-long interview with Totalbiscuit, which was entertaining in the way you could expect. If you like his style of ranting, I suggest you listen to it.
They also did a 1,5 hour long interview with the Finnish guild Paragon, which currently is considered the best raiding guild in the world. They talked to four of their members and the conversation gives some interesting glimpses into a world of competitive raiding that is very different from what most of us ever experience in the game.

Did you know that it's a normal procedure for this kind of guilds to take fake screenshots from first kills with guild members who weren't even in the raid at all? The reason is that they don't want to give out information to their competitors about what setup they've used. And if you’re curious about what specs the players in Paragon use, maybe wanting to copy it, you shouldn’t trust what you see in Armory. In order to not reveal their tactics, players will deliberately switch to some random spec before logging out! Wow. That’s what I call a competitive mindset.

It was also intriguing to hear that they regularly use Meyers Briggs tests as they’re evaluating potential new players. They have found that one personality type was dominant within the guild, even though they didn’t say which one in this interview. However it might be worth keeping an eye on their website. Apparently they’re planning to give some more information about their testing, possibly also letting visitors test themselves.

The weekly toast
It’s time to wrap this up I think. This gnome has been babbling long enough.

Have you felt the earthquakes? Every time I do, I smile to myself, and my heart trembles a little in anticipation. The shivers tell me that we ain’t seen nothing yet. There’s more to come. Much, much more.

Let’s bring out a toast for the earthquakes and whatever adventures they’ll bring us.

Cheers!

Yet another angry post from a disappointed ex-tree

I have a confession to make. A confession that probably will insult some of you. But the truth is that I hate night elfs.

I never realized it until today, when Blizzard snatched my treeform disguise, leaving me all but naked, staring in disbelief at my bouncing boobs from the outer space.

Suddenly it dawned upon me that this is how my resto druid will look from now on. Gone is the soulful, androgynous tree with the air of old wisdom and mystery. Instead I’m looking at a freaking bimbo with pointy ears and purple hair. Yak. A night elf. That’s what I am, that’s what I’ve been beneath the surface all this time wehen I thought I was a tree.

I hate my night elf form so much that I have to rail and shout about it in this unplanned for blog post, written on the fly in a state of rage. My excuse for defying my non-posting policy is that if I didn’t post, I’d probably smash something coming in my way.

The farewell procession
Just like Shintar, I participated in our realm farewell celebrations to the tree form last night. We did a beautiful slow procession through Dalaran at walk speed, lining up around Krasus landing and filling the air with a sparkling tranquillity rain. We danced and we cried. I believe most of us were tauren, but that didn’t matter. In the tree form we’re all brothers and sisters.

Today I woke up to see the next strike against us: the new tree forms displayed at MMO-Champion – so ugly that I don’t know what to say. They look very aggressive and extremely masculine. I can vividly imagine them in some kind of treeslapping melee fight. One commenter compared them to Quasimodo, adding “I’m a druid, not a hunchback football player”. And I can’t but agree.

Tree of life will be on a cooldown from now on. Well, they wouldn’t have needed tu put that restriction on us. The new form is so depressing that you’ll only shape into it reluctantly, in a case of emergency. Maybe that's why they're doing it. So we won't miss our tree form so badly.

Zelmaru at Murloc Parliament is taking the consequences, going cat on her druid rather than tree, since she can’t stand the changes.

For my own part I wouldn’t go that far, but it certainly feels as a setback and it will probably take me some time to get used to the changes.

Better in battlegrounds
The battlegrounds is a different case though. I’ve spent some time in those lately (shocking, isn’t it!), and noticed that the treeform isn’t optimal in that setting. You could as well run around yelling to everyone: “Look here! I am a healer! So you’d better take out me before anyone else! I’m even a bit bigger so you can target me more easily! Just come over and kill me!”

As a night elf I think it will be easier to find a good hidden spot to heal from without being noticed. Despite your purple hair and bouncing boobs. (By the way if you’re wondering where Blizzard found those breasts, a guildie provided me with a link to their source of inspiration. Can you blame me for thinking night elfs look stupid after seeing that?)

So for PvP purposes I can even I even welcome the changes to druids. But for anything else I mourn the day when they took away our treeform and replaced it with a temporary Quasimodo buff.

End of angry rant. Back to blogging slow mode. I promise.

Moments of zen at the dusk of Wrath

- My name is Larisa and I enjoy playing World of Warcraft.
- Hello Larísa!

It's actually true. I enjoy playing WoW. *Gasp* .

Not just in theory or in the past or the future. I enjoy playing it now. Maybe I'm juvenile; maybe I'm a clueless victim for the cunning marketing from the big evil company. Maybe I just lack good taste and insight of what constitutes a good MMO.

I don't give a crap. Because I actually like it. Stupid or not.

Time for a disclaimer: Of course there are moments when I'm not overwhelmed or thrilled. You could even call them a bit dull:

• I get bored whenever I try to clean up in my bank. It makes me fall asleep and always ends in the same way. “Oh, at least I have five slots available. I can do that another time.”
• I lose my gaming spark when I’m repeatedly killed over and over again in a BG and end up spending 90 percent of my time in the battlefield standing in a grey mist facing a spirit guy.
• I find potion crafting rather tideous. To stand still on the spot to create 40 potions of speed and staring at the cast bar filling up over and over again isn'twhat I consider "fun".
• I'm pretty sick and tired with most of ICC as I'm playing it with my mage (my resto druid is another matter). I don’t think you can blame me really. I’ve been there three times a week, starting in 2009. I don’t even want to think of how many hours that adds up to.
• I get impatient quickly as I'm queuing for an instance, hanging around in Dalaran with nothing else to do but to see the stupid goldseller spam passing buy in one of the general channels.

I think we all have those moments of drudgery. That's life - online as well as offline. It isn't an endless stretch of fireworks and roller coasters. Sometimes you're just on a mental break, and I actually think we need it. That's when we recharge our power supplies.

However - if WoW offered nothing but lethargy, I'd definitely stop playing it. I wouldn't put in so many hours of my free time into something that offered nothing in return.

Moments of excitement
And WoW does still offer me moments of excitement and thrill that make it all worthwhile.

Copra gave me a good reminder about this in a comment to my post about the generation gap in WoW. I think he was trying to make me take a step back and stop bothering about what other players think about WoW. So what if the veterans are bitter and don't like to play the game? What matters is how I feel about it.

"It all comes down to the fact whether you are enjoying the game or not [....] Now, if you concentrate on this moment when you play, what others think doesn't matter. Only thing that matters is your own game, which you either enjoy or not. I know I criticise and whine about the game in my blog. That doesn't mean I wouldn't love it WHILE I play[…. ] As you know, when the flow is there, the raid moves on and there is nothing else in the world. That's when you are there."

Copra, I know exactly what you're talking about. Those moments of zen. Those are the major reason for me to play WoW, something I expanded on in a post last year.

And you know what? They're still there for me! I experience them here and now, as the sun is sinking below the horizon and the darkness is closing in on us. Not so much on my mage, admittedly. She's a little bit tired and in the need of the replenishment that comes with new bold goals. But let me dress up as my resto druid Arasil, and you'll find me completely absorbed. I don't even have to be in a raid to get those magic moments.

Like a few nights ago, when I was healing heroic Halls of Reflection. That instance is always a stretch to me, fresh and inexperienced as I am in the role of a healer. And it certainly doesn't get easier when the tank is a tad low geared and equally new to his toon, which was the case in this run. We barely made it through the first part. I healed and decursed and cleansed poison like I never had before, cursing at every global cooldown, making decisions on the fly, second by second, as focused on this encounter as if it had been heroic LK I was facing. I lost the tank once, but lo and behold managed to battle res him between two waves, and as by a miracle we didn't wipe. My sense of triumph and exhilaration was just as big as if it had been a major first kill for our guild. I was all absorbed, all immersed into the game and my blood was boiling. I have no idea if I got any drop that night. Probably not. But that wasn't the point. I got my zen moment, which is all I ask for.

Those moments of complete focus, clarity and flow makes up for any downtime, any frustration, any boredom I may experience as we're waiting for the launch of Cataclysm. I don't get them every second, not even every night. But I get them from time to time. And that's why I'm still around.

That's why I still, at this very point, enjoy playing World of Warcraft.

Does jumping straight into heroics at 80 make me a leech?

Do you always pull your own weight in a group? Does it make you cringe if you don’t? And how do you tell if a healer is carried in a five-man group? Can he or she basically be carried at all? And is it OK to jump straight into heroics as soon as you’ve dinged 80? This is the topic for today’s discussion at the Pink Pigtail Inn.

I’m in a confessional mood today, so let’s start it from there.

The shame of being carried
I can as well tell you right away: I haven’t always pulled my own weight in groups over the years I’ve been playing. There have been moments when my mage has been crawling in the sewer below the tank, barely beating the healer on the damage chart.

And the funny thing is that for a long while I had no idea that I actually was carried. I didn’t have any damage meter or even know that such things existed. I felt ashamed when it dawned upon me, Swedish as I am.

You see one of the most conspicuous national traits of our people is the obsession with the idea of being self sufficient. As a good Swede you’re not supposed to owe anyone else anything at any time. This shows in situations which probably would look pretty hilarious to an outsider.

In other countries – as I’ve been told – it’s considered normal, polite and expected that if you’re visiting a restaurant, someone will take the bill for the entire party. They know that next time someone else will pay and eventually it will even out. But so not in Sweden, oh no! In a Swedish restaurant, the bill will be split up. And sharing it evenly isn’t enough; every one will scrutinize the receipt, not hesitating to ask the serving staff for a calculator if necessary to make sure that no one by accident will pay a single cent more than they should. I’m not kidding. I’ve seen parties ending a lovely dinner spending 15-20 minutes or even more on the payment procedure.

Coming from this, you can imagine how I feel if I notice I’m falling behind in an instance party. It makes me cringe.

It happens – rarely - that I’m in the opposite situation, topping the damage chart in my PUG group thanks to superior gear. I don’t mind at all. I will carry my less fortunate fellow dps:ers and I’ll smile happily on the way! All I ask for is that they do their best, contributing with whatever they can. So what if it takes us a little bit longer to beat the content? Given the choice between being carried or carrying others as a dps:er, I’ll go for the last option, any day.

Struggling in normals
However: the last few days I’ve once again found myself in the role of a leech. At least I think I’ve been leeching, I’m not entirely sure. Judge for yourself.

The story is that I’ve finally gotten my third character to level 80 and like most players in this situation, I boldly ventured on my dungeon-grinding tour, hoping to gear up the druid, improve my healing skills and have some fun on the way.

To begin with I only signed up for the normal modes, even though the dungeon finder would admit me into several of the heroics. After all, I was dressed in blues. Shouldn’t I at least get myself some emblem gear and a few crafted purple pieces, maybe buying some BoE:s, before stepping up in difficulty level? As the “good girl” and Swede I am, I wanted to make sure that I did the “right thing”.

And maybe it was morally correct, but it certainly gave me a headache. Far from being easier than the heroics, those normal modes were rather a super-hard mode. Every single time I ended up as the only level 80 in a group where everyone else was level 78 or 79. The tanks were without exceptions death knights, and suddenly the name of the class got an entirely new meaning. Death was the word, and my heart sank whenever I saw their squishy little bodies go “splat”. I couldn’t help blaming myself (healer guilt, you know), and I wondered if I had been foolish to believe that I would have what it takes to become a reliable tree. I won’t lie to you; it was pretty depressing.

When I mentioned this to a guildie, he just laughed at my foolishness, saying that I was doing it wrong. Why didn’t I go for the heroics, like everyone else? People are so well geared these days, he said, that they don’t need that much of healing. I would be fine in there.

Reluctantly I gave it a try. It would offer me better loot and more badges, and after all – why should I distrust the gearscore that is built into the dungeon finder tool? If I wasn’t prepared to run a certain instance, I would be locked out from it.

Leeching in heroics
My legs trembled nervously as I entered my first heroic, which turned out to be Gundrak. I greeted the party, and couldn’t refrain from babbling insecurely, asking them to take it a bit careful since I was new to healing and badly geared. They just laughed it away: “No problem, we all have to start somewhere!” and with concern about me, they also made sure to take time to do the extra boss, so I could get a couple of more badges.

My friend had been totally right. The full epic geared warrior tank barely got a scratch, regardless of how big packs he pulled. I dutifully kept dotting people with HoTs, as a safety measure, giving me something to do. But it was barely needed. We reached the end quickly enough without a single death.

Was I carried through the instance? I suppose I was. I doubt the run would have been as smooth if everyone else in the party had been at my gear level. I was relying on them.

Did the group feel that I was a burden, dragging them down? Probably not. I don’t think a better geared healer would have made a huge difference to the run. They might have skipped the extra boss if I wasn’t there, but that’s all. As long as the party stays alive, can you really say that the healer has been carried?

Strengthened by this experience I checked the heroic box for the next instance. And then I did it again. And again. The results were similar: it worked just fine. I wouldn’t do this as a tank, and possibly not as a dps, but I tell you - as a healer, you’re way better off in a heroic instance than in normal.

Yet I can’t rid myself of the nagging suspicion that I was a leech after all. In the end, there were other players who took a bigger share of the bill. I heard this little voice telling me that I should call on the waitress, borrow a calculator, and settle my debts.

This doesn’t prevent me from keep signing up for heroics though. Why would I pick the normal one when all I get is a repair bill and severely bruised self confidence?

Carrying or being carried
A final thought on carrying and being carried. It’s easy to get blinded by the dazzling, seemingly scientific, unquestionable numbers on the damage chart, forgetting about everything else. But the truth is that the guys who are subscribing for the first place in your raid sometimes are carried by they ones who always dwell in the bottom. Only in another sense.

Who is the one who provides the spirit, the force and the giggles that keeps your guild going through times of hardships? What is he if not a carrier, and what is the constantly disgruntled, unsatisfied guy who never provides anything but negative energy, if not a leech?

There are many ways to carry. There are many ways to be carried. And maybe we should do as they do abroad: take turns in paying the bill and feel confident in doing so. It will all even out in the end.

A Glimpse of How it used to be

Yay! It’s Friday night and it’s time for a little bit of storytelling here by the barside.

This week I'd like to share with you a tale from something that happened to me in game recently. Looking at it from the outside it wasn't special at all. It didn't give me bragging rights; it wouldn't hit the gossip columns of WoW.com or MMO-champion; it didn't qualify for any achievement. There was no loot to be won and the slow gain of XP was laughable.

And yet it was a golden nugget, a precious moment I wouldn't exchange for any gold or jewelry you could offer me in Azeroth.

What happened was that I for an hour or two – typically enough I lost the track of time - got the chance to experience how WoW used to be once upon a time. I had a glimpse of how the game could appear back in the days when the gold-and-epics fever hadn't yet infected the game and we were exploring the world rather than exploiting it.

It happened in Maraudon
It all started as a pretty normal PUG run, using the dungeon tool. I singed up with my level 41 druid bear and didn’t have to wait long before I was assigned to a group.

“Oh. Maraudon. Crap. Am I capable of doing this?”

The doubts flew threw my head, but I tried to push them away the best I could. “Confidence, my dear, confidence”, I thought to myself. The one and single most important ability of a tank.

This would be my virgin run in this instance in the tank role; as a matter of fact I could only recall seeing it once before – a few days earlier, when a friend drag my mage through it, so I could get the achievement. I had no idea about the place, where to go, where to look for bosses. All I could remember was that it was a labyrinth in the good-old vanilla style.

There wasn’t much time to ponder upon this though, because before I had managed to buff up anyone or even switch to bear form, someone had pulled. My shiny “Welcome-to-this-run I’m –your-tank-today and Here’s-the-rules” macro didn’t help at all. This was obviously going to be one of those runs when you’re rather fighting your party members than the mobs.

However somehow we managed to make it to what appeared to be the first boss. As we killed him it turned out that this boss was at the same time the last one, because we got that random-dungeon-completed message and a goodie bag.

“WTF?” I thought. Was this all? Are they building this huge instance for one single boss? I felt cheated. Looking closer to it I understood the situation; there were more bosses available, but apparently there are several entrances and for some reason we had arrived at a spot where you can go straight for the end boss.

Dancing with the slimes
The party started to disassemble every so quickly. I suppose everyone was eager to join the queue again to find a new instance to rush through. You’ve got to think about your XP/hour you know. How would it look if everyone started to slack?

But not everyone left. For some reason I lingered in the instance, and so did another druid, who had joined in the form of a kitty. We looked around us and noticed the lack of party members.

I don’t know how it happened, if someone actually said something aloud, making a suggestion, but before we knew it we were continuing our way through Maraudon, just the two of us.

Gone was the silly pull-as-much-as-possible attitude. We approached every pull and every turn in the cave with respect, checking for patrols, calculating on which packs were linked together and which weren’t. I pulled one or two at a time, mostly tanking. But when it was needed I shifted to another form, and so did he. One moment we were bears, the next we were kitties, and then we were cows. We took turns in tanking, dps:ing, healing and rooting, whatever was needed best at the moment. It happened that we died, but we battleressed and kept going.

Some slime mobs were especially fun to figure out how to deal with. They hit hard as a truck and were very hard for a tank and a healer/dps to manage, but then we realized how slowly they moved, so we worked out a way to slowly kite them around, slowing them even more with our roots, using our caster spells to kill them. It became a sort of dance, the most beautiful example of team work I’ve seen in a very long time in the game.

Deeper and deeper into the dungeon did we go, both equally clueless about the way. When we spotted some packs that looked just too big, we transformed into cats and sneaked by them in stealth.

Go us! We both knew we rocked. We couldn’t actually talk much about our strategies or rejoice at how well we did, since my partner’s English was lacking. Most of my efforts to chat away were met with a "?", since he didn't understand me. But who cared? When two druids are on a roll you don't need many words.

The end of the story
I don’t know for how long this lasted. But I enjoyed every second of it. The story came to an end eventually, when we both died and failed to find our way back to the instance and our bodies. Which of course is the backside of the handy teleport-to-instance-feature. Players who are prone to get lost (read: Larísa) won’t get any chance to improve on their map skills this way.

When we finally gave up on continuing, we both knew that it was the end of a friendship that might have been. We were on different servers, and it was very unlikely that we ever would get opportunity to do this again. And I suppose this added to the bittersweet flavor of this random meeting in Azeroth. Once in a lifetime.

As I logged back to Larísa, I mentioned in the guild chat what I had been through. And someone remarked that this was how the game was back in vanilla all the time. These kinds of encounters were common and it was on those occasions that game friendships were forged.

And I couldn’t help wishing that I had been around back in those days. I suppose it’s about as futile as for the kinds of today to wish they had been around for the golden days of punkrock. What’s gone is gone.

But I keep having this naggering thought: doesn’t it tell us something about the state of WoW when teaming up with a stranger to have some fun with trash mobs in Maraudon is such a rarity, such an exclusive event, that I find it natural to devote an entire blogpost to it?

As Blizzard polished and polished on the game, listening to the players, making up all those cool and handy things and made everything available to everyone and all the players independent of each other, because we asked for it, something seems to have gotten lost on the way.

I got a glimpse of this “something” that night in Maraudon. But I have no idea about where to look to get more of it.

Listening to the voices
From one thing to another: I downloaded a free trial version of LOTRO last night. Shocking, isn’t it?

I blame all those voices in the nether. I couldn’t refuse to listen to the advice of my guests. This means that one late night this weekend I might take my first stumbling steps in the Shire, provided that I didn’t mess up somewhere in the installation.

I'm not planning to break up with my loved one. I'm just fooling around a little, but I must admit that it’s kind of scary. WoW has been my one and only home for such a long time. But I suppose it’s about time that I dare at least have a peak into other realms, finally maybe becoming a gamer and not just a WoWer.

And who knows, maybe I’ll stumble upon someone who will enjoy teaming up with me, having some fun, without being in a hurry for anything particular? Maybe, just maybe, I might experience an equivalence of my Maraudon adventure. I actually have hopes about that, judging from the rumors about the slightly more relaxed and civilized atmosphere in LOTRO.

But now it’s time for the traditional Friday toast to celebrate that the working week has come to an end.

Cheers all!

Why Tanks Have the Best View in the Game and other Summertime Musings

It’s an established truth that tanks have the most boring view in the game. I’ll quote the grumpy but worth-a-read blogger The Gray Place, who wrote a why-tanking-is-boring post a couple of days ago.

“When I was tanking I never even got to see any artwork in the actual instances. I’d always have this huge boss’s ankles in my face or if I was lucky his crotch.”

Talking about grumpy – have you noticed that all good tanks have a bit of grumpiness in them. It’s like a natural law. Maybe that’s why I so often end up in the roll of a victim whenever I try tanking on my baby druid, being yelled at with an impatient “go-go-go”. I’m probably just not grumpy enough to get some respect. WTB grumpiness.

And why am I suddenly talking about the benefits of being grumpy? Well, as you see this is another Friday night post, where I give myself the freedom to jump even more freely in my thoughts than normally. I blame the bartender. She must have poured something strong in my glass. Oh, wait, I’m the bartender…

The best view
Anyway. Back on topic: I was talking about the view from a tank perspective.

Regardless of all the feet, legs, crouches and wall-like surfaces a tank will put his eyes on,, I would say that it isn’t entirely true that their view always is the worst. As a matter of fact they get to see a lot of stuff that a squishy dps class will never see. In fact there are moments when they even get the best view in the game.

I realized this as I finally came around to make a nostalgic run through Karazhan this week as we called the main raid for the night a bit earlier than planned. It must have been almost 2 years since the last time I ran Karazhan. And maybe that was about how long time I needed to recover from the overdose I got back in time in the days of badge farming.

Now the disgust had suddenly been replaced with longing, expectations and nostalgia, and the return to the old castle was even more enjoyable than I had imagined as I took initiative to the run.

Even if we flew through the instance, aoe:ing all the trash and killing the bosses in a matter of seconds, I also managed to take some time to just look around and actually see the instance, paying attention to the details, like all the paintings on the walls, the sculptures, the books on the floor, the flights of stairs going in all directions. Especially in comparison to Wrath instances like ToC, Karazhan was absolutely amazing and stunningly beautiful in it’s design.

So what has this got to do with the tank view? Well, for the first time I was able to see some of those places the way that our tanks always saw it. Do you remember the hall with all the dancers that you did on your way to Monroe? I never saw it until now.. I spent all my time staring into those stairs, waiting for the tanks to come running back with a bunch of hostile dancers to aoe down. But I never saw anything of the dance activity.

And suddenly I understood how privileged tanks are, always arriving first to a spot, always facing the bosses eye to eye without any other player disturbing the view (apart from sneaky rogues, but they’re almost invisible anyway.)

By always going in the front, you sometimes get to see stuff that no one else will see. Another example from Karazhan is the room where Curator stands. As a squishy mage I always waited patiently for the tank to go into the hall of the Curator, grab one of those elementals and their electrical fish and bring it out to me. I never saw the view of an entire hall full of elementals – not until this run, two years later.

Summertime musings
It’s the end of the week and how has it been? Well, I think I could say that it’s been a week of lightness and sadness at the same time. I suppose it’s a little bit like a school class going for their summer vacation, knowing that a lot of your classmates won’t be there when school starts again in the end of August. There will be a school class, alright, but it won’t be exactly the same as it was.

We’re a little gentler than normally, a little more lighthearted (not that we normally are that horribly harsh, but the atmosphere is definitely a little bit extra soft). The sun is low on the horizon, the shadows are getting longer and the light is warm, gentle and a bit tired. As we had a horrible wipe on Sindragosa due to some really silly mistakes this Thursday run, there wasn’t the slightest sign of annoyance in the air. We’re a family about to change and we want to enjoy our last hours together as much as possible.

It’s summertime. And sure I can cry for some new content, but at the same time it’s also kind of relaxing to let go of a little of my worst progression ambitions. Don’t misunderstand me – raiding is still fun. But if it doesn’t happen, I’m just as happy merrily exploring and getting lost in Maraudon with a friend, as I did the other night.

The living is easy. And in my garden, the blackbird is calling on me to get outside and just enjoy the out-of Azeroth life. Cataclysm can wait a while longer. I don’t mind.

Cheers all! May you get a lovely weekend!

Tanking scares the hell out of me - that's why I love it

“Why are we going so slowly? What’s keeping the tank? Come on!”

I felt as if I had ants under my pants. Something was itching badly. Normally I dare say I’m a rather polite and patient player – especially when I’m on an alt without any ambitions for glorious end game triumphs. I can take my time, what’s the rush? But this run was far beyond slow, it was plain silly! What was the tank up to? Had we unknowingly joined a secret branch of the Slow movement?

I was arguing with myself. “Maybe I should give the tank a hint that he should pull himself together and start waving his great big ehrm and get the job done?”

Would it be rude to make a subtle hint, like tapping my toes a little?

I didn’t. You see: there was this little detail. The turtle-look-alike tank was no one else but yours truly. I was the tank.

Back to tanking
After ten months of sulking and tending to my hurt feelings and wounded self-image, I’ve finally gotten over my previous shortcoming in the tanking business. Once again I’m taking the role as a furious, raging bear mother, not shy of anything, ready to protect my family of adventurers to the bitter end, no matter of what horrors we'll be facing.

Last time I tried this part of the game, I dropped off pretty quickly, with the tail between my legs. Long time readers might remember. It was in June last year, that I entered DM ever so boldly, only to find out that my impatient PUG party rather wanted someone else to tank, just to get through it ASAP. After a couple of similar experiences I surrendered, put the idea of tanking to rest and went tree instead. My services weren’t wanted, so why bother offering them?

When I recently rolled a tauren druid at Argent Dawn, my first idea was to level it healing in instances and nuking as a moonkin while questing. If it wasn’t for Dwism I would probably have stuck to this plan. But somehow he managed to talk me back into tanking, as a worthy, interesting challenge and Cataclysmic turn in my gameplay. And with such an enthusiastic supporter I just can't give up, can I?

My fresh run as a tank took place in SFK, and to be honest it was a plain disaster. Dwism healed me well enough as he had promised, but there were three pugged hunters with growling pets pulling and tanking mobs all over the place. I stood there as an idiot, frantically looking through my spellbook to see if there were any more spells I could drag over to my action bars and get control over the situation. I never did; I had no idea about what I was doing or where we were going, and the fact that we somehow completed the run was pretty much a miracle. I was present in the party, but I was hardly what you would consider a tank.

The next run, in Deadmines this time, included almost only guildies, and went slightly better. The only moment of Endless Shame was when I took a careless step to the side of the boat, fell down into the water, and then ended up swimming hysterically in circles, chased by pirates, murlocs and god-knows-what. My comrades seemed to be more entertained than annoyed though, and hey, at least we didn't wipe.

Things to work out

To be honest there are quite a few things that need to be fixed before Larísa can call herself a tank without feeling like a hoax:

1. A sense of direction
In every single instance I've cleared since I first started to play WoW, I've been a follower. Even though I haven't literally put my toon on follow, I've done it mentally. There was always a solid tank around, someone I could trust on. All I needed to do was to keep my eyes on that furry bear butt, never letting it get out of sight. Now I'm the one with the butt, but I still haven't got a clue about where to go. Sometimes I've even run back to where we came from, until I've noticed a distinct lack of mobs, which is a good hint that I'm on the wrong track. WTB a sense of direction.

2. The ability to multitask
I know that women are supposed to be experts in giving attention to several things at the same time. Either that stereotype is a complete lie, or I'm just not a typical woman. Whatever the reason is - I fail at it. It's not just all those swarming trashmobs you're supposed to pick up, including patrols randomly strolling by and extras pulled by careless dps:ers. It's also everything that goes on in between. As a dps:er I used to have very little compassion with tanks who forgot to check the mana bars of the healer or failed to mark and give proper assignments. Seen from the other side, with a thousand different things to think of, I can very well understand why you sometimes miss even essentials like this.

3. Confidence
A veteran tank officer in our guild used to develop the tank team by initiating discussions on our forum. I remember how he once put the question which ability the tanks considered most important. And they all started to suggest different core stats and spells that are crucial for tanking. I suggested something different, namely "self confidence", since an insecure tank is quite problematic for a group to handle. And I actually was the one who got closest to what he wanted to convey. He concluded that the most important ability was to make the rest of the raid trust in your tanking. Being self confident often helps. But even if you aren't, even if you're full of self doubts, you should act in such a way that the team will think you know what you're doing and feel comfortable about it.

Scary and fulfilling
Of those three things the last one, confidence, is definitely the hardest one for me to acquire. I may look like a proud, tall, strong Tauren, who won't back off for anyone. But as anyone knows who has tried it: the tank shoulders weight a ton compared to the cloth ones.

I can't think of anything more challenging and absorbing thing to do in the game. As I enter an instance in bear form, the rest of the world ceases to exist. Sure - I feel quite clumsy, and I've got the distinct feeling that I'm horribly, horribly slow. But I'm totally present in my mind and focus, and when it's over, I have absolutely no idea of how long time I've spent in there, or what else has been going on in the guild chat meantime. I've been just as lost in the gameplay as I would have been in any progression raid, and I come out just as fulfilled and excited as I would be after a boss kill. And that's pretty good for a level 20 instance!

To be honest, tanking scares the hell out of me. And that's exactly why I shall stick to it. Rather than giving up this time, I'll work harder.

One day I'll grow into those heavy tank shoulders. One day I'll say it aloud: I am the tank! and sound as if I actually mean it.

Love rather than loot will turn me into a healer

There’s a discussion going on in the blogosphere about if you should hand out some extra rewards to tanks and healers. It sparked from a guest post at World of Matticus by Gordon from We Fly Spitfire. Blessing of Kings, Big Bear Butt , Spinksville and Forbearance among others have commented on it.

A lot has been said about how much or how little the dpsers are contributing to the success of the group. Some argue that we’re quite disposable, more or less dead meat nowadays (as opposed to when there at least was a need for good, reliable cc), while others point out that enrage timers are hard to beat without sufficient dps and that GOOD dpsers are just as rare as good tanks and healers.

The enjoyable stress
Gordon talks a lot about the stress and pressure that comes with the tanking and healer roles. He seems to regard this task as a burden. The poor tanks and healers have to work harder than anyone else in the group and this justifies an extra reward.

Frankly I just can’t see it that way. When did running an instance become a burden or a job? I thought we did this for relaxation and entertainment (with possible exception for a few gold farmers, if there still are any around these days).

Admittedly my experiences as a tank or a healer are restricted to my druid alt who is currently lvl 73, so I don’t claim to be any expert. But as far as I’m concerned, the pressure put on me as a healer is a reward in itself. It’s the very reason for me to want to turn into a tree!

I enjoy the feeling that I’m really making a difference. An instance can be four-manned or three-manned, but only as long as there’s a healer and a tank in the group. As a healer I’m running the show as a team with the tank. I enjoy the adrenaline rushes, not only during the bosses, but during almost every single pack. I enjoy sweating and swearing and responding to the challenge! I enjoy not being able to follow the guild chat since’ I’m totally focused on what I’m doing.

There isn’t such a thing as a facerolling easy instance as long as I’m on my little druid. The stress kick I get from a normal five-man instance would require a major new boss fight if I was on my mage. I find it highly enjoyable and it definitely isn’t something I expect extra rewards for doing.

Encouraging healing and tanking
Still – I admit there is an issue concerning the incentives for choosing a role as a tank or healer. Apparently something is keeping people away from it - otherwise we wouldn’t face the unbalances in the Dungeonfinder system, where a healer or tank will get a group within a second, while a dps can expect to queue for at least 10 minutes, if not more.

The question is: can we get more willing tankers or healers simply bribing them with extra emblems, gold or even special drops, only-for-them? I sincerely doubt it.

The best thing that Blizzard possibly could to do encourage players to try out a healing or tanking role is already done. It was when they introduced the dual spec, so that all players always could have an easily available dps spec to bring out for questing – either for levelling purposes or for knocking off dailies. Gone are the days when healers had to either waste tons of gold on respeccing or put up with painfully slow killing as they were questing.

However it’s evident that the removal of this obstacle wasn’t enough. There still aren’t enough people who are willing to bring up as many new tanks and healers as we need to make balanced groups to beat the content.

The lack of patience
I think the major problem is player attitude – how we treat our healers and tanks. There is absolutely no forbearance, no patience, no understanding for the fact that everyone is new at some point and has to start somewhere – gearing up and learning to play their class in this specific roll.

Although you can gear up a bit outside of instances, it’s rather hard not to say impossible to learn how to heal a party by questing. You have to make your errors and climb the learning curve in a real instance environment. Even players who realize this need seem to think: “fine, you need to learn, but please don’t do it in my party. I don’t have time for this.”

Calli at Pew Pew Lazers put it well in a recent rant, which has epic proportions but is well worth reading.

He points out the rather ridiculous expectations players of today have on the time and easiness of an instance run and the gear level of the tanks. Some players even prefer a deserter debuff and making the queue once again to giving a tank with less than 4 pieces of T9 a shot.

I can’t but agree. It’s absolutely astonishing how spoiled players are, how we expect literally every encounter in the game to be on farm mode from the very beginning and any instance to be cleared without any causalities within 20 minutes.

If a new tank takes his time to actually mark things and ponder a bit upon on how to make a pull or wait for the healer to gain mana, you can bet that someone will yell: “Gogogo”, followed by a “Gtg soon, hurry!”

And I honestly don’t think ANY kind of extra loot can be enough to compensate for some of the douchebaggery fresh tanks had healers have to put up with.

What I want as a healer
My druid has recently taken her first stumbling steps waving her branches in the Northrend instances. What will it take to make her continue to offer her healing services through the Dungeon finder system, rather than questing, hiding in the shadows as a kitty or just giving up the whole project, sticking to one of my dps characters?

Well, it takes two things. The first, and definitely the most crucial one, is cooperative tanks. Tanks who don’t dismiss me when I admit that I’m new to healing, but rather adjust their pace and the size of packs they’re pulling to what I’m capable of healing through. Tanks who give me time, if not to loot and skin (oh what a mistake to pick skinning as a profession for a healer!), at least enough for me to have a drink every now and then.

The second thing it takes is a little bit of encouragement from the fellow players in the party. You can’t overestimate how much the feedback you get from your first healing or tanking experiences ever in the game mean - how it can inspire you to pick a challenging, stressful path– or how it can scare you away from ever trying such a thing again.

A few days ago I ran my first Nexus and UK in a random group consisting of only players at the right level. And I was lucky enough to get one of those insightful and patient tanks. Of course I overhealed a lot, nervously staring at the health bars, resulting in rather long drinking pauses when the party had to wait patiently for me. Of course I got tunnel vision, resulting in rather stupid standing-in-fire actions from my side. But somehow we managed to make our way through it and the party was up for another instance with me as a healer. Words can’t describe what a boost this was to my self confidence!

As we separated after UK, as I had to leave for real life stuff, the leader said: “I’m sure you’ll make a fine healer at lvl 80”. It may not sound as anything special, but I tell you, for the terrified newbie healer, it meant more than any drop Gordon could have brought me. I was exhausted from the tension and strain, but my healing heart was glowing with pride.

My simple conclusion is: All you need is love.

Give me a cheer and a hug and I’ll heal my arse off for you in any instance you like. Regardless of what awards it offers.

Genders in a five-man party – are we stuck in the stereotypes?

When you’re doing a five-man instance, who in the family are you? Are you the mother, the father or the naughty child?

Speaking for myself, I’ve always been the child. We have a great time, trying out our toys (“Zap! You’re a sheep! Mama, mama, look, I’m invisible!”) while we’re fighting our brothers just for fun. (“Haha, I beat you on the damage list, sucker!”) Sometimes we lose our minds, foolishly pulling aggro. But our patient parents, the tank/healer couple, will normally save our asses, and after giving us some well deserved bashing they’ll forgive us.

Recently however I’ve tried a new role. As the regular guests of the inn know, I’m levelling a druid alt, with the ambition to se the game from a different side, as a tank or healer. But for all my intentions to tank, I have gotten more and more into healing. Not only because there’s obviously much more demand for healers than for tanks in the old world, but also because I’ve fallen in love with the task in a way that I hadn’t expected.

Suddenly I find myself, a modern women, playing the traditional female healing role in an MMO. I’m standing in the back, a pretty night elf chick in a beautiful robe, dutifully renewing the HoTs, trying to keep everyone alive instead of boldly killing evil stuff. And it bugs me that I enjoy it so much. It bugs me a lot.

Revolting against stereotypes
The thing is that I hate gender stereotypes with all of my heart. I always have, since they make me feel trapped, reduced into a couple of milk producing body parts on legs, supposed to take decisions out of hormones rather than out of my free will. I want to enjoy the freedom to form my life and display my personality anyway I want. Above anything I want to be treated by myself and by other people as a fellow human being, not as a Sex.

Even though I’m not a Role Player in its true sense, one of the things I love most about MMOs is that you can play around in an anonymous, protected sandbox. You can check out different roles and discover new sides of yourself.

Surely, sometimes we encounter gender stereotypes which seem to be leftovers from the middle ages, but we can always act like Spinksville and turn our back to it. . Back in the early days, female gamers had to struggle quite a bit to get accepted and respected. But now there’s nothing unusual about us, we’re like other players. No more, no less, exactly how I want it to be.

Lack of female tanks
However, when I think about the act of healing, I can’t help thinking “typical girlish thing to do”, no matter how I try to rid myself from this notion.

Maybe it’s related to what I actually see in the game. Until this day I haven’t seen any female tanks or melee dps as I can recall or knew about. Yeah, there are a couple of blogging exceptions, but I’ve never seen any for myself. Girls play healers or possibly ranged dps. They seem to avoid the blood splatter.

I wonder why. I refuse to believe there’s some genetic reason for it. After all, tanking doesn’t require any special physical abilities, such as real life strength. Basically WoW playing is the same for everyone. You push your buttons; you move your mouse and you click. The only difference is what kind of targets you have and what effects your spell have.

Maybe we just need some new stereotypes, alternative images which we associate to the different roles? Why do I insist on thinking about the tank as a father? A tank could as well be pictured as a mother – a raging lioness, a killing machine, who will do anything to protect her children. And the healer could perhaps be the old, wise, white bearded grandfather, whose inner spirits are familiar with the old arcane power? After all, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're gay because you're a male healer... :)

But for the dps I can’t see any other image than the one of the child: innocent, convinced about their own immortality, full of energy and void of responsibilities. Oh, happy days!

A blunt Swiss army knife in action

I did it! I brought my baby druid to Deadmines and I tanked one of the bosses. Sort of. Almost. It didn’t turn out exactly as I had hoped or expected, but after all, it was a quick run, around 30 minutes, and not a single death, so I shouldn’t complain. I felt like a blunt Swiss army knife.

Arasil The Tank
In my vision it would have been quite different. In the motion picture Arasil The Tank running in my head, I saw how I was the one that arranged the epic event, invited and led crowd in the mission to seek out and kill this evil Mr Van Cleef.

Arasil would be that strong, sturdy tanking bear, probably a little bit grumpy, but solid as a rock, putting up a steady pace for the run - not overly quick, but yet efficient. I pictured how I’d take quick and wise decisions about how many mobs to pull. I would mark, if not every single defias, at least most of them. And I would assign people, telling them in which order to kill them, what to cc, what to aoe. I would deal with the loot issues. I would praise the ones who deserved it. I would probably not criticize much, because that’s not my way of leading people. To put it short: I would be godlike.

Nothing of this happened.

The preparations
I had planned it all so well, probably putting a lot more effort into it than a normal sensible player would do for an ordinary five-man run. After all this was one of the activities on my 33-things-to-do-before-I-quit-the-game list and I wanted to do it properly. My gear wasn’t exactly top notch, but I had thrown on a couple of low level enchants and some leatherworking enforcement on my armor, whatever I could to improve a bit. I had loaded myself with elixirs to get an extra boost. Considering the size of the stack you could think I was about to do a progress raid, but that’s just how I am.

I was prepared, but above all I was motivated, eager to give my brand new druid girl a real challenge. I felt as if I just had gotten one of those clever multi-tool devices and I wanted to fold out every single blade on it to try it out.

I'm sure that Gnomeaggedon and some other valued friends of the Kirin Tor will consider me a traitor, but since I’m always truthful in this blog I’ll admit it to you: I have reluctantly fallen in love. Reluctantly because there are way too many druid bloggers out there already as it is – they certainly don’t need any more to join their ranks. Reluctantly because I’ve always thought that one of the wisest things I’ve done in this game was to focus on my main rather than split my game time on thousands of project, not completing any of them.

But it would take a ton of resistance gear to withstand the joys of shapeshifting, the pleasure of healing, tanking, spellcasting, cc:ing, in short being capable to adapt to any situation you can think of in the game. It’s as far from the fireball-fireball-fireball spam as you can come. No wonder I couldn’t make myself put the druid on pause until I had managed to get a guild-only run. And that’s how it came that I ended up in the LFG channel, and before I knew it I had been invited to pug-party.

Tank competition
I can only blame myself for what happened in this run. I should have spoken up, being clear about what I wanted, saying that I was a tank, take it or leave it. Instead I mumbled like a school girl, giving a little speech, saying that I was ”specced into feral and that I’d prefer to tank if possible, since I wanted to try out something new, but oh, wait, I’m all new to tanking, so if I suck too much, just tell me and I’ll leave.”

I figure it’s not the best way to introduce yourself if you want gain the trust of a group.

As we ventured the tunnels of DM it became apparent that this party didn’t have one tank but three of them. Me and two paladins were all fighting like crazy to get the aggro. I growled and did everything I came to think of, pushing all those new unfamiliar bear buttons, trying to at least get some of the mobs glued to me. And the others did just the same.

Miraculously enough this zerg method worked reasonably well through the whole run. The only victim in this was the poor priest who ran out of mana in his efforts to keep up the health on three wanna-be-tanks. I was the only one who paid any attention whatsoever for his requests for breaks. The paladins just pushed forward, grabbing another bunch of mobs before I could do it, saying that the priest should blame himself for not saving his mana better.

When we entered the forge of Gilnid I finally dared to raise my voice, asking if they couldn’t let me tank this boss. And finally they let me. It wasn’t as organized as I wanted it to be and I pulled him prematurely together with some of the remaining trash wandering around. But he went down alright and I had kept myself steady in the top of the Omen meter. I smiled for a second, until I saw the paladins disappearing into the next corridor and I realized I had to catch up and fight if I wanted to have my share of love from the mobs.

My first tank insights
All in all, this wasn’t quite the run I had imagined. But I brought one thing from it: my first insights about what’s going on in the mind of a tank. Grabbing not only one but several mobs and keeping their interest was far from easy. The race on the Omen meter can obviously be quite a nightmare. This time it was self inflicted – the paladins knew what they were doing and it didn’t cause us any problem. But I could very clearly imagine how stressful it must be in a harder context.

Was I proud of what I had accomplished? No, far from. I was probably one of the bluntest army knives every seen. Still: it was a milestone in my personal WoW career, a noticable step forward in my general knowledge and understanding of the game.

On the loot side, if anyone wondered, I ended up with the Emberstone staff. Maybe it's a sign that my next instance experience should be as a healer? Hopefully I won’t have two other players fighting to perform the same task this time.

The motion picture about Arasil The Healer is already running in my mind.

To be continued.