The post where I assure the readers that I'm still a merry gnome!

Maybe it's just the season. The darkness coming over us will full force. Maybe it's the time of the WoW cycle, in the gap between content patches. But isn't there a bit of gloominess in the air?

Quite a few players seem to have gone into some kind of power save mode, biding their time for Icecrown, not caring particularly about upgrades and progression, since it all will be outdated in just a couple of weeks. This effect has spread to the blogs, where the writers are slowing down and spending whatever they have of creativity and spirit on their write-a-novel-in-November projects rather than on ranting about WoW.

Have I too become infected with this state of mind? A disturbing sign showed up in a comment to the post yesterday:

Bell wrote:

"You've been seeming intensely disillusioned about much of the game lately; are you sure you're not getting close to being done with playing? Brewfest, titles, instances, preparation for Cataclysm, micro transactions and pets...you're very unhappy and antagonistic towards much of the changes occurring in the game."

Larísa a grumpy gnome?
Yeah, thinking back on the last couple of months you might wonder. Has Larísa beome a Grumpy old lady? Has she without knowing it turned into one of those who are bitter, constantly complaining and looking back at the "good old days"? Has she joined the party of too old players who for some odd reason insist on hanging around, pestering the atmosphere in Azeroth, rather than leaving for a game they might like better?

I think it's time that I put some things straight. You see: I don't consider myself a disillusioned player at all.

OK, I admit that I'm not a fan of the pet-shop-thing. And for very personal reasons, I had some problems with the drunk-until-you're-smashed-out concept of the Brewfest, which I wrote openly about. But read my lips: on the whole I'm quite fine or even enthusiastic with how WoW has evolved since I started to play it in 2007!

I consider WotLK an absolutely awesome expansion with beautiful new zones, much more fun questing and a fantastic finish. I have never complained about the lack of difficulty, I have never cried about the handouts of epics to more casual players, on the contrary. Over and over again have I supported that all players have the possibility to see all bosses and that the more advanced raiders are offered hardmodes for their amusement. I think the achievement concept is fine too, even though I've very selective when it comes to which ones I care about for my own part.

I love WoW as it is and most of the changes that are incoming - although there are of course always things you may have opinions about in such a huge game and world. I have no plans to stop playing anytime soon; as a matter of fact I see myself playing in Cataclysm and probably beyond. And I'm a dedicated Blizzard fan girl, which I think is pretty clear if you look back at my writings about for instance the Cataclysm announcement or my love for their mission statements.

The stroke of melancholy
So where this does this sad tone in the innkeeper's writings, which Bell obviously can read in my posts come from?

The intention of this post was originally to assure you that don't just like the title Merrymaker, but that I'm actually quite a merry little gnome, no matter of a few blogposts where I may have seem a bit down. But still I can't lie to you. I don't walk around every single second in the game with a huge smile, sparkling as if I just had used one of the Halloween toothpicks.

There has always been a stroke of melancholy in my WoW writings. You see, I'm sitting here in my virtual armchair, enjoying a pint in front of the fire, just relaxing, putting words on whatever I happen to have in mind - ups as well as downs. That's the whole point of running the blog in the first place. It helps me to deal with my Azerothian existence - the good that comes with it as well as the bad.

I admit that I have moments in the game when not every single corner of my mind is all happiness. I think that what currently bothers me most is that I often find myself pretty lonely, except for when I'm in the guild organized 25 man raids. One reason is simply because I play at a bit odd hours, when not so many others are online, except for people who are already engaged into 10-man instances at the point when I come online. Another explanation might be that I've never been good at getting or maintaining friendships in real life either.

I've had a few game friends over the years. You know, someone who whispered you when you came online, someone to level with, run instances with, just talk some nonsense with, have a laugh with or whine a bit with when things are bad. But they're not around anymore, for various reasons. I couldn't help finding a little bit of comfort in a recent post by Thistlefizz at The Cranky Old Gnome, where he describes his loneliness. I know exactly where you're coming from Thistlefizz. We may be alone in the game but we're not alone in our experiences.

Still having a blast
This loneliness might be one of the flavors you've felt in what I've been serving recently Bell. But it doesn't mean that I'm done with WoW!

When I'm not raiding, which I'm absolutely passionate about, and is the major reason for me to keep playing wow, I've started to do some of the things on my 33-things-to-do-before-I-quit-WoW-list. And I'm having a blast!

For instance I can tell you about what I did a few nights ago. It was one of those bad nights, when my internet provider failed me and I repeatedly was dc:ing (which makes me quite cranky, it's the digital equivalence of toochache if you ask me) and I finally had to give up on raiding, asking for a replacement. Instead I switched to the horde side, to the bloodelf DK which I started recently, just to have a look at those famous first few levels, with all those moral dilemmas and cool questlines.

Admittedly, I felt pretty lonely - now that the huge DK rush in the beginning is over, there aren't many people around in the starting area and I know one (1) player on the horde side, who of course wasn't online. But boy, did I have fun (in spite of the dc:s, which didn't hurt anyone but myself)! I was clueless about how to spec and I even forgot to train as I leveled, which made killing quite a bit harder than it would have been else. I fumbled in darkness and I was delighted.

Maybe I should share more of those experiences with you, so you don't start to think that I'm about to quit. Because I'm not.

I will finish this post, quoting DW-Redux, who like me is worrying over the fact that he's starting to get a bit grumpy. In a post the other day he argued with himself, trying to silence the voice of that grumpy old man inside him, telling him to sod off.

"The game is still fun, and the people playing it are still the same."

Well DW-Redux: the people playing it aren't quite the same. But it's true that it's an awesome game. Maybe it was about time that I reminded myself and my readers about it.

Merrymaker Larísa. In the future I'll try to work a bit harder to show that I'm worthy the title.

Immersion starts with a passion for pointless pixels

So Blizzard is selling pets for real life gold, what's the big fuss about it? It's just pixels after all, right? Some bloggers and commenters find it hard to understand why people in the WoW community react so strongly, calling the criticism "nerdrage".

I won't go into a deep analysis about the pet shop, since Elnia already did it. But as I said in a comment to BoK:s post: something snapped inside me when I heard about it. My little pink pounding gnomish fangirl heart shattered.

I've been thinking about this the whole weekend. What exactly is it that makes me get so emotional over this - and over other things as well in the game? Where does it come from, the crazy joy, the burning anger, the happiness, the sadness, the laughter, the giggles, the disappointments, the cries, the constant excitement over something that doesn't have any impact whatsoever on reality? Is it really advisable to experience WoW as an emotional rollercoaster? Wouldn't it be better to see the game from a relaxed position in the far distance, shrugging at every boss kill, upgrade, buff or nerf, not making a big deal of it. After all, what does it matter? It's just pixels, right? Pointless pixels. Or is it?

The pointless pixels argument
The more I think about it, the less do I believe in the "pointless pixels" argument. I would even go so far that I would argue against using too often, especially not ingame.

You see, every time I utter "pointless pixels" to myself, it resembles me of something I do when I find myself at a cinema, where it turns out that the movie I went to was more violent and scary than I had thought. Since realistic violence makes me nauseous I will start an inner monologue, talking to myself. I picture how the movie was made and I imagine how the actors are surrounded by technicians and all sorts of equipment at the recording spot. I remind myself that what I'm seeing on the screen never has happened in real life. This is a defense mechanism and although it works pretty well, it also breaks the experience and idea about going to a cinema in the first place. You could ask: what exactly am I paying for if I break the immersion deliberately?

To really enjoy WoW, as well as to enjoy a movie, you have to play along and accept the fantasy world you enter as "real" and "important". Not 24/7, because most of us have a real life to care about too, which takes precedence. But as long as we're actually in the game we need to care, if not about everything, at least about something. We need to be passionate. We must to put a value to those "pointless pixels". It doesn't matter really if we're crazy about pet collecting, alt leveling or high-end raiding, as long as we have something that grabs our attention completely. The moment we start thinking about it as "pointless pixels", it is like turning on the lights in the middle of a theatre performance. The magic will be gone and so will the illusion be. It's a clear signal to the audience: it's time to go home and do something else.

Breaking the immersion
And to me this is also the main objection against the RMT pet shop. You could argue that the pet is useless or awesome - but that depends entirely on what part of the game you're focusing on. One thing is clear to me though: it breaks the immersion. When we can get items by giving out our credit card numbers on an out-of-game website, we get a distinct reminder of that we aren't any real heroes, fighting to save a world from evil forces (which also occasionally results in loot rewards). In reality we are morons who pay real life money for pointless pretty pixels.

In order to enjoy WoW as much as possible and get full entertainment for my monthly fees, I choose not to think of the game as "pointless". But Blizzard's recent actions really don't help. They're turning on the lights in the salon. They're shutting down the holo deck, letting us clearly see that the world we were engaged in, in fact was just an empty room with flat walls.

There will be a day in the future when I don't play WoW anymore. There will be a day when I think about the game as a bunch of pointless pixels, and I will be equally passionate about something else in my life, which may be just as incomprehensible in the eyes of others. Aikido, mountain climbing, origami, whatever. Go picture.

But as long as I play it I want to be immersed. So I will keep raging. I will continue hating and loving and caring about things that the developers come up with, even if some players will consider it an overreaction. I will get annoyed when I make mistakes, cursing and grinding my teeth, and I will get overly enthusiastic, crying with joy over all sorts of progress - my own as well as my guild's. Because this is the whole point of playing the game in the first place! It's a rollercoaster, for God's sake!

WoW is nothing but an escape, relying on our passion for pointless pixels. And I don't want it shattered until I'm ready for it.

Shop Smart, RMT Pet Shop…Smart?

Aghast. That’s the precise word to describe my reaction to Blizzard’s introduction of real money transactions to the game. Aghast.

Old timers will know why I am aghast but if you are new or just don’t recall go back and read this post wherein I stated my belief that the foundation for Warcraft greatness was the fact that it did not have real money transactions in the game.

Pets as Status Symbols

One of the major issues I have with real money transactions is that they are classist. They create a distinction between the haves and the have nots that is based upon a person’s out-of-game rather than in-game accomplishments. The fact that this distinction is merely visual (a pet) as opposed to functional (an epic) is of cold comfort. If anything, the visual distinction is much more “in your face” as opposed to an exp potion that no one sees you use.

Chris thinks the new pet store is just a logical extension of Blizzard revamping of account services but I don’t agree. If I am standing on the auction house bridge in Ironforge and your character that just had a faction change walks by I am clueless about any RMT activity unless I know you personally. If you have a RMT pet I know. I know because it is staring me in the face (my bank alt is a gnome.) With account services what is essentially out of sight can easily stay out of mind. Precisely because RMT pets are going to be always in sight the classist distinction will always be in mind.

This is also why I disagree that this move is just one tiny step in a history of selling pets by other means. There's a difference between a pet which is bought as part of another transaction and a pet that is bought directly. Taking off one’s underwear and hopping into bed is just one tiny step in a romance; most people would also acknowledge it’s a significant step. The first step on the moon was also one tiny step; it was also a giant leap for mankind. The size of the step doesn’t always correlate with what it portends. Little moves can signal big intentions.

An Accountants’ Game

Whether we see a full fledged RMT store will depend on the success of this pet foray. If the net profit margins meet expectations it will be full steam ahead. Don’t delude yourself into thinking Blizzard cares anymore about the fantasy world of Azeroth. This RMT development signals that in the future it is going to be the accountant, not the players or the developers, which is going to determine what is “detrimental to the game.” What the game boils down to now is profit maximization; that’s the greatness of the accountant’s game.

There is an old saying in politics that “elections have consequences.” Yet it never ceases to amaze me that people can talk about voting with their dollars and at the same time pretend those money elections have no consequences. When you buy a pet from the pet store you are not only buying a cute panda monk, you are electing to support with your dollars a specific business model. The consequence is that when you buy a pet from the pet store you are voting with your dollars for the sale of epics. It’s that simple.

An Issue of Trust

Most fundamentally I see RMTs a betrayal of trust by Blizzard. I began my hunt for a new MMO more than a year and a half ago by specifically eliminating any game that featured RMT or micro-transaction of any type. I joined Warcraft and invested my time in the game predicated upon the expectation that Warcraft was a subscription game and would continue to be so. The game had been a subscription game for the last three years; there was no indication in would not stay that way.

At the bottom of the Pet Store FAQ there is this question: “Will you be introducing the ability to buy epic weapons/etc. in the future, for example?” The relevant part of the response is “the Pet Store service is entirely optional and intended to provide players another means to enjoy World of Warcraft in a way that isn't detrimental to the game and that doesn't detract from the gameplay experience for players who choose not to use the service.” Notice the artful wording in that response. They avoid a direct answer to a simple question and that is never a good sign. Of course, even if they did directly say “no” I doubt I would believe them anymore. They also said they would never do faction changes or races either and well…you know what…they did. People keep insisting that the pet store is not on a slippy slope when all the evidence points to the fact it actually is on a slippery slope. Epics for sale. Wake up and smell the coffee.

Smart?

What I want is for the bullshit to stop. Don’t tell me that these are just pets and they don’t make any difference to the way one experiences the game because unless one is blind they do. Don’t tell me that these pets are just $10 items and Blizzard will never sell epics because Blizzard has refused to commit to that when asked directly; everything they are doing says if they can sell epics they will. Don’t tell me that I can trust Blizzard because I won’t accept a blind faith that totally ignores a pattern of past behavior. Actions have consequences. This action by Blizzard has consequences. So don’t tell me that this action by Blizzard is not a game changer; it is. Whether it is a smart game changer is going to depend on how players respond to it. Because our actions have consequences too.

A different perspective on WoW charity

This post is probably going to be a little bit controversial. I tell you right from the beginning, so it won't come as a shock to you. Not Very Controversial, but controversial enough to make a few of the readers annoyed or at least a little bit disappointed, since they don't share my views. But I wan't honesty in my inn. I won't settle with anything else.

I'm going to talk about charity.

Once again there are a couple of fundraising events going on in the blogosphere. Wow-insider says it’s "because of the time of the year", but to be honest, I think there’s some stuff like this going on more or less all year round. Wow players are asked to support everything from cancer research to homeless animals.

I can’t help wondering about the reasons for it. Are gamers a good target audience, more goodhearted and generous donors than others? Or maybe we’re more prone to suffer from bad consciousness, thinking about all the time and money we waste on our socially not totally accepted hobby? Perhaps we have some secret hope that we can feel a bit better about ourselves if we support a good cause?

Probably it's neither. Probably it's just a cultural thing. The blogosphere is pretty much US dominated, and over there they have a long tradition of charity, where people support different phenomena in society through donations, rather than doing it as we do in Europe, by paying higher taxes. So all those charity things that stick out in my Swedish eyes are just an everyday thing for the US bloggers. You have it all around you, all the time, wherever you turn in your life.

Some explanations
As you might have noticed, you won't find any ads or announcements about those things at The Pink Pigtail Inn. How come? Don’t gnomes recognize a good cause? Has your innkeeper been influenced by a certain goblin? Do I think that welfare is the root of all evil?

As time goes by and I see those voices, hands and pink colored things on every single blog on my roll, I feel more and more apart as I'm refusing to join the choir. It's time for some explanations.

No. I'm not opposed to charity. I earn well enough to put aside a percentage of my own income to causes which I think helps to make the world to a little better place than it else would have been. As I decided to do this, many years ago, I realized that there are endless of alternatives. You can save gorillas, you can support the fight for cure against certain diseases, you can help abused children or prevent an environmental disaster. My choice fell on two organizations which I think do a great and important job, Doctors without borders and SOS Children's Villages. I support both of those as monthly donor. This means that they are granted a long-term support which doesn't require them to put a huge chunk of their income on marketing. They can trust on me being there for them, not only for a one-time-only event, but month after month, year after year. And I know that this kind of support is important for their longterm existence.

The benefit of this for me on the other hand is that I don't see any reason to bother much about all the other charity things that come in my way. It's easy to say no to organizations which call me on the phone, stop me in the streets - or approach me through blogs, asking me for money. I know that I'm already contributing.

Freedom of choice

Do I advocate that you should help the same organizations as I do? Absolutely not! I think the readers of the PPI are fully capable of making their own choices in those matters. As I said, there are tons of good causes to support out there and I have no reason to try to talk someone out of rescuing the whales in order to sponsor daring field medics instead. Your wallet is limited and it's really up to you how you want to use it. Maybe you even have good reasons for not supporting anything at all. Maybe you've got problems even to finance your own living? Maybe you even think that charity is the wrong way to go and that you should rather help out by other means, the political way for instance. Who am I to argue about that? It's your life, your decisions.

WoW as an escape
And last, but not least: I don't want too much of the world problems intervening with my existence in Azeroth. All day long I have my hands full trying to balance job, family, worrying about the state of my life, my mother, kids, the state of the world, where am I heading, where are we heading, what is it all about? You know. Real Life Stuff. The things that wears us down.

Yeah, I admit it, I say it aloud and I refuse to feel ashamed. When I log into WoW at night or when I spend time reading and writing blog posts, it is an escape for me. It's a fantasy world, my own little corner, where I can be merry, free of burdens, free of duties, just playing like a child. In the game. On my blog.

There is another part of my life where I DO worry about suffering children and women. But I don't bring it into this inn. If other bloggers want to participate, I don't mind (although I honestly think it becomes a bit repetitive when EVERY blogger and podcaster participates in the marketing, not once, but over and over again).

But I won't do it. Apart from this post, PPI will remain a charity free zone.

Please forgive me.

yours sincerely

Larísa

PS Someone may have noticed that PPI is a member of Azeroth United, which indeed promotes charity events. I had no idea that this was the main purpose when I joined the network. If I'd known it would have been more honest not to join. I'm a crap member, who won't actively take part in the fundrasing, for the reasons stated above.

Goodbye world!

And so began the evacuation of Azeroth.

With Cataclysm still months away, Blizzard has already started to take measures to make sure that we stop patrolling the world. Our heroes are to take shelter in the major cities, leaving the poor civilians on their own. The new instant teleporting to instances incoming in the next patch is a step in this direction. It motivates us to turn our backs to whatever is happening outside the walls and instance portals, leaving free room for demons and other creatures to take over and destroy everything in their way. A Cataclysm requires a deserted world. From that point of view, the Exodus makes sense perfectly well.

Waste of effort
The insight of what is about to happen hit me as a rock a few nights ago. Playing a lever 80 character, what will motivate me to ever let Larísa get outdoors, getting some fresh air, seeing some new horizons?

I’m not addicted to making dailies at AT. I’ve got enough gold to buy whatever consumables I need at AH rather than painstakingly gathering the materials. And now I will be able to teleport to the daily instance rather than flying to it. So why would I bother to move my ass anywhere at all? Will the result of 3.3 be that I restrict my existence in Azeroth to alternating between Ironforge, Dalaran, battlegrounds and instances? Will those beautiful sceneries – the soothing sunsets, the frozen waterfalls, the sunbathed deserts and the hazy, shaded forests just fall into oblivion?

The vastness of the world was one of the things that made me fascinated with WoW in the first place. And now we’re just dumping it in the trash bin. It’s as if we’re voluntarily entering the smallest of Malygos bubbles. It’s such a waste of artistic effort. All those dreams and fantasies will remain as digital numbers and program codes, never coming alive in anyone’s mind.

An explorer once again
How did it happen? Once upon a time I was an explorer. When did my gameplay end up being all about achievements and efficiency? I don’t know. But the other night I made a conscious decision to make a change and dedicate some of my non raiding time to just enjoy the sceneries once again, before it’s lost in the coming tide.

I’ve never cared about the Explorer achievement. It’s a rather silly one, don’t you think? It doesn’t require any skill whatsoever. Just flying or riding around. Not much to show up or be proud over.

However, it’s quite useful as a help to see what parts of the world you’ve never cared about seeing until now. Looking at it, I could see that I had missed quite a few views of Kalimdor- a natural consequence of levelling as an alliance gnome, who is more at home among the peaks of Don Morogh than in the elfish forests or barren plains. So I turned on the fog to see where I had unknown territory and headed out for a final mission: to once again become an explorer, checking out the mysteries of this magical universe.

Beautiful but lonely
Do you want to know what it’s like out there? I tell you: it’s lonely. Dead lonely. I rarely see anyone around but NPCs. (Amount of players in Desolace last night: 1. Larísa the gnome. I checked /who.) Not that I need any help from fellow adventurers, overpowered as I am for anything I’m likely to encounter. But even though I don’t exactly feel adventurous, cruising among lvl 10 moonkins who have gone evil, it’s still a rather enjoyable experience. What it lacks of excitement, it makes up in beauty. I’m almost as enchanted as if it had been in the early days of my WoW career.

I’m doing my farewell tour in Azeroth. Soon enough I’ll be restricted to cruising between instant portals and city facilities like everyone else. It’s like an amusement park where they’ve bunched up the rollercoasters and all the other attractions side by side, skipping all fluff like green parks and strolling areas. It’s something I suspect that most players appreciate - and me as well. I expressed my enthusiasm over it the other day, commenting on the new LFG tool. It’s like being on a holodeck, instant switching between different scenarios.

But I can’t help feeling a pang of sadness that the world has become so small. Hopefully it will grow once again after Cataclysm is launched and we once again will head out to conquer the world.

Tell and Show

God spoke and it came to be. This reality is at the heart of Catholic self-identity. As a people of God we are first and foremost a people of the word.

The Story of the Design

The order of events in the introductory sentence is worth highlighting. The first thing we learn in Genesis is that speaking; talking…vocalization…is contemporaneous with creation. The Lord said let there be light and there was light. He then looked upon the light and saw that it was good. God does not engage in an act of show and tell; he tells and shows.

The concept that creation springs from the voice runs throughout the whole course of the Bible from Genesis, to Moses hearing God and then writing down the Ten Commandments, to the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus. It is for this reason that Catholics place special importance on the disciples’ description of Jesus as the word made flesh. We think primarily of John in this context yet Mark’s emphasis on Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophetic prediction, that he is the one foretold, is critical. The Greek concept of Logos shares with the Hebrew concept of creation ex-nihilo the belief that speaking is the original creative act.

This Biblical story of creation is predicated on an understanding of the senses as passive receivers of stimuli; our senses perceive reality but they don’t create it. This understanding is also the basis for many Warcraft class abilities. For example, the warrior ability is called Commanding Shout and the priest ability is Shadow Word: Pain. There are no class abilities entitled “Commanding Hearing” or of “Shadow Smell: Pain” because in the literal meaning of the word those don’t just make any sense; they wouldn’t reflect the way our biological senses actually work.

The Design of the Story

It is for this reason that I was astounded to read that the lead creative designer of Warcraft believes that the future of MMOs lies in, “Show, don’t tell.” It’s true that video is a visual medium but as a passive sense sight can never tell us what to do.

Let’s be explicit about how sight actually works. Human beings have two eyes that are physically spaced apart to create slightly different views of the same event. This parallax creates a contrast affect which the brain interprets as depth. What the brain perceives as movement is simply a changing ratio of depth affects. Sight tells us what’s happening but it can never tell us what to do about it. There is an exclamation point over the quest givers head but it has meaning only because someone somewhere told us it did.

I think the thing that confuses designers is that they forget that text is a visual representation of an oral fact. Written words have no power outside of the oral context; they’re random lines, gibberish. Human babies are born with the ability to make noises and their hearing is fully developed within a month. Sight is not formed until six months and reading happens much later. God spoke. Then he saw.

Depressingly, there is even an element of self-hate in Alex’s statements. He was speaking, to a journalist who was writing his words down, to be displayed on a video card and his statement was that video cards are more important than speaking or writing. OK. That makes a great deal of sense. (No, it’s stupid.)

Creation Stories

The most mind boggling thing about Alex’s interview is that doesn’t actually represent the way World of Warcraft is designed. After you create a new character (are born) you are given a cut scene which zooms into your starting area (home town) while a voice, yes an actual human voice, tells you what the story is all about. Then once the narration is over you are deposited in front of another being and (here’s a shocker) that being tells you what to do.

Why does that ring a bell? Maybe it’s because after God created the world and after placing man in it the first thing he did was start ordering Adam and Eve around. And of course they ignored him. Exactly like what most people do with quest text.

But that doesn’t mean that the best answer is to get rid of the story. One reason the Biblical story is still around 4000 years later is because it accurately reflects in a crude way the basic development of human consciousness. It resonates. While developers may get their egos (and career ambitions) tied up in hot properties like phasing the truth is that for the new players the redesign of the tutorial system in Patch 3.3 will have a much bigger impact on customer retention. Clue to the clueless: there is a reason that God names things the moment he creates them.

I’ve mentioned before how I hate flaccid clichés and “show, don’t tell” is now officially on my hit list. Normally I wouldn’t bother about it too much except for the fact it’s annoying that someone who presents themselves as a creative designer evidences such a complete lack of understanding of even the most basic creative design. Life itself. Perhaps before he starts spouting off to the press Alex might wish to think a little more before opening his mouth. Although, now that I think about it, the Bible doesn’t say anywhere that God actually thought before he spoke either. Which would explain a lot.

A peek into the process of game designing

If you grew up in the 70s in Sweden, you were pretty much starved for fun TV programs.

Disney cartoons were broadcasted for ONE hour at Christmas Eve every year. The rest of the year we had to do with "shows", where hippie dressed grown-ups showed us how we should make our own toys from cloth and wood, alternatively ran incomprehensible animated doll movies from Rumania. No, I'm not exaggerating.

However, out among all those terrible programs that were supposed to be educating, but were plain boring, there actually was one kind which I never could have enough of: the inside peeks from different sorts of manufacturing industries.

The idea was quite simple. They took some everyday item, like a toothbrush. And then they showed what it looked like in the factory where it was made. I was fascinated. I still am, actually, even though I haven't seen any inside peek for many a year.

It happens that I look at things I come across, such as the tool use to crush garlic, or a plain bulb. And I ask myself: I wonder how they put this together? It's obviously made from metal, glass and plastic. But someone must have thought it out. Someone designed this. Someone collected all those pieces and made a machine that could put it together. How would that look?

Curious about what's behind
Of course my curiosity also extends to computer games. How much work mustn't there be behind an instance such as Ulduar? What does the process look like, from the first vague fantasies, brainstorming meetings and simple sketching to the actual programming and putting it all together? I have no idea, but I imagine it must be quite complicated and demanding, and probably it involves much more of grinding and tedious work than we believe.

Now would be the right time to make a twist in the post and triumphantly inform the audience that your pigtailed innkeeper has gotten a personal invitation to spend a week at the Blizzard headquarters. But I'm afraid it's not the case, in spite of the heading of it.

But I've got something else, which is pretty cool, although it is in a smaller dimension. I'm currently getting a peek into the mind of a game designer - who maybe one day will make his way into Blizzard or some other major gaming company - namely Ixobelle.

He has started a new project, another step towards his goal, to work professionally in the gaming industry. Following some good advice Ixobelle has started to design - and program - an application. Not for WoW, since Blizzard doesn't even look at that kind of stuff of fear of being sued for copyright intrusion. Instead Ixo is making a module for Neverwinter Nights 2.

Through his blog he shows his creative process, step by step, in his online diary. I honestly can't understand where he gets all the courage it takes to do such a thing, but I'm glad he's doing it, since I find it rather fascinating.

Blogger casting
What adds to the fun is the casting. Ixobelle has borrowed some inspiration from the blogosphere to the NPCs you meet. For instance there's the merchant Gevlon, the lawyer Spinks, the doctors Hatch and Tesh, and the mayor Tobold.

And the PPI staff has obviously also inspired to a couple of characters in the module. Here's Ixo's descriptions:

Larisa – The innkeeper/ owner of the Pink Pigtail Inn. A spunky little woman with pink hair. She’s the town gossip, as she overhears everything in her establishment. She can be counted on to give the ‘uncut’ (but perhaps biased) version of any story.

Elnia – The bartender of the Pink Pigtail. In contrast to Larisa, Elnia is a realist and more of a quiet observer. While people might be hesitant to talk with Larisa within earshot, Elnia doesn’t seem to pose a threat. She may have valuable insight in some situations.

So I tell you all: go and have a look at how this toothbrush of a game is born. And as an extra bonus you'll get some giggles at the participation of some well known bloggers.