Some things you didn’t know about me

Every blogger is a bit of an exhibitionist. Don't deny it.

It’s nothing to be ashamed of though. Show me an artist, writer or actor who isn't! It’s a part of the deal for people who have this unexplainable urge to share their thoughts, emotions and imagination with the world.

So it’s no wonder that I happily accpepted when Chris at Game by Night recently asked me for an interview for his series of portrays of the community. You can read the result here, and maybe you’ll learn a few things you didn’t know.

Chris asked me a bunch of tricky questions, ranging from how I integrate playing and blogging with everything else in my life to my predictions for how WoW will look in five years time. Be prepared for a rather long and chatty interview, more like a bunch of smaller blogposts than a normal discussion. I can’t judge if I’m saying anything even remotely interesting, but it was fun to participate, so thanks to Chris for this opportunity!

Ask Larísa anything
And as an extra bonus by the way: if you have any questions you would have liked to see in the interview, you have the chance to ask them yourself now.

As an experiment I’ve discretely added a feature to my blog, which you find to the right if you click on “Ask Larísa anything”. The link leads to a little service called “Formspring”, a tool for simple managing of Q&A.

Until now only three questions have been asked, of which one was a bit odd and makes me wonder if it really was intended for me. However I couldn’t resist answering.

I haven’t made up my mind about if I'll keep it or not. But for the time being - feel free to use it if you're curious about something.

Can “free” LOTRO lure over a WoW addict like me?

I’ve never played any other MMO but WoW. And I must admit that it plagues me a bit, the blogger I am.

I follow a number of general MMO-blogs which, unlike me, aren’t just obsessed with one game, but move around freely covering a much wider field. Full of knowledge and insight, they can compare their experiences from different games, recall previous successes and failures, make accurate predictions about the future and suggest how MMO:s should be changed for the better. I’m full of admiration for this kind of bloggers.

What do I know about gaming? Not very much when you think about it. After three years of WoW playing I suppose I can talk about some aspects of WoW (PvE from an alliance point of view) fairly accurately – as long as I limit myself to post-vanilla content, being a TBC baby. Whenever I try to look at the bigger picture I feel shallow and clueless, a hoax of a blogger who lacks perspective and should keep her mouth shut about things she doesn’t understand.

Maybe this will come to change though. Last week it was announced that LOTRO will go free-for-all this autumn, which of course set my mind on work. What’s in it for me? Could this be a sufficiently attractive bait to finally lure Larísa away from Azeroth?

Maybe. Maybe not. How much I’d love to see a new setting and see another take on the MMO concept, I still have some issues with it that holds me back.

Things that keep me from trying LOTRO for free

1. The Concept
A major concern I have, which probably is the one that has the strongest hold on me, is the game concept as such. I’m a huge Tolkien fan since childhood; I’ve read and re-read the books at least ten times, if not more. Mind you, I don’t consider myself a purist or a fanatic, and I had no problems to accept and love the Peter Jackson movies, with all the compromises and changes they had to do. But nevertheless: I wonder what I would feel about my world transformed into a cartoonish video game. Do I really want to see that happen?

2. The Business Model
Another holdback is the business model. I know there are many players who think a free-to-play game combined with micro-transactions is brilliant, but I’m not one of those. I want to pay my monthly subscription fee, knowing that I’ll get access to the entire game, and then not having to worry about anything.

My entire life is full of decisions and it wears me down. I don’t want to have to think and evaluate: “Do I want this thing or that thing, how much is this thing worth to me, can I live without that, but what about my game friend, if she’s bought this and I haven’t, can we still play together?” In my world this is not fun, this is more like visiting a supermarket. Something you do because you have to rather than because you enjoy it.

My problem isn’t lack of money. My problem is lack of time and energy for decision making. Before you say it – yes, I know you can still “subscribe” to LOTRO, becoming some sort of VIP member. But as a newcomer it’s the free-to-play combined with a number of different purchases that I’m facing, and it pushes me away.

Apart from this I’m notoriously suspicious of anything that is claimed to be free. For instance I refuse to read crappy advertisement financed “newspapers” that people try to force on me. I’m proud to pay my subscription, thus making sure that the news corporations will hire proper journalists and not just ad sellers. And if you’re a paying customer you can always expect better treatment. I think this goes with games as well as with newspapers.

3. The Timing
We’re in the middle of the longest and I’d dare say deepest dip in player activity that WoW has seen up until today. Summer is here, we haven’t seen any new content for ages, and we don’t know yet when Cataclysm will arrive. Guilds are struggling, and tons of players are going on a hiatus. We don’t have any official statistics on it of course, but just having a look around me in game at what normally is peak time is evidence enough. The people aren’t there anymore. And this turns into an evil spiral. An MMO that lacks people online is as dull and sad as an empty theme park in November.

I think more than one WoW player would be dying to try something else by now. But does Turbine take the opportunity to launch this free-to-play idea now? Nope. They’ll wait until “the fall”, which is rather strange to me. They may have their reasons to do so, but speaking for myself I can tell you that once Cataclysm arrives I won’t have a second over to try some other video game. I’ll have my hands full to explore and enjoy the new old world and to level and gear up my main again for raiding. What were they thinking when they scheduled this change?

Things that can make me try LOTRO anyway
I haven’t entirely dismissed the thought of trying LOTRO though. And it’s not just about educating myself to become a slightly more experienced gamer. It’s also about longing back to my MMO childhood. I would love to once again experience the feeling of being at the start of a huge adventure, of not having any idea about what to do or where to go, to not be involved in the min/max game.

I never knew how privileged I was as I leveled my first character in WoW, innocently strolling around, exploring, messing up, gasping at everything I encountered, generally having a good time. It wasn't until a long time afterwards that I understood.

Once you’ve done it, there’s no going back. I’m looking forward to Cataclysm as much as anyone else, but I don’t think the novelty will ever be the same as when you play a game for the very first time, since you’ve already eaten the apple.

What makes it even more attractive is that with the huge influx of new players you can expect, I would be far from the only noob in the starter zone. With all respect for veteran LOTRO players, who I imagine will stay as far as possible from the noob infested areas, I think it will be fun times for the newly arrived players. As opposed to if you roll an alt today in WoW, you’ll have plenty of people around who are equally clueless and equally happy to form groups and to try to help each other to figure out this world. (And yes, I have a very optimistic view on the shape of a game community until I’ve been proved otherwise.)

The tipping point
I haven’t yet reached a verdict on the LOTRO case, whether to give it a go or not. One factor to take into the calculation is “what will my friends do?” If a bunch of my guildies enthusiastically would head over for LOTRO urging me to come along, I might find it hard to resist. They’re a bunch of nice people to hang around with after all and the setting isn’t that important in the end.

Another factor to count on is how easily accessible the game is. I have an extremely low tolerance level for technical troubleshooting. I want the download and installation to be quick and more or less effortless, not requiring me to go through complicated instructions or do a lot of settings in my computer. I want the game to be ready-to-go in just a few intuitive clicks.

In the end I believe the tipping point will be all about timing. If they release the game for free at a point when there isn’t much to do in WoW and my guild is on a break from raiding due to lack of players and content – sure, I might give it a go, in spite of my doubts.

But if Cataclysm arrives before this happens, you’re very unlikely to ever see your innkeeper setting her foot in Middle-earth. Clueless blogger or not.

How to Make an Unforgettable Guild Anniversary - Take 2

Finally the day was here, the day that we had looked forward to for weeks, not the least after watching the trailer our beloved GM had posted on our forums as a teaser.

It was Sunday the 6th of June, the National Day of Sweden, but also the day for the Second Anniversary of Adrenaline. And we were excited!

After the success from last year (related here at the inn), the expectations for this event were all time high, so high that I couldn’t help feel a little bit sorry for the officers as we assembled. They had made themselves a disservice by putting the bar at a ridiculous level. How could they possibly match the amazing scavenger hunt from 2009, where they combined superb role playing with rhymed riddles and perfectly home crafted quests? Surely this must have been a once-in-the-lifetime-of-a-guild event!

I should have known. I didn’t think it was possible, but this anniversary was just as good, as the one before. Or even better. We may not subscribe for the #1 spot on the server progression chart, but no one beats Adrenaline on arranging high quality guild events. No one.

As some of our newer recruits said after the night – amazed at what they just had gone through – this was the most fun night they ever had experienced in five years of WoW playing.

And just like after our first anniversary, I’m happy to share the concept, in the hope that it might inspire other guilds to come up with fun guild events that aren’t about raiding.

For Adrenaline this night came real thanks to our guild birthday, but you don’t need such an excuse to arrange an event like this. You could as well do it just to get your energy buck, taking a break from the raiding lull, doing something that makes you gaming face crack up with a smile after endless wiping on LK or perhaps weeks of cancels due to lack of interest.

But enough of pre-talk! Let’s head where it all began: at the top floor circle of The Temple of Storms in Stormpeaks.

The start
The first thing that happened this night was that we were divided into teams. The officers handed out wrapped packages and at a given moment we opened them and found shirts in different colors inside. The teams were formed after the color of the shirts, with three players in each. We were told to always wear them so they could be easily spotted.

We were presented the basic idea of the night: to compete in different areas, collecting points for our team. Towards the end of the night the points would be added and a winning team would be appointed.

1.The Gnome escort
Our first task was to go to Dalaran and seek out a gnome who was supposed to wear a shirt with the same colour as the team. Ours, a level 5 warlock, was hiding up in the Kirin Tor building. She did some role playing as we found her and made it clear that she was in danger, needed help and was heading to Alextrasza. Then she took off in a hurry, and we followed her as close as we could, down into Underbelly, and before we could stop her, she panicked and threw herself out through the sewer tunnel, falling to a certain death in Crystalsong. She was more irresponsible, unpredictable and whimsical than any escort quest NPC I’ve seen, more prone to be unlucky than Corky, and even though we didn’t quite figure what this was about, we ran after, in an urge to protect her.

This turned out to be an escort mission going through Crystalsong via the tunnel to Dragonblight, ending in the Wyrmrest temple. But the true nature of the competition – to keep the gnome alive and arrive at the destination as soon as possible – didn’t dawn upon our team until after we were done. I blame the gnome for this. She confused us with role playing. Her complaints about being cold and hungry gave us the idea to make up not one but three camp fires, and being the kindhearted mage I am, I started to conjure level appropriate drink and food. I was just about to hearth to get her some milk, which she said that she’d rather like than water, when she suddenly changed her mind, suggesting that we should move on. But the race was already lost. Oh well, the moral victory was ours!

2. The Quiz
Before moving on the next assembling point, at A’dal in Shattrath, we were handed a letter, pointing us towards a quiz. We were asked to answer 25 questions during the course of the night, taking advantage of natural breaks in other missions, when we were waiting for our turn to do something or traveling from one point to another. The answers should be posted to an officer before we head of for our final mission of the night.

The questionnaire was extensive, but that was pretty much expected, since it was a teacher who had put it together. Some of the questions referred to people and happenings within the guild, while others required thorough knowledge about bosses, places and lore in WoW.

The Adrenaline related questions are of course very internal, but the WoW questions aren’t, so I'll link the quiz for anyone who'd like to try it for yourself or use it as a source of inspiration. (Cheaters can look here for the correct answers.)

3. Arena time!
Now we were told to head to our next destination: the Nagrand Arena. This competition consisted of a 3v3 PvP match where each team faced a group of three officers, decided by random rolls. The teams who were waiting for their turn in the ring could either sit in the gallery, watching the ongoing matches, or take the opportunity to spend time working on the questionnaire.

The more officers your team managed to kill and the fewer deaths you had in your own team as the match was over, the more points did you gain.

As it turned out, the member ranked players of Adrenaline were slightly better at PvPing than the officers, which doesn’t mean that we were particularly good. I guess we’re a PvE guild for a reason. Nevertheless it was very enjoyable - especially the moment where I made our GM look literally sheepish for a few seconds. The view made me chuckle maliciously. Maybe PvP isn’t such a bad idea after all?

4. The Manhunt
Next up was a manhunt. We were directed to check out a Wanted poster concerning a certain villain we were supposed to track. Each group was assigned to a separate vent channel, where we had an officer available who would answer up to 20 questions with a yes or a no, helping us to figure out where to look for this blood elf.

In the end it turned out that it was one of our officers, hiding in Hammerfall with his horde blood elf character. The team that got to him first and killed him got most points, but others who found him were awarded as well, with point deduction depending on how many questions you had to use to get there. Just please don’t ask me how my team made in this part. Let’s pretend it didn’t happen and move on to the next activity:

5. Hide & Seek
This time we assembled outside the gates of Stormwind. The rules were simple. We all got three minutes to hide anywhere in the town. After those three minutes had passed we weren’t allowed to move at all. We were also instructed not to use stealth or invisibility alike abilities. After the set time had elapsed, the officers would come and look for us. Those were also on a timer of a few minutes, and for every player who wasn’t found within the time limit, the team would be awarded points.

Needless to say the druids had a blast, as they took a long bath in the channels. For anyone else who would like to try this, I’d suggest banning underwater breathing along with stealthing. For my own part I ran straight to one of my favorite inns, down into the cellar and sneaked into a little spot behind a huge barrel. I almost got away with it, but ten seconds before the time ran out, I was spotted, no doubt thanks to my pigtails. Oh well. There was no time to get sulky over this, because it was time for our final challenge:

6. The splatter contest
Once again we were gathered in Stormpeaks in the tower where we had started the night. Time had come to the moment when we would see our deputy GM committing suicide, jumping off the top in front of our eyes. Our task was to at a given signal do the same. Without using any helps such as slow fall, we should try to kill ourselves and land as close as possible to the officer corpse. Points were given to the teams that came closest.

The happy end
Finally we met up in the Park area of Stormwind and while our officers finished their work correcting the quizzes and counting the assembled points, the rest of us amused ourselves in the fountain. An abundance of awards, such as rare pets, were handed out to the overall top team, but also to the winners of each competition and to players who deserved special mentioning thanks to particularly good (or bad) performance over the night.

Then there was an appropriate fiest, with fireworks, drinks, cakes, dancing, screenshotting, cat dancing, video making and whatever you could think of.

And so ended the magnificent, unforgettable two year anniversary of Adrenaline, which at the same time was a worthy farewell to our GM and deputy GM, who are about to leave the game.

Player created content
Once again I had been reminded about that while new challenging raid encounters are cool and fun, there’s nothing, absolutely nothing in the game that can compete with high quality content created by the players themselves.

It’s such a pity that so few ever will experience it. Most players will never know that there is a world beyond the morons and slackers, the facerolling and mindless repetition.

There's still magic in the game. But you have to look for it, since it's hidden in beautiful enclaves such as Adrenaline.

To all of you who think: "Id' like to do something like that", I want to say: go out and look for it! We may be outstanding, but I know for sure that we're not the only guild that is doing those kind of things. And if you don't find it on your server, make it happen in your own guild!

I wonder what our three year anniversary will be like. Extraordinary, I dare say. Our GM:s are stepping down? The hell they are! I bet they're just taking the year off to ensure that they'll get all the time they need to plan for next year's event.

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!

The Post Where Larísa Tries to Mislead

"But Larísa, you're not a mage blogger"!

"Oh. I'm not? Well, now that you mention it..."

The comments on the post of yesterday was a bit of an awakening to me. Listening to the banter in the bar, it became clear to me that even if I'm thinking of myself as a mage blogger, I'm certainly not seen as one. One reader had even lived in the illusion that I was a paladin. Maybe it was my shields that had confused him?

I threw a glance at the labels of the posts, and realized that out of more than 500 posts published since the opening of the PPI, only 35 were remotely connected to mages. And this made me give in. I'm not a mage blogger anymore. I may have been it at some point, but nowadays I'm just a WoW blogger who happens to play a mage.

This hasn't prevented me from producing yet another misleading mage blog post though!

I think we agreed yesterday that Gnomeaggedon is The #1 Misleading Mage Blogger who deliberately plagues the blogosphere with his delusions just to confuse all those pesky, envious hunters and warlocks.

I've now joined his forces, giving him a hand in his efforts to spread false information over Azeroth. So if you want to get a chunk of Larísa writing today, you'd better head over to Gnomes place and read my guest post, titled: "Agility and Attack Power - the essentials of a mage".

Have I succeeded in my mission to mislead? Maybe, maybe not. It may not be exactly what it looks like from the heading. Judge for yourself.

BRK and the Assault on the Mage Blogs

So BRK is underwhelmed by the mage blogging community. That’s for sure. According to the show I just listened to, he and his fellow hunters think there are only two mage blogs out there. And of those two, one has the bad habit of publishing misleading information.

Don’t you believe me? Well, download episode 34 of Hunting Party, where BRK appeared as a special guest, and hear for yourself.

It was a bit of a shocker, I tell you! My hero is rejecting me and all of my fellow mage bloggers. Just like that!

I probably would do wise to remain silent about it. You don’t challenge the most outstanding icon of the blogging community (an icon I happen to like a lot myself). Especially not considering he’s wearing a gun.

But right should be right, so I’ll speak up, regardless of the consequences.

Admittedly BRK wasn’t the one who said that one of the two existing mage blogs is misleading. The host did. But BRK didn’t object at all – on the contrary, he seemed to agree and added that mage blogs didn’t hold much content except for “Hi, I play frost, it’s cold” or “I’m short and wear a dress”.

Of course this woke my curiosity. Ever since I heard it, I’ve been trying to figure out which blogs they had in mind in this conversation. The frost blog should be fairly easy to identify, since Euripedes sadly closed his door and Spicytuna hasn’t updated for very long. It leaves us with Frost is the New Black as the most profiled candidate.

But which mage blog contains the misinformation? Hm. That’s a bit tricky. It could be Krizzlybear of course, but he has backed up his weird love for the frost spec with some solid damage charts to prove his points. It’s probably more likely that they’re talking about Gnomeaggedon, known from the past to spread delusional ideas, such as fire being a better spec than arcane and BG:s being a fun way to spend your time online.

But on the other hand, who’s the short one in a dress? Could that be me? Or is it someone else of the approximately 70 mage blogs there are out there?

Yes, we’re actually that many according to the blog list kept by Gnome. A few of the blogs on the list have closed down, but even if only half of them are still around, it’s yet a big collective we’re talking about. More than two at least.

I admit that I don't know of any podcast entirely dedicated to the mage class, unless you count TotalBiscuit who never has played anything but mage, but makes a point out of not letting class specific information taking over the show.

And I too can get a little bit impressed as I look at the abundance of hunter blogs and druid blogs. For some reason those classes seem to slightly more chatty then others.

Nevertheless – don’t you agree that it’s to pull it slightly too far to claim that there aren’t any mage blogs at all around, and that one of the two there are contains misleading information?

Brothers and sisters in the mage blogging community! We’ve had our controversies over the year regarding what spec is the best to play. Now it’s time to unite our voices and speak up, so loud that even those hunters will hear us through the noise of their blasters.

Mage blogs exist! And we don’t mislead you any more than necessary to keep some of our secrets to ourselves. Just to maintain the class balance, you know.

New Documentary about WoW players

The realm forums are far from exciting most of the time. Their main reason for existence is for recruitment or for organizing of the more ambitious sort of PUG raids. But sometimes you can pick up miscellaneous pieces of news, little gems that you want to help to keep spreading to wider circles. And this happened today, when someone posted a link to a new documentary movie.

It's called Avatar Days and it isn't long - just a few minutes in fact. However, the quality is absolutely superb. This isn't any ordinary amateur home video, this is at least on a semi-professional level. Even if you normally don't follow random links that bloggers provide from time to time, I urge you to make an exception and look at this one.

The plot is simple. You will listen to four players who talk about their game play and their characters. It's only one thing that is different to normal documentaries: most of the time you will see them as their avatars, in very ordinary situations in Dublin city. Waiting for the buss, standing in a queue, driving a truck, being at their job.

The movie is great for two reasons. One is from a technical point of view; the 3d models melt into the background very nicely and it looks just so cool to see them walking the streets among normal people.

The other reason is the low and serious tone in it. It was about time that someone made an effort to picture gaming like this, without pointing fingers or exaggerating in any direction.

The movie makers aren't trying to sell in some sort of political message for or against gaming, they're not trying to market anything. They're just quietly documenting a phenomena, a little piece of modern culture, saving a testimony about one example of modern urban culture in 2010 for the future.

I know that it isn't likely that anyone of the creators ever will see this blog post. But if it will happen for some reason - maybe as you google the movie name - and accidently stumble into my inn, I just want to grab the opportunity to tell you how much I loved your work.

Now please head over to the bar and we'll offer you any drink of your choice on the house, as a little sign of our appreciation.

Cheers!