Is something in the wind lately?

Every where I turn, friends who had dropped their WoW accounts like they were hot have been signing on for more questing, more rep grinds and more alt-a-holism. While at the same time, hardcore raiders seem to be dropping out from burnout. My old guild has lost several die-hard 24-7 WoW-heads in the last month. What’s going on?

Is the dim Autumnal lighttriggering something deep and mysterious in our limbic systems? Wolves grow their winter coats. Trees’ leaves put on a show for the tourists. Cider mills open for business. And old players return to WoW.

What’s driving this? Is it all of the Wrath of the Lich King press, or the promise of soloable epics from Ogri’La?

What’s your guess, dear readers?

And that was a tricky title… the idea of this post is to discuss why are YOU playing WOW!

Is it to gear up and be the best that you can be in game? Is it to enjoy a fun time with friends? Or is it something else?

This past weekend I went to Stratholme Live to farm Righteous Orbs for some Crusader enchants.

Yes, Stratholme is a level 60 instance, with under-par loot compared to Outlands greens and blues; but it is still FUN. We did the whole instance in group of three toons: I was tanking on Dreadmoon (level 70 druid); we have a healer (level 62 priest) and DPS (level 62 mage).
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..and finally found my motto in the Eitrigg forums.

It goes like this:

“If the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault. If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault. If anyone else dies, it’s their own damn fault”
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You get it while you’re questing. You get it in Ironforge and in Orgrimmar.

You get it whether or not you’re Aldor or Scryer, you get it in the mail, you get it in whispers and general chat.

Now, you can get it on your very own instant messenger!

Smooch says (8:58 AM):
hi?

kullender says (8:59 AM):
hi

Smooch says (8:59 AM):
who’s this?

kullender says (8:59 AM):
This is a company serving for WOW players. Now we are looking for some cooperators in game. There is a world of good for our cooperators. do you have any interest in it?

Smooch says (8:59 AM):
i’m not sure what you mean

kullender says (8:59 AM):
We lvl for players and also,rent their accont if they have an idle account with a lvl60 char even naked.

Smooch says (8:59 AM):
…

kullender says (9:00 AM):
?

This person added me via MSN Messenger, which happens occasionally as I have my contact information on my website. After I allowed them to see my online status, we had the above conversation. The email address for ‘kullender’ is ipgfeedback5@hotmail.com — not sure who that is, but I’d love to know how they knew to IM me.

Anyone else gotten any ‘outside the box’ WoW spam?

Turns out it’s about 80 square miles. To put that into perspective, the island of Manhattan is about 20 square miles. How do I know that? Tobold figured it out. He went through the trouble of figuring out how big a mile would be in game based on how fast a toon could run across it, and then measured the whole damn continent of Kalimdor, then doubled that to account for the Eastern Kingdoms. It’s pretty small for a “world” but as Tobold notes, maybe landmass isn’t the correct way to measure virtual worlds:

“But in the end measuring the size of a virtual world in square miles doesn’t make much sense anyway. If you made a parallel World of Warcraft with exactly the same number of quests and mobs, and the same geography, but just doubled all distances, Azeroth would be 4 times as big. But that wouldn’t add anything to the game. So counting the size of Azeroth in number of quests is a better indicator of game “size”. And in that respect World of Warcraft is easily beating other games that just have more land mass.”

[via BoingBoing]

Click for readable image.

The first real guild I joined Twisting Nether was “The Crimson Watch.” They were a role-playing/endgame guild when I joined with nightly scheduled runs or RP events. By far the most popular event was our guild induction ceremony held every Saturday afternoon on Dreadmist Peak in the Barrens. This is the mountain whose top is covered in black fog and cultists and contains a jewel that lowbie players must shatter.

We would meet in this cave, with the jewel, and dress in our ceremonial crimson robes. Everyone would be walking, not running. Everyone would be in character. Our guild leader, Morghul, would stand atop the plateau in the cave and the officers of the guild would kneel beside and behind him. The entire guild was expected to come to these ceremonies. The screenshot above is one that I took during one of our inductions.

Inductees would be given a speech about our motivations and about the goals of The Crimson Watch. Then they would be called forward one by one and asked to perform three tasks: donate one gold to the guild, prove they had spilled Alliance blood, and then spill their blood before the guild. This was done using the /emote command, of course. If they satisfied these requirements and also spoke once over Ventrillo, then they were given crafted crimson robes and were official guild members.

Every week after the ceremony the officers would dream up new challenges for the recruits. They would have to duel the strongest warrior. They would have to hold themselves underwater until they died. They would have to sneak into Teldrassil and leap from the tallest branch into the sea. They would form a raid and attack Ashenvale. They would be summoned to the starting area for Dwarves and Gnomes and would have to occupy the buildings there. Every week it was different, and every week it was fun.

The role-playing built guild loyalty in a way I haven’t seen elsewhere.

“The New Golf” is old news. Yeah, World of Warcraft has some of the social elements of golf, and that context for chatting about business while doing something you enjoy. But I’ve always thought it was a bit of a stretch. Then again, I’m not a golfer. So maybe I just don’t get it.

Then last week in our guild forums someone started a thread “We K(No)w — Real life opportunities”. I wasn’t too interested, even though I’m poking around for my next professional gig. So I didn’t even bother to look at it until today. Boy, was I surprised!

It’s not that the content was so surprising, but my reaction to it. I really enjoyed reading about everyone’s professional lives and thier background and their employers. Despite the “new Golf” hype, this is not something that comes up a whole lot in game, and reading these posts adds a richness to these burgeoning friendships.

People I know fairy well in game have careers that are fascinating ( and news to me…) and others are facing big career transitions. And lots of people are offering to help others with new jobs and career development. It’s all very human. It’s a community. And maybe, in that way, most like Golf?

[Note: This is a guest piece written by Socorro Villa and was written for the We Know guild newsletter.]

…or should I say Warcrack addict? (my husband is telling me that is the right lingo while he is DOTing Scarlet Mobs at the Scarlet Monastery with his warlock character).

Yeah, I know. If you are just an average civilian instead of one of the 6 million World of Warcraft players -or their close relatives, like me- you did not get a word of what I just wrote.

The story goes like this: Once upon a time I used to have a husband who liked games: from the board role-play version of the Lord of the Rings and the dinosaurs-era Atari to the X-men -each version- for PS2 and the Diablo, Diablo II & expansion pack for PC. Just to make it worst, he is a geek and works in the IT field. As for me I am just an artist; though I am pretty much computer savvy -for an artist, that is.

Back to my story. This husband I used to have would play a few hours a week. He would play perhaps for an hour after dinner a day or two on business days and even arrange special “game afternoons” with a group of friends during the weekends.
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If you thought it was just us that were letting you down on the WoW news front, checkout this article from VGGEN.com.

“I think the worst part about World of Warcraft is the lull that’s fallen over the game before the expansion’s release.”

Now I don’t feel so bad. I think I’ll continue to not post my article about trying to collect unusual non-combat pets.