The following links aren’t exclusively Warcraft or Azeroth-specific, but they are of interest to anyone who plays games or MMOs.

First: Griefer, a story by a fellow Metblogger (in Atlanta) Will Hindmarch that extrapolates the concept of griefing into a real-world, near-future(?). Well worth your time.

Second: Another link to The Escapist, this time on the topic of how or why “regular” folks view gaming: The Myth of the Media Myth.

Third: Winner of the “best comment” award on MetaFilter for this tongue-in-cheek “review” of the MMO “Outside”.

The respawn rate of objects and players is ridiculously slow. A dead player can expect to wait for years to respawn, and will be set back to zero assets and a tiny, nearly helpless form. Death is hardcore, and resurrection all but impossible. Outside is not a game for the QQers out there!

Happy Wednesday!

At last! Something to blog about in WoW! While <Conviction> has been keeping me busy killing Gruul & Mag and working on SSC and The Eye, I’ve felt that I was missing something in my WoW playing. I needed more cowbell Whimsy. Brewfest has brought me just that, I suspect All Hallows will do the same. Dammit, I want my cool non-combat pumpkin-headed lasher! But yeah, I am proud to say I gathered up the 600 tickets necessary to make it all happen. Check out me on my sheep! Suck it, Alliance!

There’s a storm going on in the WoW fansite teacup right now, which most of you are probably unaware of. I’m going to write about this, since if you’re reading this you are a member of the WoW community, and you probably read both of the blogs/communities in question - but I’m not going to link to either community, quote any posts, or anything else. If you’re a member, then you know what I’m talking about.

As the web director of a social networking site, I am very involved in the theory and function of virtual communities. When it comes to something like Warcraft, you probably spend a lot of non-game time on various blogs and sites, participating in the community, contributing to it, getting advice and tips, reading about breaking news, etc. The social network in Warcraft extends beyond the game mechanism, and can be just as vibrant and enjoyable as the time that you spend ingame.

What happens when you sever those ties with the rest of the community?
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I’m sure that you’ve all read the accounts of the in-game voice chat that Blizzard is planning. Some people like it, some people hate it (if they ever roll it out to general channels, we’re ALL going to hate it), but it does raise some interesting points. Lag may be an issue, and as a female gamer I’m not looking forward to using it in PUGs.

The interesting issue, for me, is that of the effect on virtual personas. Online, ingame, you can be anyone you want. You can be someone in complete opposition to who you are in real life, which is probably a good thing for people who are put in pigeonholes based on physical appearance, sex, etc. Once you introduce rl elements to your virtual world, however, you lose a lot of the freedom you have to be who and what you want to be.
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I have a routine for most mornings, as I drink my coffee and wake up, prior to getting ready for work. I grind.

My 70 hunter is the breadwinner for most of my other alts. Depending on what I need, she’ll do a circuit around Terrokar from Allerian Stronghold (hides/felscale, dampscale baskilisk eyes, blackened basilisk and warp burgers plus two to four green items for the AH), or Nagrand (clefthoof leather, roasted clefthoof, green items, motes of air and earth from the elementals, cloth from ogres) or Elemental Plateau if I’ve had insomnia and have gotten up really early. Sometimes I fish, mainly to get Golden Fishsticks so that I can make nice to healers.

It should be boring, but is not…you get into a rhythmn, especially on a character that doesn’t have a lot of downtime. There’s something quite peaceful in the repetitive actions, and although not very exciting, grinding is rewarding in its own way. Fishing is much the same, although I can only fish for short periods of time before becoming restless - I think mainly because you have to concentrate on the bobber. What do you think? Do you enjoy grinding, is it a necessary evil, or do you just buy everything on the AH?

It took a 40-man raid, half a dozen hunter’s traps, a bucket of chicken and Hode but we managed the impossible. We captured a murloc - Alive!

You would be amazed what you can do with an Orb of Deception, a dozen Thorium Widgets and 2 gnomish engineers. Our engineers have assured me that there are absolutely no bugs whatsoever in the translation matrix, and there have been no deaths in the most recent round of testing.

So Finally Here is The English/Murloc Translator

Muigleml!

Part of the reason why I really enjoy playing my hunter is because she is so suited for solo play, grinding, and just plain survivability. My warlock’s spec is far more suited to raid dps than solo play, so I tend to only bring her out for Karazhan or five-man instances; I don’t spend solo time with her. When things really get hairy, the hunter has tons of survival tricks: traps, feign death, wingclip and run, you name it. Unless I do something extremely stupid, she can survive most things. I tend to solo a lot, so she is my favourite character, and I spend most of my non-raiding time with her.

What is your favourite solo class? What do you enjoy playing the most, and which classes have most survivability?

(PS: Speaking of survivability, I started a Draenei paladin last night. :D I suspect I’ll get bored with levelling her, but I was amused last night at how effective she is - set her to attack a target, and I could go away and read for a bit while she whacked away at it….slooooowly, but always successfully. I was running into groups of blood elves to try to liven things up. As a 70, I have a complete loathing of evil chicken-riders, so it was quite satisfying for my little pally to totally kick belf butt…lol, lowbie payback.)

The always thought-provoking Tobold has posted a follow-up to his Is the Burning Crusade reshuffling guilds? post, entitled Peer pressure.

This is something that I’ve written about before, and something that obviously has affected a lot of raiding guilds post-TBC. Whether your guild has survived or not, you’ve become aware of these issues. My long-term guild saw exactly this scenario, and I was part of a group who splintered off. (We’re doing just fine, thanks, and as of yesterday have enough people for two Karazhan runs. The guild is founded upon being nice to each other, we’re not going to split spouses who like to play together, we’re helping everyone get attuned, and we understand that life come first. So it’s not all bad.)

What do you think? Aside from the Burning Crusade clichés of elitism and the A Team and B Team splits, have you experienced peer pressure to level faster, to get attuned, to keep up with the class? Or were you able to pick your own path?

It’s great to find something that makes the game exciting in a different way, that makes you anxious to log in, that makes it all brand new. For me recently, that has been playing my baby Draenei priest. I’ve never played a healing class before, as I’m used to ranged and caster DPS classes. This has been a lot of fun…and do you know what? I wouldn’t mind making her my main someday.

I’ve sat and read books in between bouts of button-mashing in Naxx on my lock, enjoying the experience of raiding with my guild, but not nervous or challenged in any way. And then, this weekend I sat with pulse racing while trying to keep a party alive. The instance? Stockades. :)

What have you found recently that makes it all new and shiny for you? Was it discovering roleplaying, or PvP? Playing a new class? Playing Horde for a change, or Alliance?

Now, if I could just remember to heal the darned pets…

During the past couple of weeks, I’ve been in a kind of lull where I’m just not as excited about playing. Both my main characters are 70, I left a guild that I’d been in for a long time, helped form a new one, and we’re getting new members attuned for raiding. I’m a bit burned out on questing and grinding, so I’ve been turning away from the computer on nights when I would normally have played. And then I went back to my baby Draenei priest.

I do enjoy playing her. I’m looking forward to playing a healing class in instances, since that will be a totally new experience. I love the way she looks, with her chunky hooves, pigtails and vaguely Eastern-European accent. And yet…the thought of taking another character all the way to 70, through all of the old content, through all of that grinding, just makes me tired.

When do you say enough is enough?
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