Month: March 2012

Guest Post: Abuse in WoW, A Personal Story

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(This is a guest post by Kat from Shaman Nebula. No, not the Kat on the Matticast. This Kat plays a Resto Shaman in a raiding 10 man team.)

Yesterday, I was accused that having the privilege of being a girl. Whatever special effects our sex brings to the table has helped me climb the ranks of standard raider status for my guild’s raiding team. That I was offered numerous perks, contrary to what a man would ever imagine of receiving as fast and as efficiently.

Huh?

I mean.

WTF?

Let me introduce myself.

My name is Kat and I’m an adult female playing video games. One of many and one of plenty. Make no mistake, the rumour of girls not playing games is only but a myth. I’ve always enjoyed gaming, whether that was defined by a tennis court or a pc screen. Gaming of any sorts compliments my competitive nature and soothes my need to keep myself constantly busy. I take pride in the fact that I never give up and that although I’m a sore loser I make it up by persevering and carefully planning my come back. If I’m told I’m not good enough you can be sure I’ll bust my ass come next day in order to prove you and myself the opposite. I’m the kind of person that will spend countless hours on improving my character and my skills. This means reading copious online guides, spending innumerable hours grinding dungeons and consolidating with fellow players, not to mention countless hours of testing addons in order to squeeze that little extra of what any spell can give me (with the vicious God of GCD becoming  my only reason to hesitate).

So when this guy accused me of using my sex to climb up, I burst into flames.

His exact words were “I wish I had your pair of <upper female parts> to guarantee me a raiding spot and a whole guild raving about my skills and people constantly trying to get my attention for doing absolutely nothing else but existing, rather than ignore me when I log on”.

Huh?

I was bewildered by how blind this person could be to their own faults. Instead of blaming his own inadequacy for being left out, he felt the need to put me down by insinuating that beyond my genders physical characteristics, I didn’t have anything to offer to my team.

Thanks.

So the fact I have <insert upper female parts> is enough to solo heal HC Ultraxion. (Matt’s note: That’s actually pretty flippin’ impressive).

Silly me, I can take the green buff while my <insert upper female parts>  take the red and blue one respectively, actively making me and them a team of 3.

Makes you wonder what their combined item level would be.

This is not the first time that I am being haunted by such an accusation in the game. When it happens once it’s easy to let it go, but when it keeps occurring you feel the need to stop and reassess the way you let other people influence you, not the way in which you behave or look at yourself.

Make no mistake that this is bullying and it should not be tolerated.

Truth of the matter is I enjoy as many advantages of being a woman playing WoW as I do the disadvantages. A team could either welcome me because I’m a woman or also reject me because of it. It’s not a secret that women are usually not regarded as top players. Top women players are considered to be the exception and not the rule. Hardcore guilds base your petition by your skills, your experience and your logs, not your bra size.

I was left wondering how sexist this guy really was, how ignorant or how right he could have been. The question isn’t about how good I actually am. With skills equally compared to a male fellow player, which one of us would make the cut? 

It all comes down again to the battle of the sexes.

Digital Azerothian edition.

Who would think something like this would even occur to a universe where anonymity rules?

I am somewhat bitter. I want to believe at the end it all comes down to skills and character. I hate to think that I was given something I didn’t deserve just because I am a woman. I read innumerable posts of female WoW bloggers documenting the exact opposite. Of how much abuse they have received because of their sex. Guild masters not promoting them, raid members not accepting them into their all guys team. And the list goes on.

At the end of the day, we need to realize that a guild, the WoW community, is just an extension of real life. Real people are involved after all which means real problems are going to transfer into Azeroth. Is this natural?  A while back, I was studying for my degree, a classmate accused me of getting a bigger mark from him because I’m a woman. What he didn’t know our professor was homosexual of course which made his accusation even more hilarious.

My point is this.

All these people are nothing more than bullies.

It doesn’t matter what world you live in or play in. They are feeding their insecurities by putting you down. From the bully that made fun of you because you were overweight at school to the guild master that didn’t accept your opinion because of your sex. From the bully insinuating you are getting a raid spot because of your sex or being denied one for the same exact reason. And one doesn’t hurt less than the other because real people are involved.

Real feelings.

Real emotions.

It shouldn’t be perceived as natural that abuse will occur in our gaming world simply because it does in real life.

Next time you feel like making fun or degrading someone in your guild do yourself a favour and think about it twice. Or even someone in a random pug. You never know who this person is, what they have been through.

Discrimination, abusive behaviour, violence of any kind should never be tolerated. It’s my belief that the gaming community is purer than any other community in the world. And if you feel that you can’t make a difference think of this. Change starts from within and in this age, never before has a single voice sounded louder. 

PSA: On the Business End of a Battle Res

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Priestly service announcement.

If you are on the receiving end of a battle res, can you do all of us healers a favor?

Give us a 2 second warning when you take it

Especially true if it’s on an encounter like Ultraxtion where the damage is just pulsing and non-stop. Give us a buffer to target you and spam spells on you so that when you do take the res, one of our spells will stick and bring you out of non-lethal range. It lets the Discipline Priests shield you, it lets the Paladins Holy Shock you, it allows Druids and Shamans to Nature’s Swiftness + some heal you, and Holy Priests can Surge of Light proc + Flash Heal you.

Any other healers irritated by this? In an age where we have a finite number of Rebirths and stuff available, we need to make sure we don’t waste that stuff unnecessarily.

Introducing Mattivision: Heroic Hagara

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Heroic Hagara 25 man, Holy Priest PoV

Past kill videos I’ve recorded for the guild involved epic music. Since I upgraded my internet connection with faster upstream, I now have the ability to stream and record. I’ll be streaming my guild’s progressing through heroic Dragon Soul on a raid nightly basis. Something I’ve always want to do was offer more insight on healing from a microscopic perspective. Sites like Learn2Raid and WoWhead offer great information on what your raid needs to do. What I want to do here is focus more on the player and how one could handle the different challenges that occur against bosses. So as a test run, I recorded a VOD of our raid group against heroic Hagara. I tried to commentate and narrate what was going on and what my train of thought was at the time.

Anyway, take a look and let me know what you think.

You can tune in Monday, Tuesdays, and Thursday nights just before 6 PM PST to my Own3d page. Will be streaming it later tonight. Heroic Morchok goodness! Also if you want to join in, there’s a little chat button when the stream is live in the middle there. I’ll try to respond to any questions, but no promises.

And yeah, I need to make some adjustments to the sound. I lowered game sound to 20% and dropped Mumble chatter to about 25%. Nothing I can do about the keyboard pounding though. Love my Black Widow. Wish I could get a muffler for it or something.

Caverns of Times: Where’s the Horde Perspectives?

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Beat Mass Effect 3. Such a glorious game and a fantastic conclusion to the series. I can now go back to defending Azeroth and Demacia.

Before you question my allegiance to the Alliance, know that it hasn’t changed. I happened to be reminiscing about my experiences in Warcraft’s 1, 2 and 3. Naturally, my mind drifted over to WoW and I started thinking to myself what awesome missions in the RTS games would translate as either instances or raids. Thinking about the ones presently in the game made me realize that that was a distinct lack of actual Horde storylines.

Culling of Stratholme? Original Alliance mission under Arthas dedicated to levelling the citizenry.

Escape from Durnholdee? You were playing as Alliance infiltrating Alliance camps in order to break Thrall out (I guess that’s the closest one gets to Horde).

Opening the Dark Portal? Sort of independent, protecting Medivh.

Mount Hyjal? Mixed operation. Same with End Time and Hour of Twilight

Well of Eternity, I believe everyone had to play Elves.

There are so many crucial moments in the Warcraft RTS that I feel would make an awesome instance to explore. All of us players who are old enough to remember Warcraft 1 (I think I was like 6 or 7) and the subsequent releases can remember some of those chilling moments in the game where… it just got real. I think we could use some Horde representation in there too (as in, having our character models adjusted to reflect the story like how we tend to either be portrayed as humans or elves).

Lothar’s Parlay

I believe this was one area of the game that received a retcon (Lore players can help me out). The original Warcraft 2 mission had Lothar get assassinated as he was on his way to negotiate with Doomhammer. But then it got changed to a death match style encounter with Doomhammer himself or that Doomhammer had help from Horde forces. If it’s the latter, it would make a great instance.

Now we Alliance players know that there’s no way that Doomhammer could’ve solo’d Lothar, right? It makes much more sense that Doomhammer wussed out and called up his cronies who just happened to be standing in the bushes nearby waiting to ambush him.

It makes sense!

Plus it gives players the chance to take on Lothar in a boss environment.

Strike at Karazhan

Lothar leads a strike team into Karazhan to kill Medivh. I think this would be a fantastic raid instance. Looking back on it, Karazhan was a pretty fun place. They can do the Stratholme treatment (take a destroyed instance and recreate it to what it looked like originally). Some of the rooms would probably have to be enlarged to accommodate 25 or so people.

Imagine fighting Moroes with 25 people.

Will pass on Chess though.

Assassination of King Llane

Oh man. I don’t know if you’d plan this out as a raid or as a 5 man. Concept would your party assisting and clearing the way for Garona to infiltrate the throne room and help her take out King Llane. We can check out what Old Stormwind looked like without all the canals and stuff.

Others

Breaking Illidan out of the Watchers prison – An escort instance similar to Durnholde. You’d need to infiltrate the Watchers prison and bust him out.

Andorhal – Memory’s fuzzy here, but there was an Undead level in Warcraft 3 where Arthas killed Uther.

Theramore – The Horde mini-campaign in the Frozen Throne had the final level where Rexxar and the Horde assaulted Theramore to subdue Admiral Proudmoore.

I’m not as familiar with the universe in the books or in the comics, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s any moments that in any of them that might translate well into the game.

Whatever the case, here’s to having more Caverns of Time stuff in Mists! They’re starting to run out of room in there actually. I wonder when they’re going to create another floor. It’s about time the Bronze Dragonflight did some renovating.