Virtual Race Relations Part 1: Elves

So, why is it that World of Warcraft players love elves so much? What is the mysterious attraction of these slender, blank-eyed character models? Whether we’re playing the characters ourselves, or just watching level one Night Elf chicks dance naked on the mailbox, World of Warcraft players seem extraordinarily little resistance to the charms of …

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Build Your Own Guild Part 10: Making Changes

New guilds tend to start out in an idealistic mode. Guild masters and officers alike make ambitious plans–possibly including world and server domination–and they put in the kind of policies that they believe will get them to their goal. However, sometimes plans go awry. In my experience, guild rules fail for two primary reasons. 1. …

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Will You Be Dual Spec-tacular?

Less than two weeks out from the Wrath of the Lich King release, I find that one of the upcoming changes I am most excited about will hit not with the expansion itself, but with an upcoming content patch. At some future point, many of us–particularly hybrid classes–will have the flexibility we’ve always dreamed of. …

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Why I Love and Hate Achievements

As I predicted in an earlier post, the newly-fledged Achievement System turned out to be more than just a cosmetic change to World of Warcraft. In fact, I was far too conservative in my predictions. Instead of adding another layer of accountability to progression mechanisms already existing in the game, the Achievement System has in …

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Build Your Own Guild Part 9: Ambition

Once you have your own little Raid Machine up and running, it’s very easy to get a particular kind of tunnel vision. In the context of Burning Crusade, many new raiding guilds or casual raiding guilds worked and struggled to become the kind of organization that could reliably clear Karazhan. However, once Prince started going …

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