News and Opinion

General news and opinion about WoW.

Responding to the “I Play for Personal Advancement and Gear Argument”

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I was going through my dailies this morning (a real life quest involving using all my reagents to create coffee, finding clothes, and reading 20 blogs before going to school) and I came across a post on the Raider’s Progress that was seemingly not happy with Warcrafter.

The reason for their unhappiness?

It has nothing to do with the features of Warcrafter.
It has nothing to do with the information on Warcrafter
It has nothing to do with the analysis and conclusions that comes out of Warcrafter.

It has to do with the attitude and mentality that these kind of services support. That is, emphasizing the person over the player.

The Question

This quote effectively echoes the sentiment of 95% of players in the game [citation needed]:

    the only reason I play is because of gear and my personal advancement. I know it sounds selfish but thats how it is.

That quote was also taken from Raider’s Progress.

That’s fair enough. Everyone likes to feel a sense of achievement. The best way to express that achievement is via the gear on your character. It proves that you’ve done certain things in the game and killed certain bosses. Raiding Guilds are composed of players that want to progress in WoW (Casual and hardcore).

Players that are in the game only for themselves can be detrimental to the Guild they are in. But sometimes, being selfish can be a good thing. If the attitude can be harnessed properly, you can easily turn a player from a loot maniac to a player who will do whatever it takes to get the loot he wants.

So how do you change the mentality of that player who is so intrinsically selfish that he doesn’t seem to care about the Guild?

The Answer

You, as the GM, officer, monkey, murloc or whatever title you may have in the Guild have to make them understand 1 thing only.

Change this:

    the only reason I play is because of gear and my personal advancement. I know it sounds selfish but thats how it is.

to this:

    the only reason I play is because of gear and my personal advancement and the only way I can do that is ensure my guild is also progressing which requires gear.

It’s a real obvious statement, there is no question about it. Make that person understand that it takes 25 people to move forward.In order to that, it needs hard work and effort. I don’t know how many times I can emphasize that.

There are always going to be players that have a “me first” mentality in a Guild. Make them understand that in order for them to get the best pieces of gear in the game, everyone else in the Guild also has to get it at the same rate as that player or else that Guild will not move forward.

Dangle the loot that’s relevant to them in front of their faces. Even they can understand that if they want that loot, they have to kill a boss in order to even get a shot at it. The “me first” attitude is fine if they understand that it comes with patience and effort.

Star Players

In every professional sports teams, there are star players. There are certain names who night after night just seem to deliver their best performances.

The Patriots have Tom Brady, who was able to deliver and lead his team to a Super Bowl choke appearance.
The Penguins have Sidney Crosby, the best overall hockey player in the world.
The Yankees have (had?) A-Rod, who… was probably important for other reasons.

Challenge your Guildmates to be the best they can be. Recount and other DPS meters, used in the right way, can help foster a little of competition. Warcrafter and WWS can be used to show whose slacking and who isn’t.

In my opinion, it’s not about the methods. It’s about the results. Eventually, players will realize that PvP Gear isn’t going to cut it on certain encounters because sites like Warcrafter and WWS will prove that your PvE geared players will eventually top them in damage.

Just remember. If everyone brings their A game to the table, then those end game bosses won’t even stand a chance.

6 Signs You Masturbate Too Much

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We all do it at some point, but we all deny it. Yet we do it because it brings us pleasure and sometimes we have to hide it from other people. Obviously as this is a WoW based blog, I am referring to WoW masturbation. It can be incredibly unhealthy for you. If you start noticing the following signs, start looking for help right away.

Tired

1: Extreme Fatigue

You start feeling tired throughout the day. Why? Because you have been up all night again playing with your toons. Your eyes are nearly blood shot. When you go to bed, your hands are shaking incessantly from the surge of Red Bull and coffee. But you still do it anyway because it’s only one more attempt. Then two. And it slowly snowballs after that. Before you know it, it’s 3 AM and you have to get up at 5.

2: Self-Admiration

So you got yourself some nice shiny purples and you are spending most of your time checking yourself out and showing yourself off to everyone you know. Damn, man! Go and do something with all that gear and make yourself useful, eh?

3: Obsession

You have to fire it up every day because you can’t seem to get satisfied.
You have to finish every quest.
You have to get the best possible gear.
You need to farm as much gold as possible in case the economy crashes.

Hell, you ARE the economy!

4: Can no longer perform

You just can’t keep it up anymore when you’re depended on. Your marks are slowly dropping away. You’re blowing off important emails from Bob in accounting while you’re busy reading up on your favourite blog. Your productivity in life is slowly withering away top the point where you can’t seem to look yourself in the mirror anymore.

5: Losing touch with people

Your friends don’t even bother inviting you to Friday night poker because they know Friday’s a raid night for you (sniff). But that’s okay, because you need the money that you would have lost to pay off your WoW bills. Your boyfriend or girlfriend has to buy the game just to speak with you and hold a conversation. Normally I would suggest watching TV, but with the writer’s strike happening…

6: Physical pain

This one applies to me. My back hurts. It’s probably due to sitting down in one position for too long. It pays to get up once in a while and walk around the house. In fact, I’ve made a conscious effort to get out of my room and my house at times to grab some coffee. Most of my blog posts are being written via pen and paper initially before being typed on my computer. During long raids, I like to fix myself something to drink. If your joints start feeling sore and your limbs are feeling cramped, change your posture or consider playing standing up for a few minutes. Learn some Yoga.

Here’s an idea I’ve been thinking about: Everytime you wipe, do 10 push ups.

Hopefully these telltale signs will be noticed by you in time for you to act upon them. If you think you have a problem, seek help immediately. There’s actually an Online Gamers Anonymous. Consider seeking counseling or other extreme forms of treatment. If you think you have the will, then you might be able to quit WoW cold turkey by uninstalling the game in order to get your life back on track. Video game addiction is being considered for the DSM. Let’s not forget that people have died from WoW.

Remember, WoW is only healthy in moderation!

Brazil Government Bans Counterstrike and Everquest. Could World of Warcraft Be Next?

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It seems that the various democratic governments around the world have begun to take an interest in the well being of their citizens. I’m sure most of you are aware of China’s World of Warcraft curfew. There’s about 1.5 million players in China alone, although I would guess 1.4 million play as their full time job [citation needed].

The big news comes last week. Both online gaming giants Counterstrike and Everquest have had their distribution banned from Brazil. As far as I understand, LAN centers and players with existing copies are allowed to keep them. But it is a federal offense for those 2 games to be sold in Brazil either via retail or online.

The federal judge who imposed the ban stated the games were “…[a] subversion of public order, were an attack against the democratic state and the law and against public security.”

So far, World of Warcraft has escaped the banhammer. Seeing as WoW is not showing any signs of slowing down in terms of growth, sales, or subscribers it would be reasonable to expect that the Brazillian government has WoW on their crosshairs. We’ve already seen 1 government take legislative action on WoW. For Brazil to do something like this, it sets a pretty large precedent.

I’ve taken a few political science courses and from what I remember, Governments exist to determine “who gets what, when and how” (Lasswell). You’d suspect that they’d have bigger fish to fry other than games. Can you think of the possible criminal implications? No more will Brazillian drug lords be smuggling cocaine, marijuana or other drugs. The real money now will be in titles such as Call of Duty 4 and World in Conflict. Instead of cash crop farmers, we might see a rise in piracy!

As a law student, one of the fundamental principles we learn is that a crime is what is defined by society (I’ve condensed months of learning into 1 sentence). Gamers will always be gamers and they will want to play what’s up there. We’re consumers after all. Wouldn’t it suck if we had to go into a dark alley somewhere just to get Starcraft 2? It’s almost like the government is playing the role of a parent by deciding what kids can or cannot play.

Canada may have had it’s share of murderers, but thank goodness nothing like this will be in force up here.

Setting Up Dual Ventrilos, What’s Your Client?

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I say this every year on January 1st and this year is no exception.

I will never drink again.

But anyway, yesterday afternoon I was in Karazhan again with several friends (and that one random hunter pickup) and my Guild leader popped down into my Ventrilo channel to ask me if I was talking to myself. I guess from his perspective it looked like I was, but in actual fact I had two separate clients set up: 1 for my guild and 1 for a different guild. It’s not a trick that’s well known, but here’s how it can be done.

1: Right click on the shortcut to your Ventrilo
2: Click Properties
3: In the Target field, add -m to the end of the line

Now you can be connected to multiple vent servers simultaneously. If you’re going to do this, I strongly advise setting up different user profiles. Do that, then you can separate different keybinds for each user. Otherwise, what will end up happening is that pressing your transmit key will see you talking on all servers your connected on.

Then people will get strange ideas such as you talking to yourself.

I also know that teamspeak is a fairly popular voice client that some Guilds use. But I’ve never ran into anyone on Ner’Zuhl asking for people to use it. It’s always been vent. I’m interested to know if you use any 3rd party voice communication at all and if so which ones and why?

What third party voice client do you use?

  • Ventrilo (76%, 82 Votes)
  • Teamspeak (18%, 19 Votes)
  • Skype (6%, 6 Votes)
  • I don't use any (1%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 108

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No One Else’s Fault But My Own

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Masters Leiandra and and Trollin’ have asked the one question that sits in the back of our minds ever since we started playing this game.

Why are you playing this game? What made you get into this game? Who did it?

For me the answer is very easy but lengthy to answer. My first real game was Gizmos and Gadgets. Then I graduated to RTS’s with Warcraft 2. I loved the fantasy universe and I knew I would continue to play Warcraft games for a long time. Fast forward a few years and I met up with some people online in IRC (who happened to be local in my area). They asked me to play and compete with them in Counter-strike (1.5 was the norm back in the day). From that day onwards, we formed our own gaming clique. Whatever the current ‘fad’ in video games was, all of us would participate.

It started with CS
Then we moved to DoD
Warcraft 3 debuted and most of us played that
Back to CS: Source
DoTA
Lineage II Open Beta
Guild Wars
Then World of Warcraft hit

At first I resisted for several long months. I had a good excuse. I was just a poor high school student with no source of income. That summer I got a job and made a decent pile for a student. I decided to give WoW a try and I was hooked immediately. Several months later, most of us split due to some stupid issues. It was all my fault because I failed to heal one of my friends in STV and abandoned the field of battle because I didn’t want to participate in PvP anymore. I killed my subscription for a while and stopped playing. I stopped coming around on vent because I felt I didn’t deserve the flak I took for saving myself in a hopeless cause. It’s a little difficult to engage in combat as Holy and while I would perform well in PvE environments, I wouldn’t have a clue as to what to do in PvP. I didn’t really know anyone else to play with and it just wasn’t enjoyable without friends. I started nodding off when I did some quests or other things by myself. I got bored of the game, essentially.

Anyways, I started playing the game again because the same guys wanted to form a reroll raiding Guild. I figured why not? I’ve never truly seen the end of the game and I wanted to see what it was like. I picked a Priest to symbolize my dedication and goals: I picked, at the time, the class that was most in demand and underplayed (Dwarf Priests). You know what was stupid? Completely randoming his look. Sheesh, now I’m stuck with a scowl and a glare for the rest of my WoW career.

What I want to say is the only reason I’m playing this game isn’t for the raiding. I’m not here to get all the best loot as possible. I don’t care about progression and epics and the like. I’m not interested in showing my dominance and prowess in PvP. Some people take pride in pressing buttons faster and more accurate than the next guy. I lost that drive after Guild Wars.

Digression: We worked our asses off in Guild Wars to take the Hall of Heroes and get our damn sigil. Then we stopped playing after that.

Anyway, without caring about loot or PvP abilities, what does that leave?

Why then do I continue playing this game?

Because all of my friends are playing it. Truth be told, if my friends all stopped playing WoW, I would stop playing altogether. A lot of people have this idea that all WoW players are addicted to the game.

They’re not.

It’s their choice to play it. If I wanted to quit WoW, I could easily pull it off. I just don’t want to.

They’re not addicted to the game. They’re addicted to the friends and the people they’ve met playing this game. The reason I play WoW is because of the people I play with.

Told you the reason was simple.