Postcards from Gameville

I wrote this post originally in February of 2006 on my 1UP account as part of some WoW-related contest. I’m going around deleting accounts on services I no longer use, but I wanted to save this somewhere, because at least on the human priest side of things, it’s a true story:

If I were to write up a script for one of the Switch parody shorts, and I were more cantankerous and maladjusted, it might be something like this. You’re going to have to imagine the scene blocking yourself, though.

All the horror stories you hear about the priest getting blamed for every party wipe out? True, true.

It doesn’t matter if your mage thinks they’re the reincarnation of an atom bomb and think AoE’ing everything, every time, is the proper course of action. It doesn’t matter if your party’s only tank is a Voidwalker. Your druid thinks they can turn into a locomotive and run the enemy down? Yeah, okay. And so what if your rogue is fighting with a trout in one hand and a hamster in the other? If the party wipes? You’re the priest, and it’s your fault.

For example: I was invited to be healer for a party heading to Uldaman. From the get go, it was, “Stand there. Do this. Don’t do that.” Never mind that I’m 30 years old, capable of conversing in English and making my own decisions, and have other things I could be doing with my time. I’m not some piece of furniture that dispenses magical warm fuzzies that make you feel better, and I’m not the babysitter for the Reckless ‘Tween Club.

So we get up to Grimlok and we’ve cleared the antechamber just before. We’re trying to rest up and someone, somehow, pulls Grimlok and his goons down on us. That’s fine, mistakes happen. But I’m not even at half mana when Ms. Mage over there–whom I doubt is a real woman because no woman would name her female toon “Uglee”–she decides she’s Mt. Saint Helen and starts dropping Arcane Explosions like they’re going out of style. And she’s all “Heal me, heal me” and despite my better judgment, I am… but no one can tell because everything’s already targetting her and for all we know, she bought her armor at T.J. Maxx.

And when she dies? Guess who’s next?

After I quit the party, what does the rogue /tell me? Among other things I’m sure his mother wouldn’t approve of, he sends me:

“U R TEH FUCKEN WORTS PREIST EVAR.”

Look, I’m not saying I’m perfect, but at the same time, if you’re gonna chastise me, you’re gonna have to do it above a 3rd-grade reading level. Who taught you to spell, kid? Alpha Bits? Criminy. The only thing I’m guilty of is trying to entertain you lot like some sort of creepy children’s show host.

Popular opinion holds that the average age on the Horde side is ten years older than the Alliance, but let’s face it: anyone would have to be more mature than these knuckle-dragging zygotes with whom I keep ending up in parties.

(Eilers disappears in the puff of smoke seen when a druid changes form, and is replaced by a Tauren druid)

Nowadays I can heal, but I can do tons of other things as well. I can turn into a bear with horns. I can turn into a sea lion with horns. I can turn into some crazy owlbear-with-antlers thing. It’s killer.

There’s been some adjustments, of course. Since I’m taller, my center of balance isn’t where I expect it to be, and I find myself ducking to enter doorways when I don’t have to. I don’t hunger for White Castle as much as I used to. And there’s still the occasional jackass who thinks it’s funny to make a “moo” comment or the like. But that’s okay. I just turn into a lion with horns, stealth up on their tired asses, and gore them.

Then I heal them. And /moo.

My name is Eilers, and I’m a switcher.

My hands-down favorite WoW podcast, Taverncast, is back from a long hiatus with a new episode of their “After Hours” format. (It’s the June 4th, 2007 episode if you go to their archives.) This time they talk about game addiction, and the results of an experiment Eloysius, one of the hosts did in the style of the film Super Size Me, in which he attempted to play at least 10 hours of WoW every day for 30 days. It’s a really interesting look for those of us casual players into how hardcore one can get, and how you can get to that point. He also went into how it started to affect him, both physically and emotionally. Good, good stuff.

Towards the end of the show, they went over a list of potential signs of game addiction, tempered by Eloysius’ experience. Some of the signs:

• Constantly forsaking important real-world events for game-events.
• Being regularly unable to keep to self-imposed limits on your playtime.
• If you spend all your non-game time thinking about the game, looking up strategies and information, talking about it, etc.

Eloy stressed that consistently falling into those habits was key. If you went on an all-weekend bender, that’s not addiction. But if every night of the week, you tell yourself you’re only going to play for a couple hours, and you end up playing for six or seven… that ain’t good.

It’d be great if Blizzard made a list of these types of symptoms available and highlighted them on the site. One of the other good points the Taverncast crew made was that many of us are concerned about addictive behaviors, but we wouldn’t know how to recognize it in our friends. Compounding that is the fact that we’d have to be around as much as our addicted friends in order to get a clearer picture of what’s going on with them. If you’re only on for three hours one night, you won’t see that your friend’s been on for six hours before and will be on for three hours after you leave.

I highly recommend you have a listen to this episode. And the rest of the show, it’s really well done. If nothing else, check out the Halloween special they did. (I spent part of last year trying to listen to two episodes a week during my work commute, starting at the beginning until I caught up.)

Apparently today, as Steve Jobs was giving the WWDC keynote, an error message popped up saying something about World of Warcraft had crashed. I had a friend who was there who later told me about it. Hah!

This story isn’t big news at all for anyone who’s played MMOs for any span of time recently, but it’s interesting to see it air on something as widely heard as NPR’s Morning Edition.

Playing online games for 12 hours is a fulltime job for thousands of Chinese workers. They’re accumulating virtual money — or “gold” — which they can sell for real cash. But it’s a dull and labor-intensive job with limited payoffs.

Hi! Getting rid of the Wordpress default first post here. I’m in the process of choosing a template, tweaking it, writing an About page, blah blah blah. I’ve imported all the posts from Pioneer of Aerodynamics and I’m tweaking the image sizes there. You’d think that the default theme for Wordpress would be 100% solid CSS-wise but the full-size images weren’t getting resized via CSS in Safari and WOW did that look funky. Gah.

You know, I don’t think I want to know. These aren’t my lands, these aren’t my customs.

The Mage School in Ironforge sent me to Stormwind to talk to one Jennea Cannon of the school there. When I arrived at the Tower’s inner sanctum, Jennea let me know that there was some sort of disturbance going on at local tavern, The Blue Recluse… a disturbance of an extradimensional nature!

“You want me to blow them up?” I asked her.

She cocked her head at me. “Wha—no, I… no, Eifle, you can’t blow these things up. You can only stun them.”

“So you want me to stun them so you can blow them up?” I asked.

“No.”

“You want me to stun them so that guy over there can blow them up?”

“No. Eifle, what’s this sudden infatuation with explosions?” Jennea asked. It was a good question.

I thought for a moment before saying, “You know, I’m really not quite sure. Something about this place… no, this city makes me want to blow things up. And avoid ice cream.”

“This city is not known for making people lactose intolerant,” she said, turning to the table next to her. “Even so, at least you’re just an exchange student. Here,” she motioned to a few strange devices on the table. “Take one of these, and this parchment as well. The incantation you now hold will make visible the Rift Spawn within the Blue Recluse. Stun them and then contain them in these boxes. Now go and perform this task.”

I took one of the boxes off the table. “That’s it, huh?”

“Bring the boxes back when you’re done, of course. And take Ray Parker Jr. with you.” She jerked a thumb behind her, and I peered around her to see this guy smiling, sleeves rolled up and belt cinched like he was ready to get down to business. He carried some sort of staff that was glowing with an enchantment, so I assumed he was one of the local mages.

Ray and I headed to the Blue Recluse, which fortunately wasn’t busy when we arrived. Not that they’ve ever been busy. Actually I’m not sure how they stay in business.

I read the incantation off Jennea’s parchment, and there was a whoosh and a zap and hey, we could see the rift thingers!

One was near enough to hit with a Frostbolt. “What do you think, Ray? Should I bother with freezing it first?”

“If there’s something weird in your neighborhood,” Ray replied.

“I’d say so.”

“If there’s something strange and it don’t look good.”

“This certainly qualifies,” I said, and cast a Frostbolt at the nearest Spawn. We engaged in a magical battle the likes I hadn’t seen in a while, but I managed to subdue it. Quickly I tossed a box on the floor under it, which sucked the Spawn into it and trapped it. Success!

“Who you gonna call?” Ray asked me then.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Uh… me?” He cocked an eyebrow back at me, looking at me expectantly. “Me and Ray Parker Jr.?” I tried again. Ray smiled and pointed at me with both hands, like he was holding guns. Damn that guy is smooth. We rocked and locked two more Rift Spawn and went back to Jennea.

“I ain’t afraid of no ghost,” Ray said, unprompted.

“Those weren’t ghosts, Ray, those were extradimensional entities.”

“That… kind of sounds like a ghost, Jennea,” I said.

She swiveled her head to look at me. “They’re not.”

“Are you—”

“Yes.“

If you find yourself falling from a very high point, and you have advanced sufficiently in your training, here’s what to do:

1. Cast Slow Fall. Your descent will be made significantly more pleasant.

Here’s what not to do:

1. Spend time looking around after accidentally stepping off a cliff.
2. Say to yourself, “Oops.”
3. Realize that you’re rate of falling is increasing and how far up you might have been without realizing it.
4. Consider casting Slow Fall.
5. Land abruptly.

We took a hippogryph to Teldrassil and really, can I just say how much cooler these things are than gryphons? They’re gorgeous. A much better ride. I’d like to petition the gryphon union of the Eastern Kingdoms to consider allowing other choices to your customers. I know we’re filled with continental pride and all but don’t fear import vehicles. We’ll still have jobs at home!

Randis and I went through the glowing, teleporting tree—and honestly, I’m still trying to figure out how the night elves grew that thing when they don’t have any mages—and circled round the big bank tree that looks like a big bear with an eagle on top of it. It’s rather amazing, and Randis thought so too.

“WOW!”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s huge. A mighty marvel.”

“It’s so cool! Thanks for taking me here, Eifle. You’re the best!”

To be honest, I was filled with a sense of pride at that point, mixed with hope for our future generations, that they’d be gracious, humble, hard-working and—

“Hey, can you take me to Theramore?”

Randis’ request broke me out of my reverie. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah, I wanna meet Jaina Proudmoore and get her autograph. She’s my hero! Can we go? I mean, we’re on the same continent.”

“Yes, but—”

“And I want some ice cream. Tigole’s Strawberry. Mmmm.”

“What?”

“I think they make it in the Shimmering Flats.”

“What?!”

“Tigole’s makes the best ice cream! Mmmm.”

So much for my hopes for the future.

We took the boat from Auberdine back to Menethil, and then another boat to Theramore. On the way, I turned to Randis and said, “I’d like to point out that I’ve taken you across the ocean three times at this point.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m just saying. In case you wanted to grasp the enormity of effort that’s gone into this field trip. Three transoceanic journeys. Two transcorporeal death scenes. Setting my hearthstone to Stormwind when I’m needed in Loch Modan.”

“I wonder if Jaina likes Tigole’s Strawberry ice cream.”

I’m never having kids.

We arrived at Theramore and went straight to the main tower, no time for sightseeing. Up we climbed, and at the top, Jaina actually gave a moment of her time to me (and I stress “me” because Randis was suddenly too shy).

“You’re very kind for taking Randis around like this, Eifle,” she said to me. “You seem tired, you must have travelled very far to come here!”

“You have no idea,” I said.

Randis, to his credit, was really grateful for Jaina’s autograph, and was overjoyed that she wrote him a personal message as well. But as soon as we were done in the tower, I activated my hearthstone.

Randis cocked his head at me. “Is that… can that thing take us both back? I heard that they only work for one person.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, letting the hearthstone continue to charge. “Empirical evidence is the best way to answer questions. Let’s find out together.”

Adventuring parents, your hearthstone can bring your kid back home with you, just so you know.

Now, fortunately, it turned out that there was an ice cream vendor in Stormwind that has Tigole’s Strawberry, so Randis’ last request was easy to fulfill. I handed him the ice cream and he beamed.

“Wow, what an awesome day. Thank you so much, Eifle. I think it’s time I got back to the orphanage, though.”

I wasn’t going to argue. But… okay. I like the kid. He knows how to set goals. Just don’t tell him I like him, or he’ll want to do this again next year.

We went back, I dropped Randis off, and for my efforts I received something that I have to admit made all the globetrotting worth it. I got… Mr. Wiggles!

Now I have a friend to keep me company, and he can help me practice my disappearing pig trick!

Last night some guildies and I decided to roll some Horde toons for a change of pace. We’ve done this sort of thing before, but several people wanted to do this on an RP server, which was more than fine by me. Six of us rolled new toons, created an ad hoc guild channel and proceeded to grind through our respective starting areas. On our channel, someone asked what our guild name should be if we pursue these new characters. In the middle of our conversation, something like this happened:

[4. penguins] [Eland]: afk fish crisis
[4. penguins] [Oleru]: “fish crisis”?
[4. penguins] [Oleru]: <Fish Crisis>
[4. penguins] [Panhorus]: yes
[4. penguins] [Kroos]: yes

I like the stranger guildnames over the terribly generic fantasy names. (Think: <Swords of Valor>, <The Silver Protectorate>, etc…. and I’m making those up, so if one of those is really your guild name… sorry, mate.) Something to give me more of a feel for what the character of your guild is. Something that says if you have a sense of humor about your guild name, maybe you’ll also have a sense of humor over an accidental party wipe or otherwise won’t be a prick.

But I also have a fondness for serendipity, automatic writing, accidental art, surrealism, and the like. And sometimes, just like when you might hear a turn of phrase and think, “that would make a good band name,” sometimes good guild names are accidentally found.

I’m sort of hoping we go with <Fish Crisis>, but I won’t be torn if we don’t. It seems fortuitous, for sure. <Drunken Plainstriders> was also thrown out as a version of our <Pirate Penguins> roots.