Casual Huntering

Posts Tagged ‘commentary’

Sorry, no Friday Fiction today. I couldn’t find my flash drive. So, instead you get the post that I wrote while donating plasma yesterday. Yes, I donate plasma on a somewhat regular basis. I get some money while I either read or write for the blog post. Not so bad. Anyway, I didn’t get a chance to proofread this (yes I’m trying to get better about that), so don’t be too critical. I do also ramble a little bit, that’s just who I am. I try to keep it controlled, but its difficult when you have a big needle stuck in your arm. So here you go.

It has been good to be a casual player in WoW as of late. Blizzard has been catering more and more to our crowd, even though it has ruffled a few feathers in the process. Getting geared for end level raiding has never been easier in the five year history of the game. The introduction of the LFG system has given the part-time player a chance at getting geared up for ToC realatively quickly. Plus those of you who can’t play when the rest of your guild does can now do five mans at weird hours, such as when I play at 5am in the morning. Not to mention the ability to get emblems.

Of course I never raided in the days before the badge/emblem system. I hit end level during Burning Crusade, so Kara was my first raiding experience. I can only imagine being able to get gear from drops and nothing else, that would have been obnoxious. The badge/emblem gear has been great for filling in the holes in your armor. I’ve only heard stories of what it was like to raid during the vanilla WoW days. Competing with forty players for a piece of gear is ridiculous (let alone trying to get that many players online at one time). What was my guild back in the day had to join forces with a couple of guilds to get anything accomplished. They had to come up with cross guild loot systems, which I think worked okay, but they’re run so much better to keep it in the guild, in my opinion. And with BC came the ability to save a raid half way through. I seem to remember my brother going off on how nice that was, even though now I have a hard time imagining it any other way.

As you might have guessed, I personally welcome all, if not most, of these changes. Making the game more accessible to the masses was a smart way to go for Blizzard. Why would you want to make a raid that only 1% of your subscribers would ever see? I know that made it like super uber for those players, but where did that put the rest of us? Another example was the old PvP system of titles. Everybody was ranked per week and the only way you could get the highest rank was if you were PvPing 24/7, having guildies help you by playing when you weren’t. You’d have to eat/drink/live WoW for a week to get even close. It had to be very very cool to have such a title and to get the best PvP gear possible, but less than 1% would have even had a chance at it. Its okay to have leet stuff for players to seek to obtain, but so many of the raids were so difficult to get into back in the day.

I know some people feel like the game is being “dumbed down” or that its getting too easy now. I have to agree that this is true to some extent. My sister-in-law’s brother purposely pulls a good half dozen mobs on his warlock just to try to make the game a little more challenging. He reports the game being much easier now than back in Vanilla WoW days. I have to agree when it comes to leveling. Now it’s faster, you need less XP, you can get mounts earlier, and you have a nifty quest tracker. Everything is just about given to you on a plate, what more could you want? I don’t really mind, the leveling grind before was painful. Painful, I tell you! I know this because Aoirselvar leveled under the original system and there were times when all of my quests were either red or on the other side of the planet. I admit to killing a lot of boars in my day.

I’m enjoying the game more than I ever have in the last three and a half years of play time. It’s more accessible to me than ever before. You can actually play and still have a life away from the game. I guess you could before, but you know what I mean. You don’t have to get divorced over the game (could still if you want). You’re kids can know who their dad is (or mom) and you can keep your job.

Of course there is plenty to do if you want to keep things difficult and challenging. You can work on the crazy en level dungeon achievements which do have some nice rewards. You can work on all of the hard modes for the raids out there, which I’m told could get you some better gear. However, you hardcore players no longer have exclusive accesses to certain raids and what not. It was never meant for your eyes only. That makes me happy because it gives me a chance to actually see the fall of Arthus and in the next expansion maybe see the demise of Deathwing.

You can’t hardly blame Blizzard for the direction they are going. They are playing to their target market, the market where they’ll be able to make the most money. When it comes down to it, there are more people like me out there. If Blizz is going to get new people subscribed to the game, they’ll likely be more casual players. The hardcore players that will play are already playing!

Well, all I know is that I can actually raid in my guild (even though I’m not going on the progressive runs yet). I can do this and still spend time with my family. I appreciate that quite a bit.

I ran into this article about Warcraft in the LA Times “World of Warcraft, a magical place to play — or a digital dungeon of obsession?” Its about a guy who plays WoW who is going through a divorce, and how he plays warcraft to try to get through this difficult time in his life. The article actually doesn’t attack Warcraft out right (except with its title), its pretty neutral and straight with its facts. But with a title like that you wonder if they had a negative slant in mind. Interesting what other think about us WoW players.

What I thought was interesting was the letters to the editor about the article.

Are you kidding me? Your front page should be screaming about the addictive perils of massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, not celebrating a confab of generation OCD.

In reading the article about a recently divorced man finding solace in his virtual friendship circle, I immediately wondered if hours a day of WoW contributed to the former Mrs. Dread Pirate hitting the road.

These games are insidious and are creating vast pockets of humanity that would rather pretend at life than cope. Twenty, 30, or more hours a week? What a terrifying waste of real Earth time.

James Boysen
Manhattan Beach

Don’t you love that line “insidious and are creating vast pockets of humanity that would rather pretend at life than cope”. Wow, I guess we aren’t coping with real life. Do you think that maybe we just enjoy the game while you sit on your @ss watching TV? uh? Also “what a terrifying waste of real Earth time”. I’d like to see what the h3ll this guy does that is so horrible productive.

Your article gave me a different perspective on the social role the game can play for some gamers.

I come from the mental health field, and the perspective of some colleagues is that many of the gamers are experiencing what will soon be known as computer addiction disorder. Due to the strongly addictive nature of the game and often severe consequences that result from playing (high debt, missed days from work, poor personal hygiene), it’s actually a huge concern.

However, I think you’re pointing out that not all players will suffer negative consequences, which is an important perspective to share.

Melody Jazeb
Encino

Yes, not everybody suffers from some huge addiction that ruins their life, the majority of us are normal people, pretty boring at times. Many of us have jobs or we go to school and we just do this for fun, its a hobby of ours.

It’s incredibly rare to see a factual representation of the player population instead of the ever-increasing number of articles focusing on addictive and negative behaviors associated with the game.

Those who would refute the social aspects of WoW obviously are not among the millions of game players.

Steven Dowling Jr.
Long Beach

Yeah, all of us are anti-social, all 11 million of us. I like this last letter. Anyway, I saw that, thought I’d add my 2 cents and share it with you.

I recently read an article in regards to people getting addicted to MMOs (sorry I don’t know where the link to the article is). Of course like many articles out there it painted MMOs in a negative light, but I guess I understand. I can see that there is potential for many people to become completely obsessed to whichever game they are into. There are many people out there whose lives are completely unbalanced due to their obsession or addiction to MMOs.

I think we do let other things suffer a little bit. I’ve heard that they are blaming the increase of college drop-outs on world of warcraft. I know personally of a family that has neglected their children. There has been several issues where neglect has gone too far and authorities had to step in. Many marriages out there harbor contention over this game, in fact mine has in the past. I even read about that girl in China who played for so long that she died of self-neglect (I’m fuzzy on the details on that one).

You see these kind of stories on the news all the time. Usually we get annoyed and we tell our non-wow friends that those people were morons and the most people aren’t like that and I honestly do believe that the majority of people out there are not idiots (unless you think trade-chat people are the majority /gag). When there is a problem its usually more subtle for most of us. Instead of neglecting your children you might spend less time with them. Instead of dropping out of college maybe your grades suffer a little bit. Instead of getting divorced maybe you fight with your spouse occasionally in regards to your play time. Maybe there is a hobby or a musical instrument that you to spend less time with because of Azeroth.

In this article, it never said right out that people shouldn’t play MMOs. Rather the article said that you should be wary of getting addicted and keep an eye on your kids who play. All time spent on the media, whether the internet, watching TV, playing console video games, MMOs, movies, etc should probably be limited somewhat in order to keep balance in our lives. However, all of these things in moderation aren’t a problem, at least in my opinion.

I’ve strived to try to play WoW in moderation for my family’s sake. I am sure that I would probably play a lot more if I were single. I spend a lot of time thinking about the game when I’m not playing. I get on twitter and chat with people about the game while I’m at work. I write this blog when I get a chance. When I get with my brothers, what do we chat about? Oh, yes. We talk about WoW. I talk to my wife about the new things that I’m doing all the time. I’m sure it drives her crazy at times. I’m honestly not a casual player in my heart. Of course I think anybody who writes a blog is at least somewhat hardcore. How could you not be??

Then again in comparison to others who play out there I’m casual, but again remember balance. The people who are at the top of the game, who have the best gear and the most achievements completed, yes those top guilds, those that we will never catch up with, these people are not well balanced. How can they be? Being a hardcore raider (raiding more than 3 times a week) means you are giving something else up. Whether that is spending time with their family, working on playing the guitar, reading a book, or whatever it is, they aren’t balanced and I don’t think its healthy.

I for one am not going to stop playing WoW because of the article, but I will keep an eye on my playtime and the time I spend writing on this blog and well… anything else WoW related, and make sure its not interrupting time I spend with my kids or spouse. (I really need to get my other computer fixed so playing WoW is time spent with my spouse). Just as BRK use to always preach, it’s all about balance.

I was listening to the podcast entitled “Spouse Aggro” and they were talking about warcraft (hence a world of warcraft podcast). One of there friends told them that he gets value out of buying a cup of coffee from starbucks, but not from paying to play a virtual on-line game such as WoW. That got me thinking about it. I’ve been working on getting all of these mounts towards the achievement “Mountain of Mounts”. I’m a getting real value out of this, or just a bunch of pixels. How much monetary value am I putting into this?

Now I haven’t gone on ebay and actually spent and real money on this, but I have invested a lot of time. And time is money after all, right? An employer thinks we’re worth a certain dollar amount at least. There is the bare minimum of what are time is worth monetarily. Let’s say you make $15 an hour and your job. Now if we put that towards WoW; how much time do you play during a given week? I’ve actually raided a couple times this week (that’s a lot for me) and I’ve played my usual time before I go to work, so I’ve put in roughly 17 hours in this past week. 17 x $15 = $255. That is what my game time was worth, but that’s not the case because I make a lot more than $15 an hour.

Now if you want to really blow your mind away go log in the game and type /played. Figure out how many hours you’ve played from there and times that by your average hourly rate and watch your jaw drop. Yes, you value your game time, look at the monetary value you have put into just this character. At least I hope you value your game time…

However, this doesn’t matter if you are getting value out of the game. You’re going to put your money somewhere with your time, right? People spend a ton of money on going to the movies which society considers normal entertainment. How much time does the average person watch TV in a given week? And how many hours are people putting into playing RockBand? If you are finding value out of the time and money you put towards the game then it’s worth it. But that also means you probably should be doing things that you don’t want to do. Why waste your money/time? If you hate dailies, don’t do them! If you would rather die than go grinding for farming, then do something else.

I haven’t done the /played time x amount of dollars, I’m too afraid to see that. I’m sure it would be well over at least a years worth of income, yikes! But then I wonder how much my sleeping time is worth, lol. Is your game time worth the time/money you put into it? What do you value in your gaming experience?

.

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Addendum:

Of course you could look at this another way, I just got a comment on here from Petal:

Right now, I have two accounts to optimize my alt-levelling with. I play on average of 2 hours a night, and about 10 hours on the weekend… so that’s 20 hours a week. That’s about how much I normally play, so if you take $15 and divide it by 20 hours… that less than $1 an hour. VERY CHEAP form of entertainment… and as long as I’m doing something ‘constructive’ in game I think it’s time well spent.

I didn’t even think of it that way. Figure out how many hours you play a week and divide that  by $3.50 (about the amount of money you pay per week to play – unless you multi-box). If I play about 15 hours a week that means I’m paying about $.23 an hour to play, that is cheap entertainment! Just think of those hardcore raiders, how cheap the game is for them!

Okay, so I got my new header and it totally doesn’t work with all of this red, but I’m not going to get rid of it until I can change the header or fix the background. I’m just happy to finally have a header for my blog. Thanks to Nassira for editing the image and putting it together for me. And thanks Nance for helping me put that on the blog.

On to another topic. I’ve realized that one reason WoW is so addictive is the fact that there is always something to work on. Whether is be an alt to level, gear to be ninja-ed (well, Hm earned), mounts to be found, achievements to be… achieved, etc. etc. There is always more to do, especially if you are a part-timer.

Right now I have several projects in the works.

• leveling my cat (currently level 79)
• Argent Crusade Dailies (So far I’m a champion of Iron Forge and the gnomes (can’t spell their city and I’m too lazy to look it up).
• Making a motorcycle (only about 9,000 gold to go /sigh)
• getting geared for raiding (which isn’t going wonderfully)
• Searching and working towards other mounts (yes this is one of my obsessions)

In this game you don’t ever win. Not really. There is always more to do. Whenever you beat a boss there are like 3 more, whenever you get an achievement there are like 10 more to do, etc etc. My cousin Applebiscuit (no that’s not his rl name) thought at first that when you hit max level that big words would come up on your screen “The End”, so he leveled slowly because he didn’t want the game to finish. Little did he know that the game only begins at the max level. There is always more to do.

Oh on a completely different topic, my pet is nearing level 80 and needs a name. I got this cat from a statue on the north end of Dark Shore, it took awhile, but not many people have this cat I like him a lot. What do y’all think I should name him??

Isn’t he pretty, he is all camoflaged in the snow (and no, he isn’t stealthed right now, he’s a ghost cat!)

Okay, I wanted to take this time to talk about wasting time.
What do most people think are a waste of time? Here are some things that I thought of so far:
Any time spent in a government office, traffic, watching TV that doesn’t interest you (you know you’ve done it!), aimlessly poking around on the web with no end in sight (again you know you do it), many facebook aps (even though we do it anyway), talking about the weather, Tupperware parties, writing lists of items that are a waste of time, etc.
Notice something? WoW wasn’t on my list, ha! Why? Because I enjoy, it’s fun, relaxing (unless it’s PvP), and its social. If you don’t relax and have leisure time you will snap. Seriously! A healthy amount of leisure time is… well… healthy.
I also think there is nothing wrong with good movies, your favorite TV show, and spending time on the web. If you enjoy it then it’s not a complete waste of time. Of course if it’s taking place of your family then that’s another matter. But that’s beside the point, another post another day.
So, what I hate is when people tell us that World of Warcraft is a waste of time. Granted, yes I guess it is, but compared to what?? Compared to feeding the homeless? Well, yes, I’ll give you that. Compared to playing wii, watching Mork and Mindy, reading a novel, etc etc… Well, I don’t know about that. I think leisure time is leisure time. Frankly our leisure time is social, it helps us develop problem solving skills, and it’s interactive. It’s not like the inactive leisure time spent in front of the tube or in watching movies.
Anywho, don’t let people mock you just because you play the most popular MMO out there, instead you can make fun of them for watching American Idol while you defeat the woes and monsters of Azeroth.

So, today I realized just how behind I am. /sigh. I watched my brother-in-law go through a bunch of dailies that I had never seen before. And now he’s matched me in number of mounts. (We both have 63 mounts currently). So I had better get to work. I can think of 5 mounts that I could get pretty quickly with just a little work. Just need to cut off some more ears for my hippogryph. Need to do all sorts of stuff for my Motorcycle. And well, I need rep with about a hundred different factions. Hmm….

I guess you can’t have it all, right? Or maybe I can, just by the time I get it will be into our next expansion.

So, I admit, I’m a collector. I want to collect things in the game, its getting pretty bad, my main’s bank is full of junk, completely and utterly full of …. stuff! Well, that’s besides the point.

So, yes I’m pretty behind the times (was to begin with and now I’m way behind), I keep seeing mounts that I want, gear that I want, vanity pets that I would like to have. I want. I want. I need. I need. Give me. Give me. blah blah blah. But its all good. The day I don’t have something to work towards in the game is the day I put the game away for good.

Well, anyway, yes this is a ramble post for the day. I have some decent posts in the works that I’m thinking about.

An interesting thing happens when priorities shift and change happens in your life. I started an online business with my brother and WoW (blog, game, community and all) kind of dropped out of my life. I won’t get into the business or anything but it ate up my time and attention. As it was before I really didn’t have much time to write blog posts, to research hunter things, to actually play the game, etc. But then I found that I really didn’t have time to do anything related.

Of course I love the WoW community too much to give it up. I actually got on this morning to play for the first time in almost a month. I forgot just how pretty the game is. I went over to the Argent Crusade Tourney area and got really confused. But I’ll go back soon and figure it out. I miss playing the game, but that’s not a big deal. What I missed more was the WoW community. I think the community is was keeps us playing.  If this was just a game you played by yourself, I might have put it down a long time ago. But when I can play with friends and chat with friends on twitter, discuss raids with my brothers, listen to podcasts and hear what’s going on? That is just too much fun.

I’m coming back on a part time part time basis (I say that because I was already only playing on a part time basis, he he). I got my account reactiviated and everything. I still have to play early in the morning if I want to play, (can’t play while the kids are awake after all), but I’ll come visit Azeroth a little more often.

So, we had a debate on twitter a little while ago. It was the old PvP versus PvE server argument. I play on a PvP server, mostly because that was the server my brothers were playing on when I got started. So, I didn’t really have a choice, I’m guessing that a lot of people have similar situations, you play on your friend’s server when you get started. Its not till later (or right away in my brother-in-law’s case) that you venture into other realms and test the waters.

So, lets say you just started playing world of warcraft. What are the pros and cons of the different realms.

PvE

Pros
You don’t have to watch your back constantly.
You can PvP in controlled settings.
No camping. Nobody is forcing you to play an alt.
You can have a horde and an alliance character on the same server.
Farming in peace.

Cons
Not as exciting. (that can probably be argued).
You don’t get the real feeling that you are at war with the other faction (heck you can have an alt of the other faction – which might be a pro instead of a con)
fluff fluff fluff (at least according to those on PvP servers)
Get made fun by friends that you are on a carebear server (yes, that’s what my guild calls it).

PvP

Pros
Okay sometimes it is fun to gank other players, especially if you had a bad day.
You really really hate the other faction which feeds in any RP you want to do.
Yes you have to watch your back, but that makes it more exciting.
You can make fun of your PvE friends.
More PvP skirmishes through out Azeroth.
The feeling you get when someone tried to gank you and you totally owned them!!!

Cons
Farming can suck.
Did I mention getting camped by some 14 year old undead rogue???
Sometimes you might decide to leave a zone because their is a jerk going around on a killing spree.
Running back from the grave yard, again.
Death Knights (unless you are one).

Did I miss anything? Any other Pros or Cons?

So, I had been wondering when I was going to give up on WoW or MMOs in general. I’m an adult and adults aren’t suppose to play games like this, right? For some reason I was using my parents and in-laws to gauge what I would be like when I got to their age. What would I enjoy or do? Part of me thought, well, they don’t play video games so eventually I probably won’t either.

However, they didn’t grow up with video games either. They did grow up with TV and they still do that. So, why would I eventually stop doing something that I grew up with? We aren’t the previous generation. We evolve.

So, now I realize that I probably won’t grow out of this form of entertainment. I like it a lot more than TV because its more interactive and more social. If I were a betting man I would bet that our brains do a whole lot more when we are playing video games than when we are watching TV. We have to think, make decisions, plan, strategize, etc, etc. When you watch TV you have to … sit, and … watch. We also do more socializing with MMOs. We have guilds, we play with friends, family, etc. We meet new people, make new connections. That doesn’t happen when you watch TV either.

Don’t get me wrong, I love TV. But I really only watch my favorite shows and nothing else (The Office, Scrubs, LOST, Grey’s Anatomy, Simpsons). But I’d rather watch my favorite shows while playing WoW (unless its a new episode of LOST then everything stops).

Sorry about the TV tangent. Anyway, So, when I’m old and grey I’ll proably still be playing some kind of MMO. Weather that may be Starcraft Universe 3 or World or World of Warcraft 2 I don’t know. But I’m not likely to stop playing just because I reached my parents age. I may play less because of more family responsiblities, but I think in the years to come we’ll see the average age of people who play MMOs will go up. Do you think you’ll still be playing MMOs in 10 years?