Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Theme Songs, Parts 2 and 1.
Over at the Blog Azeroth community, Autumn asked, “What would be the theme song for your toon?” I thought I would add my list of answers. Be sure to check out other people’s responses! (Part 1 is here)
Asaluce: My protection paladin (still in training, five levels to go). Needed a song that had a sense of light in the darkness. “Bells of Freedom” by Bon Jovi.
Just reach out and ring the bells of freedom
When your world’s crashing down like you’ve lost every round
Stand your ground
And ring the bells of freedom
Up the steps of the church
Through the fields in the dirt
In the dark I have seen
That the sun still shines for the one who believed
Lushere: A Feral Druid who is young (for a Night Elf), who is still somewhat naive, who doesn’t want to hurt anything (Stop Killing the Spiders, NOW!). And yet, who mauls faces. And flirts (but not seriously, she would be so scandalized if anyone took her seriously).
After careful and lengthy consideration (which included the “Hello Kitty” theme) I think Lushere’s theme song would be “You’re a Star” from the Josie and the Pussycat’s Soundtrack.
Rylande and Kazahana: The toons I am currently leveling as a multi-boxing duo. I am thinking about their RP nature (not so much whether I RP with them, because I won’t, but what their stories are in my head), and it’s hard to think of songs for them just yet.
EDIT: It seems, somehow, that part 2 ended up overwriting part 1, oh no! Not sure if I can get it back… at all… might need to rewrite it. If I can remember.
EDIT: Near as I can recall, this is what I had in Part 1 before it was so inadvertently destroyed.
Serasong
Serasong was my shadow priest from before it was cool to be a shadow priest that I raided with (the original version of that sentence was better, and by better I mean more convoluted). She has just about the most RP nature, though I’ve never really done any RP. It may be cliche, but I have to go with O Fortuna from Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. Not just because it’s kinda dark and foreboding, but because it’s about the nature of fate and getting really screwed by it.
Fate - monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
Azzlefluff
Who doesn’t love the excitedly jumping pink-haired gnomes. The Entertainer by Scott Joplin.
Raleena
My first character. A huntress, somewhat savage, rather bitter about losing immortality. Kashmir by Led Zeppelin.
All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land
Trying to find, trying to find where I’ve been.
Shalareth
I don’t recall what I wrote here, but I think it had something to do with Draenei Shaman, crunch-granola-ness and Grand Canyon by Sister Hazel.
Orcapalooza: Live (Picture) Blogged
Anyone, who is anyone, even who is anyone meaning anyone not meaning someone important, should be rolling an orc on Argent Dawn RIGHT NOW for BigRedKitty’s ORCAPALOOZA! I’m Kazzahana, fyi!
UPDATE 1: Hi Ratshag! Feel better in green skin?
TJ did show up:
With Some Guy:
UPDATE 2: And they’re off!
UPDATE 3: Twenty Minutes, One Thing!
UPDATE 4: One Thing, and One Bloodmoon Chosen! Halfway point…
UPDATE 5: Oh Noes!
UPDATE 6: 10 MINUTES REMAINING. I am losing.. only two of the Bloodmoon Chosen and three items:
UPDATE 7: IT’S OVER!
And I lost…
FINAL UPDATE
Aside from going back and compressing and cropping images, Thanks Brksorc! And thanks, Bloodmoon Chosen!, from one Argent Dawn-er to a whole bunch!
Knowing. Deciding. Raiding. Eating.
Lunchtime is one of the great times in the day. It interrupts the tedium of employment and allows for scrumptious eating (sometimes). Today I was set for Chinese food: General Tso’s Chicken, fried rice, crab rangoon… mmmmmmm. Then I walk past our kitchen area and someone is heating up an Italian dish and OMG I want Italian! Maybe. There’s a Noodles & Co. and their Parmesan Crusted Chicken Breast is pretty good. So now, I have to make a decision.
What I realize is that I do not like making decisions. I like knowing the answers.
Decisions are about consequences. Weighing benefits and costs. Answers are about facts. There is no relevant facts about lunch-I like both places and I will enjoy eating either. One costs more and will take longer to get, but the difference is negligible.
In WoW we face that same sort of issue. I like being the one that knows the answers, that knows the runs, that knows boss encounters and gearing, and, well, all of it. In that aspect, I think I lead raids well. I know the plan, I know the abilities we have available and I can communicate that.
But the other half of raiding, the deciding half, I hate handling. I hate putting the raid together because it is not a questions of knowing, but choosing. Is person A going to be useful in this raid? I can know the answer is "no," but the decision doesn’t stop there. Is there someone else who can fill the spot at all? What are the social consequences for passing them over or replacing them?
When the choices are made, we’re left with the consequences. When we have good results, that’s good, right? No one complains about getting more bosses killed or getting more epics. But what about when the consequences are terrible and you wipe over and over again on farm content and it isn’t because you don’t know how to do it, but because the choices made earlier are preventing you from doing it? How do you turn to your raid and your guild and say to some of them, "I don’t care what you think, I know you are not ready and bringing you again is going to hurt our chances to succeed?"
The StormSeekers has some exceptional people in its ranks, and some exceptional players. Some of those overlap. There is an increasingly widening gap between the top and the middle- Our efforts to move forward are being hit not by knowing how to do them- We’re not limited by answers- We’re restricted by choices and a guild culture that is not welcoming of the tough decisions we’re faced with. The culture itself being a choice we’re feeling the consequences of, the ripples and repercussions.
What the future holds for the StormSeekers, I have no idea. A lot of deciding needs to be done on both the leadership’s part and the members about what is important as individuals and as a group. We have made pretty big strides recently (three bosses in Zul’Aman, Lurker in SSC and Void Reaver in TK with Royal Steel, and completing Gruul’s Lair as a StormSeekers run (even if half the raid was out of guild)) and it seems a waste not to capitalize on those successes. The future for me holds Chinese food.
PlusHeal.com!
New Healing Community: PlusHeal.com
Several of the most prominent WoW bloggers have gotten together and launched a community for healers: Plusheal.com, brought to you by:
Anna of Too Many Annas
Auzara of Chick GM
Lume of Lume the Mad
Matticus of World of Matticus
Nuetralise of Spirit is Your Friend
Siha of Banana Shoulders
Wyn of World of Matticus
(I sorted the list alphabetically - this is no expression of favoritism in the order)
Auzara and Matticus have introductions up about the forum-based community, but the best way to learn about it is to go, now, right now, and meet the authors on their blogs and meet the community they’ve started. Now if only there were places people could go to learn more about Paladin tanking, or tanking in general. Or Shadowpriesting. Or Feral Druiding. Or Rogueing. Or Rogueing. Or Huntering, and because hunters are so interesting, maybe even more Huntering. How amazing would it be for those sorts of resources to be freely available. You know, if anyone knows of any of those resources, let me know, and I’ll try and help get the word out.
Edit: Auzara, thanks for stopping by and yes, it is a shame that DPS Casters don’t have anywhere either.
Just a game!
This has to be one of the most annoying things to hear anyone say while playing World of Warcraft. Of course it’s a game; I’m under no illusions that a digitally created world I view through a 20′ LCD monitor is real. Perhaps there are some people out there who can’t sort out the difference, but that is not the group being derided with the comment, "It’s just a game!"
When I hear someone saying this, it is usually in the context of the silly casual v. hardcore debate, or someone responding to (usually) worthwhile advice about improving their play. "Sure (spec x) could be better, but it’s just a game. I like (something silly.)"
I have no problem with people making choices in WoW for silly reasons. On my druid, I run around a lot of the time in dps gear with the heavy clefthoof pants on because I hate the way the clefthoof hide leggings (a skirt!) look. I bought my gnome engineer a snowy white griffon rather than crafting the copter because I like the white griffon and I don’t like the puffing and hissing and gear noises of the copter. So what?
I tend toward the hardcore end of the spectrum in a lot of my WoW tendencies. (How many people that have WoW blogs are not more hardcore than the average player?) And the fact that WoW is just a game is what makes it possible to be hardcore about it.
Consider: In whatever passes for real life, would you get together with 24 of your closest friends and launch an invasion of a well-defended fortress knowing some of you would not make it out alive? If the cost of failure is death, do you run through the middle of a battlefield shooting randomly? Of course not! We can get away with this because there is no significant penalty for failure. Failure costs time, nothing more. We are entirely free (within personal and group limits and within the rules and actions allowable) to try any silly idea we have for accomplishing something (Rogue-tank Gruul? You have got to be kidding…).
What better way is there for pushing your limits and abilities? Because WoW is just a game as long as you have enough other people going along with you, you can play to the very edge, stomp all over it, and keep walking. If you fail, so what? Just res and try again.
What I’ve come to hear when someone says, "oh, it’s just a game," is: "Oh, I just don’t care. I’m not willing to concern myself or engage myself with making the best or the most interesting use of my time in this game." That is an absolutely acceptable view to have. We all pay our $15 a month for access. The catch is that once you involve yourself in someone else’s game time, be it pvp, grouping, or raiding, you are not just playing on your dime, but theirs. And it’s a mark of courtesy and respect to use their time with great care.
Playing the group game
An interesting post from Treebound Cat left me thinking about how people see themselves in the interaction of the group in WoW. maerdred remarks:
…healers step up and offer to roll a new character to help the guild. We need more Holy Paladins! The Druids step up and offer to level a pally. We need more Rogues! “Hey, I’ll level a rogue.”
In both guilds, no matter what the need is, the healers are stepping up and offering to help. The DPS kind of flounder and offer to search the Guild Recruitment forum. The tanks, well they’re tanks.
I wonder how many people, when they first unwrapped the shrink-wrap on their copy of WoW, really thought to themselves, "Ooooh, I really want to play a healer; stand at the back of the group, click little green bars and buttons and not have to actually look at any of these pretty graphics the designers made for us. And as an extra, added bonus, I will have a heck of a time soloing!" I doubt many people opted for that course off the bat. Some did; a lot of those were probably people who played with groups from the beginning or were carrying over traits from another game. But so many players of WoW were coming to this from friends and coworkers, not from the MMO culture, and when they had to choose, I bet most people chose something fun like a pet-taming hunter or a fireball throwing mage. Maybe a dark, evil (but cute and innocent looking) Gnome warlock.
Over the course of playing the first few levels some people inevitably shifted their characters around and we end up with, roughly, the balance we have now. Classes that are fun all the time become the most populous, and people who like more niche rolls fill those rolls. When faced with the reroll question, most people are going to continue with the slots they fill because it is comfortable, the most habitual. And people are creatures of habit.
Is it that healers are generally more giving? Are they more Team oriented than the others? Is there a specific personality that draws people to healing classes? I’ve never once seen a hunter offer to put down his bow and roll a Paladin Tank. I’ve never seen a Fury Warrior drop his swords and offer to roll a Priest to heal.
There is a lot to this idea. When playing, I think you can divide the focus between the playstyle of the individual and the playstyle of the group. If you play in a group at all, you inherently weight those two issues. The mage loses dps time to polymorph, the hunter drops traps instead of steady shots, the shadow priest tosses a power word: shield here or there to help the group. In more extreme cases, some people will respec to fill a group need because they weigh the group success more than individual playstyle. Some people are just groupers. And some people just do their thing and everyone else can deal.
I have, however, seen fury warriors roll holy paladins, resto druids roll paladin tanks, warlocks roll both holy paladins and holy priests.
We have 5 resto druids, and only need 3. Two of them inevitably offer to roll something else to help the whole. We have 6 Rogues and only need 1. They all bitch and moan about why they didn’t get picked to run Kara. Why did he go instead of me? Me Me ME!
The thing about healing is that you can’t do it unless you have someone to heal. And no amount of healing alone is going to finish quests. WoW as a game is based on killing things. Being a healer is saying to the game "I want to be part of team," and I think people drawn to that playstyle are more likely to be the ones deriving enjoyment from the group playstyle. Some people just can’t do it, just can’t get into any playstyle other than the individual.
It’s part of WoW that we get into groups and go kill things together that none of us could alone. Each of us has to respect the group playstyle at least a little bit for that to work. I know the officers in my guild do- most have a handful of raiding alts of varying classes and roles and are pretty willing to respec, if need be, to help the group.
As a long term strategy, this is good. It’s nice to have enough variety that a lot of situations can be accounted for. Short a mage, no problem, I’ll switch. Oh, need a tank, no problem I’ll grab my paladin. Short term, the rogues have it right: if you need a holy paladin now, your best bet is not rerolling, but finding one that already exists.
Are healers predisposed to be generous and giving, is that why we’re healers in the first place?
I’ve met some very not generous and not giving healers. Often they’re progression whores. I will say that most of the really nice people I’ve met in WoW played healers. There may be something to that. I wonder if the Daedalous Project has any real info on this: how does personality affect playstyle? I would wager that there are so many reasons people play their classes and roles that the answer is so complicated as to be meaningless. But, then again, I, well, I’m a tank (whatever that was supposed to mean).
Social Environment
Some people have taken issue with the recent wave of account bans that Blizzard enacted several days ago. TJ, and the Bloggingest Guild in Warcraft: Aetherial Circle on Drenden, had one of their friends banned. They, perhaps rightly so, are certain he did nothing that would warrant having his account banned, even if he cheated*. I don’t know the fellow at all, but the Aetherial Circle people all seem very nice from the blogs and it really sucks that they’ve lost their friend.
Whether the ban was appropriate or not, there seems to be a complete lack of information coming from Blizzard regarding it. He was not provided with specific information as to why he was banned, just which section of the ToS or EULA (I’m not sure which) they believe he violated.
Blizzard has a pretty poor reputation for their service and communication. At times, apparently, lying to their customers (consider this). What we do know is that Blizzard has a woefully ineffective system for communicating with and responding to customers, even when Blizzard asks for feedback!
World of Warcraft is not just a game, it is a social environment. Non-gamers may not understand, but the relationship that are formed because of virtual interactions are just as “real” as any others. Some of us spend as much time playing with the same set of people, the same set of friends, as at a full-time job! The goal is to forge a group identity and accomplish goals no individual could alone. The very essence of most people’s World of Warcraft experience is in being a part of a guild, or a raid, or PuGs, and being involved in relationships with other people. These relationships are the strongest element keeping people playing. Blizzard seems to forget that it is because of those relationships that their game has grown to be the success it has. If they start banning people, they really should be very explicit in why they have done so: people are less likely to be angry when they are empowered by - at the least - having full information.
Kirk at Priestly Endeavors has a very thorough look at contacting Blizzard and how their corporate structure is part of the problem and ways that it can be worked with. Lamaa, I hope this can be resolved quickly, and at the very least you can be told exactly what the violation was. To the members of Aetherial Circle, I hope you get your friend back.
EDIT: As Kirk pointed out in his comment, he posted even more information.
