Apologies and a fun weekend....

First and foremost, normally I write at least 4 - 5 times a week as a habit. My apologies for being silent in that area. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, I have been devoting a lot of time towards my career progression classes in the real world. This takes a fair amount of time during my day where I used to have a lot of spare time. Lets face it, I love WoW. I love Blogging, but I have to balance that with my real job. The second part of this however, is that I spend a fair amount of time reading other peoples blogs, I think I am subscribed to almost 60 now lol. I tend to write short comments where appropriate but it is time consuming to read every one's thoughts, so that slows down my own writing. The thing is, I love all the blogs I read, everyone has good stuff to say. I don't always comment, but I love the community and I am addicted to reading other people's thoughts or commentary. So, my apologies in this area.

Now, let's see. Oh yes, I took a break from my regular guild over the past few days. Most of them are gearing up in the real world to go out overseas for military duty, so I rarely see or hear from anyone lately. What did this break include? Well, it wasn't a break from playing that's for sure. My main did manage to get his 500th HK which is laughable because I doubt as a tank he has more than a handful of killing blows. I parked him again as he is close to hitting lv 80. But then what? My guild is all quiet and I hate running Ronin style. Well there is the other 5 lv's to go, but really I don't want to deal with that yet till I get some better gear. My Feral pvp druid Damios hit 30 so his BG days are limited for a couple of levels. I do need to get some farming done for more cash flow to feed my little army though. That is the limit of my Alliance side work.

My real fun was with my Orc hunter Grimnhak over the weekend. While leveling he is a cash cow, but then its on to the BG's and open world pvp wherever I can find it. I am noticing he is having a harder time fighting out there and I do need to add in an additional pvp style pet but I had a blast fighting AB all weekend. I am currently specced Survival, not sure if its the best for pvp but I stiil love it anyhow. At anyrate, because AB was on the extra honor awards, that's where I fought. Sadly, my horde compatriots had very little in the ways of healers on the pug side. Worse, many times they didn't remember to fight at the flags and to hold ground. Too often I found myself either alone or with maybe 1 or 2 others to defend. This became an issue as in AB you need to hold the points with at least 5. Even if the enemy zergs on you, they rarely to it organized enough to put a serious push on you. Everyone is racing so their attack is rarely coordinated and you can pick them off one at a time a they approach at range. The problem arose when in many of the fights I ran, zerg mentality ruled the day. I'm not sure if they were trying to get acheivements done, but it was at many times brutal. I'd say throughout the day on Sunday, I saw a 30% win ratio. Not too impressive but it did teach me a lot about what not to do.

Some things I did have a ton of fun even when the battle was lost:
Traps galore! Gods having traps everywhere has saved my skin. Being able to move my pet as a sentry for early warning approach. Tracking both unstealth and hidden. Hunters may not put out the ultimate dps, but their additional abilities make them a unique and welcomed Swiss army knife. Flare is another beautiful thing, cuts back on those 1 shot ambushes significantly.

Things I need to get:
A new pet. I love my raptor, don't know why but I do. Spiders though are so damned useful in slowing the prey down. I hate spiders, but it looks like I'll need one. Enchants and glyphs. On Grimnhak's server (Emerald Dream) prices are stupid outrageous. I am not a part of a solid pvp guild as yet. I did manage to find a low Lev guild though to be honest I don't think pvp is their focus. Soooo...I am somewhat ham stringed their. The problem is, there aren't too many pvp guilds on that server accepting lowbie toons still learning the Art of War. It's ok, I'm bashing my way slowly up the ladder, just waiting for the right time for him. I thought about finding a strictly pvp server but I have yet to find one that is ok with a newbie pvper like myself. Much like the titanic Raid guilds out there, PvP guilds can be very much the same way in looking at the peons of the world lol.

Finally, for anyone looking for a good pvp outlook on patch 4.1, I advise you to head on over to Cynwise's Site and read this. Excellent info for those wanting to know the up and coming scope of the pvp world. Cynwise is also very very experienced on the BG strats etc, it is definitely worth looking at. Yup that was my shameless plugs for one of the Bloggers that I got a lot of respect for lol. Anyways, I hope your Easter went well everyone, for those who spent a little time doing the Noble Garden stuff, hope you got yer Bunny on! Speaking of which, good places to get the eggs and such: Alliance get on down over to Dolanaar or umm the Space Goat zone. Avoid the hell out of Human or Dwarf zones they are always ovewr camped.  For Horde, try out The Blood Elf beginning zone, not too bad there for gettin yer egg on. And with that, take care one and all, I am still out there pluggin away!

Roleplayin', RP, ARPE, rpee.....good bad an ugly

Well, my weekend break is over with and I had a bit to read today amidst my hectic crazy work life as well as my online course work. I been busy ok? So here I am to write a bit more. Today I found this post on Sheep the Diamond and found it an interesting topic to discuss. First a bit of background. I grew up on pen and pencil roleplaying games. Yes, I was the Dungeons and Dragons nerd rollin dice all over the place when other teenagers were out getting plastered or playin football etc. Over time I got into deeper story line driven games like Vampire the Masqurade or Werewolf. Tried Sci Fi games but they werent as fun. I even tried the LARP scene though that felt kinda silly to me. Don't ask me why, it just wasn't my cup of joe. Then the mighty MMO came out. Holy crap! MOAR RPers!!! I thought I would be in heaven. No not really. It never happened.

So with all of the background in place, let us progress before I digress. See all of this comes back to motivations of why we play. If we look at the big 3 (rp, pvp, pve) we notice one thing, they all make fun of eachother and hate on eachother. But why does the RPer get the worst of it? Well, I'm guessin alot of it comes from the avid gankin PvPer.
 Unfortunately this is the stereo type of many RPers. Typically the most over used cliche is the tragic hero, you know that guy...stripped of all that is good, doomed to fail though noble in heart...blah blah blah. The worst of course is the guy who's total motivation is revenge upon (insert name, clan, race). Look that was wearing thin when Luke Skywalker was in town for Star Wars. Ok, cool back 20 years ago..but way out of fashion. The next one people stereotype out is the god moding, vampire/demon hybrid...totally whacked out axe murderer of extremes. *Yawns* yeah ok you can incinerate me with a stare, so can Deathwing. Cmon, we got enough of those types already built into the story. So this leads to the next stereotype..you know the tavern crawler and or casual reveler. So damned mundane they can never rise above barmaid or tavern owner. yay, really? And for the love of god, in a world of heroes, why do we have 50 or 60 hardcore heroes in a small village (Goldshire). Now finally the ERPer, you know the one, either the creepy guy lookin for a girl, or the creepy guy pretending to be a girl lookin for a girl. One must wonder why non RPers look at RPers with such derision.

But lets say you are an RPer, ever get bored acting out a totally mundane seen that has no plot drive or reason? Let me tell you, there isnt anything more annoying than this. It lacks substance so why do it? Really?
All of this drives the non RPer to hysterical, no breather laughter. It also makes the RPer a pariah. Now believe me, I'm not knockin RP. I love a good story driven set. But I stopped RP for the most part, and here is why. Aside from all the above cartoonish stereotypes which I actually have seen on a regular basis, I really HATE the ever so many folks in the RP world that want to ALWAYS be the center of attention. Drama queens the lot of em. This unfortunately drives many people away from the RP scene because it's seen as a dirty word.

I have actually become more of an Immersion player that enjoys aspects of rp, pve,pvp. Fact is, no matter what you do, to a small degree you are deep down inside an RPer when you play an mmo. Why? well you are taking on the different roles in a fantasy world. Yeah somewhere there is a tiny pin hole of RP light in you. It's ok, you don't have to admit it, but it is there. You love tanking? Guess what, that is a role...and you play. Like ganking some poor lil night elf out questing? Yes you are to a slight degree roleplaying, as an aggressive murderous pillager. That is a role.

RP is not thee's and thou's hell most people during Shakespeare's era didn't speak that way anyhow, and they certainly didn't speak in such language during the dark and middle ages. No, there wasn't the lol nubcak3s 733t speakers or slang which we use on a daily basis, but that's just the opposite end of the spectrum. Want a good taste of fantasy world speech? Check out the way R E Howard wrote. Good RP doesn't need to have a troubled tragic hero at it's center either. Background stories need not have elements of tragedy either. At the same time, the common person thrust into uncommon situations makes for one hell of a story.

So is it all wrong to be an RPer? Well, in truth its wrong for some people who pay into mmo's for a different reason. But it's just right for those who love to weave a great tale that will be remembered down the road. Just remember in the end, have fun out there, regardless of your interest in the game, and even more so, let others have fun as well. With that, I must end this post. Enjoy your day out there in Azeroth fellow players.

Music - Feelin the drums of Battle

Music, it sets the mood, it is in fact it's own language, it gets us pumped...ON TO WAR!!!! I love hearing music when I play WoW. But I have different types of music that I listen to depending upon what mood I am in and what style of play I'm working on. Take for instance PvP, I love pumped up music with driving beats and filled with rage or evil. Why? It makes me pumped up ready to go kill pixels. Some of my favorites for pvp are Rob Zombie (especially Devil's Rejects), Nickelback, Metallica from the 80s and early 90's, AC/DC and ManO'War. Some of it is because of Lyrics, some of it's because of driving sound.
When Raiding, no music. Seriously, I have to concentrate on my job as a tank or healer, music gets in the way of communication when I'm trying to stay alive and hit the rotations just right. Standard 5 mans though, I love to listen to classic rock from the 60s-early 70's and some good old fashioned Johnny Cash. I do the same for when I'm farming by the way though I add in alot of Dick Dale's guitar work, keeps me awake while doing tedious work. . RP, I haven't done much RP in a hot minute but when I do, I really enjoy Eastern European folk music, Middle Eastern Folk music and select instrumentals. Questing really depends upon where I'm at. See, the music score to Northrend was so cool, that when I am questing there, I keep it on the WoW loop. Other places, depends upon the mood that strikes me.

So, what music do you listen to while playing WoW and are there times when mood changes the types of music you enjoy while playing? Drop a line, let me hear what ya got to say! Happy hunting out there!

The evolution of female MMO players

I read a post today from Jinxed Thoughts that sort of piqued my interest and got to making me think even further. You see, the virtual worlds of MMOs have become their own culture which has evolved over the last 15 plus years. The interaction and involvement of female players has also evolved. And that is what I decided to talk about today.

So, 25 years ago I was playing AD&D on tabletop. It was me and the guys, the nerd squad...typical Saturday night. Then BOOM! Brian brings a friend into try the game...a FEMALE friend and she was cute to boot! Us nerd guys had a chance in the world with girls who actually at least would smile at us. So began my experiences with women and gaming. Yes I'm getting to my point here in a sec, but it's my wall of text so please bear with me.

Years go by and low and behold I'm in the Age of MMO's. In the beginning we knew there weren't very many if at all female players. There wasn't a way to prove it since vent wasn't really up at that time. Yet, there were plenty of female avatars running around. Thus began the era of geeks who play female toons...I blame Tomb Raider for that lol. This brings upon other topics of toon genderbending of which yes I do occasionally play one. But back to the point at hand. I might have been able to see 1 in 100 RL female video gamers who played mmos. Most were husband and wife teams with just the spattering of female single players.

Time passes, I don't think about it but then I run across some podcasts dealing with RL gamers that are female with a wide range of ages. It brings up a ton more of social issues within the community when this is revealed as a truth (back in 02-03) from the casual gamers world, much like a woman being brought into a monastery. Most young boyus who were into MMO's acted like young boys and pretty rude over all. Older guys were trying to actually find relationships from the virtual space dreaming of Lara Croft in their arms. The female gamers weren't having an easy time integrating in a world dominated by hormone driven boys. Female toons had the ability to look like Maxim models and even the strongest armors were Ahem...well not there, mostly it was skin and a lot of it (this still happens lots lol). So, while guys were begging for real females to play, I have a theory that by their own ideas and or attitudes, they kept females from playing, or only accepted those females who either A: used flirty sex, or B: were one of the guys.

In the early 2000's Nick Yee created the Daedalus Project which attempted to look at the social and psychological aspects of the MMO gaming world. Allot of interesting topics started to rise when the issue of gender came up. One such study started to show an interesting trend of how females were introduced into the gaming world. One of the biggest points of that was that at that time, female MMO gamers tended to be on average older than thier male counterparts and were far more likely to be romantically involved with the male gamer PRIOR to coming into the MMO world. Checking around the net, I find that women who play WoW often start with romantic involvement prior to participation. The above site by the way is also a statement on the social issues at hand. Warcraft Chicks is by it's own nature a use of male orientated terminology.  This by the way, was the case for me when my wife decided to join into WoW. She knew I wouldn't stop playing so she gave it a shot and eventually really enjoyed it. Mind you the findings were from respondents and therefor a sampling with probably some bias or disparity involved. Overall females participating were about 16.5 % of the population base as of 2003.

This gets to my main point, female interaction has increased since then. Socially MMO's have crawled out from the nerd cave and into mainstream. Now there are different motivations for women  who play. For some, the competition of play or achievements. For others, the social aspect. For others, to spend time with family. As women have begun to populate more and more into the gaming world, we notice also different personalities arise. Back in 2009, Sydera wrote this post on female architypes that can be observed in the MMO community and not always in a pretty way. Now we begin to see the different identities arising within the community. But by and large, these particular stereotypes tended to arise more so in the Raiding Guilds than on the casual/social side. I contend here that when competition for pixelated rewards which have no REAL intrinsic value, specific personalities arise through the need of competing. They are often perceived as being bitches, divas etc. I'm wondering if that's just the social complexity for competitive play, of which I do believe Raiding is.

Now much of what I have said above is condensed and somewhat simplified but it is bringing to light a social aspect of this game that is sort of...not mentioned. My hats off to the female gamers of the world. Special thanks to my wife who has been my steadfast partner in WoW and a couple other MMOs as well. Even when no one else is on in or guild, we always got each other.

So, these were the thoughts which went on in my mind and are up for full discussion for any who care to. I know that there are a good many female bloggers out there as well as males. What will be interesting is to see the response rate if any on the subject. With that, enjoy your day and happy hunting!