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You know what shamans need - flying stealthing ghost wolf form

…bah bloody flying guildies taunting my little alts

T_T

Where have I been?

I just (re)discovered Gnomechewer … where the hell I been?… anyways lets link at least one vid:

BACK IN YOUR HEAD

hmmm well maybe just two…

Standing in the way of Control

(Ahh I bet I always link that one because its so horde o_O are all hordies as crazy patriotic as me? I don’t really mean to be… maybe it’s because Thrall is an orc too.)

…

Okay it will have to be three, because the next one is just ..cool.

It’s Gnomechewers answer to the horde band lvl70 Elite Tauren Chieftan: The Lower City Gypsies. But theres more - if you watch the whole thing theres cookies and gnomes and taurens … and if you get right to the end theres a real laugh (I never realised how short 40% of the alliance were heh… actually I keep thinking now *gee BRK really needs to trade the cat for a bird* :p)

Through the Roof ‘n’ Underground

…how does gnomechewer make music that would usually send me running awesome? No really the bloodsail vid for example…

 

There’s an offical page??!!??

Bah everytime it happened to me it was a youtube site - when did he get an offical page? Have I been flying secondclass? O_O

hum-bug
hummm
booger
its stuck in my head again
…
/sigh
I did it to myself too
/double sigh

The Ideal Elf

Title: The ideal elf: identity exploration in World of Warcraft.
Source: CyberPsychology & Behavior 2007 Aug;10(4):530-5.
Authors: Katherine Bessiere, A. Fleming Seay, Sara Kiesler.
It’s unfortunately not readable off the web so you will have to get your hands on the actual journal to read it.

So the article is basically about a study they did of 68 people - comparing a person’s self image to their ideal image to what they thought of their wow toon image. You can read the actual article summary over HERE.

Sooo basically in greenhunter language (a handle I use cause it’s my web address ^_^ & apologies to peeps who get confused because I keep changing the blog title) what they did was decide who had low self esteem in the group (depression symptoms) and then they are looking comparatively at things like:

• Do people who play virtual games have bad self image? (lol we all saw that one coming)
• Are toons (avatars) similar to the people who play them?
• Do people aim for the ideal-self more in toon creation if they suffer from low self esteem?
• Do people view their toons as more ideal then their actual selves?

The last three points I found interesting, especially with the results of the study.

• Turns out it doesn’t matter who you are you will equally strive to create an ‘ideal-self’ imaged toon… and then you will rate your little toon as being similar to your ideal self in some way - they couldn’t prove that a person of low self esteem was more likely to do this than any other Joe.
• People with low self esteem secretly think their toon is cooler than they are.
• Peoples who were not depressed and lacking in esteem rated their characters as pretty similar to themselves.

Alas they admit that the body of peeps they were surveying was predominantly male undergraduate students :p

Well colour me rather unsurprised, I mean really character creation is where we play god … why would we be trying to create something we considered crappy? I mean even if we designed something purposefully bad, worse race to class and a face only a mother could love and then went against all the play rules (naked warrior, melee hunter) – well heck we were that mother. We would all be like “don’t laugh at my dual-dagger wielding warrior cow that hangs out in the forsaken lands and gets stuck on doorways, because HE my friends is a work of ART.” Incidentally I am actually referring to one of the Pally’s myriad of alts here … he really does get stuck on forsaken doorways. And yup I did indeed laugh at him every given opportunity.

The awesome thing about academic research is this article and the associated research probably had funding and took months to complete.

They want to do a study on whether toons become more ideal in a players eye over time & on the class roles people pick and the implications behind the group roles in regards to player psychology but I am pretty sure they have missed the boat on that second one and it has been done.

Anyways I am left with one question: Is my toon my ideal self?

• She’s an orc - I don’t think i would really want to be an orc … bad dental plans
• I suppose her six pack (stomach muscles of a bodybuilder) is enviable
• She has no money, no house
• …but her Dragon absolutely beats my Subaru
• Her family (guild) is as crazy as my own … but i guess my family doesn’t call me Don Hat
• Frankly farming is kinda like doing the dishes … we pull about equal there
• Personality wise we be about the same - we could both use some sass and a bit more bitch
• Her cat is bigger than mine
• ….but they both cause about the same amount of destruction and trouble

Of course half my toons are blokes … where do they fall in this ideal (ahh I be too shallow and not focused enough on personality … probably because I tend to play what I am with a little RP background and game jokes.)

I am a reality-avoidant deviant

 

The Warlock pointed out the MMO Anonymous site to me the other night and many people have been discussing the moving confessions of a former hardcore raider. The Warlock friend of mine has in fact returned to Australia from Korea and is suffering from a lack of functioning WoW due to having to operate with a laptop and 500 mbs only of RAM. The horror. She too has voiced aloud the ever present wow-gamer question “am I an addict”.

Heh - you know you dig around on the web with keywords like warcraft, therapy & confessions and you get some really interesting sites.  Plenty of interesting ‘dealing with addiction’ and `psychology of the MMO’ websites.

Actually there really are heaps of dealing-with-the-addiction links; truly I wonder is wow addictive or is it just played by addicts  I mean take a look at me. I am a reality-avoidant deviant.

No really.

Frankly before ‘the WoW factor’ entered my life, I enjoyed various entertaining forms of reality escapism: reading, PC gaming, internet surfing, entertainment media, roleplay games (oh yeah - warhammer and D&D, paranoia, stupor heroes and white wolf gaming, you name it), I was already into MOOs and MUDs.   I probably indulge my inner child a little too much and yes I have Pokémon games and anime DVDs on my bookshelf amongst the mess of Sci-Fi and Fantasy books, some books are even a heathen mix of the two genres. (Aye Pike I too have read the whole Redwall series and believe that hares are the coolest species (though badgers were high on the list.) Bre & Fimlys - I too don’t care that everything David Eddings writes is a repeat the same story with amusing added details. That’s a part of the pattern of the fantasy tale he is telling *mad cackle* - it’s awesome, accept its awesomeness.)

I actually deal pretty darn well with real life. Have a decent personality (heh if I do say so myself), decent health, couple of handfuls of friends, least one handful of rather close friends, decent full-time job, doing a second degree, insane family (but I hear all families are insane from the inside lol), pets, personal projects and so on – got all that and can’t complain (cept when I do.)

 

Now when it comes to WoW:

• I have played for 3 or so years.
• I currently log in hmmm probably once a day or every second day on average (if we don’t count my occasional week-month long disappearances from the wow scene.)
• I have a level 70 and dozens of alts
• What to most people is TV time … is my WoW time (my sister once had hysterics when she stayed with me at this one residence that had net but no TV reception… lol she is an average TV junkie and couldn’t understand why you would live somewhere where you couldn’t get it – me, well I just watch movies, videos and downloaded TV series really.)

 

Okay so according to some sites that’s probably enough to classify me as hardcore or addicted despite the fact I feel like a casual gamer.

So why do I find WoW so attractive? Why indeed?

• Well probably because it’s darn entertaining. Real life is great, but I am just another Joe-Blow (*Australian for average person*) & I dunno about you but I find RL can hit a bit of a farming grind some months outside of social events and annual holiday leave. The snake in the back garden can cause small excitement in everyday routine … but so can dealing with a dragon out in SMV. Heh and I can log into see the dragon – kinda like a ‘small excitement on my terms & time’ thing (similar to downloaded TV) I am such a spoiled brat.
• WoW has been genuinely a game that doesn’t end. With all the patches and Blizzards habit of tweaking classes in ways that practically make them new classes it’s not a game I am getting bored of. (Probably helps that I can’t really just plug in cheat codes to give me a super racing car that shoots bullets and clear zones on easymode.) If Blizzard had made a crappy game I would have moved onto some other game.
• I just like MMOs. Being social and having a love of web based activities.

 

Back to the ‘addictive’ or ‘addict’ issue.

I believe that you have to be an ‘addict personality’ to get addicted. Particularly in the case of something that is mostly psychologically rewarding like wow. I have watched a few people in my life fall haphazardly from one addiction to another; they do something like start with something trivial like  cigarettes or gambling or drinking (which gives them something they need psychologically) and eventually get into something more serious like drugs (yes smoking pot counts o_O), which they may exchange for sex (okay its usually some unhealthy relationship where they have been nagged into dropping a vice to continue), something which may be dropped for serious booze or the like upon breakup – eventually they seek help and fall into another addictive pattern of behaviour either therapy prescribed or they find religion. If they lose the religion or stop the therapy then it will be back to one of the past addictions. That’s a nasty generalization on the behaviour of absolute addicts as I know them.

Being an extreme addict seems to be a symptom of other underlying issues. Being an addict seems to have a fair bit to do with how a person interacts with the world around them – it carries over into whatever the ‘cure’ is. Ever been near an AA meeting? To an outsider it can be scary. You can feel the Borg vibes reaching out to you *join us - be one with us - you should come to AA as well because you COULD be an alcoholic even though we know you don’t actually drink, there is a family precedent two uncles back*, O_O – okay that’s an uber extreme example … but it is the summary of a real conversation I had once with an AA member while doing some volunteer work. Now let’s be clear – I am not saying that addictions are not real or bonafide issues, just that it is less about the actual thing of addiction and more about the addict behaviour. Of course enabling addictions (like giving people free drugs to swill or allowing people to plug their credit cards into the pokies) is rather socially irresponsible … happily I am not the government so it’s not my job ta be responsible and avoid enabling people :p *Heh come my friends I have this free wow account card – bwahahahahah – join us - play with me!*

 

Okay so personally I find wow slightly addictive … but I know I have a borderline addict personality (I mean really – what other excuse can I have for having once made an entire spreadsheet of optimal pokémon breeding for stats and attacks for each pokémon species based on type and group role… that’s hardcore for a twelve year old fourteen year old… ah okay okay it was only a couple of years ago (bah)… maybe even insane.) If you took wow off me I would simply transfer my addict behaviour into another outlet, probably not a RL socially esteemed outlet like being a workaholic or making money either – I would probably, I dunno, build a formula one race car out of matchsticks or glue buttons to my work vehicle.

 

Anyway as a habitual addict I have the usual guidelines to follow when interacting with wow

• Don’t let it affect work
• Don’t let it impact negatively on family
• Don’t turn down real life socialisation for the habit/hobby
• Don’t let it affect your health
• Don’t let it control your emotional well being
• Don’t take it too seriously
• Always have a couple of other addictions around to tap into (balance your hobbies)

 

But really the fact that MMO’s have actually become so common that they have hit the list of addictions researchers write about is awe inspiring … I mean does anyone remember the old text-based muds? (they are still out there) … hmm flashback: cast magic mushroom-cast magic mushroom-cast magic mushroom. I skipped some final University exams to play those (along with a group of friends) and we & the people like us never made headlines like the students who skipped study for drugs and alcohol problems did … but now I feel like my habit/hobby/addiction/entertainment is pop-culture baby … it is boggling and bizarre.

 Anyways one good site for interest reading is the following: The DAEDALUS Project: the Psychology of MMORPGS

& I feel fine ^_^

~ It’s the end of the world as we know it,

its the end of the world as weeee knooow it ~

 

So another blog Azeroth topic has spread and spread around the blogger-sphere (even onto the twisting nether podcast) – something like: what would you do if you only had 5 hours of wow left till  the end of the wow world. Been some awesome posts out there – everything from “I’ll save the world… of warcraft” to interesting character close enactments to “bah I would be in foul mood if you take my game as I haven’t finished playing it stop talking doooooom, I smack you with keyboard” posts.

 

100% honest: I would probably miss it o_O I miss the Darkmoon Fair all the time.

I would attempt log in and I would not succeed and I would be all “hey what? … awwwww” *I think I need a slash hug.* If by chance I didn’t miss it I would turn into a screenshot & fraphs junkie hitting every zone, battleground and instance I could in a five hour time span (hopefully with friends) and then I would spend a RL week making a dozen bad but enthusiastic music videos … ^_^.  The WoW will go on – cackle.

 

Actually I will link one post: my favourite take on the situation would have to be Melted Faces (es… Ssss… Face’s…. facese … ssssss? – ouch *think I just bit my tongue*) – I did indeed laugh my butt off reading it. Especially the bit about taming an EX-representative pet and watching it die over and over.

 

I feel inspired … I think we need to go write a pet therapy post … cackle.

Fieldtrip: The Deadmire Serpent

Zangarmarsh 79, 33

Okay this guy is interesting because he has a reputation as the 666 Serpent - christian types who are looking for evil in warcraft often bring him up. I can never tell when they are being ‘tongue-in-cheek’ about it … and err when they are completely serious.

In any case he’s an interesting and pretty sight.

 

So let’s talk about the LFG system, PUGing and SeX BaBy!

(well okay not about sex I just want attention :P)

Lately my little group… hmmm

[Pause for clarification: currently I am in a very little guild indeed… in fact we are more like a bank and 4 lvl 70 friends at the moment. With a legion of alts that needed to be kept somewhere we made this guild when the guild bank space was introduced to the game. Now the reason my main is sitting in it at the moment is a bit of a tale to tell: but basically the last guild I was in (and I believe I was with it for about a year) disbanded in a messy drawn-out emo-fit come the burning crusade.

I just logged in one day (and I admit I was a rather casual RP sort even back then prone to the occasional month long disappearance and reappearance) and they were all just gone, disbanded … either I was spelling his name wrong or the guild leader didn’t even exist anymore. And to be honest I breathed a huge sigh of relief (in fact I did a bit of a /dance out next to the Thrallmar mailbox – which in retrospection is a little childish but may cue readers into how depressing guild atmosphere had gotten.)

It was a case of the usual guild drama: They were a great bunch of guys really, but the guild leader wanted a popular high end raiding guild that could be very picky about how people applied and demand regular forum postings and have other strict rules etc … but the guild itself just didn’t have the pull value to be so strict. I mean I was conscripted at level 15 and I had to fill out a huge online application form and write an RP story, then I found out the guild only had around 10 people in it. Slowly one by one people would quit because there wasn’t any end game content being completed and the RP was once a week – the guild leader would hissy fit each time this happened in /guild.

It got so if you logged in you would have to listen to an hr of typed /whisper or /guild conversation on how no one helped, things were going downhill, how the guild website cost money and there needed to be more recruitment, how we weren’t allowed to speak to any blood elves come the expansion because RP wise they would ruin the horde and how his real life was getting him down. Every now and then he would threaten to guild disband and all the guildies would have to tell him no-no we really like our guild we are happy with the way things are etc etc placating talk and the like (thank god this was before in-game chat & they didn’t have vent.)

Basically it made wow depressing … errm I only play wow cause I think it is fun. Why play if every time I log in I get turned into an agony aunt because I am too ‘nice’ and wishy-washy to tell my guild leader to shut up and grow up? At this point in time I was thinking about… I dunno playing some console games or something instead – cheaper and well… fun, entertaining what wow used to be for me.

Instead I was set free.

Freeeeeeeeee.

Cough… okay on top of /dance I may have run in a circle for two minutes /saying Freeeeeeeee! Like a nutter.

End of the guild story is I was left with a mild guild phobia and just sort of rolled an alt and leveled with some friends to 70 for a while, declining all guild invites (including interesting “let’s start Kara groups”.) End of my sidetrack rant.]

So lately my little group has been having a lot of fun doing instances. We can all hang out as 70 together and that is rather novel (because it has for the last 6 months or so been lowbie alt groups, or cases of playing big daddy (*mommy even) to said friends. Now we have a nice four man set up with the positions of tank, healer and CC already covered. But the new guys in my group are not geared for heroics yet (I have a choice between doing heroics in my PVP gear or my rather blue +hit instance gear – I am rather ahead of the other guys because I have been 70 for longer and enjoy BG pvp at 70 in my spare time if nothing else), so basically we are almost a complete group who wants to run instances on normal.

But we still have a hard time finding even 1 extra dps. The looking for group system is usually bare, I try to drum up some action over LFG chat channel and often come up with zap. And I have to wonder aloud in my blog space, what’s going on?

• Are we that far behind the wow community, Is this because everyone is raiding?
• Do people with proper guilds only do weekend speed runs of heroics with pre-organised groups?
• Is everyone ‘taking a break’ before the release of WotLicky?
• Are the lower level guys all skipping instances in favour of power leveling and then doing arena PVP?
  I know one little mage buddy I met in the Arathi Highlands (we shot an invading gnome mage together when he was lvl 58 and I was a 70 passing through the area) who did this; he basically only did instances that would give him rep for the blue starter PVP set.
• Is it simply that no one really uses LFG on my server?

Of course - there are other factors in play here; with more oceanic servers available for ‘Australians’ and other sorts that keep my time (Korean etc) drumming up a group in the ‘late’ hours of a US server is more difficult. And when we do get a toon, well usually it is someone who monitored LFG and then wants to log in an alt - so more people have multiple 70’s in the outlands. Then there are the dailies, when I wanted my epic fly mount all I did myself was dailies to rake in the cash.

These days I find that joining a ‘proper’ guild is becoming a tempting option - due to the promise of a body of pixilated bodies (say that 10 times fast :p) to market runs at so that I can get some regular PVE content. Interesting the oncoming expansion really does seem to have sparked new guild formations out in Shatt City.

Hmmm Shatt City – I should just get on /Trade next time and offer to do a naked female orc dance for anyone willing to come run with us :p kinda like “pimp your PUG”. One side-serve of RP cyber for the hire of your … great balls of fire? (cough… snort … bwahahhahahaaa)

10 WoW Flashbacks wooo~wooo~ooo

Hmmm this is a Blog Azeroth topic I rather liked so I am rolling with it: 10 memorable wow moments (there have been some really good posts put out for this topic.)

1st character baby Night Elf Hunter PVE server – friends account:

1/ Falling off a NE tree building and dying and thinking *omg an RP game that doesn’t baby-sit you with railings shock* … then the whole ghost world experience – that was quite awesome the first time round.

2/ Falling off the edge of the world as I knew it and dying – that was the first I realised the NE island was actually a giant tree (despite all the quest lore I had been reading.)

3/ I remember being fascinated by the fact that when you ran backwards you ran slower, then I went for a swim and drowned from fatigue (aye after I fell off the tree.) In awe I wandered around for a week in RL exclaiming over how realistic an RP game wow was and how it compared to the ‘intelligent’ mobs in half life that ducked behind vending machines when you tried to shoot them. Many peers were vaguely disgusted with me (they are all wow-aholics now so I had last laugh.)

4/ Discovering pet pathing issues for the first time by jumping down a hill as a shortcut and then seeing my pet running towards me with 10+ mobs behind him @_@. Needless to say I turned tail and ran away. You can no doubt visualize that well: night elf hunter screaming and panicking, being chased by pet cat (didn’t even know how to stay him), being chased by a pack of furbolg … ahhh youth.

…heh so many strong memories from this first account had to do with dying

2nd character baby Tauren Druid PVP server - my own account:

5/ My first trade – which occurred after being saved by a level 60 Tauren warrior when the horde town ‘the crossroads’ was being massacred by an alliance rogue. All the little hordies surrounded him (actually there were a lot of us) and /danced and /cheered (we had been camped for more than an hour by the alliance toon.) I spent all my money (a whole 40 silver) to buy him some morning glory dew from the innkeeper. And I decided right there that I would grow up to be a defender of the horde :p

6/ Hiding in a kodo corpse with friends to avoid world-side PVP ganking from an alliance night elf – I felt like Han Solo

3rd character baby Troll Shammy PVP Server

7/ The shammy quest lines – long, complicated but full of lore. Most interesting was that to get ghost wolf they made me run all over the two continents of Azeroth.

8/ Discovering PVP as an enhance shammy with a two-handed axe… it may have only been WSG but it was awesome!

9/ Watching a group ‘deliver’ a live dragon to Thrall for Valentines Day. There was a hunter at the lead of this huge group kiting him. (Hmmm hunters huzzah!)

4th character (rerolled) baby Orc Hunter PVP server

10/ Saving my Wailing Cavern pug group with a pet. It was a really laggy and buggy run and we kept getting attacked with nasty ranged magic from mobs we couldn’t see and couldn’t seem to ditch. I set the pet to defensive and he shot off and started biting the floor – the healer and I kept him healthy and the whole party /cheered as the invisible enemy bit the dust. Then whenever it happened again the party would gleefully yell “send in the wolf!”. It was nice because the wow PUG community was very anti-hunter at this point in time (aye even at WC level.)

hee hee…

Another dwarf comic has a very amusing Fire festival panel – added to links – mission *peel cat off my keyboard* successful.

The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf