kindness
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Turbine's customer support department spreads holiday cheer
Working customer support for an MMO means that even the best times of your job are still spent dealing with upset players. Sure, the player might recognize that whatever went wrong was just an accident or a bug, but you've still got player issues to manage. It's the sort of work that can make you bitter or cynical, but not so with the customer support team at Turbine Entertainment, which decided to reach out to fans in a slightly happier fashion with holiday cards. Seriously. Real ones. Players on the Lord of the Rings Online forums have reported receiving physical holiday cards from the game's customer service department with hand-written messages and gift cards for 500 Turbine points inside. The community team has stated that this is exactly what it seems to be: a random gesture of kindness and appreciation for the game's playerbase. That message also reminded players to keep their mailing addresses up to date, as this is unlikely to be the only such event. [Thanks to Fredelas for the tip!]
The Summoner's Guidebook: Staying positive in League of Legends
This is the last issue of the Summoner's Guidebook for the time being. I hate to leave, but unfortunately things are out of everyone's hands. So before I go, I will give you my final lesson: the way to be the best League of Legends players you can be. I played my first game of Hexakill last week, and it was terrible. I was jungle Shyvana, and we had a duo top plus otherwise standard lanes. All of my lanes lost. Our Ryze went 0 and 6 against the enemy Syndra. The enemy Riven had something like 11 kills in the midgame with over 26 by the end. I was the only one not behind; our bottom lane was losing, but not terribly. We won that game. Some of that victory comes from the enemy screwing up. I will fully admit that if the enemy had played properly in the midgame, we would have lost. However, even with the enemy's mistakes, we were tens of thousands of gold and several towers behind. How is a comeback like that even possible? Here's how: Stay positive and always look for the silver lining.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Pooling your efforts to win LoL games
Winning in League of Legends isn't only about skill. Sometimes you completely rock your lane and go 7/0 in laning phase yet manage to lose the game. Blaming your team is totally reasonable there, but the truth is probably closer to home than you think. A team that is working together will prevail regardless of the strength of its individual members and in most cases regardless of its strategic decisions. I've had games where we had one losing lane and no other big lane advantages (I stole a blue buff once, and both junglers took some Flashes but didn't get any big wins), then went on to utterly destroy the enemy because we pulled together as a team despite having a 5/0 Riven on the enemy team. I've also had games where we had two people with over 5 kills in laning phase and still managed to lose.
The Daily Grind: Would you want an MMO for a gift?
We're into the part of the year when everyone's thinking about giving gifts. But for all that I like receiving games as gifts, I'm not all that happy at the thought of getting an MMO for a gift. It's kind of like someone buying you a pet -- sure, it's a nice gesture, but it's also going to ask for a lot of your time and effort in the future. This isn't something you pick up and leave alone for an extended period of time. On the other hand, sometimes MMOs can make wonderful gifts. I bought a friend a copy of City of Heroes in years past to help introduce him to one of my favorite games. Several of my friends wound up in World of Warcraft because I originally volunteered to purchase the game. So what do you think? Would you like to get an MMO for a gift this holiday season? Or do you think MMOs are really something you should buy for yourself? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Knowledge, newbies, and why kindness pays off
I played WoW on dial-up for a while, and during that time, it was close to impossible for me to raid anything but add-light 10-man content. So I did the only thing that seemed doable: leveled alts. A lot of them. While previously I had vowed to only level my rogue (my original main) to max level in any given expansion, I was suddenly the proud owner of six level 80 characters. Even after I got back on actual broadband internet, Cataclysm's introduction of new races (especially Races That Are Worgen) gave me some more incentive to bring my number of max-level characters up to, well, its maximum level. So I finally listened to Matt Rossi and made a worgen warrior. He's awesome. And he tanks, a first for me. I've been leveling him almost exclusively through the dungeon finder, taking advantage of the instant queues for a dog what wears plate armor. I'm still pretty new to tanking, but between new talent trees, heirlooms, and questing/dungeon gear with better stat balance, most low-level instances are a breeze. So I move fast. Sometimes a little faster than other people. The same kinds of people who attack from the front as a melee class or hit "need" on spirit weapons as a mage. And I would make snide remarks to those kinds of people. Then I realized something. I was being kind of a jackass.
Storyboard: To flow like water
After having heard about a small explosion of RP drama earlier this week (not within my immediate sphere, but relayed to me anyway), I was initially going to make this week's post all about that most hated of all interactions. Then I found myself thinking about it a bit more, and I realized that really, most RP drama has an easily identifiable source that's easy to change if you actually want the change. And the solution is so simple it's almost insulting. Be flexible. Seriously, it's that simple. It's so fundamental that I put it into the very first column I wrote for this franchise, which should tell you something. But even though -- or maybe because -- it's so obvious, it's also stunningly easy to overlook our own inflexibilities. It's one of those things that we all know on a conscious level and ignore in practice, and if that's not rant-worthy, boy, I don't know what is.
The Daily Grind: Do you mend fences or burn bridges?
It happens no matter what you do: you get into a bad group of players, or you and your guild leader (or shell leader, or supergroup leader, or whatever) have a falling-out, or you just tagged something that another person needs. Whatever the reasons, feelings can flare when playing an MMO, and we tend to invest a lot of ourselves in our virtual avatars. Some people, when confronted with rising tempers, try to get everyone to calm down and even things out. It's not that big of a deal, after all -- it's just a video game, and it's better to make friends than enemies. On the other hand, some people would rather take the chance to hold the moral high ground and lash out where it's appropriate. After all, if you don't tell people what they do wrong, they'll never learn -- and it's just a video game, how could they be so upset when you give them what they have coming? So which do you generally try to be? When everyone gets touchy, do you try and be the person calming people down, or the one stirring them up? Do you try to convince people to stick with a bad group, or do you let the dead weight know what they're doing wrong and then get the heck out of Dodge?
The Daily Grind: Virtual worlds, real gifts
You can't really wrap up, say, a +1 sword in Dungeons and Dragons Online. But that doesn't mean it makes a bad gift. After all, for some of your friends it's cheaper to ship and more relevant to your friendship than a fruitcake. You can't always trade the important things in MMOs, but even as the games celebrate the holidays by giving us several cosmetic items, it's possible for the players to find a more personal and intimate way to share in the holiday spirit. Today, we ask you if you've given a gift to a friend in a game, whether they're an in-game buddy or a real-life chum. If so, what did you give them? Was it something that you farmed up or crafted just for them, a bit of equipment you had lying around that they always wanted, or something sentimental? If you havven't, is it something you would consider doing? Today's the right time of year for sharing these stories, so even if you've only been a giftee rather than a gifter, we'd like to hear about it. (And for safety's sake, please, don't try to wrap a +1 sword. Those things are sharp.)
Hi, my name is mandy*
Do you ever stop to think about the other players in WoW? The game attracts a wide range of folks, but odds are good many of them are remarkably similar to you in many ways. Sometimes it's hard to remember that there is a living being behind those pixels. Someone who is excited by triumphs and aggravated by mistakes. Oddly enough, we don't always treat them as real people.Take for instance one of the PUGs I did this evening. Within 10 minutes of joining the group, the Hunter typed a vulgar joke in party chat. At this point I saw four options four options for dealing with it:
Forum post of the day: Random acts of kindness
Of course there's a lot of bad blood between Horde and Alliance, but every once in a while we work together. About half of the times I've done the Ring of Blood quest line in Nagrand I've seen Horde and Alliance fighting side-by-side. There are some other quests that seem to promote this behavior like "Even Gronn have Standards" and "The Skettis Offensive." Some things just bring out our cooperative souls. Sometimes we just find ourselves compelled to do nice things. Sukalin of EU-Anarchronos told a tale of a complete stranger coming to his rescue:Just a few minutes ago, I was running down through Stranglethorn Vale on my 20 Warlock, so I could get to Booty Bay and eventually The Barrens to do my Succubus quest. I kept getting attacked by beasts and dying, though. About a quarter of the way down I was attacked by a tiger and was reduced to about 5% health when a Troll Shaman called Ayisah shocked the tiger and saved me! I was grateful, of course, and expressed my gratitude in the form of emotes - but in addition to that she helped me travel down the rest of the zone by following close behind me on my way to Booty Bay.
Breakfast Topic: Christmas WoW stories
When we come back from vacation, it's nice to ask each other how their holidays were, and hear all the interesting stories about what made the holidays so special. For those of you who played WoW on Christmas day, I wonder if you had any experiences which made that day special, somehow different from other days. Did you do out of your way to be especially kind, or encounter other players doing so, possibly even to you? Did you see lots of people saying "Merry Christmas!" in the various chat channels of the game? Did you do anything special with your friends in game?
The spirit of giving, even in WoW
This holiday season means many different things to many different people, but whoever you are, and whatever background you come from, it's pretty hard to argue against anything that asks people to be a little more kind and generous with one another -- even if just for a little while. If you happen to be playing World of Warcraft today this is especially important. There might be a little voice inside your head saying, "Oh, I'm such a loser, playing a video game on a holiday," or similar such nonsense. You're not playing games today to avoid your loved ones, after all! More likely, you have special circumstances which prevent you from being with them -- so banish the thought that says you shouldn't hang out with people online in addition to in real life! Today is a wonderful opportunity to put down this and all other kinds of negative attitudes and make a special effort to be good to others, no matter where you meet them. The key to celebrating the holidays wherever you are is to exercise the kindness and generosity of the season with whomever crosses your path, whether it be the path outside your house, or the path around Alterac Valley. Just today, I was fighting in AV, making my way to the Frostwolf Relief Hut with several other folks I'd never seen before in my life. After the battle was finished (healthy competition in PvP isn't unkind at all -- but gloating about it would be), a mage standing in our group proceeded to cast his Ritual of Refreshment spell with a cheerful "Merry Xmas!" even though there were just 4 or 5 of us there! As we partook gratefully of his conjured manna, it occurred to me how people are always people, whether online or off, and such spontaneous kindness and generosity can uplift people's hearts in any situation.
