play-styles
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My change from hardcore through casual
The time between expansions is a great opportunity to change your play style. You can become more proficient with PvP, learn to not stand in fire, or pick up a new class. It can be hard to find guilds to take you in as an undergeared, fresh class player, but things are also a lot more forgiving. You'll be under geared but with everyone else around you rocking some of the best gear in the game, you don't really have to worry about your gear being too huge of an issue. For me, this is also a great time to switch between overall play styles. Back in Burning Crusade I was a hardcore raider. 25 hours a week of raiding, our guild made it into the top 150 in the world, and I'd tank like an army drill sergeant. When Wrath came around I floundered and had enough, I went down to being "mid core" -- the gray area between casual and hardcore. I'd raid with dedicated groups, but I wouldn't do more than 10 hours a week.
The Soapbox: Everybody wins
I make no bones about the fact that despite working in this industry for three years, I know there are parts about MMOs and the culture around them that I just do not get. For example, I still have no idea what possesses someone to think that "toon" is a good term for characters. But on a slightly more serious note, I have no idea what makes people cheer for a game to fail. You see it everywhere. World of Warcraft subscription numbers drop; people cheer. Something bad happens to EVE Online's community; people cheer. A game goes free-to-play; people announce the game's impending demise and begin cheering prematurely. A game closes down; people cheer. I don't get this. All right, I get it on the most basic level, inasmuch as this is a game you don't like and you're willing to publicly crow about your schadenfreude. The thing is that this is never a good thing. Cheering for a game you dislike to do badly does not result in anything good.
The Soapbox: Casual is as casual does
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. It's time to put an overused MMO term to bed, and by "put to bed," I of course mean that it should be executed with great prejudice. Actually, there are lots of terms that I'd like to see retired permanently. "Toon" can go, for instance, as can "mob" for single enemies. And people have really worn out "nerf" beyond belief. But those are all issues of personal preference. No, the term I'm talking about is "casual." As in "casual player," a creature as rare and mythical as the Loch Ness monster. Also like the Loch Ness monster, it doesn't actually exist. In the case of the latter, it exists only through a handful of doctored photos and a lot of people who really want to see a pleisiosaur in Scotland; in the case of the former, it's a strawman concept that no longer has any purpose in our collective lexicon.
Breakfast Topic: Alts for odd reasons
While many of us have alts to try out new styles of gameplay, or to make accessing the Auction House easier, many players create new characters with specific ideas in mind. A friend of mine recently created a pink haired gnome simply because he wanted one the moment he saw one -- instead of levelling up, he just runs around with her and enjoys whatever there is to enjoy about gnomes.After giving one of my new characters a name inspired by a series of books, I decided to create some alts with more "book-inspired" names to give her some company, but I'm sure there are far crazier reasons for making particular alts. What's your story?
Breakfast Topic: Gaming the game
It's a late breakfast today, and the topic is play styles. What do you do when normal WoW playing becomes too easy for you? You start creating meta-games, challenges within the game that add new levels of achievement and complication to the equation. Whether you've roped in some friends to see who's the first to 60 on a new server, or you're trying to beat your own high scores in terms of number of pulls or HKs, there are times when we all set arbitrary targets for ourselves ingame.Especially if you've already taken one or two characters to 60, the game content becomes less of an interesting distraction and more a means to an end. You know all the best grinding spots, areas with decent drop rates and fast-spawning mobs that are especially susceptible to your class skills. You're gaming the game -- plotting the most efficient route through a minefield of quests and levels. If you don't level by the end of today's session, you consider it an inefficient use of your time.Do you find you fall into this behaviour? Do you try to beat your own times to level 10, 20, etc? Or do you sit back and enjoy the ride, whichever character you're on, not caring much about what you get done in a single session?
Breakfast Topic: Alt-itis?
I'll be the first to admit that I may have a slight case of alt-itis--however, with 27 characters spread across sixteen realms, it's perhaps gone a bit far. Many of my characters are placeholders, created so that I could talk with friends on the server, but I've played enough of them to have seen the first 10 levels from every possible angle.I like being able to create a new character when I am in a "newbie" mood--sometimes levelling older characters gets slow and tedious, and the heady rush of starting again is the ideal antidote. Fortunately, WoW's mechanics support this behaviour, unlike some other games which restrict the number of characters you can make.However, I'm now at the stage where I've got too many alts, each of which is starting to make different friends and acquaintances--my playing time is being spread thin to keep up with them all. While character transfer may help with some of this, I fear there is no permanent solution other than to lie low for a while.Are you an alt-addict? Why do you make alts? If you only play one character, do you intend to start again once you hit 60?
