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The Daily Grind: Does summer vacation affect your playtime?
Massively readers, being people of excellent taste in entertainment, know there's a lot of fun to be had sitting down and logging in to their favorite MMOs for a few hours of fun. The problem with kicking back and relaxing like this for any period of time is that eventually real life is going to rear its head and you're going to have to step away. (This is a good thing, mind you.) The summer months are here for much of the world, and that affects MMO playtime in one way or another for many gamers. Are you one of those gamers? Maybe school and studying have kept you busy and now you're free as a bird with more time to play. Maybe you're a parent, and now that the kids are out of school, they're keeping you hopping. Do you have a job that changes according to the weather or seasons? How do the summer months affect your gaming time? 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!
Breakfast Topic: A chat channel with a bank
This article has been brought to you by Seed, Aol's guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. Watch for the next call for submissions and a chance to submit your own article. The next new byline you see here may be yours! When Wrath of the Lich King was first released, my guild was red-hot for Naxx. We recruited. We started a website and started swapping ideas, posting videos, strategies and of course developed some great friendships. Although we didn't steamroll over content like a lot of our other guild peers on the server (a lot of us seasoned players had been there/done that with the hardcore raiding guild scene and were over it), we still went along at a decent pace and were satisfied with our overall progress. Things were going well. Ulduar was around the corner, and everyone was ready to do a great big cannonball into new content. New strats, pics, videos and posts were going up on the guild forums. People were reading up, doing their homework and ready to roll right into Ulduar. We were getting through the first couple of bosses with no problems, but then we ran into a boss in that my guild failed to read any strats or watch any videos on: the RL Boss. Our guild could not get past the RL Boss. People were getting married, getting divorced, buying a house, losing a house. You name it, it was happening. As luck would have it, it wasn't our second-tier raiders either; it was the performers that were taking a four-quarter breather from the game. After a while, the guild leadership just gave up. Any senior raiders who were left started pugging, and there were a few months with absolutely nothing on the guild calendar. There have been a few half-hearted attempts, but those were over before they began. Rumor has it that the GM has put the kibosh on recruitment, effectively making the remnants of our guild a chat channel with a bank. Has your guild wiped on the RL Boss enough times to discourage any guild activities, even to the point that the guild actually disbanded? What happened?
Quest tracker sends you on a RL quest line
It was bound to happen. Jokes and lists about "you know you've been playing too much [your MMO] when..." abound. Suggestions for balancing your real life with gaming are almost as numerous. They're truth in jest, sometimes hitting a little too close to home because -- let's be honest -- who has not procrastinated on something like taking out the trash until they just kill one last boss or wrap up one last quest? On the other hand, there's a potential for an upside to the real life/gaming crossover. For example, one particularly awesome teen got in great shape by applying gaming principles to his life. Treating his goals and challenges like a game -- "your score has to be high at the end of the day" -- took him pretty far and it was only a matter of time before someone else picked up on the idea. Meet the real-life quest tracker. This clever little tool lets you add quests, sort them into categories, keep up with their completion status, and even add your own quest summaries. It's a free download, and all ready for you to use. Quest rewards are entirely up to you, of course. Bonus points if you pick up every pop culture reference in the example.
The Daily Grind: balancing RL with gaming
We all know how easy it is to sit down and lose ourselves in our gaming worlds for hours on end. We've all felt that urge to snap "What?!" when a family member or roommate chooses the wrong moment to ask you a question or request help with something. And we've also experienced the annoyance of a party member picking the worst possible moment to say "Afk, mom wants me to run to the store.""RL comes first" is the common refrain, but the nature of MMOs makes it more difficult to stop on a moment's notice and go take out the trash. Saying "afk, mom is yelling" while you are smack in the middle of PvP combat isn't going to be as easy as pausing your Sims game or putting your book down for a moment.So how do you balance your game time with the demands of job, family, friends, school, and the big blue room?
Breakfast Topic: WoW analogies
I don't know if it's because I blog about WoW, or just because I play a fair amount of it, but analogies between WoW and other parts of life constantly leap into my mind. This happens often enough in everyday conversation that it doesn't even annoy my girlfriend anymore; she's just used to it. Most recently, I was at a large family event, maybe 30 people. I was noticing how hard it was to get the entire group to do anything - waiting for people to get ready, deciding what to do, etc. I immediately thought of 25-man raiding, with its horrendous logistics. By comparison, a group of 10 people, in raids or real life, is much more manageable. What sorts of WoW analogies have occurred to you recently? Or am alone in this particular affliction?
Breakfast Topic: A change of pace
While I enjoy playing World of Warcraft, there are times when it feels like too much work and I need to take some sort of forced vacation. I got that last week when I needed to take my wife to the hospital and we were both properly pried away from the game. We were unable to play for a few days, she bedridden and I keeping watch in a sad, Internet-less room. It was actually refreshing. I watched some TV and my wife finally started on Brisngr. As soon as she was up and about again (thankfully), of course, she was right back on top of her game, commandeering the Auction House, performing her usual daily quests, and raiding left and right. In some ways, getting back into Azeroth was theraputic for her (the Inheritance Cycle has been put back on hold). On the other hand, just a few days out of the game and I found it hard to get back into my groove. I've only played one Battleground since we got back from the hospital, one game of Wintergrasp, and not a single Arena match.Actually, I'd found myself spending more of my online time tending to a virtual pet and lately, a virtual restaurant. I guess being so frazzled over the love of my life made me want to relax a little bit, and I don't want to get into the adrenaline-raising tedium of smashing heads just yet. Maybe later. How about you guys? How do you find getting back into the game after a short (or long) break? Do you get right back into the action (like my wife) or do you dilly-dally (like me)? When our lives force us to take a short break or change of pace, how do you get your groove back?
Breakfast Topic: Manners
One of my guildmates ninja'd the Large Satchel of Spoils from the Obsidian Sanctum the other day. Technically, it was his run, he organized it, and he was Master Looter. Because it was his run, you could argue, he could do anything with the loot. But that's just ninja talk. The truth of the matter is, my guildmate had no manners. I mean, even fish have manners.This is an MMO, the central letter there standing for multi-player. This means we play with other people, real people. Real people we need to treat with a basic sense of courtesy. That's one of the tricky things about that little fiasco -- we know our guildie in real life. He's a real person, an affable big fella my wife has described as a teddy bear. The problem is that in the game, 'bear' isn't the four-letter word to describe him. The satchel was just his largest haul, but he's been known to nick the occasional Abyss Crystal from a heroic run.
The Daily Grind: Does your guild like to party down?
As has become tradition for this blogger, every year on Memorial Day (aka 'the birthday') weekend, lots of people from our guild like to get together and party down. There are friendships in our guild that span many years and almost as many games. Of course, beyond just discussing whatever is going on in MMOGspace, there's lots of good food, beer, and geekery to be had for everyone! Since this is the perfect weekend for getting together with friends and family here in the States, we thought that we'd ask you -- do you ever have guild parties in meatspace? Are there any particular times of the year that you and your guild-mates like to get together, like at a convention or fan faire? Or is your guild a strictly online-only guild?
WoW as a bargaining chip
My wife is a shrewd little fox. She knows just how much I love the fact that she plays the game with me so sometimes, when we have our little domestic arguments, she makes sure to cancel her WoW account just to drive home a point. Of course, it doesn't mean much since we're both paid up for the next few months, but the message is clear -- "we make up (or you see things my way) or I'm quitting the game!" Of course, we don't reconcile merely because I'll be losing my favorite playing partner, but I have to confess that it doesn't make me happy one bit.For parents, World of Warcraft can be a useful bargaining chip for their kids with the parental controls feature. It's easy enough to control WoW time if kids aren't doing their homework, floundering in school, or simply not doing their chores. Conversely, a friend of mine gave his son a WoW subscription when he did well in school. World of Warcraft can be so much fun and addicting that it's often used as a social tool, and it's often upsetting when our friends quit playing the game. How many of us have had friends whose significant others have "allowed" them to play the game after, say, a wonderful date?I'm not sure if it only applies to me, but because I play the game with many of my RL friends and my family, I use the lure of WoW to full effect. I once had my brother do a specific task for the promise of an upgrade to The Burning Crusade. A little before he finished what I asked him to do, I secretly upgraded his account so he could finally make his Blood Elf Priest. Kind of manipulative, I know, but we did end up having a lot of fun leveling our alts together. How about you? How much a part of your life is WoW and has it ever been used as a bargaining chip in your social life?
Officers' Quarters: LF Raid Leader PST
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. A few weeks ago, my first and most important suggestion for casual raiding guilds was to find a committed raid leader. These days, however, good raid leaders are even rarer than good tanks. The author of this week's e-mail asks, What do you do if your guild doesn't have anyone willing to be the RL? Dear Scott, [. . .] My guild, Winding Path, came to be during the MMORPG, Asheron's Call, and has been in existence since February of 2000 (3 months after the retail release of AC). We're a family and friends based guild of roughly 85 casual, playing members whose core belief is friends>lewtz. We've gradually worked our way through Kara and are *finally* <whew> making some progress through ZA (slowly, but surely). We have some amazingly talented players, intelligent people, kids as young as 10 who make the adults look like n00bsauce sometimes, and more belly laughs than you can shake a stick at. We may never see Sunwell Plateau until a 4th or 5th expansion ;) , but the points you make in regards to the fun being of the utmost importance was something that I have hammered home in the eight years my guild has entrusted me with the leadership of our family. I thank you for sharing that with the rest of the WoW community, as I fear it is heard far too little. My greatest issue, however, is one that even after all this time, not even I have been able to resolve. A few months ago, we were forced to terminate the Raid Leader for our guild for several reasons. The biggest issue, though, is that on multiple occasions, he failed to show up for raids without notice, which we forgave and ignored. Unfortunately, the last time this happened, we learned he had actually been playing his Horde character on another server, running Kara with his other guild. Quite a slap in the face, and well--to me, a definite expression of his disinterest in his position as our RL.
MMOs: the finishing schools of the Internet
As much as Massively is about what's news and what's developing in the world of MMOs, one of the most curious things about the online world is how much people's interactions are similar in each game. "So what's to know about playing MMOs?" you might ask. "Where else can you go to learn that life has no consequences, just future runs at drops? To endure requests from people begging you to please do complicated quests for them so that they can have red dye on the armor they'll replace tomorrow? To listen to others proudly shout out their "deep understanding" of complex political, economic, or scientific concepts they doubtless gained from mining virtual iron ore for six hours a day? To spend peaceful weekday down time telling socially inept children– some of whom are in their 30s and 40s – to STFU?" Well, sure, there's that. And I've been playing online games since 1990, so I've seen all that aplenty. I'm what you'd call a Dungeon Curmudgeon –a guy who has been around long enough to have seen the ins and outs of many an MMO, been to the meet and greets, watched the n00bs come and go, and even remember when w00t wasn't a word. (And it still isn't as far as I am concerned -- l33tspeak is Pig Latin for the Internet -- except that the dictionary people haven't figured that out yet). Yet looking beyond the archetype of the teen-aged moustached, pizza-faced veneer of social ineptitude, something more complex and curious is happening. You see, I think MMOs are the finishing schools of the Internet.
A New Year's quest log
Everyone has New Year's resolutions, including MMO players. Here is a two-page list of resolutions we found on a particularly busy player whose list is in a particularly accessible format that any quest runner will understand.
Breakfast Topic: WoW outside of WoW
If you're reading this site, I'm guessing that you spend at least some time during the week playing the game World of Warcraft, amirite? But I'm specifically not asking about the time you spend in-game -- but the time out of it. How many times do you spend away from your computer talking to friends about how you leveled last night or the awesome new piece of loot that dropped for you in Karazhan? For my part, since my best friend recently decided to give in to the addiction (read: fun!) that is World of Warcraft, we rarely have a conversation that doesn't include references to the game. To the puzzlement of our non-playing friends, we'll have detailed conversations full of game references and in-jokes. So I ask you, dear readers, has the World of Warcraft crept into not only your virtual, but also your real life? Have you turned your homework into a series of reputation-grinding quests and do ordinary pieces of punctuation hold new and interesting meaning to you?[Image courtesy of Tom, who sent it in to Around Azeroth describing this New Jersey quest-giver.]
WoW Rewards Visa
I had to check my calendar to make sure this wasn't still April 1st: Blizzard is announcing that you can now get a WoW credit card! It's a Visa that gives you 1% of all your purchases as free game time, as well as a free month with your first purchase. The 1% rewards rate means spending $1,500 with the card nets you a free month of play. There are some other credit cards that give you 1% cash back (or more) on all purchases, though, so this card's strongest point seems to be its attractive designs. Then again, that may not be such a good feature if you don't want to out yourself as a WoW player every time you open your wallet. With no annual fee, I might well pick one of these up myself, if only to use once for the free month. What about you guys?
Player ganks woman's character, gets beat up by husband
A Mexican WoW player named Bronco Carson got beat up in real life by the husband of the player he had been repeatedly ganking, as well as a few of the husband's friends. Apparently, he'd been killing the heck out of this woman's character, which is reasonable enough, although somewhat annoying. The woman started threatening Carson at some point, but hey, it's the internet, right? They don't know where he lives.Wrong! Carson seems to have decided that a good idea would be to give the woman his address and and ask "if her husband was man enough to just come meet me to settle this." Um...bad move, sir. The husband and friends came and beat him up, netting Carson two broken fingers, a fractured wrist, and a destroyed computer and entertainment center. The moral of the story: if you're going to make life hard for someone in-game, don't give them your address and taunt their husband to come fight you. You are not prepared.Note that this story may well be fake, seeing as how there's no terribly credible source for it -- all the references to it I've been able to find trace back to this story on Fun Tech Talk. Grain of salt and all that.P.S. Just so we're clear, beating people up isn't cool, especially when it's three against one.[via wow.qj.net]
