Warcraft is a complex beast
I’m sure I’m not the only person who has mentally adopted Zel’s Bee Pit as the final destination for all manner of wastrels, ne’er-do-wells and those annoying idiots who say “ogogogogog” a lot. [ASIDE: I encountered my very first Arthazz in an instance. I was so depressed I still healed him, and forgot to take a screenshot. *sigh*]
Aaanyway. There is a problem brewing, I suspect. I wonder what Zel’s solution will be?
I’ve figured it out.
You can all relax, because I’ve figured it out. Why that last shambling horror always spawns moments before the LK runs away to do his “ooh, chilly” phase transition. Why the valks ALWAYS pick a healer when infest is coming. You can blame every wipe on this.
It's the Lich King, it's Artha... waitaminute
Let’s just take a closer look at that, shall we?
Guards! Arrest this man!
So there we have it.
It’s all Dy’s fault.
A few bits and pieces I’ve found when poking around in the WordPress dashboard. I’ve been a little quiet on the blogging front recently, for the simple reason that there hasn’t been much I felt like sharing. Ergo, I haven’t really been keeping a close eye on the blog backend overmuch. Now that I’m more inclined to post again, I’ve been checking up on stuff.
Spam
Isn’t blog spam a weird beast? I don’t often look through the spam folder as I find Akismet does a good enough job for me, but it is sometimes interesting. Why, for example, would I think a commenter called “Forex Robot” was anything but spam? Then there’s the angry spam.
“Why have you deleted my post? It was very beneficial information and i promise atleast one person found it helpful unlike the rest of the comments on this site. I’ll post it again.”
followed by the usual get a bigger wallet/girlfriend/penis stuff. And of course, the hundreds of random-letter spams, like the one below. These particularly mystify me. None of the links go anywhere. What’s the point?!
Search traffic
I don’t get a lot — not a big surprise, I don’t post much in the way of valuable information, just personal wow-witter. Ever since posting a “faceroll” picture link in an post, I’ve had lots of hits for “faceroll”, “ret faceroll”, “paladin faceroll” and the like. Yeah yeah, whatever. Personally I think it’s a concerted campaign by hunters. Aaanyway, I happened to glance across at the stats module yesterday and discovered a search engine visit via “mage faceroll”.
Mage faceroll? Really? I mean, I know the arcane “rotation” is two buttons excluding cooldowns (unless you have to move) but they’re in a sequence. Mashing your face on the keyboard just isn’t going to work!
As for “wow shadow faceroll”? I give up.
Teeny ninja loots again
On Saturday evening after random real-world stuff messed up my plans, I joined a late-ish ICC group on Cent. At Saurfang (yes, I know I said I wouldn’t do that again). The ad in trade interested me: they were looking for ranged DPS who was “patient”. I asked what that meant, and also how far they hoped to go. The reply was effectively “someone who won’t have a hissy fit if there are inexperienced people in the group or if we wipe”. That seemed reasonable, and it was the last night I’d have a chance to raid on her this lockout so I went ahead. Short version: after an “interesting” first attempt on Saurfang with no CC at all, we were able to down Saurfang and Fester before Rotface and the clock put an end to the group. Most of the people in the group didn’t appear to have done the fights before, so I was actually quite impressed. And Cent swiped a new necklace.
Back to the king
Last night after a shaky-looking start (i.e. we had 9 for VoA and Onyxia) we ventured to ICC and comfortably cleared the emo wing. We then put Sindy down on our first attempt (a first), albeit with a casualty or three. We then had a couple of promising warm up fights with the LK before calling it for the evening.
Distressingly, personal obligations and the dreaded spectre of work look likely to prevent us from fielding the same group for the next … er … while. I swear, if we could have just three raid nights in a row where the group composition was the same, we’d kick his whinging backside straight off that platform.
I’m an emotional guy.
I’ll give you a moment to recover; clearly, I should be taciturn, tough, controlled, and have abs like a mogul field. That’s not really me.
I *am* an emotional guy. I’m happy with that. This evening, I was watching a crime drama called “Wire in the blood“. It’s about a psychologist who works with the police on murders, child abductions, serial sex crimes. Nasty, nasty stuff, and the shrink in question is (appropriately?) messed up as a result. Tonight, Bryn & I were watching some old episodes which, as a sort-of background to the primary stories of horribleness features a young boy who’d murdered his parents. Over the course of a couple of episodes, in fits and spurts, we got to meet this young man via his occasional meetings with Tony (the shrink), whether he was fighting with the prison/hospital staff, desperately trying to work out who he should be as an adult, or carving his real name into his arm, having been “released” with a new identity.
Apologies if this turns out to be a spoiler, but you’ll probably not be too surprised to learn that things didn’t end well. Ultimately, this young man couldn’t cope with the things he had done and took his own life.
I sat on Bryn’s sofa, crying.
…
There’s a game called Dreamfall, written by Ragnar Tørnquist and made by Funcom. It’s a sequel to “The Longest Journey”. I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve never completed “The Longest Journey” but I have finished Dreamfall. I finished it on a Friday night and, yes, I’d been drinking and yes, rather than a night out with friends I’d spent my Friday night alone with Dreamfall. But I finished Dreamfall that night and it made me cry. Like a (drunken) baby. If you haven’t played it and you have any interest in adventure gaming, do give it a shot. For more info, take a look at Rock Paper Shotgun’s coverage, although be aware that Mr. Walker is (justifiably!) unbiased.
…
Why would I bring these things up? Principally because it’s not something I’ve got from WoW, not as yet at least. Sure, there have been the occasional quests where there’s been a faint twanging of heartstrings. The horrible story about Malygos and Keristraza, and others. Please don’t think me heartless, but none of these had quite the same effect at the time, no matter how unpleasant the story in retrospect. In the case of Keristraza, I don’t think I really grasped the horror until the second time I played those quests.
Of course, I can’t (and don’t) necessarily expect the same level of emotional involvement from a massively multiplayer game as I might hope for from a single-player game. Naturally, the opportunity to write specifically and singularly offers the writers of a single-player game greater opportunity to grab me by the heartstrings. That said, I *am* emotionally involved in Warcraft, with the members of my guild, with my in-game friends. I care about my characters, in a peculiar way I haven’t entirely internalised yet. The hooks exist, to make me laugh, cry, sad, happy, exhausted, exhilarated.
Perhaps this is just one of the tradeoffs of MMO play. In return for the opportunity to bond with, play with and experience content with others, we willingly give up on the idea of storylines or NPC characterisations which are sufficiently complex to provoke a response. Perhaps these things exist in game, and I’ve managed to skip or ignore them. Perhaps they exist for many players, but just didn’t quite do it for me. I don’t know.
I do know that in pretty much any form of entertainment I consume or interact with, something that makes me cry is generally something I consider a bit special. Not because I’m desperately emo and want to spend my evening sobbing — quite the opposite. An MMO which could provide storylines which allowed me to share feelings with friends (delight, despair, horror, hope and beyond) in addition to the now-standard dungeons and raids could be the last MMO I ever played.