A Monday in which I reminisce on Requiem and my days in an uber World of Warcraft guild

I got kind of confused with the book tour post for Ellie Garratt's new book Passing Time and published it/unpublished it. You may see it in your Google Reader. That post will go up on Wednesday, so I'm sorry for the confusion. If you would like to visit Alex J. Cavanaugh's blog today, he is hosting Ellie Garratt on schedule.

My friend Kevin is gonna make me want to play a pandarian before this
post is over. *Shakes fist at Kevin!

Today I would like to introduce you to the first of two "Kevins" that I met while playing World of Warcraft. I still don't know what this particular "Kevin" looks like in real life as I haven't met him, but I've talked to him on the phone and on ventrilo and he's a fellow druid lover (although I thought his character's name "Shribryn" was far cooler than the one I picked, which was "Velanna"). I hope to introduce you to the other "Kevin" soon. I sent him some interview questions. The other Kevin was my raid leader and guild master of "Requiem" (a very handsome fellow I might add) and we dominated our server for about five years. Plus we were a top 200 guild. That's sayin' a lot for those of you who don't know what that entails. That other Kevin went on to raid with the guild "Elitist Jerks" after I left, which is a "top 10 in the world guild" on the server Mal'ganis US.

Anyway, this first Kevin (and my good buddy) wants to take you on a little nerdy history of Azeroth. So those of you that like video games and/or fantasy stories may enjoy this entry. As a side note, I think those of you who "despise" video games because they take boys away from reading should check this attitude because video games are just "graphical" fiction with the best possible "choose your own adventure" engine. To explain further, it would be like an author of fiction hating on another "author of fiction" simply because they get all the attention and their product looks way better. In other circles...we might call that jealousy (a topic for another time). So yeah, jealousy does not become you my dear...

Anyway...take it away Kevin a.k.a. "Shribryn"...

As some of you may know, Mike used to play a lot of Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft (WoW) and in fact, it is in that game where I met him. Since I’m assuming some of you have never played WoW or don’t know anything about it, I will explain a few basic facts. WoW is an MMORPG which is shorthand for saying it is a multiplayer online role playing game and Azeroth is the world where most of the game takes place.

Comment from Mike: Graphics continually improve. I remember when I thought this
looked good. This is what Wizard 101 looks like LOL.

The game is a simple concept. In exchange for $15/month, each player starts with a few basic abilities and your character improves through a combination of leveling to gain new abilities and gear to make you more powerful.  The combination gives a feeling of improvement that can be addictive. This isn’t a particularly new idea but when Blizzard released the game, they hit the sweet spot. When their game came out in late 2004 there were only about 6 million people playing MMORPGs. In under a year the number jumped to almost 13 million and many of them were playing WoW. In the United States alone, they had to open almost 200 servers to accommodate the traffic, each essentially their own little world.

Growth in MMO Accounts per year. Impressive, eh? It reminds me of the explosion
that the iPhone experienced (or the iPad) or for that matter, Apple. Only Apple
did it better. Still, a company would be proud to have this kind of growth.

I will never forget the day in game when I got a whisper from a guild of casual players asking for help against some of the game’s harder content. After a few failed attempts, one of their druids bombarded me with a constant steam of private messages and our conversation continued long after his guild gave up the fight. Within a week, I recruited Velanna (aka Mike) and a few of his friends to join my guild. Mike’s character is in the picture below on the far right. I’m next to him in tree form.

Having the name <REQUIEM> floating next to your character was pretty damn cool.
People all over the server basically treated you like a celebrity because you could clear
all the content on hard-mode. It really taught me how working together as a team
with someone is the best way to play a game. Some of our guildies were such
attention whores. They'd sit in all their epics and legendary gear at some high
trafficked location in the game and just go idle so that people could "marvel" at all
their cool stuff. The psychology behind video games is fascinating.

As you can imagine, finding long-term friends in an online game like WoW is hard. During the time I was in charge of recruiting for the guild I noticed a consistent trend that every month we’d lose around 10% of our members. That might not seem like much but it essentially means over the course a year, guilds (teams of players) will look completely different than they did a year earlier. Beating the ‘boss’ in the picture below took ‘playing’ 4 hours a night, 3 days a week for almost a year. Only about 5 people remained of the 40 that were there from the start.

The <REQUIEM> Bad-assess. Seeing these pics brings back memories.

That is the nature of the game and the trap of MMORPGs. They suck you in with the promise of a fun social experience but it eventually becomes a grind.  As Penny Arcade perfectly summed up in their GIFT cartoon (below), the anonymous nature of a game like this means you will find a greater percentage of idiots and it’s a test of your interpersonal skills if you want to find a good friend. Of the thousands of people I met in the World of Warcraft, Mike is the only one I talk to on occasion.

Click to Embiggen

A few weeks ago, Blizzard sent me a 10-day pass for their latest expansion, Mists of Panderia. I’ve heard some good things about it and despite my misgivings, I decided to check it out.  At first, it was weird to play as I couldn’t remember any of the buttons to press but it came back quick and so did the nice feeling of falling into the world of Azeroth.

Oh the peril of a huge sword is just too hard to resist
standing underneath and sneaking a screenshot.

The newest Warcraft storyline is based on Chinese and Asian legends and the world they created is breathtaking. The first thing I noticed was just how good the new areas look despite the game’s age. In addition, the questing is streamlined, there are better tools for new players, and the game’s mechanics are simpler. One huge improvement is the addition of the tools added since the Lich King expansion that helps players find groups. The LFR/LFG system minimizes the playtime needed at the highest levels so there’s no longer any need to devote a year of your life to experience all the content.  I can attest that is a good thing.

Of course, there are things I didn’t like. Now that that it is easier for players to access the highest-level content, the designers have decreased the challenge to accommodate players that don’t take the time to understand the game’s mechanics. This seems to have made some players even lazier as many don’t seem to bother to move when they are ‘standing in fire’ as they know healers can keep them alive. Despite that, the latest expansion is a definite win for Blizzard.

The one thing Blizzard can’t change is the fact that no online experience can replace real life interaction and the rise of mobile gaming on Iphones/ Ipads/ Androids is stealing potential customers. As you can see on the chart at the top of the post, the MMORPG industry has stagnated for over the last 4 years and mobile gaming has been a big reason. Games like Angry Birds or Words with Friends are cheap, have little of the social stigma and place little/no time demands on its customers. There’s nothing Blizzard can do about that but I don’t feel too sorry for them. They still have millions of subscribers paying $15 every month and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

Even with the positive changes to the game, my return to Azeroth was short.  I know from experience that the time demands are still too much and my completionist nature can’t handle it.  I’m not leaving Blizzard’s domain entirely as the new Starcraft expansion is/was released on March 12th so if any of you are interested in playing, my player ID is jebei#674.

*****

Thanks Kevin for taking me down a stroll through memory lane. I do miss playing World of Warcraft with <Requiem> a lot. However, I made a choice to quit playing so that I could get my mojo back with regard to writing (to play something so incredibly creative destroys my own creativity), to start getting in better physical shape, and to concentrate on goals I wanted to make which are namely: to buy a house and get my retirement all set up nicely and maybe do some traveling (if there's any money left). All of that is really difficult to do when you are raiding four nights a week, and people are depending on you to show up because you have the gear that allows them to tackle the difficult content. However, there's nothing like a game to show you the people that have no ability to do math and to point out those that may have an IQ of around 80. You quickly learn to distance yourself from those people, as they will waste all of your time. It sounds ruthless, but that's the way it is.

Any of you watch the trailer? It shows actual game play. Pretty impressive in my opinion. Have a great Monday.