Author Archives: Donny Rokk
Birth of a Mohawked Fury Warrior
That’s a big Nelf with a big Fish.
There’s one thing that can be said for the Looking For Dungeon tool – you certainly get to see how the other half lives.
Case in point. I’ve recently started a character on the Alliance – a Night Elf Fury Warrior named Afuryan. He’s been my focus for awhile now. My condolences to the Warlock experiment, which once again never made it to level 20. He did make it as far as an Instance or two before I found my interest drifting. Maybe it’s a caster thing. It’s hard to say. I had my baby druid specced Balanced for all of three Instances before I switched him back to Feral. I think it boils down to the fact that I like getting my hands dirty. Afuryan gets in there with his stylish haircut (why more Night Elves don’t run with a mohawk, I’ll never know) and kills things up close and personal. Say what you want about Night Elves, but when you find one with a crazy haircut and a maniacal look in his eye, your life expectancy can be measured in seconds rather than years.
It has nothing to do with dudes wearing dresses.
This isn’t a scary look. It’s just sad.
As you might have caught earlier (and the more clever readers might have pieced it together from the name), I’ve specced him Fury right off the bat. In his downtime he’s been questing and working on his gathering professions. I’ve geared him with the appropriate Heirloom items that a Fury Warrior should have (the Chest, Shoulders, and Weapon – Trinkets are next on the shopping list). Unlike the Warlock, I know Afuryan is going to use the gear I get for him. The goal is to get him to 80, on the off-chance he moves to another server. It pays to be prepared, and Afuryan is going to be ready for deployment. Why am I prepping him? Well you never know what might happen at Blizzcon. I could meet some interesting peeps, for example, and decide I might want to raid with them. Yes, raid. I have the time, so why not get a little more out of the game? Herc’s already rooted in his own amazing guild, so it’s nice to have options.
Let me tell you, running with a lowbie had both shown me some new things, and reintroduced me to things I’d long forgotten.
– Dungeons: Alliance has Deadmines and Stormwind Stockade – simple layout, fairly straightforward. Horde has Serpet Shrine Cavern and Razorfen Kraul, which are both horrible gong shows to navigate for the first few times you go through them. I know that faction doesn’t matter as far as what you have access to, thanks to the LFD system, but it’s the principle of the thing. Also, Gnomeregan can eat the peanuts out of my poop. That’s right I said it. HATE that place, and Afuryan isn’t even 30 yet. I can only imagine the twisty car wrecks that are on their way.
– Tanking: I have come to the conclusion that you really have to try to be horrible as a lowbie tank. I’m fairly certain of this. Yes, Afuryan has his share of BOA gear, which puts him ahead of the curve compared to many others coming up the ranks through Instances. But about five times now I’ve had to step in to tank after the original tank disappeared or quit after dying or being told he outright sucked. Every time I’ve tanked with a two-handed axe, not the traditional sword & board. Also, all my points are in the Fury tree. I don’t respec to tank, to clean up someone else’s mess. I step in and do what I can for the group, pick up the ball that the other tank dropped. I never lost aggro, and when I did I just hit taunt, sundered a few times, and life was good. The only thing I did differently between DPS and tanking was to change my stance from Battle to Prot. I may even queue up as a Tank for a little while, just to get my Instance run done quicker. I’ll play around with the Fury Tank concept for a bit and see how it goes.
– Players can be silly: Sure that goes without saying. Take the Warlock that stood there for about five minutes before finally pulling out his Voidwalker. Seconds later I had the “vote to kick” panel pop up in front of me. I couldn’t click it fast enough. Last night, during one of my 2h tanking sessions, I kept having a druid pop bear form and try to take the mobs from me. I guess he thought he was saving me because OMG you need a shield to tank at level 25! He eventually changed his mind after being unable to peel the mobs off of me. I had to tell him that it would be great if he would kill the mobs that run at low health. He was so worried about trying to “help” that the runners kept taking off and pulling adds. I also had to break up a tiff between a healer and a mage, who were going back and forth calling each other noobs (sorry, I meant n00bz). I simply asked if anyone else thought Betty White was hawt (HAWT), and that brought the conversation to a momentary halt. Oh well, at least they didn’t /votekick me for my awesome taste in women.
Who doesn’t love a Betty White Sandwich!
I have to say, it’s been much more entertaining running low level Instances compared to the 80’s where everyone is worried about what shade of purple they need to be wearing. When survival isn’t an issue, you can afford to worry about stupid things like that. I prefer being shoulder to shoulder with groupmates who feel they have to perform because they have something to lose. That’s something that has gotten lost at the “end game” of Gearscore and ePeen.
This is Herculano. Betty White, break out the baby oil and scented candles. I’ll see you in my dreams.
Nobody Likes A Quitter
World of Warcraft is on a decline, as it often happens during this late phase of an expansion. Content has been done to death, raid bosses have been slain, and people are spinning their wheels looking for something to do in-game. Many have simply quit until Cataclysm comes out. I wonder what WoW Addicts are doing now.
That’s something that hasn’t been run into the ground lately – video game addiction. Remember the days when the mainstream media was all over World of Warcraft as the evil game that ruins lives? It’s digital crack, online heroin. Yet I find it so hard to feel bad for these people. Maybe that makes me a horrible person. Maybe. But not as horrible as some of the people I’ve been reading about on WoW Detox.
I missed my Sons 5th birthday party. I didn’t get him a gift or anything at all. I completely forgot about it. My guild setup a raid for the same day. I had been preparing for it all week. I’m the off tank usually and this time I got chosen to be the main tank as the other guy in my guild went on vacation. I was more excited about this than my own Son’s birthday. I forgot about it completely I was so busy studying and researching the dungeon and bosses. My wife told me I was supposed to pick up the cake and bring it to funtime Pizza at 12:00 on sat (like chuckycheese) but I forgot to I thought she meant next saturday. I spent the day wondering why it was so quite. Apparantly my wife took our two kids and their friends to the funtime pizza for his party. I turned off my phone and prepared myself for a day full of WoW. They all got back at 9:00pm my guild and I had just got to the 2nd boss. I’m sitting at my computer being the moron I am not paying attention to anything with my headphones on and my screen goes black. I look over and I see my computer in pieces. My wife knocked it off the table (to say it lightly).
When I looked at her I didn’t know why she was so upset. Untill she started screaming out about how I let down our Son and that I’m hardly ever there for him or her or any of our kids because I’m always paying attention to the game.
She explained to me how all the kids waited an hour for me to show up with a Cake and it never happened. I felt like pure crap. Worse than forgetting to bring a cake I forgot it was even his birthday. My wife was upset with me she had our kids stay over at their friends house just so she could discuss our future it was a long night.
I let this game eat up at me and destroy my marriage and my relationship with my children. Now I’m on the verge of a divorce.
I don’t blame my wife for hating me. I wouldn’t blame my kids if they hated me either. I hate myself for what I have done to them. I don’t remember a single time in my adult life where I honestly cried but that night I did before my wife.
It hurt so much to know what I was doing. My Son is always going to remember his father letting him down and not being there for him. How do I make something like that up to him? How can I get my wife to love me again?
My Wife was right “I did this to us”.
That’s an addiction. That’s pathetic, like sniffing rails of coke off a dirty toilet seat.
Damn it! I flushed my Authenticator!
I have no sympathy for those kinds of people. You have people in the house, people you live with, but you give priority to online voices? That’s grounds for a kick to the testicles. But there are others, folks with a bit of a clue, that I find myself wanting to give a little hug to.
I was playing WoW for seven months. I felt it consuming more and more of my life.
It was the one place I really felt important. But I realized it’s only half a reality.
I think that’s why many people find themselves “addicted”. They have such a low feeling of self-worth that anything they achieve in-game gives them the rush that real life can’t give them. Hey, I’ve been there. It takes alot of work to get beyond that point. It isn’t easy, but it can be done. But the first step is taking responsibility for your actions. Not like this twit.
I got tricked into buying it (WoW) and got tricked into playing it. Then I get tricked into continuing to play it. Every time I brought up leaving people would beg me to stay. I just wanted to quite because I didn’t enjoy the game. I felt it was boring and annoying. Boring because you do the same things over and over again and annoying because of the selfish pricks you have to deal with while doing so.
Tricked into continuing to play? Brilliant. Yes, sinking money into World of Warcraft is clearly someone else’s fault. What a brave soul, to finally walk away from the digital faces that continuously held a gun to his head and forced him to renew his subscription.
No. Stop. Save me from myself.
The ones who have a real chance, are the ones who have a degree of self-awareness about their situation.
The hardest part of quitting so far is knowing that in Azeroth I was pretty and popular and had lots of friends but IRL I’m shy and plain and lonely and nobody really likes me or notices me. I know though that I can’t get my self worth from a game. I have to find a life somehow while I’m young and can enjoy it. Two weeks clean after 6 months /played in two years and this is hard. I’m sad and lonely and starved for people like me to talk to. This site is a life saver though. I have been reading through all the stories every single day. It keeps me from reinstalling. That and warcrack widow’s blog. That made me stop in the first place.
World of Warcraft is known by the player base as being such a “social” game. But for the socially inept who can’t forge relationships face to face, being able to wear the mask of a digital avatar can be a godsend. It lets them connect with their fellow gamers. These people soon find themselves unable to quit the game, because there’s no way they can go back to life without their mask.
I’m no addict. I haven’t missed obligations so that I could play. Given the choice between real life activities and in-game activities, real life always wins. But I understand how people get drawn into World of Warcraft. It gets comfy, like a big warm blanket. Cataclysm is going to breed a fresh batch of addicts, guaranteed. I just hope that more folks remember that, no matter how much of a “social game” World of Warcraft is, it is still a “game”.
This is Herculano. Know when to draw the line.
