Day 3

I headed out of Thunderbluff today. Truly I didn't go anywhere, I'm still in my chair stairing at my avatar, Gref, who looks to be taking the elevator down to the ground below the plateaus Thunderbluff is on is a graphic representation of the character the came world has created for me who is in turn made from the same stuff the world is: polygons. Even deep than that I could say that like our world is made of atoms virtual worlds are made of 1s and 0s, bytes form the basic matter of these worlds. Like atoms we can't see because they move so fast, bytes we can't see because they are processed at blazing speeds by our computers. Are these pertinent questions to my explorations? Possibly, but I can't help thinking of them as I stare at my collections of pictures from my adventures so far.

Unlike travelers in the real world I don't have to worry about carrying a device separate from my mode of travel to take pictures. I merely press the “Print Screen” button on the upper-left hand side of my keyboard and a snap shot is taken. This snap shot ability does cause my computer to pause a little bit and the words “Screenshot Taken” appear on the screen, or something of that nature. This is one of many moments in players must suspend their disbelief, quite frankly MMO's like World of Warcraft are filled with more moments which require a suspension of disbelief than any other game I've played. Frequently, it is of a nature that should be completely unforgivable,especially since the goal of many other games seems to be to remove as much evidence as possible that the player is in fact involved in a game, and rightly so, but why not here? I ignore these moments because I want to enjoy the game. “The dirty little secret of gaming is how much time you spend not having fun” wrote Stephen Johnson in his Everything Bad is Good for You. He was trying to defend games by claiming that they did not in fact back offer instant gratification, as so many parents claim. In a similar vein I'm trying to say that much time is spent in these games searching for that perfect moment of Zen or what have you, when the player has a transcendent experience with the game and forget the real world for a little bit. I believe this the sort of thing all media attempt to offer us, escape, but there truly is a problem here that places these sort of games in the realm of drug addiction. Playing the games becomes a seeking of the perfect high so to speak, or at least to peak for longer or more powerfully than previously done. Now this isn't true for all players all the time, I know I've felt this desire at times. Especially on particularly bad days. Otherwise why do I play these games? Recently the drive has become social in a teams sports sort of way. I want to get my character stronger a long with helping my team mates to get stronger so that we can tackle increasingly difficult challenges. But I digress, I'm not even talking about my experiences on the Runetotem server.

Alright so I began to head down the road away from the Thunder Bluff when I was overpowered by a pack of wolves and died. Thankfully death has few draw backs for my virtual self. Upon dieng I am left paralyzed on the ground and presented with decision as to whether or not I want to release, to release is to be sent back to the nearest graveyard where I am given back the ability to move as a ghost. The bonus of being a ghost is that I get to go practically where ever I want. The drawbacks are that I can't interact with anything. Perhaps this is what it's like to be left to wander the Earth in spiritual form, except that I've always imagined that if a ghost concentrated hard enough she could effect the real world. This of course is not the case, since the virtual world is bound by a tight set of rules, and as a ghost these rules say that I cannot do anything but run around. Although as a ghost there is one important thing I can do and that is return to my corporeal form by either asking the Spirit Guide who looks like an angel wrapped in a bit of heavy toilet paper who will return me to life at the expense of damaging my equipment, or I can walk back to my corpse and resurrect at no cost but the time it takes me to walk there. I opted for walking, therefore I cam back to life in much the same condition as the way I left it, perhaps a little wiser.

Day 2

Day 2 on the Runetotem server in World of Warcraft and I was in Thunderbluff, the Tauren capitol. I only had about a half hour to spend online so I thought I'd see if I couldn't find some people to talk to. I don't normally talk much in online games eschewing the social aspect for play. Mostly I really like to be able to see peoples reactions to what I'm saying. Not necessarily their verbal response but their physical response. I know things are going bad from looking not only into a person's face but by their expressions and body language. Of course in an online game I get none of this, it's like being at a costume party, no wait it's even worse then that because you can't even read a person's body language or listen to the tone of their voice, plus you have to wait for their response.

When I talk to people online if they don't respond immediately I get nervous that I said something wrong or that I am boring them. How do I socialize then in online games? Well truth be told I really don't do all that much socializing in these games. I love to tell people all about the possibilities for socializing online but honestly I'm just reporting what I observe around me which is pretty difficult in the first place because people can keep their conversations to themselves. Most of the time I can't even tell if people are talking to each other.

There are only two types of chat that all players can read /say and /yell. /say is essentially like speaking in a normal tone all of the people in the vicinity can hear what you have to say. /yell is well yelling so everyone in the “zone” can hear, zones are kinda like states they cover large swaths of land and are delineated by mostly natural borders. Besides those two, players can choose from all sorts of different channels to speak in such as general chat which again spans a whole zone like /yell but it is not considered obnoxious to use.

On with the story, after fifteen minutes of waving hello to everyone I saw like an idiot somebody finally waved backed and used /say to say hi to me. Taken aback I faltered for a few moments. “What should I say, I have no idea how to break the ice online,” I thought to my self so I typed /say how's it goin. He responded /say not bad. I then went on to complement his turtle named Raphael (I assume in reference to the Ninja Turtles of yore) and I asked him a few questions about how the new the server was and some other details about it. He told me it was a month old when a fellow fishing nearby piped in and said there were only ten level 60s in total on the server. I'm sad to say that after the guy piped in the conversation fell apart pretty fast as I accidentally started him to talking about computer hardware.

I guess this isn't so bad from a research point-of-view, maybe that's what people talk about and I shouldn't be trying to change it to meet my expectations, especially since I am not on a role-playing server where some players openly pretend to be their characters. I suppose just like travelers on the highways and interstates talk about the machines that get them from place to place it makes sense that electronic travelers would want to talk about the machines they use to transport them around the virtual world.

We continued to talk about computer hardware for a bit. The guy with the turtle must've gotten bored as he bid us farewell. I sent him a private message asking if I could add him to my friends list. He said he didn't care, wanting to be polite, I thanked him for the courtesy. There is no way for him to know I had added him to my friends list but I thought it would in some way be like the way people trade phone numbers in real life to subtely say to each they want to be friends. After, he left I talked to fisherman for a bit longer until he dissapeared without warning, whether he voluntarily logged off or was disconnected I'll never know. After that I decided it was time to call it a night and logged off myself.

I'll add some picture as soon as I get a chance to upload them.