Wandering Roads

I spent the weekend wandering over the roads of Azeroth. I've been trying to figure out what separates the roads in World of Warcraft from the roads in the real world. I think that placing the real road against the virtual one will reveal interesting ideas about the nature of both, although I am concentrating on the nature of the virtual one.
First, I tried to come up with a few basic points to build off of:

1. Machines travel on the roads
2. It's a path that players follow
3. Promotes a tourism of sorts
4. safer than the pockets of wilderness
5. does it allow reflective, thoughtful travel?
6. builds community

Alright, now I've got to see if I can't break these down, and who knows maybe I'll come up with more.

So Much for so Little

Admittedly, virtual worlds are something I find myself longing for. Last week I went four days without playing one game. During that time I found myself fantasizing about playing video games again. Not one game in particular, just to experience a world that isn't this one. It's nice to give up all the mounting pressures of life, if only for a short while, for the frivolous pressures of unreality.

Oddly, I find myself not wanting to play one of my characters, Leye. The main reason for this is that playing him has brought a lot of it's own pressure with. Two of my real life friends and my dad are in the same guild as Leye. When I'm not playing they constantly pester me to come on and play citing that the guild needs my help. When I went on to play last week after my four day hiatus I had high hopes of helping the guild defeat the huge black dragon Onyxia. Too bad I wound up having to complete a boring task, which felt more like a chore than any sort of thrilling experience. I had to compete this task to get the key that would allow me to enter Onyxia's lair. While I was doing this I listened to everybody else having fun on the voice chat software that we use which works like walkie talkies. After I completed the menial task I logged of dissatisfied.

Afterwards, I asked myself “why would anyone want to play a game that requires so much work with so little reward?” I still haven't found the answer.

Day 7 Bitch in the Vineyard with the Thieves

The other day I was playing as Kef, a human warrior, who starts off his journey in the northerly parts of Elwynn Forest, helping out the denizens of the Abbey. That's just what I did by lending a hand to whatever task the NPC's were programmed to give me.

I picked up a quest from this chick who had a vineyard nearby. Woefully the place had been overtaken by a gang of beastly thugs who spent their hours munching on her virgin fruit. Thus I grabbed my sword and headed into her ravaged garden to weed out the villians, but mostly to get some of the burgeoning fruit, 10 to be precise. I made short work of the Briggands of the Defias Brotherhood, thumping them on the skull with my hammer until this larcenous prig paladin came and started stealing grapes from me after I did all the work of dispatching the treachours fiends only to be undone by a compatriote. You see if a player is on your side, Alliance in my case, it's not possible to physically harm them, although I wished to crack her skull like all these foul rogues that lay about me. All I could do was try to keep away from her. A difficult task indeed since she followed me about. Thankfully I did manage to lose, I suppose she got bogged down by the grasping fingers of the desparados she revered. At least there is some justice in that.

Afterward I returned from the garden, fruit bursting from my bags, and was directed by the lady to give the fruit to the old drunkenm monk in the attic of the abbey to be made into wine. Oh what glad errands I should run for the sake of these suffeering people who are beset by evil on all sides.

Day 6 Post Patch Scarlet Strat Run

The latest patch hit, 1.10, on the 28th knocking the servers out for most of the day because of technical issues with the patch. Inspite of this patch days are generally days of celebration in World of Warcraft because it means that new features are added, old places are improved upon, and new places are inserted in. While this patch boasted no new places to explore it did do some significant revamping to some of the old places such as Stratholme(Strat) so it could only be done with five people rather then ten.

Areas like Stratholme are classified as instances because they create versions of themselves for every group of players that enters. In a sense it breaks down the massively multiplayer paradigm because the players get taken out of the large seamless populated by thousands to be placed in an isolated world populated only by the group of players connected by an arbitrary bond through either a five man party or a raid of up to forty, the numbers vary depending on the instance.

Players must carefully choose the players they wish to have in their party since instances require players to be heavily dependent on their comrades. A single player can not make it through an instance meant for them, nor will a group make it through if they do not have experience and communicate with each other. Most importantly trust is required to make it all of the way through an instance, especially since they can take a few hours to get through.

The decision to go to Scarlet Stratholme arose from a conversation my friend and I had over lunch. We were both curious as to what changes had made to Stratholem to facilitate the new five man cap, so that we agreed to meet online later that day to check it out. I got home from work at 4:30 pm and signed in with my level sixty Night Elf Priest named Leye.

Up until now I have only been following the exploits of Gref the Tauren Druid. After some thought I decided it would be inappropriate to not show how travel occurs from many different entry points in online games. Players do not see the world from only one perspective but from a multitude of perspectives, not only from the different races but also from opposing sides of the war. For instance if Gref and Leye were to meet they would have likely harbor feelings of hatred for each other since as a Night Elf Leye is aligned with the Alliance and as a Tauren Gref is aligned with the horde. The two player controlled factions in the game who wage a never ending war against each other. Anyway, let's get back to the task at hand.

My friend signed in with his level sixty Night Elf Druid. I'll leave a more in depth explanation of level for later but for now I'll just say that level sixty is as high as one can go right now. Before we could get started in Strat we needed three more people preferably a warrior who can tank, net speak for a player who can take lots of damage, and two others that can do dps, net speak for a player that can do a lot of damage. The first and most reliable place to check for players is in our guild as it's a social organization of players we have played with before. Sadly, we had to resort to a PUG, pick up group, which many players look down upon with hatred. Generally it is assumed that players who join PUGs are the dregs of the game. It's assumed that they are the people who have no idea how to play because they lack the skills to get into a decent guild. I admit that due to many a bad experience I share this feeling with my fellow players.

Around 5:30 we managed to get all of the players we needed: a warrior, a mage, and a rogue. I can't say I remember their names too well because I saw them only as a means to an end, again I admit that this wasn't this kindest thought but in a world teeming with players who frequently see each other only has tools to get them what they want it's all too easy to remove digital characters of the personality that controls them. Before I had cemented myself in my guild other players were seen as more but now that I have stronger connections to a group of people in the world I often ignore opportunities to increase my social connections. This is an elitist sentiment because I snub those who aren't in my guild deigning to stoop to the level of others only when my guild doesn't come through for me. My only poor excuse is that everyone else does it.

We got the group together and in Strat by 6 pm. We made slow progress through the instance because the people we picked up didn't immediately trust my experienced friend. After a few deaths the others succeeded their wills to his commands, for the most part. From then on things went rather smoothly in the game except for our mage had to leave us after the first hour, but we survived with out. In the real world things were a bit more rough for me.

I had foolishly thought we could be in the dungeon by no later then five and didn't fully consider that it would take us at least two hours to make it through the whole not to mention the amount of time required to make preparations to enter the dungeon. At around 6:15 my girlfriend asked me when I was going to make supper I responded only with soon, knowing full well I was in over my head. By 6:30 she knew something was up and was becoming openly frustrated with me. By 6:45 she was steaming. By 7:00 she wanted me dead. At 7 pm the mage left, and I hoped that the whole group would disband, too bad for me my friend was sure we could make for at least twenty more minutes until we killed the Cannon Master. Spinelessly not wanting to upset my friend I tagged along for the next twenty minutes with the sounds of my girlfriend storming around upstairs, upset that I choose the game before her.

Thankfully, this story does not end badly for me. We defeated the Cannon Master, I logged out and ran upstairs to create a delicious meal that was so good it redeemed all of my past iniquities. For all that these games do to create a world to escape to the real world is still present and filled with its own obligations.

Day 5

You can't take on the great challenges by yourself. That's not really what I discovered today as I stared at polygonal trees trying to think of something worth writing about. I've yet to discover any deep meaning in this world if that's something that only the divine spark can grant something, or perhaps we simply have yet to perfect the virtual divine spark. The real world is amazing because it's breadth and complexity are too much for us to comprehend. In a virtual world we only get simulated vastness that is only as the hardware can handle.

Day 4

Is deep travel possible in a virtual world? This the question I've been pursuing each time I start up WoW.


I'm in the crossroads. Shit, what the hell am I doing in the crossroads? I'm a level one Tauren Druid in an area meant for level ten to twenty. I came here because I wanted to illustrate what happens if I go beyond the prescribed bounds set by the designers. I was ripped apart by mobs who couldn't stand my level one calogne. Not only that but the other players were more than obliging enough to tell me where I should be not forgetting to call me "nub", a term of derision for inexperienced players.


Didn't take me long to realize that the crossroads isn't my place so I clicked my hearthstone and snap I'm back in Camp Narache with the rest of the "nubs". I picked up some quests from the dudes with exclamation makrs above their heads. I started the quests that begins the journey of ever widening circles until the whole world is encompassed in their expanse. What I mean by this is that when a player gets a quest she is usually expected to go out and complete the quest then return to the npc that gave it to her. Progesively the player makes her way further and further out into the world until they find themselves in a new town with new quests that repeat the same idea, eventually the player finds themselves traveling back and forth from one edge of the world to the other.


Could the designers have planned what the circular nature of these quests might imply? Complete a task get a reward, complete a task get a reward, complete a task get a reward, ad infinitum with never ending life. Seems almost like never ending sadness than infinite adventure.

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.