n00bcoil

Note: this is a repost from my personal webpage, paperhurts.com.

I started playing WoW because Ploman bought me “Burning Crusade” for my birthday this year (May 24, and yes I have an Amazon wishlist, hint hint) and nagged me for months before to start playing with him and another friend. I already had picked up the original version after much nagging from another friend, but had never actually gotten past the multi-disk, multi-hour install.

WoW is not an easy game to get into. To begin with, when people start talking to you about the game, they tend to speak in wowspeak - and when you’re first starting out, you have no fucking idea what half the things they are saying mean. Ploman used to regale me with tales of “uber healz” and “ganking” every time we got on the tennis court (I think to make up for the fact that I consistently kick his ass) and I would spend most of the time smiling and nodding and not understanding 75% of what he was talking about. Catherine has complained to me quite a lot about this, since a few of her friends in library school play WoW and are constantly harassing her to sign up. I tried to get her to do refer-a-friend with me, but she wouldn’t. Sigh.

Then when you first play your character - in my case, a little baby undead warlock - the quests seem stupid: go kill eight bats; go kill eight skeletons; go kill eight zombies. But eventually leave the shitty undead starting area and move over to the Blood Elf starting area, where everything is pretty and the quests start to get more interesting. Then at some point you end up in Duskwallow marsh for what seems like an eternity, and you again question your sanity for playing the game because let’s face it, Duskwallow marsh just plain sucks. But finally you make it to 70, and start doing heroics, and maybe a few raids and dailies on the Isle and you start getting gear and stop being a walking target for Alliance rogues and the game starts to get more about theory and tactics and less about grinding mobs and running back to your [dead] body all the time.

And once you’re there, you find out that one of the most challenging things to do in WoW is to get a decent PuG going… I swear there are only four tanks in LookingForGroup at any given time, and three of them suck. And don’t get me started on the varied and vast ways a healer can repeatedly wipe a group - even just on trash (note: crappy healers will inevitably blame the tank, and crappy tanks will inevitably blame the DPS).

I think, however, the most difficult part of WoW is figuring out what kind of gear with what stats you need in order to best play your class. Followed by figuring out what kind of rep you need to grind to help along your gear objectives. Followed by figuring out how to best spend those talent points. This weekend I broke down and hit up the Elitist Jerks forums and printed out some information on Affliction, raiding, specs (believe it or not, there is serious math that goes into people figuring out which talent points will eventually yeild the most damage), DoTs, gems, glyphs, etc… It almost felt like work, it made me question my sanity, as does the fact I’m even writing this post.

So now that you’re probably thinking to yourself “man, this lady is mad nerdy, why am I reading her blog?” allow me to talk a little about why video games are awesome - in no particular order.

1. Video games are one of the few things not tanking in our economy. It seems that video game purchases tend to be immune to the waxing and waning of our fragile economy. The “biggest-spending customers are typically young men (the average gamer is around 30) with high disposable incomes who regard gaming as an important part of their lives, rather than a form of discretionary spending.” Also, video games are [relatively] cheap entertainment, that you can do at home, even with friends (who hasn’t played Rock Band with a bunch of folks?). Compare going out for drinks with friends and having two key lime martinis at $9 each, versus a monthly subscription to WoW; $18 for two drinks, or $12-$15 for a month of WoW subscription.
2. Video games help keep your brain young. “In a study of 40 adults in their 60s and 70s, researchers found that those who learned to play a strategy-heavy video game improved their scores on a number of tests of cognitive function.” The study “suggest that strategy-based videogames can enhance reasoning, memory and other cognitive abilities that often decline with age,” which makes me think that I really should nag my grandfather a little more about accepting that refer-a-friend invitation.
3. WoW makes people smarter. A “study of 33 laparoscopic surgeons found that those who played video games were 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures and made 37 percent fewer errors than those who didn’t.” Scientists found that WoW players utilize “scientific thinking, like using systems and models for understanding situations and using math and testing to investigate problems.”
4. Everybody else is doing it. Or at least, over half of the adult population of the U.S. is playing video games; one in five play at least every day! I’m in the other four, but many of my friends are that one in five…which supports the survey’s assertion that “a college education means you’re more likely to play” video games. The majority of my friends have at least an undergraduate degree, and the majority of my friends play video games.

So if I have somehow managed to convince you to come play games with the rest of us, you can find me on U.S. server Burning Blade, Horde side. Look me up; Criphyrursol.