WoW: I'm a NERD.
May. 8th, 2006 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
I think it's time I finally came clean in public, in case anyone didn't already know: I am a giant nerd.
I'm not alone in this, a fact for which I am hugely grateful, but that does not take away the fact that I am a giant nerd. What's prompted this bout of confession, you ask? Well, the fact that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
corianderstem suggested we get together this Friday night, and I can't, because I have to raid. In fact, I raid pretty much every night of the week except for Sundays and Thursdays, and even on Thursdays sometimes I'm not available, because I'm doing instance runs with seldon, jade_okelani, and akscully.
Most of you probably don't even know what I'm talking about, and that's good. You don't really need to know, and I've spared most of you by making the vast majority of my WoW posts just for other WoW enthusiasts. But I think one public post acknowledging my giant nerdiness is in order, as well as an explanation of what takes up most of my time these days.
World of Warcraft is an immersive game. It's an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), basically meaning that you're playing at the same time as hundreds/thousands of other people. Your basic goal is to 'level' your character, by killing things and by accomplishing quests. You can do the quests with other people or you can do them alone. Thus, I can get together with Jade or Amelia and do quests with them, or just one of them, or we can all go solo and just wave at each other if we pass by one another.
As you level, quests become more complicated, requiring multiple people to accomplish. They start you off early on that concept with 'instances,' where a group of five people (typically) run through a specific 'dungeon' and do those dungeon-specific quests. Usually you get much better rewards from doing this (and from killing bosses in those dungeons) than doing solo quests. By the time you reach level 60 (the current cap), those dungeons have turned into 10-, 20-, even 40-man groups, called 'raids.' Doing these results in being able to acquire the BEST things the game has to offer, in terms of armor (also called gear) and weapons.
Not everyone raids. Some people, when they reach 60, stop playing that character and start leveling another one. Or they only do the lower-end instances. Or they PvP. Going on to raid requires a) being part of a raiding guild and b) a lot of time/dedication.
For the longest time, Jade, Amelia and I weren't in a raiding guild. We were interested in doing it, but it's not always easy to get into a raiding guild (particularly a good one), and their raiding schedule also has to be a fit for you (there are Australian guilds, and east coast guilds, etc.), whether they are really hardcore about it or more casual, as well as, of course, the people -- you definitely want to be in a guild with good people. Then my brother got into Emerge, which was an up and coming raiding guild, and sponsored our applications.
Thus, my days of raiding began.
Each raid can take anywhere between 4-6 hours. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we do 40-man raids. That means that there are 40 people in our guild in one instance, and we're all working together to kill the bosses and collect the loot. Chatting in-game is possible, and the vast majority of raiding guilds also use Ventrilo, which is basically voice chat. So we talk to each other, hear each other's voices, participate on our guild forums, and basically, get to be a kind of family. You get to know people and personalities pretty well, kind of like LJ only you're playing a game at the same time and also voice chatting in real time.
Emerge skews to an older crowd -- most of us are between 24-45. We also have a lot of women, kind of unusual when you're talking about a video game, but possibly it's because we have a number of couples who play together. Many of our guildies are married and have children. Emerge is also a more casual raiding guild, probably because of the aforementioned facts about family. Still, we have a core raiding team, the members of which are required to attend 70% of raids, and after a few weeks of playing, me, Jade, and Amelia were all asked to be on it. This was, of course, nice and flattering, but it does mean that we have an obligation to be at the raids most of the time.
So, that is the tale of my giant nerdiness. Five out of seven days a week, I go home to play WoW with these 19-39 other people. It's its own kind of social outlet, but does make having a social life in RL kind of difficult. I'm having an awesome time though, so... it's a price I'm (currently) willing to pay. One day I'm sure that'll change, but it probably won't be soon. :P
I'm not alone in this, a fact for which I am hugely grateful, but that does not take away the fact that I am a giant nerd. What's prompted this bout of confession, you ask? Well, the fact that
corianderstem suggested we get together this Friday night, and I can't, because I have to raid. In fact, I raid pretty much every night of the week except for Sundays and Thursdays, and even on Thursdays sometimes I'm not available, because I'm doing instance runs with seldon, jade_okelani, and akscully.Most of you probably don't even know what I'm talking about, and that's good. You don't really need to know, and I've spared most of you by making the vast majority of my WoW posts just for other WoW enthusiasts. But I think one public post acknowledging my giant nerdiness is in order, as well as an explanation of what takes up most of my time these days.
World of Warcraft is an immersive game. It's an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), basically meaning that you're playing at the same time as hundreds/thousands of other people. Your basic goal is to 'level' your character, by killing things and by accomplishing quests. You can do the quests with other people or you can do them alone. Thus, I can get together with Jade or Amelia and do quests with them, or just one of them, or we can all go solo and just wave at each other if we pass by one another.
As you level, quests become more complicated, requiring multiple people to accomplish. They start you off early on that concept with 'instances,' where a group of five people (typically) run through a specific 'dungeon' and do those dungeon-specific quests. Usually you get much better rewards from doing this (and from killing bosses in those dungeons) than doing solo quests. By the time you reach level 60 (the current cap), those dungeons have turned into 10-, 20-, even 40-man groups, called 'raids.' Doing these results in being able to acquire the BEST things the game has to offer, in terms of armor (also called gear) and weapons.
Not everyone raids. Some people, when they reach 60, stop playing that character and start leveling another one. Or they only do the lower-end instances. Or they PvP. Going on to raid requires a) being part of a raiding guild and b) a lot of time/dedication.
For the longest time, Jade, Amelia and I weren't in a raiding guild. We were interested in doing it, but it's not always easy to get into a raiding guild (particularly a good one), and their raiding schedule also has to be a fit for you (there are Australian guilds, and east coast guilds, etc.), whether they are really hardcore about it or more casual, as well as, of course, the people -- you definitely want to be in a guild with good people. Then my brother got into Emerge, which was an up and coming raiding guild, and sponsored our applications.
Thus, my days of raiding began.
Each raid can take anywhere between 4-6 hours. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we do 40-man raids. That means that there are 40 people in our guild in one instance, and we're all working together to kill the bosses and collect the loot. Chatting in-game is possible, and the vast majority of raiding guilds also use Ventrilo, which is basically voice chat. So we talk to each other, hear each other's voices, participate on our guild forums, and basically, get to be a kind of family. You get to know people and personalities pretty well, kind of like LJ only you're playing a game at the same time and also voice chatting in real time.
Emerge skews to an older crowd -- most of us are between 24-45. We also have a lot of women, kind of unusual when you're talking about a video game, but possibly it's because we have a number of couples who play together. Many of our guildies are married and have children. Emerge is also a more casual raiding guild, probably because of the aforementioned facts about family. Still, we have a core raiding team, the members of which are required to attend 70% of raids, and after a few weeks of playing, me, Jade, and Amelia were all asked to be on it. This was, of course, nice and flattering, but it does mean that we have an obligation to be at the raids most of the time.
So, that is the tale of my giant nerdiness. Five out of seven days a week, I go home to play WoW with these 19-39 other people. It's its own kind of social outlet, but does make having a social life in RL kind of difficult. I'm having an awesome time though, so... it's a price I'm (currently) willing to pay. One day I'm sure that'll change, but it probably won't be soon. :P
