A Pilgrim’s Digression

This post is going to mean absolutely nothing to people who don’t play World of Warcraft, so I give you fair warning. The half-dozen or so people who don’t play the game can stop reading whenever their interest wanes.

If you do stop reading, I nonetheless recommend that you take a look at this online comic series, The Noob, by the artist Gianna Masetti. Masetti has hilariously parodied the experience of entering the world of a role-playing game, even titling her fictional RPG Clichéquest. It’s a fun read, and hopefully even someone not familiar with this type of game can appreciate the humor of it.

Having just initiated my best friend to WoW over the past couple weeks, I’ve been thinking about what my experience was like when I first started playing. Specifically, I have been remembering some of the humorous, or stupid things I did as a n00b–as a new player. Again, a warning: these may not be humorous if you don’t play the game.

It was only August 31 of last year that I installed the game, but in some ways the period prior to August 31, 2006, seems like a previous era of my life. I have devoted hours and hours to this game. In some ways, it has come to seem as real to me as real life, or as gamers call it, RL. To some extent, we have to distinguish between our real life and our virtual life, for sanity’s sake, but when you spend as much time–if not more–in a game than you do socializing with “real life” friends and family, is the game in fact becoming your real life?

Memory fades, but I can still remember what it felt like, that day in August when I dropped into Coldridge Valley, Azeroth, for the first time. My first character was a dwarf warrior. Warrior is the default class at the character creation screen, and I didn’t understand enough to choose another class. I just knew I wanted to be a dwarf.

I could have played a human, a gnome, an elf…or I could have joined the “enemy,” the Horde, and played an Orc, a Tauren, a Troll, or an Undead.

I chose a dwarf warrior. The warrior part was a mistake, though, and pretty soon I logged out and spent more time at the character creation screen and figured out that I wanted to try a hunter. So I recreated my character, this time putting more thought into the matter.

It’s interesting the choices we make, though, in the creation of these avatars. Why didn’t I automatically chose the human race? Why would I choose to play a hunter? It was fortuitous that I did choose a hunter, because as some have noted, playing a hunter is like playing in “Easy” mode. But originally, I chose to play a hunter because they are the only class in the game that get a pet who fights alongside them. But perhaps choosing a hunter was also a subconscious choice connected to my youth in West Virginia, where I was a hunter in RL.

The question about why I did not choose a human is more complicated, and I am not going to spend a lot of time here over-analyzing it. But to this day, the one race I have no desire to play is the human race.

Returning to the story, dropping down into Coldridge Valley for the first time as a dwarf hunter named Nori was a disorienting experience. I was disoriented for most of the first month or so that I played, in fact. Much of the humor I am about to relate results from that sense of vertigo, of being sucked into an enormous gaming realm where you can quite literally go anywhere, as long as you are strong enough to survive.

There are tool tips to help you take your first steps into Azeroth, and since you are “alone” (meaning, not grouped with another player), you can progress at your own pace. Or you can sit down in the snow and alt-tab out to the Internet to find answers to the questions you have about what to do next.

Nonetheless, the sense of immense complexity is overwhelming at first. That feeling passes, with time, so it’s good to remember it, now.

One of the first things that happened to Nori on his adventures was that, at some point, his camera perspective got screwed up. As you play, the camera is usually positioned behind the character, so you are always looking at his backside. You want to be able to see what is in front of your character, after all.

However, at one point early on, I found myself looking down on the top of Nori’s head, and I could not figure out how to move the camera back behind Nori again. It made playing immensely difficult. Since I could not see in front of me, I was literally blundering into wolves and troggs and creatures, who would quickly kill me. This was a real problem.

There came a point where I was just about ready to delete the character and start over, figuring that perhaps the character data was corrupted in some way. Instead, I decided to seek help. At the time, I had no clue how to ask a question in the general chat channel.

Probably, no one would have answered anyway, or they would have mocked me. The latter is the more likely possibility. Anyone that seems n00bish is likely to face some ridicule. On the other hand, some generous soul might have answered my question, if I’d been able to ask it. There are plenty of good people in Azeroth, as well as plenty of jerks. I tend to go out of my way, now, to answer questions in general chat, even if the answer should be staring the person in the face.

Whatever I might have done, what I did was I sat down in the road and through trial and error figured out how to petition a Game Master, customer support, who thankfully replied almost immediately. I didn’t know how lucky I was, on that score. I’ve never received such a quick response to an issue since that day.

“Do you have a two button mouse?” The GM asked.

“Yes.”

“Hold left-click and turn your mouse…does the camera position change?”

“Um. Yes,” I said sheepishly. “I feel like such an idiot.”

Hold the mouse button and move the mouse. Duh.

I’ve told that story before to friends, but the next story has never been told. This is the account of my first experience with Player versus Player action. PvP. Supposedly the heart and soul of World of Warcraft.

In fact, WoW is set up so that you never have to actually fight other players, if you don’t want to. I play on an RP server (role-playing), so PvP combat is limited to those times when I choose to fight. Thus most of the time, other players cannot attack me, unless I have made the conscious choice to PvP.

It took me a long time to figure out that system. When am I flagged for PvP? How do I unflag? Why can’t I attack that damned Night Elf who is making rude gestures at me?

Personally, I feel like anytime someone in-game spits on you, makes a rude gesture, or even farts on you (yes, your character can fart), that ought to raise your PvP flag. Regardless of whether the rude person is of the same faction as yourself, you ought to be able to take them down.

But I digress…

About level 6 or 7, I got my first quest to go to Ironforge, the Dwarven capital city. That trip could be a story in itself. I didn’t go back for a long time, because it was just too large, too disorienting. It was incredibly crowded with other players. I got lost. I couldn’t find my way to where I needed to go. Then, I couldn’t find my way out again.

I didn’t know enough to ask a guard for directions to the main gate.

However, on my way in to Ironforge, there were some people dueling just outside the entrance. Ironforge is not quite as bad as the human town of Goldshire, in terms of people wasting time dueling with each other, but usually there are people gathered out there for some same-faction PvP.

I stopped for a moment to watch. I had read on the website that duelling was one of the ways people can choose to PvP on a role-playing server. It isn’t “true” PvP, because no one dies, however. The loser simply kneels before the victor and they go on about their business…or they duel again.

As I was standing there, someone challenged me to a duel. A little message box popped up, asking me to accept or decline the duel. I looked for the person who had challenged me…found them…ah, a level 24 Mage.

Why not? I’ll accept!

I accepted the challenge and started running towards the Mage to whack him with my axe, when suddenly, lo and behold, I am a sheep.

Yes, I got sheeped. Polymorphed, is the technical name for it. The Mage changed me into a baaaaing sheep.

WTF!, as gamers say.

After 20 seconds of running around wildly as a sheep, I changed back. Oh yeah, I’m gonna nail the bastard this time.

Poof! I am a sheep again.

Baaaaaa!

This went on for a long time. After the third or fourth time, I finally said, “To hell with this.” I wasn’t taking any damage–the purpose of the sheep spell is not to damage an opponent–but I couldn’t fight, either.

I didn’t realize that a Mage of that level could have beaten me at his leisure. So the next time I changed back to my Dwarven form, I took Graham Chapman’s advice to “Run away! Run away!”

Poof! Sheeped again. This continued until the Mage got tired of it and let me go. I forfeited my first duel, instead of fighting bravely to the end.

A message went out in the chat channel, broadcast throughout the land, “Nori has fled from Player X in a duel.”

My first entrance into Ironforge was therefore under the most humiliating of circumstances. Then I got lost and was unable to complete the quest I had come there for, to begin with. So I hearthed out (used my hearthstone to transport me to the Inn at the town of Kharanos). Then I logged out, hurt and upset, and feeling like this game was not for me.

“Maybe I’ll just give it up,” I thought. “I should have known that I wouldn’t like playing a game with other people.”

But I haven’t given it up. However, perhaps my wife wishes that moment had truly been a kind of “aversion therapy” for me.

I did return, however. I spent some time in Ironforge, learning my way around. Whenever I went there, however, I kept twitching and looking over my shoulder, expecting to be sheeped at any moment.

For awhile, I thought perhaps Ironforge was a kind of free-for-all zone where I could be attacked by other players at any moment. Eventually I came to realize that I was perfectly safe, as long as I didn’t accept any duel challenges from level 24 Mages.

I now think sheeping is one of the coolest abilities in the game. Really high level Mages are able to turn players into pigs, an even better spell. I’ve often thought having such an ability in RL would be the ultimate revenge on some people.

Someone is annoying you–sheep them. Then make your escape while they run around baaaaing for 20 seconds.

Hopefully, these two stories have entertained and (perhaps) made it easier for new players to feel as if their experiences with the game, good and bad, are entirely valid and appropriate.

Currently, I am helping train up my best friend, who just started playing, and as I’ve told him before, there is something to be said for NOT having a friend teach you the game. Sometimes I feel like I am leading him about by the ear, rushing him from place to place without giving him a chance to experience the first-time excitement of exploring Azeroth and learning about its people and customs.

And I know he must get tired of my long-winded discourses on choosing a profession, on what to sell to vendors and what to auction at the Auction House, and on gaming etiquette and protocol.

I had to figure all of that out by myself, and I made lots of mistakes. Once I started grouping with others to complete tough quests, I probably irritated them with my total incompetence.

But it was an exciting time. You only get that experience once. Then one day, you discover that Azeroth is huge, yes, but not border-less. Game Masters stop responding to your questions in a timely fashion.

And duelling is for morons. I still don’t duel. I’m not averse to some PvP action, from time to time, where the consequences are death…but duelling is a complete time-waster.

And at some point in your experience, you realize that Goldshire is not a quaint village of peaceful humans, but a wretched hive of scum and villainy where bored, high level players duel bare-fisted and bare-butt naked in the streets, and Night Elf chicks dance nude on the table tops in the Lion’s Pride Inn.

However, at least in the beginning, there is only you and the cold mountain air of Coldridge Valley. The snow blows about your feet. Cold air whistles around your bare ears. You are dressed in rags, not a coin in your pocket, but there is a warmly dressed dwarf in front of you named Sten Stoutarm. He has a gold exclamation mark above his head.

You talk to him. “I need you to go get me some wolf meat,” he says. Bring him eight pieces of tough wolf meat and he will give you this nice pair of warm winter gloves.

Sounds like a good deal to me, on a cold February day like this.