Lost my appetite (yawp)

Oh, well, another weekend with Rift Beta, in which I spent only a short moment. Instead, I plunged into the AH game in WoW and had - almost as short - moment with Gnomore.

Positives first: I broke 100k gold in Sunday, 121 312g this morning to be exact. This makes it about 50k in less than three weeks, not to mention all the materials I've been stockpiling and have waiting for processing on my three main crafters. Mind you, I'm not doing this as my main attraction (though it seems that way): I have enough time to pull a thing in here and another there, but not enough to plunge into a LFD PUG or quest meaningfully in the new areas.

Gnomore hit level 17 and I had some strange things to happen... All in all, I noticed that I have very hard time in logging into Gnomore because the playing is pretty intense. The general mindset I have on this toon is very, very different from the gung-ho mentality I have with other toons. In addition to that, anyone claiming that it's hard to get any money as a starting character can look at themselves: Gnomore at level 17 has 444g only through gathering professions and selling the materials in AH. Normal character has quest rewards and assorted loot to sell, too, so they should have even more at level 20. Definitely enough at higher levels despite the increasing skill costs. So hush and go loot something, like I tend to say to beggars.

Which brings us to the not so positive things. Rift is one fine game, but as it happens, the players are drifters from other - not so great - games. They bring their limitations, expectations and views along with them, most notably the spam in the chatrooms about how Rift is this and that other game is so much better and so on.

I learned a few things about myself and my playstyle in one encounter in Rift. It effectively took my appetite for future betas, and I really honestly began to doubt if I really want to be part of the Rift community. Then again, the community consists of players, and if I'm out, the community will be less me.

I was exploring with my level 17 Pyro/Archon/Ele in the second Defiant area, Stone-something. It's an area for levels 18 upwards (I think, the mobs are that range), so I was really exploring an area where no sensible player would go at that stage. My experience with Gnomore however has lead me into this, to challenge the odds and see how far I can trek.

Anyhow, I came to the settlement in there and as it happens there was a cave nearby, behind a cathedral of sorts. I sneaked past a couple of groups of mobs and got into the cave. There was a party of two in, killing mobs and by a custom I launched my - due to level difference - feeble fireballs into the mobs. Yup, the mobs were level 24, seven levels above my toon, so I barely made an odd point or two damage here and there. My mistake was that I wasn't paying attention to the chat at that point, as there was something said that was probably aimed at me.

You see, one of the pair said that "you should stop leeching" and "ok, kill the next ones yourself" and I didn't understand a)who was saying that, b)to whom it was said to and c)what it was related to. Turned out that it was meant to me and that I was leeching the pair doing the 'hard work'.

Now color me pink and call me Daisy, but I understand leeching to be something involving gaining something from others hard work. Like Larísa of the Pink Pigtail Inn, when she leeched the Headless Horseman pumpkin event: she did it because the game froze and she just got the reward from other players work. It's the same as playing WoW Battlegrounds and AFKing to get the points for it, doing nothing.

Leeching is to me to gain something from others, doing nothing yourself. In this case, I was doing (even though it was in vain) and I wasn't gaining anything as the mobs were normal world mobs and there was no group event around.

When I pointed out and challenged this view of the vocal person in the pair I was told the following:
* It is rude to leech - of course, I wouldn't approve it
* I was leeching because I wasn't contributing - I was contributing to the best of my ability
* That point or two was hardly contributing, I shouldn't be here - Oh...
* At that level I shouldn't have even been there - ...
* Because I didn't ask, I was rude, impolite and leeching.

Anyone knowing me ingame knows I'm very polite, treat even the jerks with utmost respect and correctness and very seldom use any derogatory terms, especially with strangers like this.

In the end, I took the pounding of one mob in the cave, gave the vocal one the satisfaction of seeing me fail like that (really) and trekked even further into the zone after resurrecting myself and healing.

But I felt very bad about the whole incident. Had I misunderstood something? Was I really acting improperly and rudely? Am I to be confined to the 'safe and proper' areas for questing?

So I logged out after taking a soul portal to Meridien and didn't even look back to Rift after that.

Goes to show how one rotten experience can spoil the whole fun for you. I wonder how a newcomer to any MMO will react or feel when s/he encounters the "L2P NOOB" wall of scream in the first group event s/he takes part in...

Was I really playing it wrong?

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No three to report

Yes, due to a real life commitment, Three Stooges didn't ride. At least not together. I'm not sure what Förgelös and Bishopgeorge may have gotten into their mind on doing, the best I can hope for is for them to do some questing and get some gear.

On the other side, I'm nearing 100k gold through my AH experiment. That's only 30k more from my starting point, but it has accumulated through effort, not through luck, and within a short period of time (2 weeks to be honest). From this I can offer a few insights on the AH market to the newcomer.

* Start small. Do not try to grasp the whole glyph market on the first try if you're new in the game, short on money or short on time. Best way to go is to sell materials: cloth, ores, stones and herbs.
* Trust the market. Do not put cheap materials for sale in stacks of one: instead, put full stacks and at a bit higher price.
* Know the market. Too often I find a piece of rare recipe, schematic or plan in the market for a fraction of it's real price. I purchase a rare recipe for 6g and sell it for 300g. The same goes with all the stuff in AH: know the competing and/or real price of the items you are about to sell. Saves you the headache when you notice that you could have gotten 10 or 100 times the money you put it in for.
* Plan and develop a system. Saves time for the actual play.

Unless of course, you plan to play the AH rather than the questing, grouping or raiding.

It's a choice. Your choice.

.Current balance (alliance side): 90 635g, invested another 2540g in Elementium and Obsidium ores for prospecting.

Metropolitan players

A comment on yesterday's post spurred this train of thought. In short, the MMOs and their populations are so big that the social coherence and unity is already broken by the fact that players are more like citizens of huge metropolitan cities rather than the nice little rural village I dreamed of. The characters running across my screen when I play are just as anonymous and meaningless as the passerby in any modern city only because there are so many of them.

The dark side of this thought is the fact that the more there are heroes in the MMOs we play, the less anyone is really a hero. The social connections we make in the game are far and few, and if they click, then we have a foundation to the group adventures I and many others crave for.

However, the clubs, associations, jobs and social gatherings which make us connect with people in the real life are missing in MMOs, WoW in particular. The only possibility to meet other players in a meaningful in game endeavor is the random instance provided by the Dungeon Finder, and that has been watered down by the fact that it selects other players to the group across the battlegroup of several servers. It doesn't make any difference to meet other people with whom you will never have the opportunity to go any deeper in the relationship than hello-thanks-bye.

The tight social groups which go through the group content in the game are more like modern day villages or tightly knit social clubs which have strict rules to keep the riff-raff out. What comes to mind is to have miniature countries composed of only one block of flats or one skyscraper, each side by side but separated by different government, laws and taxes. (I think Ian McDonald had a novel about London like that or something... I may be wrong, though.) The guilds are more or less such, and there is no way for a stray on the street to say whether this one suits you or the other.

If we dig deeper into this, it becomes apparent that because every character in WoW (for example) is supposed to be the master of their class and skills, there is no place for the 'normal people' within the players. Whereas in real medieval times (or in literature, for example) the heroes have a huge supporting cast to provide them with gear, sustenance and information. In concurrent MMOs there is no place for a armorsmith, weaponsmith, provisioner nor sage, for they all have to be the hero of the day.

For some to be the specialist in crafting would be more than enough. I can say that I would be more than happy to be one such character, sitting in the city, crafting superior gear and be recognized as one being capable of doing that. The game mechanics do not approve that in any way, and as there is no way of giving any credit to other players for their performance, anyone crafting more than plunging through dungeons is dismissed as failure in the game. Add to this the fact that the crafted gear has no real meaning in the game as whole and you can see how the most important infrastructural piece of society is simply wiped out of the game.

We players are the citizens of huge metropolitan areas of MMOs. We treat our fellow players - more precisely, their characters - with same courtesy as we do any other person in real life we encounter on the buzzing streets of our home town.

We simply ignore them and go about our own business.

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Narrow vision - 20:20?

I have just read the post Tobold made about WoW in 2020 and Larísa's 'response' to that. I even commented both of them, almost with the same response, something I see every time I run a levelling PUG with my druid (lv63). The sad decline of the random groups ever since the Dungeon Finder came. Especially the decline in the social side of the grouping, as no one can be held accountable on anything else than their performance in the dungeon and with no repercussions on acting poorly or being a jerk, aspects which have caused the PUGs to be silent runs through the instances with - in a good case - a hello and thnx to cap it.

My opinion is that the social side of WoW has died outside the guilds which are composed of people fitting into the guild mentality and group. Anyone else is a lone wolf in a world of pixelated avatars which could be easily replaced with AI drones everywhere, creating an illusion of a living world.

The more I read the blogs of people in high end raiding guilds or people in guilds with real life friends, the more I get the impression that this vocal minority has narrowed 20:20 sight of the game. They live the game in the promised land, in tight, seclusive, social ground which seems like the game is perfect to their needs. What ever is outside that perception is fault and voided by their perception.

Even though I'm in a great guild, I don't feel I'm part of the group. It's purely because we have differing agendas on the game. Thus I'm levelling up Gnomore as well as my banker druid, exploring and experiencing the game without the hurry and need to compete or achieve. And as such I see a very much different game than the people in guilds gearing for the next raid.

And the view isn't pretty.

Sure, to make a social connection requires activity on your side. But why bother on a random group, which you will never meet again. A group of random players from other servers whom you will never know any better than "nice tank", "great healer" or "darn dps".

So I'm very reluctant to agree with the rosy tinted views Larísa poses as the future facts of the game: I share her view on how newcomers will have a very different view on the game than her, though.

If we socialize, we tend to do it with people we already know. I feel truthfully sorry for new players who enter the game on their own, like I did once upon a time. My impression is that you’d better have some real life friends joining at the same time, or you might end up lonely and alienated. It seems to me as if people don’t have the time for small talk they used to have once upon a time. It’s all about efficiency and return on investment of time. Get your achievements done. Gear up. Get your ranking. Accomplish. Don’t waste your time on strangers!

The game is already more solo friendly than ever, the social possibilities have been limited to the bare minimum and I doubt that any player coming to game even gets the notion that the other player characters are played by a living person. To deny this is the ultimate way of narrowing your vision by your own experience.

And I refuse to narrow my vision like that. Instead, I treat the other players in a PUG with the same courtesy they offer to me.

They be NPC's, means to my ends.

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See Darkshore and die

Gnomore pictorial 15-16

So it all started in Darnassus again, where Gnomore got a nice package in the post: Rogues Deck from a dear friend, my banker character. The AH ventures with inks and stuff weren't as profitable as pure herbs and ores, netting only some tens of gold instead of hundreds, so from now on the herbs will be sold as is. Selling ore in bars is yet to be tested, but that should be more viable route all in all.

Ain't that Darkmoon Robe lovely?

This time there was no doubt about the route to go: it was Darkshore all time. The main attraction was the map with Gathermate data:

All those possibilities!

So yes, sue me because I'm using an addon. Several in fact. All which help and guide me. All I have to do is run around and collect stuff while avoiding creatures.

But then again, that's how this game is played nowadays. And Blizzard is even providing us with their integrated guest helping system to counter the use of Guesthelper kind of addons, which still are out there.

Ahem. Back to the adventuring part. Darkshore has changed a lot. Where there were Nagas in the Ruins of Mathystra, there are now trolls.

And these trolls are actually working for their living!

While going through the area, Gnomore dinged level 15, allowing the use of Dungeon Finder. As the decision was made that this would be bending the rules of being a pacifist, I only made a mental note of it. This is just a step towards the mount at level 20, nothing biggie.

What never ceases to amaze me is the fact that now that I'm not whacking through the content I see all these wonderful, strange and beautiful sights everywhere. Look at these screenshots!

But let's pull back to the middle picture. As Gnomore was trekking down the eastern side of Darkshore, there was this thundering sound of waterfall, and thus I found traces of the real Cataclysmic Shattering inland.

As seein in the earlier picture, the waterfall is quite huge, for a small lv15 character it's enormous. And the maelstrom at the bottom... H-U-G-E.

And fun...

WHEEEE!

As you are pulled in the whirl, you get to another place: I think this is the first one to actually do that to a character and I feel sad for the ones who do not take the opportunity to test if they can survive the maelstrom. You see, this place grants you a free achievement...

And offers you the possibility for the Easter Egg achievement if you kill that one bad demon in there. This one:

I feel SO cheated because of this. I had no other option than get out of there and make my final comment about this whirly thingy.

So off we went. Those whirly thingies became the main attraction on the way to Explore Darkshore. Let's see how many ways...

But none of them was as fun as the Maw of the Void.

There was only one chain of quests Gnomore could go through to help this guy to keep one of the whirlies alive.

Oh, yes. Malfurion Stormrage. And the only chain which I could through was the one with Furbolgs and Fire Elementals. Yes, they killed, I collected and in the end, I protected the cleansing totem against an assault of several fire elementals and one construct I think. Sadly I was not able to relieve Malfurion from his duties, so he could flee to Mount Hyjal to greet the levelling players in there. Gnomore is such a sucker.

The totem quest happened nearby the fire whirly thingy, but it was so hectic, I was so exhilariated and excited that I forgot to take snapshots out of it. I didn't kill anything and didn't even die! Proof:

Then it was running here and there. But what struck me odd was the fact that even the ghosts of the Ancient ones had moved when the Shattering hit. I had always thought that ghosts were bound to a certain spot, but it seems that the Shattering has moved that certain spot for some - or majority in Darkshore! - of the ghosts around Azeroth.

After a while of running there were only two places to visit.

Master's Glaive, which the nasties are digging up to reveal the monstrosity killed by the Glaive, and Nazj'Vel, the new town/cave of the Nagas, both seen in the picture up there.

To conclude the ventures this time, the last picture.

To see Darkshore and die. Didn't die a lot, but that last one was appropriate one.

Gnomore is level 16, parked in Darnassus and about to take on the Eastern Kingdoms for more: time to explore them to the same 'level' and get that mount up!
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PS. There are more pictures in the pictorial album with more wittier captions and with lots of room for comments. Feel free to (ab)use the albums!
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