Is playing WoW with vent more fun?

So in looking at my blog stats, I saw that someone found this blog by searching for, “is playing WoW with vent more fun.” And I thought to myself, ‘gee, what a great topic for a post!” So that’s to be the post for today.

My take is… yes. See you next time. j/k

Vent changes everything, really.

As I’ve posted before, text-chat in WoW requires stopping whatever you’re doing, typing, and then returning to your run or fight. Auto-run helps, and so sometimes typed conversations are possible when you’re trying to get somewhere, but mostly, if you want to text chat, you basically stop playing and hang out somewhere. (I used to do that a lot in Zangermarsh. There’s something cool about sitting on top of those mushrooms for a chat…)

But Vent is where you can acutally get to know people. Because you can still play while you talk, you can joke, gripe, question, comment or muse without interrupting things. There is something very different about text-chatting with people and then moving to Vent for a conversation. It feels much more intimate, more personal.

I remember long ago, I had met someone I thought was very cool. I quested with him for a while, and eventually thought that it would be easier to invite him to chat on Vent rather than just in text. I had known him for about two weeks.

But still, I was nervous about asking. It felt somehow too intimate to suggest he come onto Vent – I didn’t want to give the wrong idea, I didn’t want to make either of us feel uncomfortable. At the time, I asked a friend, Di., about it, and he said, “sure, why not? no big deal.” And I think he didn’t really see any reason why I would feel awkward inviting someone to Vent. But it felt like A Step to me. It took more nerve – and social risk – change venues like that.

On the flip side, I once was leveling a toon and ended up questing with someone I met. And s/he suggested that we get into Vent to coordinate because it was easier. But that felt just really weird to me! I made excuses until the questing was over. I just wasn’t comfortable in Vent – especially alone – with someone i had just met. Socially, voice chat raising teh stakes, somehow. Makes things more exposed, and turns almost socially neutral situations into ones where things like age and gender and accesnt, not to mention simple personality, are much more immediate and central to interaction.

Probably a lot of this is because I’m female. My identity, as a “marked” one – that is, not the expected gender, and so noted as different – becomes salient when I’m in Vent. So text chatting, it doesn’t much come up that I’m female (although  sometimes it very much does), but in Vent it is always a part of who I am and who I’m seen to be. I’ve heard and read many women say they often claim they “don’t have Vent” because they don’t want to either out themselves as female or deal with the reactions when they talk. If it’s just me and a guy in a Vent channel, it can generate gossip – or at the very least, suggestive teasing from others.

But playing with Vent is definitely more fun. Recently I did some battlegrounds with a guildie while on Vent and it was a blast. I was a wreck, dying all the time, and really not doing well, but because w ere in Vent we could laugh at it and it was a blast. Running heroics while chatting in Vent can turn dull, repetitive instances into goofy evenings of fun.

In short, Vent chat makes things lighter. It makes them personal. It makes them somehow more real. That sense of more real is because, I believe, voice raises the social stakes, makes aspects of our individual selves more relevant and present (and simply more identifiable). This might be because voice is a “richer” medium, able to transmit more personal, social and cultural markers and resulting in more intimate interaction. But I’m with Walther: you can be extremely intimate in text as well.

But in WoW, where generally a) text disrupts game activities and b) you know of and have experience with the voice alternative to text, there is a clear difference between the two. Moving from text chat to Vent always make me shy for a few moments, even with people I’ve spoken to a lot before.

And back to school….

Ah, back to school. My blogging will necessarily be erratic now, but at least this time I have an excuse.

Starting an intensive work activity sure does cut into WoW time. Last year, WoW was my work cooldown, and I would hop on just about every evening to let the day go. These days, though, that’s somehow more difficult. Early on, while leveling, there was a nice soothing pattern to my play that suited my chill-out needs well.

These days, though, it’s raiding, and somehow, that’s a lot less relaxing. It’s not quite like a second job, as some raiding guilds can be, because my guild is flexible and relaxed. But still, the pressure is a lot higher when you’re working with 24 other people to kill big bads. When I was leveling, the only one who suffered when my bleary eyes couldn’t focus on the screen was me; in a raid, I have to stay on point. After all, I don’t want to doze off right when the decimate flattens my tank or dash into mobs because I was too tired to move my finger off the run button.

So raiding after work isn’t so relaxing.

But I do love my WoW. I’ll be scheduling in my raid times like appointments now, which is also a slightly strange thing for me. It’s not exactly another work-type obligation (after all, it is fun), but it’s not the mindless, space-out, unwind type thing of old.

Notions of entertainment

Part of why “it’s just a game” is a misleading idea in a space like WoW is because of the way entertainment is seen in our society. We think of it as this separate, non-productive thing we do when we’re not doing our “real” work. It’s optional, “just for fun,” and basically self-indulgent.

This distinction between work and play/entertainment is kind of new, relatively speaking. The rise of the industrial revolution brought with it an increasing distinction between “home” and “work”. As work was more and more often located outside the home, we strengthened our notion of home being distinct, made for something other than work, made for, among other things, entertainment. “Work,” that remunerated, productive activity that was required for survival, was defined as something we go and do because we have to. Entertainment, on the other hand, was part of leisure, and was something we do because we want to. Of course, entertaining activities like stories and plays and games have been around for thousands of years, but they were arguably not considered as distinct from other parts of our lives. They were, in many cases, even considered essential to communities and part of the educational process.

For a while now, entertainment has been closely associated with media. We watch TV, go to the movies, read books, for entertainment. We also can get news from those things, of course, and the distinction between news and entertainment is blurry, and getting blurrier, as pointed out by Delli Carpini.

Part of the issue with classifying things as entertainment (as opposed to news or work), is that this category brings with it a sense of frivolity, lack of productivity, societal pointlessness.  As Delli Carpini points out, news has often been extolled as “politically relevant” and necessary for a functioning democracy, while entertainment’s capacity to contribute has been largely ignored. Entertainment, like leisure, is a kind of “not-work,” and therefore fundamentally something that takes us away from the important thing, the thing we’re supposed to be paying attention to: work.

As part of the entertainment sphere, as it were, online video games like WoW are immediately presumed to be not only politically, but socially irrelevant, pointless, unproductive. They do not contribute, so common wisdom says, to society in a meaningful way.

Well, you know I’m going to disagree with that, of course.

First of all, the assumption that “play” (or entertainment) in general is socially/societally useless is very problematic. Children need play to develop “cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being.” But adults need play, too. Some studies suggest that play helps ”create happy, smart adults …[and] stronger emotional bonds and collaboration among team members.” Of course, less play might seem to suggest less productivity and therefore a less healthy society, but some research suggests that isn’t the case. In fact, countries with fewer average work hours show many indicators of better standards of living, longer lives, reduced stress, and healthier people.

Second, I believe play does, indeed, contribute to society. Economic figures of generating jobs, income, and a thriving market aside (in 2008, the US showed over $900 billion in media spending, plus nearly $300 billion in advertising), play is part of social interaction, and we need that.

Imagine this: You only meet and befriend people you work with. You spend no time, energy, or money on activities other than those related to work and running an efficient household. Your only source of self-worth, new ideas, feelings of inspiration and competence, or skills are work-related.

Now, that might be just fine for someone lucky enough to be in the perfect job. But for the vast majority of people, work (even interesting work) is only a small part of what makes us happy. We look to other activities to fulfill other parts of ourselves, like performing in the community theatre, scaling a tough mountain, participating in a local soccer league, and yes, playing video games.

Lumping all that play into “entertainment” may certainly be useful when distinguishing it from other activities, but some of the things that go along with that notion, fundamentally the idea that entertainment isn’t important, serious, productive, helpful, etc., short-changes how much it matters in our lives.

I have a friend who, in spite of rather astoundingly successful achievements in his career, laments with great emotion the loss of time for movies, books, dancing and the like. He is actually one of the lucky few who has a career in something he loves, but without that entertainment, he tells me, he sometimes feels as though he doesn’t really have anything interesting to talk about.

So entertainment is (to bring things back to yesterday’s post) a vital part of our social capital. I mean, really. Do you want to spend the whole dinner out with me listening to theories about cognitive dissonance? Probably not. I saw District 9 recently. That’s probably more fun to chat about.

In short, psycologically we certainly need play and entertainment. But we also need it interpersonally. We create the bonds, ties in Granovetter’s sense, that form the fabric of life. They help us in all sorts of ways: find jobs, make better decisions, learn about our world. Politics, health, economics, psychology are all fundamentally interpersonal activities. Play is part of the mill that feeds our abilities to participate and excel in all these. Study after study shows that the better our social capital, the better all these things are: we find better jobs more easily, we understand and participate more in our democracy, we make more money, we teach our children more effectively, we feel happier.

So go out and play. Play WoW, or Bejewled, or basketball, or chess, or Candy Land. Think of it as part of your investment in a better future.

Slacking in “just a game”

WoW is a game. People “play” it. When tempers flare or someone loses out on a particularly special piece of gear, one can hear, “chill out, it’s just a game” with some frequency. Non-players goggle at the idea that anyone would choose to devote many, many hours a day to “some game”.

Yet I am not alone in feeling guilt about “slacking” in my WoW play. I apologize for being too-long absent; I feel obligated to take seriously promises to play a certain night at a certain time; I acknowledge that I haven’t been keeping up my responsibility to participate; when people quit, they generally announce they will do so, and receive questions, objections, and laments in response.

Why might this be?

When  I encounter the “it’s just a game” sentiment, my first response (albeit usually unspoken) is either, “then again isn’t everything?” or, “it’s more than that.” My thinking has always been that a space like WoW is more than a game, or that it is a game just like anything we do (work, email, family dinner, going out ot a bar). I think of “a game” as, frankly, a proxy for “something that doesn’t matter.” I belive this is the sense in which it is being used when folks admonish”it’s just a game” in response to tantrums about gear or getting killed or other epic failures. “Stop caring so much,” this scolding seems to say, “a game doesn’t deserve your emotion.”

This, of course, is what I disagree with. WoW is more than a game in this sense because it is a real space, an important space, one which real people are building relationships, establishing goals, seeking accomplishments, developing skills. WoW is “just a game” as much as basketball is “just a game.” Of course, there are casual players who indeed do not invest much, but the bulk of the people I interact with in WoW are more akin to a serious basketball league, dare I say even akin to professional basketball players in some cases? (well, except, without the money and exercise)

“Games” and play are vital to us as human beings. We need to feel a part of something, and games often provide a context to invest and learn and grow that issatisfying is a very different way than, say, working as a receptionist or as a college professor. There’s a reason why Robert Putnam lamented that we are “bowling alone” when he worried we were losing our democratic structures. Notice he didn’t title his book “working alone.” The organizations we are a part of bring us in contact with others, provide space to understand each other, give us something other than work to feel good about. (Although he does note that we are, indeed, working alone more and more, as well.)

For Putnam, this is about social capital – the social status, respect, skills, and knowledge that serve as tools in social interaction. He says that because we are bowling alone too much, “our stock of social capital – the very fabric of our connections with each other, has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities.” Basically, social capital has value, and we need it.

So when I play WoW less – when I slack in my WoWly duties – I am not investing in those space, those friendships, those connections, and yes, that gear, skills, and knowledge that make me a better and more desirable player. I want to be a desireable player because I am playing with real people, who care about what goes on in that space, just as you want me to keep up my basketball practice so I can be a good teammate and we can win the championship.

You might still be flabbergasted at the idea that gear with purple titles and knowing just precisely how to click little lightning bolt icons is somehow valuable to me. Well, that’s probably because you aren’t part of this particular bowling league, as it were. Instead, maybe you’re proud of the fact you have a mean forehand in tennis, or can run very quickly in circles around town, or know the King’s Gambit. In those spheres, or others, you have gained social capital. Most of that stuff is useless in WoW, just as knowing how to kite a mob is pretty useless in chess.

Perhaps a major objection to investing in WoW as a hobby of sorts rather than, say, biking, is because it’s rather sendintary. And yes, I suffer for that. But it’s funny how few people wonder why in the world someone would sit in place for hours to become a master chess player or a connsumate blogger or model train builder. Sitting in one place to invest in my social capital isn’t really the core objection.

I would suggest that it’s because those latter activities have social capital that translates into typical American society far more easily than WoW. And that notion deserves a post of its own, so perhaps that will be tomorrow’s musing.

Oh dear, slacking

I have been slacking. I am terribly sorry, and I take all the blame. Really. It’s not because the summer is winding to a close, or because I’ve been away from home a lot over the past month, or because I’m desperately trying to create an Organized Life (unsuccessfully, I might add).

My WoW playing has been slacking, as well. And when you do that, you come back (okay, you pop on for 15 minutes) to find all kinds of things changed while you were away. People join the guild, people leave the guild, suddenly your guild has a new GM, you’ve forgotten how to use your weapon enchants…

And so you get a little daunted. All kinds of things going on without you, and you feel confused. So you say “hi!!!!” a few times and then slink off in shame. To read Facebook or some such equally silly thing.

The nice thing is, when you acutally are ready to return to Azeroth and smash a few ogres or send lovely blue waves of healing lazers at your fellows, it’s always there waiting for you. And, as it turns out, you have a pretty easy time remembering which buttons are which. It’s not exactly like riding a bike, but… well, it comes back quickly.

I can’t promise I’ll be playing all that much for the next few weeks, and I imagine my contributions here will be similarly thin, but I promise I’ll try.

Maybe I’ll even write about a few non-WoW things just to pass the time.

Macros and Add-ons and Bots, Oh My

Blizzard is very clever. Instead of attempting to design a complete and perfect game, they designed a game that accommodates player creation of doo-dads and thingamajiggies. They release certain types of information about game play publicly and provide information about the interface so that enterprising folks can create add-ons. That way, they get needed components without paying to have them created. Very clever.

Add-ons, for those who do not know, are very helpful interface overlays. They do things like put a dot on the map showing the location of the box you have to find for a quest . They label the bad guys to kill for this quest, and count the ears you’ve collected for that one. They add funky sounds and helpful information to boss fights . They tell you the market rate for goods on the auction house, and help you organize your bags.

Without add-ons, WoW is damn tough to play. Without the quest add-on, you spend 90 minutes looking around for some quest item. You lose track of who and what and how many creatures you have to kill. You’re surprised by a funky boss power every time he uses it. You have no idea what the going rate for silver ore is on the WoW auction house.

But some add-ons are simply maddening. One in particular that is driving me crazy this week is the “fail” add-on, where some raid member automatically announces every single time someone does something stupid, and ends up spamming the screen with things like, “Lantanayew fails at Fire Wall”.

Why, I ask you?! WHY?

Now, in that particular case, if you are hit with the fire wall in Obsidian Sanctum, you know it. Largely because you probably die. In other cases, yes, knowing what you did wrong is helpful, but… dunno. Seems rare, that.

Another add-on driving me batty is the “Congratulations!” add-on. Every time someone in the guild gets an achievement an automatic message from the offending player announces, “Congratulations Lantanayew!”

Now, if that were actually typed by someone, it might be nice. But a robot congratulating me? Please. That is just irritating. And pointless. Besides, then you feel pressured to say thank you, but you’re actually thanking an automated message, which is ridiculous, and then you feel foolish…. it’s a terrible cycle of awkwardness and stammering.

Again I ask, why?!

Macros, combinations of character commands you can create from within WoW (rather than something closer to a programming task as are add-ons), can be fun and helpful. I  have one that lets me click just one button for all four of my needed totems, and one that announces who I’m rezzing in a raid so people know. They can also be used to spam things like, “I am the king of the world!” over and over. Which is annoying, but meant to be, so…. well, that’s acutally okay with me. If you know you’re annoying, are doing it to be annoying, so be it.

Finally, bots. Okay, actually, I don’t have anything to say about bots, I just needed something to fill out the trio so the title of the entry would be cool. Bots are not allowed by Blizzard, because they are basically turning all your game play over to the automated bot to do things like fish or farm PvP honor (as opposed to simply providing more information, which is what add-ons do). I’ve never used one.

But there oughtta be a law, I tell you, a law. Why don’t raid leaders ask these annoying fail spammers to cut it out? Why don’t guild masters gently suggest that the automated grats are just juvenille? We’re not even getting into people obsessively posting DPS charts. Yes, at times that’s helpful. But really. Forget about the max DPS spot and just STAY AWAY FROM THE DAMN FIREWALL!

Confessions and confusions

First of all, Hi, I’m back : ) Was off in other climes for a bit, but have now returned, and I promise to return to my usual chitter chatter.

Today’s chitter chatter is a confession:

I have a terrible time figuring out who is who in WoW. Not the NPCs, but the players. My guild. People I have conversations with. Often.

To be fair, part of the confusion comes from a slew of recent /gquits and new members. Sure, I expect to adjust to new people slowly – it’s not as though they’re all on at once. Also, we’re a pretty good-sized guild, with about 30 active players, more occasional ones, and a slew of members’ alternate characters. As people move in and out, it’s tough to keep track of them all, and since I haven’t been playing as much recently, this gets more and more difficult.

But the real issue is that people with whom I have regular conversations, who say, “Hey Lant!” when I log on, who I raid with on a regular basis…. gah. I can’t figure out who they all are. Match toon name to Vent voice to past experiences with them to role in guild and raid…

Oh it’s terrible!

Partly, there are a lot of folks in my guild with several level 80 toons, which means they raid with one toon one day, and another the next. This doesn’t sound confusing, but when most of what you go on to identify people is their name, it starts getting messy. I associate a set of conversations and impressions with the toon name alone. Then someone uses a different toon (with a different name, of course), and I get lost.

The other day I had a lovely guild chat conversation with someone who greeted me warmly, asked me how I was, and told me he missed me while I was gone. I was touched and responded in kind. We had a fun conversation for several minutes.

I had no idea who he was.

Eventually, I asked the Guild Master, and yes, turns out I had been chatting with a kind fellow I knew from many raids who was using a toon I had never seen before.

Other such confusions are even worse – that is, I really should know better. It took me literally months to realise that one core member of the guild was the same person as “another” core member of the guild, and even longer to figure out that another two toons were not, actually, played by the same person. I do have little notes for some folks in my Friends list, now. Finally managed to keep straight that B. was indeed playing toons X and Y – um, even after I met him in person. Faces and voices and toons, oh my.

Vent voices don’t really help all that much. First of all, I’m not always looking at the Vent window that indicates who is talking, so I have been known to associate one person’s voice with another’s toon. For about 5 weeks. Or think that someone said something, and then said something else, but it was actually two different people. Or vice versa.

Second, some people’s voices are clearer than others on Vent, and sometimes it’s tough to differentiate. You’d think that I, as I singer, would be better at sorting out voices, but no. So I have found myself thinking I have two different relationships, but it turns out it’s the same person. Or I think I’m talking to a stranger when I’m talking to someone I chat with frequently.

Slowly, slowly I am building up a group of people I can genuinely identify. That guy, who lives there, who’s named this in real life, who I talk to about the other thing. Got it. Yes, okay. And sometimes I even manage to keep track of all the toons they play.

But for the most part? It’s a confusing whirlwind of voices and chats and monster-killing. Oh, I have fun, and I pretty much natter on in my usual way no matter what. But this does put a spin on the social interaction in that space. Without a clear visual identifier and with unreliable name-to-player relationships… well, just who am I friends with, anyway? Am I building relationships through interaction over time, as we think of doing in offline spaces? Or am I bonding only in the moment, without lasting effect?

I think that in some ways what happens is that rather than an individualized social experience, this becomes a group one. My social bonds are loosely formed with the group, rather than with specific individuals. It’s kind of like feeling close to your sports team but not really having  much alone time with anyone.

Of course there are some individual people I have closer relationships with, and I always recognize them. But for the most part, the group becomes the social unit, not the person. I can feel “close to” my guild without, really, having much individual interaction at all. And if that’s the case, then does it really matter which of us is which?

It sounds kind of shallow that way, I know. How can the individual not matter!!? But that’s not really what I mean. I believe those bonds are just as sincere – in the same way that people bond on teams or in small classes without ever seeing each other outside the group context.

What’s confusing is the fact that the individuals are so much less recognizable to me. I think I have trouble until I can include more familiar identifiers like where people live, how old they are, what they do. (All of which suggests some interesting things about how important specific types of identity are to my ability to remember people…)

Or maybe I just need better player/toon cheatsheets.

The Beautiful People

My hair is actually almost exactly the same. But I definitely do not look like a belf.

There’s something strange about getting to know people in WoW. Absent the body, you can be whoever you want in funny ways. Maybe you can’t really change your personality much (although perhaps some do?), but you can side-step all the judgements that come from the physical.

When I first started playing, I was really bothered by this. I had this thing where I just really wanted people to know what I looked like. Not because I thought that would particularly add to my appeal, but because somehow I felt I was misrepresenting myself with out the physical. Honestly, I have no idea why this was. I’m pretty much over it now.

But there are so many things we respond to about people when we look at them. I’m not just talking about how interact with them phyiscally, with all the attendant body language, smiles, eye contact. Those things can change everything about how we interact and respond, most certainly.

I’m talking about what we associate with looks in general. We believe the Beautiful People think they’re too good for us – unless, perhaps we believe we’re part of them. We believe dark skins mean one thing, slanted eyes another; pale skins mean one thing and brown skins something else. We look at people’s hair style, assess their weight, catalog their pimples, their baby face, their choice in clothing. We don’t have to be “racist” or “classist” or otherwise prejudiced against bad dressers and round tummies to react to these things. Regardless of the direction of our reaction, we have one. We’ve been trained by society and probably evolution to figure things out about people based on what our eyes see.

Online, we see nothing. Well, we see a screen name, a bunch of words in chat. In WoW we also see a ‘toon. A WoW friend once derided me for choosing a troll as my main. “A TROLL?” he guffawed. “How could you ever play a troll? They’re so UGLY! Oh my GOD! Their FEET! Those tusks! How could you play that? Why would you ever want to be so ugly?!”

I confess that in picking my troll, looks were a factor. IMHO, trolls are kind of cute. Curvy, mischievous looking, blue…. I like it. I feel cute as Lantana, and that matters to me.

He thought trolls were ugly. I was offended.

Offended! By his judgement of the drawing of the generic cartoon I picked to play WoW.

What is that about? I have no idea.

I didn’t want to be a Blood Elf because the females are too anorexic / prissy* looking. I know the males are pretty silly looking according to some folks as well, but I actually like them. And female trolls look like they can kick ass. And I like that. I’m happy to say, “In RL I’m built like my troll.” I know. I know. That’s probably really, really weird. And I’m not exactly built like her, anyway… okay, moving on.

Getting to know people in WoW, you see their toon(s). Their names. Read their text chat. Listen to their voice on vent. Your brain forces you to create some image of each person. And inevitably, if you ever do manage to see the real person’s image behind the toon, you are probably dazed and confused.

So, when I would get close to people on WoW, I wanted them to see me. Not even me in person, just a picuture of me.  Honestly, I didn’t have as great a need to see what they looked like, but… Maybe it’s that in some ways, some people would treat me as though I really did look like a Blood Elf. Which I don’t. And the idea they had some idealized image of me in their head bothered me. I wasn’t interested in pretending to look like a Blood Elf.

I’m not so bothered by this anymore with most people I become friends with in WoW. I’ve exchanged a few pics since those early days, and met a few folks I play with, but for the most part, I’m fine that people don’t know what I look like.

But recently I have made a few friends I chat with a bit more than others, and some I know what they look like, some I don’t. Does it change things? Well…. I’m not sure, to be honest.

But somehow, getting to know someone without the phyiscal is different. Is it more about the personality? Are we being somehow more “pure” in responding to pure person, not biased by the body? I’m not sure. The body matters. The phyiscal matters. Maybe we are wrongly afftected by the body in many ways. But ultimately, it affects us, which can be a very good thing.

Maybe the physical is just a really good filter. You don’t like that I’m not one of the beautiful people? Good to know.

[Edit: * This comment on female belfs is, of course, doing exactly the same thing as that guy's comment about trolls. And I confess that I have 3 female belf alts, anyway. They actually are cute.]

Pocket Friends and the Wow Experience

Recent posts from a simply hysterical and brilliant WoW blog, “standing at the back in my sissy robe“, have reminded me of a key way in which this game has changed for me in recent months.

For many, many months last year, I quested, bg’d, pugged, and hung out with a dear friend. My pocket tank/dps, if you will. But no longer.

Playing WoW with a particular person for the bulk of the time is a radically different experience than playing as part of a group, even a smallish group of folks who know each other well. In my recent Alliance  leveling experiences, I keenly feel the difference between having someone to help out with both the tedium and the technicalities of questing versus going it alone. Pugging all on your own is depressing, but can be hysterical when you have someone to share the griping.

The development of pairs of questers/players can be rough on guild dynamics, as I found long ago (see my post on Guild Drama) from both sides. When I started questing with Ll., I only added to that awkwardness, but for me… well, it was a wonderful experience. Having a questing buddy gave me a support, company, and enjoyment that was both wonderfully social and technically helpful; I always looked forward to meeting up online, and felt a bond that, put simply, always made my day. Ll. became a best friend and so WoW became a place that was our playworld.

Then he quit. And I was sad. Am still sad. And WoW has changed for me.

I do love my guild, and the folks in it are wonderful fun. I enjoy chatting and “hanging out” and raiding, etc. But having a Pocket Tank/Healer type you frequently play with is a very different experience. You do more silly stuff like running instances in a tuxedo, or go after otherwise boring achievements. You have someone who is, let’s face it, kind of “yours.” Maybe it’s all the giggly, gossipy joy of a 14 year old whispering with a best friend, but somehow in WoW it works again.

A few of my friends play mostly with one other person, usually a significant other. This is, of course, the stereotype of girls playing WoW: they only do so because a boyfriend/husband got them into it, they are kind of an appendage rather than a player in their own right. These people I know are not like that, but… well, let’s just say I understand the appeal. Playing WoW with a special person in your life, romantic partner or not, is fun!

But the “drama”. Sigh. I can not tell you how many stories I’ve heard about this girl or that who goes off with a guild member and breaks his heart, or someone else’s heart, or they break up and the guild gets weird, or they both leave…. “Girls in the guild create drama” I have heard on more than one occasion.

To that I say, BAH! Human beings in a guild create drama. Girl, boy, or otherwise.

But I miss my paladin. I miss having someone who can always be counted on to have my back in a pug, or try running SM in a party dress, or grind Netherwing rep, or lend me 2000 gold. I confess that the WoW experience is a bit more hollow without him. Not bad in any way, just less personal, maybe.

I suppose that, like anything, WoW is most fun when shared, and most fun when shared with your favorite people on a regular basis. It’s true that some of my favorite people do play with me, but maybe we don’t spend enough time doing the silly stuff.

Gotta get on that.

The tyranny of content

I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes people interesting, appealing, and otherwise connection-worthy online in general. A recent conversation with a friend or two about this reminded me that for many, especially in platforms like Twitter, content is king – at least in name.

Those we want to follow on Twitter ostensibly post “cool stuff.” The blogs we read provide interesting strings of words, with interesting links. Content, not form. Especially as we begin to merge our blog feeds, Twitter updates, Facebook posts, email…. form becomes less and less important. We chase after the good video or absorbing article largely uncaring which of our many connections served as the source of discovery. We let the world know we’re bored, or happy it’s Friday, or worried about politics in one form, link it to the other forms (often automatically), and move among these digital platforms, bop bop bop. 

So much of what I see folks post of Twitter and FB, for example, is pretty trivial (“booo Monday!”), but peppered with the Impressive Content by the cool kids. And they are cool because they find the good articles, songs, videos, etc.

Me, by that definition? I’m not so cool. I’ve never been a content collector, never really been all that great at digging up the funky unknown bands or ferreting out the insightful independent news site. I love to read that stuff, but I’m never really the one who goes searching.

Thus, the tyranny of content. The process, by this view, is not important, but rather the nuggets of stuff themselves. Indeed, some measure the appeal of friends and acquaintances by the volume of cool stuff they contribute. I am certainly the type to respond happily to people who introduce me to cool new information and ideas, but there’s something  about this process that bothers me.

I think I am swayed by notions of communication that encourage us to think of the exchange, not the specific words (content) as the true act of communicating. We develop interactions where meaning is created between/among us, and the vocabulary, facts, links, etc. are merely components of that, not the sum total of that communication. It is the act of exchange – the process – wherein the communication is found.

And now to bring this idea back to WoW, which is, after all, the “content” of this blog. My contributions in FB, Twitter, etc. are rarely cool links. More, I’m not as interested in things that people post as I am sucked in by the exchange itself – the process. In WoW, I am largely the same. I’m not contributing top DPS/heals, the best gear, the best items. In short, I’m not adding much to my guild’s content.

Instead, I think I add to the process.

I like to think I’m kind of fun to have around. I like to think that my participation in conversations, my good instruction-following skills, the fun I have when raiding, even in repeated wipes, is part of why that is. I’m certainly not adding much stuff. But adding that fun to the process is important to me. Similarly, I value greatly those players who do the same. It’s handy to have high DPS, good tanks, effective heals. But the raids are fun because of the process, not the content.

So am I a good player? Not in terms of content, probably. Am I a good person to follow on Twitter? Well, probably only if you like reading this blog – I don’t post much else, I confess. FB? I make a lot of comments on others’ posts – I engage more of the exchange than post links myself.

Maybe this means that I depend on others to provide the content, while I get to bask in the fruits of their hard won gear/web surfing/reading. And for sure, without that gear/link/video there wouldn’t be much to kill/read/watch. So I do try to gear myself up some, to post a cool link or two, do a bit of my part.

But I’m an ideas gal. I like the debate, the jokes, the discussion, the strategies. That’s really what I bring to the table more than factoids and purples. Certainly it takes all types. But at the end of the day, what do you remember? The details of that article or boss fight? Or the process of sharing with friends?

My conversations with some people in WoW are pretty content-heavy. They enjoy re-hashing a specific fight, all the technical details, how much DPS they did, where they had to stand, how to get around a boss’s funky power. But…. I confess those conversations are a tad boring to me. Honestly, I can only hear about the numbers roll for defeating Freya so many times.

It kind of reminds me of sitting around discussing baseball stats. Which makes me realise that a) that’s a boy culture in the US, far more than a girl culture; and b) some of those folks really do love to discuss that stuff.

But.

Is it really the content? Or is it the exchange? Is a numbers-crunching debate interesting because of the numbers, or because of the debate?

I think it’s the debate. And I’m sticking with it.