Some questions, some updates, and some announcements.

Those of you who made your spot checks before you read the blog might have noticed the new layout. I've been playing around with the various Blogspot aesthetic layouts, looking for one that was a bit lighter and more cheerful looking than the one we were previously using. I like this new one out of most of the options available, but I hope it's only a temporary fix. What I'd really like to do is get some nice game related pattern for the background of the blog, but sadly my artistic/photoshop skills are minimal at best. Is there anyone out there who would be willing to contribute something or even give me some pointers on how to design one myself?

In other news, I just wanted to let everyone know that I've started working at Calit2 again doing more video game research. The difference is that this time they're paying me! :D If I can, I'll occasionally post some excerpts from the work I'm doing for discussion or critique. First up on the agenda is examining the use of cutscenes in video games. More on that as I continue my research.

But now, on to the actual reason why I'm posting this blog:

I'm playing World of Warcraft again.

...I'll pause for a moment so you can gasp, cry, or yell at me.





Finished? Excellent! Let's continue.

WoW has always been an unusual game for me. Before you ask, no I've never been addicted to the game. I'll have sudden bursts of desire to play it followed by an extremely long period of time in which I forget the game is even installed on my computer. Since buying the game about three years ago, I've approximately played the game less than 24 hours, which would explain why I never made a character that leveled fully from 1 to 60 (or 70 or 80 as the expansions were released).

Part of the problem was that I never had anyone to play with. I have two main characters on two different servers. The servers I picked were based on the social potential of those servers. For my human mage I chose a server a good friend of mine played on, while my undead warlock was assigned to the server my old Warcraft III clan had moved to when WoW was first released. However, I eventually ran into problems. About a month after I started playing my friend on my Alliance server (you know who you are) suddenly moved to a different server, leaving me stranded to level my mage alone. Meanwhile, my warlock was suffering the same problems. I was an active member in my clan during the Warcraft III days, playing games/griefing with them on a weekly basis, and posting on the clan forums as often as possible. But I was late to the party when it came to WoW; two years too late to be precise. By the time I started playing, almost everyone I knew from Warcraft III was gone. They had stopped playing, or left the guild either for real life issues, or personal issues with the management of the guild. All that remained were new recruits that I never connected to as well as the old members.

As a result of these setbacks, I never played. I would log off for about six months to a year before I got the urge to play again. After a month and $15 down the drain, I remembered that having no one to play with was boring, and I stopped playing again.

That has all changed though. Recently, a group of my friends harassed me enough that I decided to start playing again. Except this time, I transferred my mage character to their server. They also let me into their guild: The Knights of Arcadia, which is a guild originally founded by Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade.

I can safely say that since the move, playing WoW has actually become fun. Having the social connection has helped exponentially. Not only do I have friends to talk to and who can guide me, but the guild itself is comprised of quite a number of entertaining people. Because of this, I am now determined to finally experience WoW from 1 to 80.

And I'll be writing about it too.

I'm going to start a semi-regular series of articles detailing my experiences within the virtual space of World of Warcraft. These articles will cover everything from my opinions on questing to the role of narrative within a persistent world, to important milestones in my character's career. I'll also occasionally talk about the people in the guild including the few members that introduced me to The Knights of Arcadia (who will be referred to as Mathne, Squibbie, and Karami unless they don't care if I use their real names). So be prepared to see a lot of this guy:

This is Lizezul. Also know as Lee, Liz and Lizezuzlzulele (long story). I'll be playing him on this journey to level 80 and beyond. Along with him will be Lizezul's pet turtle Speedy:

Adorable, isn't he? He provides no inherent bonuses to my mage other than to sit there and look cute while I'm killing random creature X. You'll be seeing Speedy a lot too.

I'm not exactly sure where I'm ultimately going with these WoW articles. The game is such a case study already I'm not sure what to say that hasn't already been said. But my goal is to point out something interesting about the game in each article. Some will be more thought provoking than others, and some will be more entertaining than others. Either way, it's an experiment and I hope to learn something from just being a part of the process.

I can't make any promises, but I hope to have the first article up within the next week or two. The topic? How people play WoW when they're not actually playing WoW. Until then, I'll be on the docks with my turtle:


Speedy really likes the water.