In my last post so long ago, I shared that I started playing World of Warcraft (WoW). I played for a year and am now taking a break. Taking a break is very difficult! Having spent so much time at it, and it being my first great foray into gaming, I feel I need to write about it here. However, I’m having a difficult time analyzing it in educational terms. I have a much more interesting time analyzing it psychologically and socially. My intent here is to explain what I find interesting about it to people who have never played the game.
NOTICE: If you have any tendencies toward addiction, do not start playing this game. Do not even read this post. I am able to take a break because I tend to only be addicted to air and water. Even so, it is difficult to stay quit.
One of the most interesting things to me are all of the differences between the characters, also called toons, that I created. When creating a toon, you choose what you want it to look like and what basic skills it will have. For instance, you could choose a hunter. Hunters use guns and bows to fight enemies from a distance, and also have a skill something like the beastmaster, where they can tame animals who will also fight enemies for them. You could also choose a rogue. Rogues are able to sneak around in the shadows and skilled at quickly taking down their enemies with poisons and calculated, close-quarter attacks. These characters fight very differently. It’s reasonable to think that the way they fight comes from their personalities. Yet, it is the player who is playing both. As a role-playing game, WoW is different from other games you may have heard of. It isn’t like Wolverine, for example, where you hear Wolverine and the character acts like Wolverine and you the player are making Wolverine do things. Instead, in WoW, it’s more that your toon is createdwith certain abilities, but the personality comes completely from the player, from you.
My toons, though, have completely different personalities. Perhaps they are all different facets of my own. Or perhaps they are all fiction straight from my mind. My first toon was a red-headed hunter named Greca. She tamed two animals and named them George and Gracie. I played her for quite a long time. She liked bows rather than guns. I don’t have red hair, but I chose it because I wanted her to have a fiery nature, not hot-headed, but intense, sincere, bold, and confident. George and Gracie were the same color as her hair. George was a raptor, like a little dinosaur, chosen at a friend’s recommendation. Gracie was a wind serpent, like a tiny dragon, who was a great honor to tame. George’s name has two meanings, one of which you already know. The other is the classic Warner Bros “I will hug him and pet him and I will call him George.” So Greca was in the game to have fun and we did have fun for quite some time.
Then I wanted to try a different character. Lots of people play characters of a different gender, so I decided to try a male. I also wanted to try creating a paladin. Paladins are like knights. Their power comes from believing in something greater than themselves and they use it to fight to the death for what they believe is right. They are the great heroes and leaders of history. Think Joan of Arc. In the game, paladins have special abilities that allow them to be great warriors and great healers. They are completely different from hunters, so I wanted to see what that was like. So I started a paladin. Not just any character can be a paladin. To start a paladin, I had to play an elf. I named this male elf paladin Graebo. He turned out to be sort of a failed Napoleon. He had great dreams and conviction, but just couldn’t get over his culture. The elves in the game have an addiction to mana. All through their training, they’re warned to be careful of this addiction to mana. Many quests are to go kill mana-based creations that have malfunctioned. Yet he has to use mana in order to kill the things. And not only that, but everywhere he goes in his home country, there are planters floating and unmanned brooms sweeping–all mana-based creations. So there’s this conflicting message–”Don’t use mana! Mana is bad! Oh, watch you don’t bump your head on the floating planter while you go assist that elf with her brooms!” Male elves also posture pretentiously and speak to everyone in demeaning ways. Graebo didn’t like that at all, and it must be genetic because he wasn’t able to stop. Anyway, he’s completely messed up from his upbringing. I managed to get him to another city called Undercity. This is where things get interesting with him. Personally, I don’t like Undercity as a place to hang out. It’s an underground city of undead with green goo running through sewers. Graebo loves it there. I don’t like it. I play Graebo. Graebo loves it. There’s nothing more refreshing to him than a dive through the green goo. Weird! So Graebo hangs out in Undercity at the bank for me keeping spare things for my other characters.
Now contrast Graebo to my rogue, Grecannal. Rogues like shadows, so you would think she would like Undercity. She does not. She avoids the green goo anytime she has to be in Undercity. Keep in mind that it’s much easier to walk through the goo to get from point A to point B there. There are bridges, but it takes longer. She prefers the bridges. I played my rogue the most. She reached the highest level in the game before I stopped playing. Rogues are type-cast rather negatively in the game. It is said that people who like to play rogues like to take out the opposing faction the most. This isn’t why I love to play my rogue. I love that she can hide in the shadows. This means that she can walk right by enemies without them seeing her. She can go places in the game all by herself that would require a group of 5 or 10 to fight to get to. I like to explore and see everything. She’s the only character I can do that with. She picks flowers and likes to help people out. She made a lot of friends. As a rogue, she wears black so she can hide better.
I started another rogue on the opposing faction, called the Alliance. All the characters I listed above are in the Horde. The Horde and the Alliance are mortal enemies. The history books write the Alliance as the good guys and the Horde as animals and monsters at best. As any student of history can surmise, there are good acts and motivation among the horde, and there are great attrocities committed by the Alliance. My personal abhorrence for hypocrisy makes me much more comfortable among the Horde. But, my great love for playing a rogue drove me to create the type of rogue rumored to be the best in the game, a gnome rogue. Gnomes only exist as part of the Alliance, and thus blue-eyed and cheerful Minace came to be. I figured as a rogue she would be a lot like Grecannal, just smaller. But no. Grecannal is very serious, mature, and quiet. Minace is bubbly and loves pink. I don’t like pink. I think Minace would wear ruffles on her leather if they existed in WoW. She’s a lot like Kaylee from Firefly. I like playing her as much as Grecannal.
There are three types of priests in WoW, but I’m only going to write about two of them here since I have no experience with the third. Holy priests are healers. That means when they play with a group, the rest of the group fights the enemies and the holy priest hangs back to send them health in magical and mystical ways. Shadow priests can do some healing, but are best known for being able to do awesome amounts of damage to enemies. Later in my year of playing, I wanted to try a priest. On the Horde side, I created Grec. By that time, I was willing to try elves again, but not males. So Grec is a red-haired, graceful, self-assured elf. I wanted to try shadow, but she only wants to be holy. On the Alliance side, I wanted to create a healer because they are always in demand. So I created another female elf named Cobalia. Unfortunately, she only wants to be shadow. No healer for me! I like playing Grec a lot. Cobalia, not so much.
I have a smattering of other characters, like my shaman, Phreda (I love her name), my undead warlock, Perenna (get it? perennial, undead 
), and my death knight, Lovelacea (you know, Ada–by the way, never name your character this unless you like for complete strangers to have every right to call you ‘Love’.) I just find it so interesting that they are all completely different personalities. I never really got into role playing (RP). RP is where you talk in the language your character would speak based on where the character is from. For instance, the troll characters talk like they are from the islands, saying ‘ey mon’ all the time. I’ve never felt that I had the writers sense to create dialog. But I wonder if all the personalities of my characters are sort of how a writer feels about characters when writing a book. They all have personalities and their own agendas. As much as the writer would like for a character to do a certain thing for the benefit of the plot, the character may just refuse.
It bears more thought, I think, but I’m tired and must go to bed. Thank you for reading about all these characters I got to hang out with for a year.
