Sarah the Druid Night Elf

I used to love computer games. I remember playing Duke Nukem in my basement for hours, looking up codes, getting excited for the computer store in the mall, freaking out when the bad guys killed me or my computer froze right before I could level up. For those who don’t know, Duke Nukem is an outrageous game full of bombs, strippers and mutants… this was my childhood (I blame my brother). I stopped playing computer games before middle school for obvious social reasons. Good thing I did, I’m afraid I could have turned out like Cartman in South Park’s “Make Love, Not Warcraft” episode (see picture). Then, all of a sudden, hipsters made geeky trendy! Hooray! Or not…

Tragically, now that I can finally practice my childhood love for ridiculous computer games without fear of judgment or ridicule… I totally suck at them.

It is a sad story, but don’t cry for me. I can always play FarmVille on facebook, which takes absolutely no skill whatsoever. Anyway, here is how I realized my un-nurtured talent escaped me.

I was so excited in class when I realized we could play a MMORPG for the blog entry because I have always wanted to try one out. I really wanted to play World of Warcraft because I have heard so much about it, but I wasn’t about to spend $30.00 (Yes, I looked into it…). After a fair amount of googling, I realized they offer a free 10-day trial of WoW for Mac operating systems. It was surprisingly easy to sign up, and off I went to the Misha Realm. Apparently there are tons and tons of “realms” or worlds where people go on quests with their avatar. I’m not a programmer, but I’m assuming it was easier to do this than make one massive, seamless virtual world. I don’t know the difference between the realms but I’m also assuming they are more or less based on experience of the player.

I then had to choose a character. This part was fun. You could be a one of 10 overarching character types. Of the Alliance (the good guys) you could be a Human, Dwarf, Night Elf, Gnome or Draenei (but that one requires the “burning crusade”). Of the Horde (the evil guys) you could be an Orc, Undead, Tauren, Troll or Blood Elf (which also requires the burning crusade). It goes with out saying that I had quite a decision before me. It was down to the Tauren and the Night Elf. I was leaning toward the Tauren because it’s this crazy bull/person that “strives to preserve the balance of nature and heed the will of their goddess, the Earth Mother.” Then I realized my avatar is going to be female. Meaning that if I chose the Tauren, I wouldn’t be a bull person, I would be a cow lady. I wasn’t about to gallivant around the Misha Realm as a cow lady… I had a virtual reputation to build! I chose a female Druid Night Elf with some awesome purple hair.

I finished my character and named her Sarbaria. Why Sarbaria, you ask? My friend helped me give “Sar Bear” (the nickname that curses all Sarah’s) a more Conan the Barbarian meets Zelda type feel... so the other avatars wouldn’t make fun of me. This decision was justified when I saw a Dwarf named “Beyonce” running around and judged her. I thought, “What a lame-o, where is her WoW spirit?” Then, ironically, I saw a Hunter Night Elf named “Poop” and thought, “That’s hilarious.” Which led me to the insightful theory that people descend several levels of maturity when representing themselves in avatar form.

Upon first getting to the world, I was immediately embarrassed. I think I might have even blushed a little behind my laptop. While all the other avatars were running around chatting with one another and killing boars, mine stood there rocking back and forth in the default animation loop. I felt like all the “experienced” WoW people were looking at my avatar thinking, “Look! That Night Elf doesn’t know what she’s doing” I realized, however, that no one was really paying attention to me. While at first it felt like I just walked into a small room full of strangers, it turned out to be more like walking outside with a bunch of strangers minding their own business.

The pop-up tutorials literally saved Sarbaria’s (short-lived) avatar life. They explained to beginners, in plain language, how to begin your quests and maneuver your avatar. I got my first quest: to kill 4 boars and 4 nightsaber’s in order to restore the balance of nature to the land. It was obviously a beginner’s quest. I found it frustrating to only kill my boars/nightsabers with this wooden spear attached to my back. I would have appreciated a little weapon variety or a bow and arrow like the Hunters. I only chose to be a Druid instead of a Hunter because the description said Druids could shapeshift into animals, and I would take shapeshifting over a bow and arrow any day. Sadly, I never found out how to shapeshift.

My friend joined the 10-day trial along with me and we met in the Misha Realm, he was a fellow Night Elf. It was relatively easy to communicate because there is a chat bubble at the bottom of the screen. However, it was very difficult to find each other within the realm. We became “friends” but we couldn’t figure out how to show up on each other’s maps. We had to call each other on the phone and say, “Meet me by the guy with the thing.” In this sense, I could definitely see the benefits of talking to fellow players via headset.

After my first quest I realized that I genuinely lack the skill and patience it requires to get into such an extravagant game. I think it’s very fun, interesting and intricate, but I don’t see myself spending 4 hours on a quest (that should take 10 minutes) to get 40 experience points.

After all, in this fast-paced world of instant gratification, who has the patience to figure out how to get your Druid Night Elf to shapeshift?

"Later guys, I'm going questing!"

Fair or not, there’s a certain stigma attached to World of Warcraft. For many, the game conjures up images of pimply, high schoolers dressed in capes, pounding Mountain Dew in their mothers’ basement. And that is why when I created my own account last week I tucked myself in the farthest corner of the library and angled my screen toward the brick wall.

Out of my element?

I think I carried certain assumptions about WOWers myself, and I felt ridiculous as I began skimming through the elaborate back story of the world of Azeroth and the battle between Orcs and Humans. Prompts asked me to select my experience from another array of acronyms. Do I want to be PVP, RP, RPPVP or RSTVMMPRSP? I may have made up the last one up, but it made as much sense to me as the rest. Discouraged, I went with convention and selected “normal.” At least it seemed less confrontational.

I was randomly assigned to the Gnomeregan Realm, an OK choice since its sounds much more pleasant than some of the other options such as “Chromaggus” or “Blood Furnace.” The system defaulted my avatar to the species “Undead,” and I was a little miffed. It seemed there were two teams—predictably representing the good “Alliance” and the evil “Horde”—and the option to choose you’re gender as well. I sat for a moment wondering “Am I Alliance or am I Horde?” Better yet, what does Horde even mean? I skipped the Trolls, Orcs and corpses and opted for a Night Elf. I really liked those guys in “Lord of the Rings,” so why not? As I customized the mythical new me I couldn’t help but be impressed by my skinny waist and voluptuous bosoms, emphasized by the plunging neckline of my skin-tight dress (I think I was right about the high school boys). After trying all the exotic celebrity names I could think of—Shakira, Beyonce and Rihanna were all curiously taken—I employed the “randomize” feature that came up with “Elylaria” and entered my new world.

The back story for the night elves involved something about the coasts of Calendor, a tree named Tredassil (maybe), a burning legion and apparently, its my duty to defend Darnassus. I don’t know who or what that is, but I didn’t sign up for it. I reappeared in a lush, green forest full of other elves running back and forth, in and out of my screen. I waited a few moments but was disappointed when no more instructions came. I noticed the ticker that tracks nearby conversations in the bottom left of my screen and decided to ask someone for help. The lines flew by narrating the actions around me, “Xacker dances with Cleverfellow,” “Narerestar waves at Icehorn,” “Awesome girly says: Hi.” To whom, I have no idea. Yogababa did what to who? This was chaos. What was I even supposed to be doing?

On what turned out to be a good hunch, I approach an elf near me who had a huge explanation mark over his head. Fumbling ineptly with the motion keys I stumbled over and met Conservator Lithalaine who explained to me that I have to kill “four young Nightsabers” and “four young Thistleboars” to thin out the populations of Shadowglen, which is apparently where I live. What he did not tell me is how to kill things.

Hunting and gathering

My first few runs were less than successful. I chased down a boar but couldn’t get it to stand still long enough to figure out how to hit it. I finally got a shot off and my large stick—it would appear my weapon of choice—hit the boar with a loud “thwack.” The little thing turned and started attacking me! So I ran. I tried again and finally got enough successive hits to slay the beast and collect its pelt.

Matters of life and death

The first time I “died” was three days into the game. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since my lack of hunter prowess and aversion to beating animals with sticks made me unlikely to engage anyone or anything in a battle. But emboldened by my collection of bodies and recent promotion to Druid level 2, I picked a fight I couldn’t win with a pointy-eared beast called a grelkin. Before I knew it my body was crumpled up on the ground, and I was a glowing spirit. The prompt informed me that if I talked to a Spirit Healer and returned to my corpse I could come back. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and I guess what does kill you will make you smarter… when you find and resurrect your body. Don’t hunt grelkins.

Girl’s gotta level up

My reluctance to chase grelkins and similar demon things hurt my ability to “level up,” or at least that’s what my retired WOWer friends told me online. As it turns out a number of the males in my circle were willing to own up to their former WOW ways and jumped at the opportunity to give me pointers. The way to gain experience points—or “XPs” in common lingo—is by either completing quests like the massacre Lithalaine assigned me, or just battling other creatures. Apparently, for someone who has been playing for four days a level 3 is disgraceful (his word, not mine). I cautiously finished the quest given to me days ago by only attacking low-level Nightsabers and returned to my quest giver for another task. I discovered that there are actually a number of quest givers throughout the realm, you can take on as many as you want at a time and not all of them involve bludgeoning things. I ran around discovering, new societies in my realm and collecting as many XPs as possible.

The WOWers

In my “questing” I got lost a number of times, and thinking like a normal social being, my first reaction was always to ask someone else for help. Getting the WOWers to pay attention to me was another story however. There seems to be a wide range of players with a range of goals in the game. Some keep to themselves and are constantly on the move, completing tasks and learning new abilities, but then there are also players who hang out in clusters and just talk to each other. And who knew such a noble and ancient species as the Night Elves had such a penchant for “lol”s, “omg”s and “wtfs?!”?

I approached a cluster and just started asking questions. No response. How do you engage other players in conversation? Isn’t that supposed to be a crucial part of this experience? A character named Xsharp yelled out in the group “Take your clothz off!” I didn’t think that was a sanctioned activity or even possible with these avatars but a number of people seemed determined to make this “that kind of game.” Looking around, “Hotsexslave” was dancing with “lesbianlover,” half naked and very provocatively shimmying up and down. I wasn’t clear whether she did really undress her avatar or if the itty-bitty bikini was a preset. Someone named Zulea finally answered Xsharp’s desperate plea for a girl to “date me pleazzzzzz” by saying “Oh well you’re not my type. I’m 11.” Xsharp was undeterred and continued in his advances until Zulea resigned, “lets start out friends and you don’t know even what I look like in real life. Where do you live?” Apparently, you actually can find a date like that.

A few other characters just had speech bubbles above their heads that were just full of jibberish. Orcish apparently. I couldn’t read that. Why were these guys even in my realm?

Zariaye: wtf is with Deathking?

You said it, Zariaye. Across my ticker rolled “Deathking is too sexy for his tunic… so sexy it hurts.” Not the most original bunch I’ve ever met.

“Try crying or something,” my real-life roommate interjected over my shoulder. My avatar knelt and buried her head in her hands. She full on wept and I succeeded in earning a pat on the back from one other player, but that was it.

In the following days I didn’t get much more encouraging results from my social endeavors. I only got a dwarf named Bigdollarz to talk to me because I followed him around until he got mad. I don’t really feel like I ever learned the unwritten rules of interaction for the game. In a realm made up of kids stereotypically outsiders in the real world, the tables turned, and I was the one who felt unsure of what to say or do to participate in the group.

That’s it. I think seven days was enough for me. I’m packing up my cloak and my canopy leggings to get back to my real life. I recommend you give it a try though, and “may the stars guide you in your quest.”