Wow and the importance of play

I don't read a lot of blogs, but one that does appear regularly on my reading list is Big Bear Butt's work and his recent post Wow is like a ... and my habit of browsing from one post to another absorbing his thoughts led me to Inspiration and Transformation and thus to a post of Gnomeaggedon's that BBB referenced that contained a subheading that caught my attention ... 'Don't write a comment when you could write a post'. His reasonings reminded me that I tend to comment rather than post and my blog was, as a result, sadly neglected.

BBB's posts got me thinking about why I continue to keep with WoW. For me, WoW is my first and only MMO my previous gaming experience reaching the lofty heights of Solitaire, Bejeweled and Tetris ... high level gaming at its best. For me the answer was simply ... I enjoy the experience. I enjoy being able to pretend and explore; to just play. Despite the growth of gaming I sometimes feel like I'm a bit of a novelty by those outside the WoW community for no other reason than the fact that I choose to play for the enjoyment of play. It seems acceptable to play games as an adult to meet people, to get fit, and to maintain skills. Rarely do we see adults admitting that we play any game just because we really enjoy playing and that play is still important in our lives.

I Googled 'the importance of play'. Unsurprisingly the first posts were all about the role of play in child development. Play is apparently important in socialisation, understanding how people behave, how to amuse yourself, discovery, confidence, creativity, problem solving, ... here ... here is one of the links ... while the Child Development site cautioned parents against considering unstructured play as being not worthwhile or time wasting. Granted they are talking about children and not adults and play in the physical world not the game world (I don't like the distinction of the online gaming world as fictional and outside of that as real life as it suggests to me that I go into some state of non-sentient suspended animation when I log onto a computer) but I feel that their premise that play is important is relevant also to adults.

A further search focusing on adults confirmed this premise. Play is important for everyone. It is fundamental to who we are and I do not understand why people struggle to understand why as an adult I would choose to play anything and why there seems a need to justify time spent playing. I play for no other reason than the act of play makes me smile. I feel good and when playing put aside the rest of the day.

George Bernard Shaw said "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing".

(The rest of the quotes on that link are worth reading)

I want to make a dragon

Not just any dragon ... a Vial of Sands dragon

I've sat down and worked out how many mats and gold I need to make two ... one for me and one for my best mate and

strewth!

gold sink or what

ah well I've been having a bit of fun running up Tsu's alchemy and archaeology to max so she can, hopefully, find that darn recipe. 10 points to go on alch and mm about 350 on arch ... in Tsu's defence, she was maxed alch when cata landed late last year and didn't pick up arch until about a month ago and I've not had as much time as I thought I'd have. Some of the flower mats I have full sets of for what I'll need so :) keep plugging away and one day you'll see me look like .... http://p0int13lank.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/orange_stone_drake_01.jpg

Good luck to me I suppose :)

1/3/12

well ... firstly welcome to Autumn ....

I thought I'd come back and update this post ... Tsu has maxed her alchemy and her archaeology and has the first few bits of Tolvir stuff for her first canopic jar ... could she be so lucky to get the vial of sands recipe on the first one? That would be cool.

She's got most of the mats ... just some more gold grinding (which wouldn't take long if she put some effort in to it!)

As a bit of wishful thinking .... The dragon itself ... I particularly like the song on this link and how he turns troll and flaps his little arms in the troll area :).

Cough .. cough ..

Just letting you know ... I've reached that point all WoW gamers reach ...

I've finally loaded Catta

Held off as long as I could ...

There is still content and content and more content in Vanilla, BC and WoLK expansions that I've not even scraped the surface of but off to level 85 we go.

oops ... ICC

Oops ... I forgot to tell you ... ages back .... ICC 10 man norm done :)

Okay so I'm still not caterized ... and I'd sort of love to have a shot at 10 man hard mode before I go cata but omg do you think I can even find level 85's who are prepared to stick their noses into hard mode?????

Geeze ... I didn't think I was that shabby a healer!

WoW cooking

An old post from Hello Tauren that I have only just come across referred to the number of seagulls in game. I have a lot of fond memories sitting places like the hills over looking South Shore (pre-Cata when it use to be pretty) watching the sea gulls swoop over the ocean. On a side note, I can imagine the 'old folk' of wow taking people into CoT to look at the 'old South Shore' area in a 'when I was a young lad/lass this all use to look like this' type thing.

Anyway, the post got me thinking about sea gulls and what I associate with them leading, logically of course, to thinking back on an oldish post (okay so I've not done many) about food that I'd love to see in game.

I just have to add to it.

I think we need to be able to cook good 'ol fashion fish and chips.

You know the sort; reeking of vinegar and a good sampling of salt we could sit on the cliffs, smelling the sea air and relaxing (yup I sense a nice bit of roll play opportunity here). If Bliz wanted to they could even have the sea gulls come beg for food just like they do in real life. Maybe even a bit of an easter egg of a quest ... feed the birds until one becomes a companion pet :).

Upgrades

This is not a comment on gear, I'll save that wander through my brain for another day. This is about upgrading software.

Am I the only person resisting upgrading to Cataclysm for no other reason than I am still quite happy in my Blizz built WoLK sandpit and not really wanting to expand my horizons?

There are so many things still to visit and I know that I'll not do them if I go and start leveling again until much later on.

... And yet, if I don't ... I'll get left behind by the people I play with.

It is a dilemma.

I am also rather enjoying running up a couple of baby toons through the introductory night elf quests (discovering that I could have a nelf mage ... it just had to be done) and running a gnome rogue through the drenai quests (hey ... so I want my girl to have a huge mount as quick as she can and it is cute seeing her smaller than the grasses in the area). If I go run my 80 resto and mages to 85 when do I get to come back to their little sisters?

As I said ... a dilemma.

Raiding update

I thought I should leave a little update for you all to read ...

Our group is now 7/12 in ICC 10 man with the downing last week of Rotface ... finally! It only took us about a month and a half to remember all his mechanics ... using our feet ... if there is anyone comment I can make about that fight (well any ICC fight) that you don't hear so often is 'use your feet'. You often hear 'you have to have good raid awareness' but not often what this actually translates into ... what it means is ... don't stand still :) and last weekend we managed that. It was not conventionally pretty but we did it. Our final effort is here ... you are not going to get a pretty polished sound track, rather you get us blurting names of people who are infected and that is about that, but just thought I'd share our efforts. We have already completed the Dreamweaver fight and oddly enough, where I've heard people talk of this as being the most annoying and challenging fight, if anything for our group, it was the most straightforward.

Our next challenges are Prof. Putricide and the Prince's. The order tends to be dependent on how we feel :). Got to be flexible ey. This will need to balance with the challenge of do we leave ICC for a while once cata and level 85 hits to let people go level thier toons? I'd sort of like to hold us all at 80 for a bit so that we finish ICC at the level it was intended for but suspect that people would like to go and level their toon. For most of the group, the toon they are in there with is their main.