I know you're playing World of Warcraft...

My warrior is named something like Ghradelin? He's level 7 right now.

I have to say that the best part of the game seems to be the interaction with other people; I helped another warrior kill a bunch of spiders in a kobold mine and helped a wizard beat up some theives and raid a tent. Also, some of the people running around are very amusing; there was a fighter named SuckBalls begging people to party up with him and a human femal of indeterminate class named Kylieminogue running around the initial town in her underwear.

I'll put my nerdiness away now.

What server are you guys on? Also, are you playing Horde or Alliance? We should make an ILX guild :( Except no awful gaylord names like VALOROUS GUARDIANS OF ELVEN HONOUR ok :(

http://bestmessageboardever.com/uploads/post-5-1104178155.jpg

It's only a matter of time before I too succumb.

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=39309975&m=931009705631

Some damn frightening reportage, but it is Ars after all.

It's the whole short-term goal thing with online role-players. There's always that likkle bit more to do that'll give you a likkle ikkle bonus. It looks from a distance like it'll fulfill peoples LOTR dreams and provide epic story and development, but in reality you're just nudging a few numbers up a chart and garnering trinkets. And even if you find a good group to play with you'll still be surrounded by these people.

Is there a strong roleplaying element to WOW? I know it's hard to generalise as there are players who go for that side and then there are the "power-levellers" (great band) who just want to be Da Baddest and Da Biggest GAMEAZ. I played NWN for a while but got turned off by every other player I bumped into being level 245324 and having 5 flaming Swords of Jesus in there 4 maxed-out arms. I find the whole fun of RPG is being low level, being scared of that huge monster and running away and finding some sort of way around things that still provides a huge story. It's the age old problem of how you do the battlecry scene in a game with lots of players when everyone is Maximus.

(help me)

Now, if you're feeling stagnant in your life, perhaps because you've recently moved across the country to a new town where you don't know more than a coupla folks and you either have a shitty dayjob below your skills(or none at all) and you're way too broke to go out at night, this might be a way to somehow fill a need to make progress.

Gruffertus the lvl 19 Troll Hunter on Azsure (IE european)

I play solo a lot, because most people are complete dicks, but it means I'm stuck with five quests for Ragefire Chasm, which I won't be able to do until I'm lvl 300 or something.

Is there a strong roleplaying element to WOW?

Yes and no. You pick a server from one of three types:

Normal: PvP (Player versus Player) is quite limited. In order to become a valid target, you have to take a pop at one of the enemy NPCs, or visit one of their big cities (which there's nothing for you in otherwise). Or hit an enemy who already done one of those. So mostly it's quests. A PvP raid can get a bit annoying if they swarm a town and kill all the people you have to talk to for your quests.

PvP: Like above, but outside of a few "safe" zones near your main cities, you're fair game at any level.

RolePlaying: for role playing. I think it works like Normal, and presumably you work your way through the main quests etc, but you make up your own portion of the story, and you can be penalised (chucked off?) for doing things that don't respect someone's Story Line. I don't know whether this is policed by petition (IE someone has to complain about something to get action taken) or it's policed in real time because there are 12 players on each server.

Good thing about hunters: once you pick a two-handed specialisation, you can just attack things a couple of levels below you, and you can swing ineffectually away, gaining a level in your weapon more or less with every swing, while your pet actually does some damage. It took about 30 minutes to get up to lvl 75 with two-handed axes.

After roughly a dozen opportunities to learn my lesson regarding "I'll just check whether any of my auctions have sold", the lesson still eludes me.

One of the cool things that Blizzard has talked about is one-time-only monsters. So they open a new area, and install a boss at the gate. Whenever it's killed, it stays dead, but until then no-one gets into the new area.

Penny Arcade seem to like it

I'm now on a PvP server! TEUFELSTOD (Deathwing server) REPRAZENT!

Teufelstod is lvl 45. Wow, I slowed down on the whole levelling thing.

Dan - We are going to need to meet up specifically so I can spend the entire time telling you how awesome this show is.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT STOLE THEIR LIVES!

talking of which, can anyone find the pic of when it covers when a skinny guy gets better at WoW and turns into a crazy fattey? sure it was on one of the old lol thread but going through all of them just to find one thing would make my head 'xplode