Back on the horse

Horse like heroin not the quadruped. After several months I fired up World of Warcraft for a serious session. Just like old times I managed to fritter away around 5 hours playing Karmm, my Tauren shaman. I knocked out a lot of quests and managed to find my way into at least one new area. It was good to play again, hopefully I can find some time to play regularly.

The only thing that could drive me away is the damn 12 year olds (or those that act like them) and their horrible chat skills and behavior. Would it kill them to form one complete sentence? Or maybe punctuate? I’m not asking for flowery prose when some Bloodsail Buccaneers are breathing down our necks, but it should resemble human speech. And Lord, please make them stop ending every sentence with “lol.” Not everything is lol.

12 yo: “aight lets attack, lol”
me: “I’m ready for battle. I’ll cover you with my magic.”
12 yo: “:D lol!”
me: “Pardon?

Lol has its place, as does rofl and omg. Just not in every sentence.

The only thing worse is leet speak. True I find it amusing outside of the game (I will occasionally harass The Cat with some leet e-mail), but it really is a drag on a RP (that’s “role-playing” for you nubs) server. Nothing breaks the mood like “dude that 3l/= r0><><0rs.” It just breaks my heart.

When I first started WoW I met two other players that really were fun to be around, Herrick and Shinobu. For about a month we quested together and traded materials. It was great fun. But all of a sudden they just drifted away from the game. I think at some point they came back, but I had a new guild and they were hanging out with other people.

One quality I enjoyed about those two was the fact that they rarely discussed the game itself. We never discussed game mechanics in detail. Sure, Shinobu used to cook me food but I never asked what her cooking skill was; the same thing with Herrick and his smithing. We always spent the time and thought to put a veneer on all this discussion. We placed it with in the context of the overall story and the characters we chose to play.

They weren’t too intense with their RP either. No lengthy emote chat fights (which I find very creepy) or involving the unwilling in their RP. It was a great balance.

I’ve never found anyone else like them. Most could give a damn about adding to the whole experience with a little bit of RP and a few others are paralyzed by their incessant RPing; they can’t actually play the game because they’ve layered a whole other system on top.

I’ll just have to keep playing with both styles of people and hopefully I can find some folks that want the same balance as I do.