The Human Experience
555 words.
For anyone who might be contemplating playing World of Warcraft for the first time: Do not, under any circumstances, select a human character. Your initial playing experience will be much more pleasant if you choose a night elf, dwarf, or gnome. (I can’t speak for Horde races.) Not because those races are better than humans, but because most of the gamers who choose human characters are… how shall I put this delicately… they’re, um, retarded.
In my experience, whenever I go into Goldshire, Westfall, Lakeshire, or even Darkshire, I find myself surrounded by childish griefers and clueless n00bs. I almost invariably end up /ignoring one or more people each time I go through. Annoying people in low-level areas is common in MMOs, but I would have expected to see it all over the world. In WoW, I only see it in the human areas. The night elf, dwarf, and gnome areas are actually fairly pleasant. It’s just the stinkin’ humans that are dorks. I started a human priest once, and literally before I had even walked 10 steps in the game, some idiotic bunny-hopping kid wanted to duel. I mean wtf.
On another topic, many WoW players seem to have the very mistaken notion that being asked to join a guild should be viewed as some kind of honor. Quite often, especially since I’ve reached level 30+, people will ask me if I want to join their guild. Sometimes they don’t even ask but just go right ahead and invite me without saying a word, so as I’m running around minding my own business, an invite popup slams onto my screen from someone I may not have even seen. Like I’m going to stop and go, “oooh thank you so much for rescuing me from the dredges of non-guild status.” Um, no. You tell me what your guild is going to do for me, a casual gamer with unpredictable playing times, who rarely has difficulty completing quests on his own, and maybe I’ll think about joining. Otherwise I’m not going to jump into some random guild with a goofy name like “Elite Death Squad” just so you can pad your membership numbers. Besides, in a world filled with guildies, it is far more distinguishing not to have a guild tag. (Maybe that’s why everyone keeps bugging me.)
And finally, here’s a funny sign of changing times in family culture: The other day in WoW, I actually saw some kid bragging about how much gold their dad makes from the in-game auctions in World of Warcraft. Said dad allegedly rakes in 200 gold each time he checks his mailbox (which was allegedly 3-4 times a day). That sounds like a dubious claim at best, but if it were possible to make 800 gold a day in WoW, you better believe I’d be putting that gold up for sale on eBay or something… at the going rates of around $16-17 per 100 gold, that would more than cover the cost of the WoW account, not to mention the missed wages from staying home to play the game. :)
By the way, just for comparison, I made about 15 silver (100 silver = 1 gold) from my first 3 auctions yesterday. Only 79,985 more silver to go and I’ll be on easy street, just like that kid’s dad!
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