I have been playing SWTOR, after something of a struggle to get my videocard drivers to stay installed correctly. Warcraft is also installed, but it feels like I’m still a tad burned out with that game. The next target to download is Rift, and then LOTRO to complete my MMO stable. Although when I will get time to play them all, I have no idea. Pewter has moved from the world of Apple to the world of Windows 7, and wow has it changed since I last gamed on a PC. After approximately 6 years as a mac user, the level of pretty is extremely impressive in it’s own right.

Before I begin my long ramble on SWTOR, I must own up to not really being a Star Wars fan. I enjoyed the movies, I appreciate how embedded they are in general scifi culture (and general pop culture) and that’s about it. Yet Bioware continue, time and time again, to draw me into the worlds and the lore that I have been dumped in. Moments feel epic and iconic, such as the forging of a lightsaber, or the first time my Bounty Hunter uses her off-hand explodey thing.

George Lucas could learn a thing or two about dialogue and storytelling from Bioware. Seriously.

Engaging worlds

Each planet so far has been visually distinct. It would be very easy for each spacey-urban city to feel very similar, but even when using shared art assets, each area that I have had the chance to run through has been breath-taking in both detail and scope. Extremely linear, in many ways, but the feeling of space through the use of far-distance and painted sky domes has lead to some truly stunning vistas. Other details include the snatches of conversation from local NPCs, the variety of fauna, the way a cloak ripples differently when you strafe, and a hundred other animated details.

Sacrifices must be made

There has been a lot of talk in the MMO-sphere about whether Bioware has bitten off more than it can chew with the class quests/dialogue. With the appeal of the game apparently resting so heavily on this aspect – what happens when even the slowpokes like me have hit 50? Will the raiding be good enough to keep interest? With story being so important, the addition of new ‘dailies’ and a couple of new Flashpoints is unlikely to keep players interested in that story interested. That said, Bioware have a pretty good record with interesting DLC in their single player games, but what remains to be seen is whether they can keep that up a pace.

So what is sacrificed? Any innovation in the talent trees. My two characters that have made it to Advanced class status are my Sith Warrior, now a marauder, and my Jedi Consular who went the route of sage. It was rather awesome to make it to the fleet, newly equipped with my shiny new lightsaber, but then such a let down to look at the talent trees for the first time. While the rest of the game had been relatively ‘mmo-noob’ friendly, the talent trees gave me flashbacks to 2007. They’re big, unweildy, and uninspiring. After the improved newbie experience that World of Warcraft has laid on, and the flexibility of Rift, the introductions to the talents and talent trees feel like the designers are making a lot of assumptions about the knowledge level of their players. It’s nice not to be patronised, but the trees feel both unfocused and set in stone. I’m sure it is possible to respec, but I felt almost scared to commit to talent choices in case I made the wrong choice. Yes, I’m a whining whiner.

Combat is a funny beast. Damage feels inconsistent. One minute I’m slicing through mobs at a great rate of knots, the next I’m flailing uselessly at the same mob type, whittling it’s health down slowly. I think this is because of my dreaded rural broadband rather than any specific failure on balancing. The global cooldown system feels a bit odd, frankly, and results in combat feeling slow and distant. This is odd, because you’d expect the lack of auto-attack to make combat feel more immediate. That said I’m still low level, so I need more time to work out the best spell priorities for each character, which will probably help.

Primed for a future patch?

My friends over at The Drunk Tank made a comment that space combat feels unfinished. Could we see Bioware spending more resources on it during a future major patch? I would like to think so, but I’m not sure they should have put it in at all in the meantime if it was just a stop gap.

I like the UI, but more customisability should be in the pipeline or things could get very irritating. The maps are pretty excellent and clear, with quest tracking handled well. Things like Lightsaber Forms (e.g. Marauder) should be switched to stance/form style buttons like Warcraft druids. I find the stylistic look of the UI lovely overall and most necessary information is well presented. I have not ventured into the AH yet, and by all accounts that is rather horrific. After the auction house mods in Warcraft, the primitive Auction houses of SWTOR and Rift are extremely tiring and backwards. Unfortunately the developers are competing against addon creators for other games, not just their professional competitors. Warcraft is incredibly good at learning from addon developers, if occasionally a tad slow. Bioware would do well to study not only the UIs of competitors, but the player created UIs for those competitors.

In my next post I plan to explore Jedi and Sith philosophy and sexuality. As you do.

Like this? You might enjoy:

• Meaningful travel time — passengers and drivers
• Distinctiveness: When is an MMO not a book?
• RIFT: First impressions of Telara

© pewter for The 'mental Shaman, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | An elemental shaman blog covering PvE, PvP, social justice issues and mental health in the World of Warcraft
Post tags: Bioware, Jedi, Marauder, MMO, mmorpgs, Sage, Sith, Space combat, Star Wars, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR
Check out TotemSpot for shaman discussion on every spec, or head on over to the Obscurecast for news and views with english accents and a fondness for ranged DPS.

I’m not feeling particularly eloquent right now. I’ll keep this short and simple. A well known british blogger was raped while on holiday, and is currently recovering in hospital. The incident was violent enough that it made the news.

My thoughts go out to Alyzande. Anything I say towards this is going to be rather trite, so I’m not going to say anymore.

I would like to salute the male (and female) bloggers who have started participating in the White Ribbon Campaign. The White Ribbon Campaign is essentially about getting men to reduce gender based violence.

I’m not in the right headspace to give much shrift to the despicable post that cropped up on another gold blog. Criticalgoblin raised the spectre of ‘what if it is a sham?’. Describing rape as an ‘ailment’? Questioning the validity of her experiences on the basis of “I wouldn’t act like that if I was raped”? No matter the ‘spirit’ of critical rationality/skeptisim the post was intended to convey, what it does do is show a shining example of how the media, and people, often react to someone speaking out about rape or abuse. It’s his blog, he’s free to say it – I’m free to say that posting speculation about the rape of a woman he doesn’t know, while she is still in hospital, shows a new level of asshattery and lack of judgement.

There is a better and more lengthy analysis over at the Apple Cider Mage blog, who has posted a good summary of events if you wish to read about them. For me, I think I’m going to add another charity to my donation roll.

If you have strong feelings about this, I urge you to put up the white ribbon on your blog, or add your own voice to the fray in a more personal fashion, like Apple Cider did.  Personally I am going to attempt to write about this later. I’m angry, and have very few spoons, and I’d prefer to keep focus on the support for movement at the moment.

White Ribbon

List of international campaigns/resources

White Ribbon Twitter

Get Help or donate to RAINN

It has been very powerful seeing the gold blogging community, a circle I’m really not part of, pull together for this. You can see a summary of those who have participated at WoWEcon

There is also an excellent post up at Bibliotech.

Like this? You might enjoy:

• I don’t see your problem: Sexism, World of Warcraft and Geekery

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Post tags: heart of gold, rape, rape culture, thegoldqueen, white ribbon campaign
Check out TotemSpot for shaman discussion on every spec, or head on over to the Obscurecast for news and views with english accents and a fondness for ranged DPS.

Bashiok
Community Manager
Dear members of the Blizzard community,

I have read your feedback and comments about this year’s BlizzCon, and I have also read the feedback to the apology from Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain. I’d like to respond to some of your feedback here.

As president of Blizzard, I take full responsibility for everything that occurs at BlizzCon.

It was shortsighted and insensitive to use the video at all, even in censored form. The language used in the original version, including the slurs and use of sexual orientation as an insult, is not acceptable, period. We realize now that having even an edited version at the show was counter to the standards we try to maintain in our forums and in our games. Doing so was an error in judgment, and we regret it.

The bottom line is we deeply apologize for our mistakes and for hurting or offending anyone. We want you to have fun at our events, and we want everyone to feel welcome. We’re proud to be part of a huge and diverse community, and I am proud that so many aspects of the community are represented within Blizzard itself.

As a leader of Blizzard, and a member of the band, I truly hope you will accept my humblest apology.

– Mike Morhaime
President, Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard wrote up the above apology after a conference call with GLAAD. You can read more about that at Gay Gamer. Thank you to everyone who has spoken out about this. I am so please to see a real apology over this issue.

Like this? You might enjoy:

• Blizzcon: This is about homophobia not Horde v Alliance
• Bioware: Romances in DA2 are for everyone
• I’m all lost in the supermarket

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Post tags: BLIZZ APOLOGY, Blizzard, Blizzcon, Blizzcon 2011, homophobia, intersectionality, L90ETC, QUILTBAG, warcraft
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I had a fantastic time at Blizzcon. I love the company and the games it puts out. I will likely be playing the new expansion and Diablo III. I made lots of new friends this weekend, and strengthened ties with old ones. This is why it makes me incredibly sad that I feel the need to post about the behaviour of a musical guest during the Closing Ceremonies. I could be waffling about the new talent system, or about pandas, or talking about the brilliant individuals I got to meet. I could talk about the beautiful art, the epicness that is Christie Golden, or the wonderful publishing panel. Instead I’m talking about how I got slapped in the face with the dudebro nature of Blizzcon.

Not smelling of roses

One comment, made by @mythraidates, was that Blizzcon attendees had better personal hygiene than Disney visitors. This remark is confirmed by us all. I can think of only one moment where I noticed body odour to any real extent. So bravo. We have mastered the shower as a community.

However there were a couple of moments that really soured my enjoyment. One was watching the Cosplay contest from the Panel discussion stage and having to listen to a bunch of guys seated behind our (nearly all female) group. Listening to their judgements on the various semi-naked cosplayers was not fun. Even worse was them judging the heck out of any woman who didn’t fit the ‘ideal body’ type.

And finally there was the moment when L90ETC invited a musical guest onstage. I believe he was the lead singer of a band called Cannibal Corpses, or something. Corpsegrinders? I’m not familiar with the band. He’s a hardcore hordie, and proceeded to go on an anti-Alliance rant. Which would have been fine if he hadn’t used homophobic slurs to do so.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eg3N3TayP8

The video above is an old clip, but it was aired un-edited during the Closing Ceremonies of Blizzcon 2011. There was no censoring/bleepouts as they aired it. I was there, I watched this clip***. It almost didn’t register at the time as I was so tired, but it stings. Now I’m aware that the band is a Death Metal band, and thus generally not known for appealing to a diverse audience. Seems a little odd to include such a guest right before one of the most popular and widely loved bands on the planets, at an event which had until that point seemed much more diverse (and welcoming thereof) than conventions generally are.

***As I am very jetlagged right now, I’m starting to second guess myself on this. Were they bleeped out? I honestly remember the homophobic terms being quite clear regardless, as I had never seen the clip before. If they were censored, then what was the point of doing it so badly when it would have been easy enough for them to edit them out entirely. However I have to make it clear that I may have mis-remembered the existence of bleeps***

I’m not offended

I’m not offended as an Alliance player if someone chooses to call us names. Although I’d call myself bifactional (where is my purple hoodie?) I’ve nearly always been mainly Alliance. I’m used to the push and pull. I’m used to bigoted language too, but I wouldn’t say I need to accept it’s presence. Free speech, such as it is, protects your right to say it, but it also protects my right to call you a a bigoted asshat for saying it.

I am bisexual. As such I get a lot of passing privilege with my sexuality.  I can get down with faction hate, but I can’t do anything but condemn the use of such antiquated and homophobic slurs as part of a ‘joke’. Letting language like this go past as ‘just a joke’ is part of the problem. This same weekend a 28 year old man was murdered in Scotland, possibly burned alive in what is believed to be a homophobic attack. In my own workplace I hear homophobic slurs on a regular basis, and no matter that my co-workers would probably be okay with my sexuality, it makes me afraid to mention it. There may be other pressing matters for the QUILTBAG community, but language still plays a vital role in making environments inclusive and safe for participants.

I can pass as straight, because a lot of my relationships tend to be hetero, and language like this during an official Blizzard event leaves me cold. I can’t speak for other bisexual people, nor those at different places on the sexuality spectrum. I’m not happy about this, and I’m even less happy that this is my first post-Blizzcon post. It’s a little rambly and incoherent, but I get to blame jetlag for this.

The Blue Response

Sadly this is not the scary drink that a friend came up with, but the usual half-assed apology. Nothing from Blizzard, just a quote from L90ETC themselves. ‘It’s just a joke, sorry you were offended‘ (TW for the comments of course).  I’m sure it was meant in fun, but the apology isn’t a) a true apology, and b) it isn’t even clear what they believe they did wrong. Are they sorry for insulting the Alliance,  or the real issue of the language used? Will they seriously rethink what they said, or just shrug it off and hope it doesn’t happen again.

Blizzard themselves seem to be trying to pretend it never happened. This PR stuff can be hard to deal with, but historically Blizzard has lagged behind rivals Bioware in dealing with the inclusive side of the gaming community.

In conclusion

Alliance vs Horde rivalry and bashing? Not always great, but part of the World of Warcraft.

Homophobic, racist, ableist or misogynistic language as part of the same? Old, tired. You can be more creative than that.

If you’re not offended, or you choose to laugh it off, good for you. The rest of us will be sitting over here, being disappointed and angry.

Further reading

• Blue response
• WoW Ladies Petition/Open Letter
• Kotaku (with further details about GLAAD involvement)
• GLAAD attempting to reach out to Blizzard, as covered by Gay Gamer

Like this? You might enjoy:

• Blizzcon: A much better apology
• Rip out my heart: Heteronormativity, Goblins & MMORPG storytelling
• I don’t see your problem: Sexism, World of Warcraft and Geekery

© pewter for The 'mental Shaman, 2011. | Permalink | 12 comments | An elemental shaman blog covering PvE, PvP, social justice issues and mental health in the World of Warcraft
Post tags: bisexual, Blizzcon, Blizzcon 2011, Cannibal Corpse, feminism, Gay, homophobia, L90ETC, Lesbian, QUILTBAG, rants
Check out TotemSpot for shaman discussion on every spec, or head on over to the Obscurecast for news and views with english accents and a fondness for ranged DPS.

Also american keyboards are weird, so please excuse the odd typing.

As I don’t have much time before I need to rejoin my friends in the convention centre, I though I would rattle off a few quick quotes which have typified my Blizzcon weekend. Apologies for the meme-relatedness of this post, although feel free to blame the Flavor Text ladies for nearly all of it.

1. “Door handles should turn.”
2. Nipples everywhere
3. Cheese Cake Factory is awesome
4. Blizzcon goers actually have very good hygiene.
5. I’m thinking about cats again.
6. Sacco’s eyes on Thursday night were epic. I hope the friday morning hangover was less so.\
7. @ilaniel is writing awesome stories for Blizzard
8. Buy all the things ($200 and counting so far.)
9. Tentacles.
10. It was 33 minutes into the WoW Art panel before we saw a female character.
11. Wow, you just made the panderan’s belly jiggle? You never seemed to have problems with boob jiggle – perhaps you can find time to give the ladies of Azeroth a bra when you’re doing the rigging and animation for characters?
12. Diablo III looks awesome
13. Heart of the Swarm looks awesome
14. People are amazing. I hope I can afford to come next year\
15. Yes, I will be at the unofficial party at the Hilton – I’ll be the girl in the doctor who t-shirt, geeky glasses, studded leather wrist cuff and bright red hair.

There was more but my time is up. More to follow on Monday!

Like this? You might enjoy:

• Blizzcon: A much better apology
• Blizzcon: This is about homophobia not Horde v Alliance

© pewter for The 'mental Shaman, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | An elemental shaman blog covering PvE, PvP, social justice issues and mental health in the World of Warcraft
Post tags: Blizzcon, Mists of Pandaria, pewter spends all the monies
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As a result Obscurecast is back, with a brand new third co-host – Razerbug – and of course myself and Gazimoff. Next week we hope to have spinks of Spinksville on the show to discuss more Eurogamer Expo nuggets of goodness. We also plan to have a roundtable on the fantastic Storybricks system as developed by Namaste.

Like this? You might enjoy:

• No Related Posts

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Post tags:
Check out TotemSpot for shaman discussion on every spec, or head on over to the Obscurecast for news and views with english accents and a fondness for ranged DPS.

No more interrupts!

First and foremost – Wind Shear is getting it’s uber-cooldown nerfed to 25 seconds. Shaman all around the world heave a sigh of relief. Except for elemental shaman, because Reverberation still brings Wind Shear down to 5 seconds. Yup, we’re still one of the best interrupters in the game. I’m sure most interrupters would agree with me that it isn’t a fav part of the game. There is nothing fun about hovering over that single button and keeping an eagle eye on the cast bar for an entire fight. Occasional interrupts are fun, but constant ones are not. (I’m looking at you, Feludius). I’m, so not going to be taking 2/2 Reverb anymore and I suspect a lot of other shaman will be learning to manage their shock cooldowns better as a result of this.

No more cooldown on Chain Lightning

Are you kidding me? Seriously? This is achieved through our talent specialisation, so costs no talent points. I’m still blinking a little at this. This returns CL to the jewel in our crown, as opposed to a very situational spell that was weaved with Fire Nova. This should make AoE much easier – although I will bet that the mana cost coefficient will mean that Lightning Bolt will continue to be our single target spell – there’s simply no reason to assume otherwise at this time.

General buffs

The other two tasty tasty buffs are a straight up buff to Lava Flows, and an interesting change to Flametongue Weapon.

Flametongue Weapon now increases magical damage done by 5%, instead of increasing spell damage by 747.

Yup, you read that right. This is a change that means we will scale better with gear. I’m not doing the math for that right now because I’m lazy and this was supposed to be a quick and dirty post. However the combined changes do mean I am considering playing again – I never thought I’d be swayed by class buffs, but there you go.

Remember that the PTR has only just opened – this is early days and we have yet to see how things will pan out. Most shaman will be eagerly keeping an eye out for overhauls to our fire totem AI, but alas, alack etc.

And finally a quick and dirty post from Ghostcrawler

We made changes to Wind Shear to restrict the short cooldown version to the DPS shaman (who have the Reverberation talent) and make Restoration less potent at interrupting. We think Restoration is currently too useful in PvP relative to other healers because of a potent, ranged interrupt. We don’t think this nerf will have major PvE ramifications.

We changed Mental Quickness and Flametongue Weapon to hopefully put a nail in the coffin of Enhancement shaman using spellpower weapons. We want Enhancement using melee weapons. Players who have been doing so should notice no change in their DPS. Players who have been using caster weapons or armor will find that gear is no longer useful to them.

Elemental’s AE damage was still not competitive with the rotations of other DPS specs, so we buffed Earthquake and removed the cooldown on Chain Lightning. These two spells should be the bulk of Elemental’s AE DPS, while spreading Flame Shocks should be an Enhancement mechanic (see below).

We also tried to improve Enhancement’s AE. In this case, the DPS was fairly competitive, but applying the AE was a headache with having to tab through multiple targets to spread Flame Shocks. Enhance can now use Lava Lash to spread Flame Shock (and the bonus granted from Improved Lava Lash has been baked into the base Lava Lash ability, so Enhance should not suffer any DPS loss as a consequence).

After checking in on thousands of raid attempts, we were concerned that Resto shaman were not competitive with the other healers, especially on 10 player-content and on fights where the raid needs to stay spread out. It’s okay for healers to have niches where they really shine, but we felt like Resto wasn’t experiencing enough of these. We buffed Riptide outright and gave Ancestral Healing a new mechanic of boosting the target’s max health. These buffs are also intended to help offset some of the loss of Wind Shear for PvP.

As you can see, we changed shaman mechanics quite a bit, some of which will be met with cheers and others will be met with poo flinging. Please try out the changes when the PTR goes live and offer us constructive feedback if you want us to discuss any concerns you might have. That goes for all of these changes of course.

No doubt when 4.3 goes live, there will be even more changes and some of the above will be modified or redacted. Part Two of this blog will explain our intent behind the final changes.

 

So it looks like Earthquake might finally be useful again, and we won’t have to play whack-a-mole with fire nova anymore!

Like this? You might enjoy:

• Spec Analysis — Elementary Survival
• [Cataclysm] Arctic & Black Wolf Makes Me Happy
• [Cataclysm] Feedback, Armour Specialisations — What Makes a Talent Fun?

© pewter for The 'mental Shaman, 2011. | Permalink | Comment | An elemental shaman blog covering PvE, PvP, social justice issues and mental health in the World of Warcraft
Post tags: Chain Lightning, Elemental, Flametongue weapon, patch 4.3, Shaman, Talents
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Fast forward to now, and I’ve had to move twice since then. My partner has moved back to Holland, where the job market is better. I’ve had to move in with my parents and take a 2 hour commute into my working day. I’ve also taken up horse riding again, an activity that was a major part of my life before university. As a result my time for the game has gone down substantially. Having to produce an article for WoW Insider based on such limited game time, and to the level of quality that website deserves just proved to be too much.

Hopefully this means I will be more inclined to post here. Posting on your own blog is a much freer prospect than posting for money. You have no editor to fix the things you’re doing wrong, and no deadline to miss. A mixed blessing. Working for WoW Insider has been an amazing experience, and a great challenge. I believe it has definitely improved my writing, even if my output plummeted. I’ve also made some amazing friends, and am still really looking forward to Blizzcon.

I will also have time to think about podcasting again. I loved podcasting, it’s a lot of fun and was great for my confidence so I hope to have time to do it again. And of course I look forward to gaming for the game’s sake, and for my friends, and because I’m passionate about it and not because I have to.

Like this? You might enjoy:

• I have some news
• Posting with an Intersectional Lens
• Updates for mentalshaman.com

© pewter for The 'mental Shaman, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | An elemental shaman blog covering PvE, PvP, social justice issues and mental health in the World of Warcraft
Post tags: Blogging Community, pewter breaks it down, rambles, WoW Insider
Check out TotemSpot for shaman discussion on every spec, or head on over to the Obscurecast for news and views with english accents and a fondness for ranged DPS.

If you’re driving you might have music on, but in many places it is illegal to be fiddling with a phone (not to mention down right dangerous.) There are some correlations to this when travelling in WoW – you can fly up high and be ‘safe’ in a way that travellers in RIFT cannot, but if you tab out while flying you risk flying off the map and dying of fatigue. Or the curious situation of flying into invisible walls (such as the SKY) and coming back to the screen to find your mount squawking at you in an undignified fashion.

In RIFT you either teleport over great distances/between zones, or you run and weave a path through the dangerous mobs. Sometimes a zone has several teleports, enabling easier questing and crafting, other times it has one. WoW also has portals, although really the flight points to Vashj’ir aren’t that bad, and the hearthstone mechanic. Now the comments over at Syncaine’s article make some great points.

1. Faster travel changes your perception of space
   Every day I get the bus into a nearby town. I did this when I was a child going to school there for 7 years, and I’ve done it again as an adult going to work. I tried walking it once. Oh boy. It was a long walk, although the ridiculous thing is that I’ve walked further than that on hikes for fun.
2. Group content always needs a way to get everyone in one place NOW.

So what is meaningful? ‘Lobby’ is an accusation often thrown at WoW by critics, and sometimes with all the portals I feel they may be right (do we really need one to Vashj’ir, or even to the Storm Peaks?) However is ‘meaningful’ travel time, as in where you actively have to drive, really fun? Other than an exercise in influencing your perceptions of space and the feeling of danger; is it a fun gaming experience? That’s going to be different for everyone, as some will relish the ‘feeling of danger’ and see it as part of the immersive experience, while others will see it as getting in the way of the immersive activities they prefer to do.

I can’t put this book down

One final thought. Both WoW and RIFT have a ton of in-game books. WoW mostly has them in the forms of static books that need to be read (and there are even achievements for reading a lot of them.) These books contain some brilliant snippets of lore (biased sources of course). There are also items you can hold in your inventory that you can read, but these tend to be grey items and not many folk hang on to them. In RIFT they actually have a book collection, allowing you to keep hold of the texts without cluttering up your inventory.

Something I’ve missed from RIFT was having a moment where I can open those books up and read them. For some reason they haven’t been compatible with crafting, so I can’t flick through the history of the Bahmi while Caerys smelts Titanium. And of course there are no flight paths enabling me to sit back and read a book while I travel from one end of the continent to the other.  I won’t say this is a missed opportunity in RIFT, because most people would rather teleport instantly than be forced to take a flying taxi, but as a perpetual passenger in real life, a lot of my life is spent immersed in whatever it is I’m reading while I travel. (Or should that be engrossed?)

So the attempt to use travel to enhance immersion and sense of space, while it works, does make me smile. For me, travel is a moment to check out of the world I’m currently in, not something that necessarily engages me with the wider world. At least until I reach my destination.

Like this? You might enjoy:

• RIFT: First impressions of Telara
• Distinctiveness: When is an MMO not a book?
• Blizzcon: A much better apology

© pewter for The 'mental Shaman, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | An elemental shaman blog covering PvE, PvP, social justice issues and mental health in the World of Warcraft
Post tags: flight points, immersion, meaningful travel, MMO, mmorpgs, rift, travel, warcraft
Check out TotemSpot for shaman discussion on every spec, or head on over to the Obscurecast for news and views with english accents and a fondness for ranged DPS.

Classism. It’s a word with a long history, but something I read in a WoW community elsewhere kind of gave me a little light bulb moment.

If you want to put someone down in WoW, do it based on their actions and behaviour, not on guesses about their living situations. ‘Basement-dweller’ as an insult takes on a new meaning when more people than ever before are unable to pay the rent due to unemployment. Folk who can move back in with their parents are the lucky ones – pooling resources in this economy is a sensible course of action even if you have been able to find work. If it was more practical, travel wise, I’d rather move in with my parents than apply for housing benefit.

Being single, or have a lower paid job doesn’t make an individual less worthy of respect. Saying thoughtless and horrible things, and ninjaing crap and being generally inconsiderate is what deserves our derision as players. While ‘basement-dweller’ is the traditional insult reserved for the stereotyped geek, today it just kinda smacks of classism.  I’m not going to tell you that ‘basement-dweller’ is anywhere NEAR the level of ableist, racist or sexist slurs, but the attitude that drives the insult is worth thinking about.

(And if you like using similar phrases, no need to post to defend yourself, because I really don’t care.)

I ended up living with my parents for a while a few years ago, after suffering a breakdown. I wasn’t capable of living on my own. I had no money (I had debts) and no where else to go, because my partner had lost his job and we were facing time apart anyway. Once you’re stuck in a hole of unemployment, especially due to a mental health issue, it is desperately hard to dig yourself out again. I was playing WoW at the time. I owned a computer from when I did have some money, and my £9-a-month sub was cheaper than going out. For a long time, WoW was my only social outlet.  Those few pounds a month were much cheaper than travelling to town to see a friend, and didn’t trigger my social anxiety (which was severe at the time.) Living with my parents was my only choice. I will admit that ‘living with parents’ as an insult did sting a bit then. I was young, I was supposed to be starting a family and paying a mortgage. Instead I was working my slow way towards functionality. I know better now.

I guess this is part of the reason that ‘no-lifer’ as an insult thrown at a raider so annoys me, but then it’s a pretty nonsensical insult all round. I know it’s part of the eternal cut-and-thrust that is the casual v hardcore debate, but really?

I was extremely lucky that I did have my parents, and my partner, to make sure I was safe. Some people don’t have that option. There are many reasons for one to be a ‘basement-dweller’, but it isn’t a true measure of self-worth. I should remember that.

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© pewter for The 'mental Shaman, 2011. | Permalink | 20 comments | An elemental shaman blog covering PvE, PvP, social justice issues and mental health in the World of Warcraft
Post tags: -isms, -ists, basement-dweller, classism, no-lifer, rambles
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