Maebius Musings

(Note: I’ll try to keep game-jargon to a minimum, for my non-gamer readers here, but a bit of such wording is necessary for proper flow and convenience. I’ll try to provide a Glossary at the bottom. I also tend to describe the actions of my characters in first-person or as seperate individuals depending on my mood. When I’m playing a character in the game, I roleplay that character during interactions with other player-characters. I healed ABC, She/He killed XYZ, etc. )

In my favorite online game (World of Warcraft) I have three main characters that I play fairly often. I will never be a “hardcore raider”, since I play too infrequently, and prefer to role-play rather than purely quest for experience. There’s a reason after almost 3 years of playing once a week minimum, I’m still not at the “level cap” on any of my characters. I play to unwind after work, not get epic gear.

I’ve written a few “backstories” for these characters, which are linked here, if you are interested. These stories do tend to use game-terms liberally, but I enjoyed writing them, and would love any feedback and critical reviews. Kanandi’s Story. (Also a small in-character treatise on healing via non-spell-first-aid) Nookni’s Story. Pohatu’s Story.

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My favorite character in general is a Troll healing priest named Kanandi. My best memories (outside of purely roleplaying ones) in-game have been running with random people I’ve never really met, frantically casting heal spells towards them, while they did their best to kill the big baddies for the particular dungeons we were exploring. While healers are particularly slow to kill enemies on their own, compared to more “DPS” classes (those who do a lot of “Damage Per Second“), they survive very well if you use appropriate caution while in the wilderness alone.

Still, the strength of Kanandi is in her ability to work with groups, keeping them alive through sometimes overwhelming odds, and the fun split-second decisions needed when battles turn bad. With limited time to heal everyone, it’s a great attention-focus knowing that you must potentially ‘sacrifice’ one player in order for the group to win the battle. It may be ego-stroking, but I truly enjoy the feeling of knowing I made a difference when things got tough, and am able to resurrect a fallen ally afterward. Healers ideally stand back from combat, and use their abilities to allow others to do battle safely. We support the group, in a massively important way, since a group without a healer will quickly fall. When grouped, it is extremely rare for Kanandi to even cast an offensive spell. If no one needs heals, I am conserving my mana (magic) for a big heal that may be needed in the next few seconds.

Kanandi’s personality is one of friendly generosity. I’ve spent more gold than I care to ponder on making bags or robes, buying nifty little toys, and other “vanity” items for my friends in-game. Kanandi is known as the priestess with a cheerful sense of humor, who will gladly pass on a minor gear upgrade if it doesn’t look as fancy on her, or if another person in the group can use it as a bigger upgrade to their current gear. She also likes to ‘drink’, and carries around a few “permanent use” items like a beer keg that can provide in-game drinks for everyone in the group once every 30 minutes.

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Secondly, I have a Troll hunter named Nookni. He always talks in his ‘racial accent‘ appropriate to the game lore, which tends to generate either a chuckle or a frown from other non-roleplayers. His personality is often wicked and sharp-sarcastic, but he always helps out his friends. Nookni is the outlet for a Trickster archetype in my own personality, and has in-game been kicked out of a guild once for mocking the selfish leadership members. Yet, I’ve been told out-of-character that some people appreciate Nookni telling things as he sees them, with no holds barred. He’s a nice guy, if you look past the smack-talk, but I admit I play this personality as a sort-of outlet for my aggression or spiteful feelings.

Hunters in World of Warcraft are essentially a pure damage class. They use bows and guns to shoot enemies from range, and have tamed pet/companion animals that are sent in to do the actual in-your-face combat against enemies. Hunters can essentially not heal themselves, other than buying potions and such, so grabbing the attention of too many monsters while out alone in the wilderness usually means a trip to the spirit-healer to recover your body. Yet it is a fun and relatively easy class to solo with, due to the pet mechanics.

Nookni exists, besides being a fun roleplaying diversion, to be my “farming” character. If Kanandi needs gold, or specific items that a particular enemy can drop, Nookni is able to do the job much faster. Things die much more quickly under a Hunter’s shots, and his pet is able to start attacking the next enemy while I’m still looting the first one. Hunters get a good flow when questing, which is a wonderfully unstressful thing. Likewise, if he is grouped with others to run a dungeon, the nature of the class means my actions require little more than standing back and going PewPewPew at the enemies. Much less stressful (and thus sometimes more boring) than playing a Healer like Kanandi.

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Pohatu is a new character, who was once called Windchilde. Due to the magic of “Character Customization” (and $10), I took an unused female Tauren druid character and changed Her to a bulky Him, thus saving myself the effort of leveling another character up to lvl 30 (which would take me about three weeks). Pohatu was named by the sprogling, and sounded appropriately “Native American” to fit his race in-game. I found out afterwards that it’s the name of his favorite Bionicle character. His personality is still in flux, but he’s slowly becoming a bit of a gruff solitary type. He tends to chat often, if questions are asked about things in-game, but does not usually initiate conversations.

The neat thing about Druids, is they have the ability to shapeshift. Other than their racial form, they learn to shift into a bear, a cat, a travel-form, a water-form, and eventually at higher levels of experience, a flight form (including two optional forms: Tree_of_Life, and my reason-for-playing-one: a Moonkin, aka: Lazerchicken!).

Interestingly enough, there are three types of playstyle (and 3 places to specialize your talents) for the druid character. Each has it’s own flavor, though it is possible to switch playstyles at any time, due to the shapeshifting talents. Of course, the gear you collec,t and spells you train up mean you are MUCH better at one particular style, yet can still switch around in a pinch without visiting a trainer again. Druids are true Hybrid classes.

Restoration Druids become healers (and Trees?!), but that seemed too similar to my priest. Feral druids concentrate on bear and cat-form to do serious claw-based melee damage to enemies, though I could never get into a pure in-your-face damage class, and already had a Hunter for killing things.

The third playstyle is Balance Druids, marked by the ability to become Moonkin. Moonkin form is essentially a “caster” playstyle, where you toss lightning bolts, Moonfire, Starfire, and balls of Natural Wrath at the enemy. Think of your classic fantasy magic-user, and replace fireballs with leafy/sky-type stuff. Plus, who can resist the awesome battle-bird avatar?!!

What also interests me below the surface of the cool in-game form, is the fact that Balance Druids are somewhat of a support character. They learn a few spells that can be cast on others to “buff them”, and their other offensive abilities do things like lower an enemies armor, slow it down, or reduce it’s ability to hit you. Balance druids don’t deal massive damage (until high levels, where they step ahead of some other classes), but they assist others in doing so.

They level much slower, apparently, than Feral druids who do not rely on Mana or physical ammunition like my hunter, and simply claw and shred their way through enemies. Likewise, they are not as group-dependent as a Restoration Druid healer. They are balanced. Not too much of this, not too much of that, and it’s a slow process at lower levels until they learn most of their core abilities.

With this in mind, I found it very curious as to what this says about my own personality. I tend to avoid the types of characters that go out seeking combat, and play very defensively in groups. While I sometimes find myself in a leadership position (I’m a guildleader on Kanandi, and an officer in a different Guild with Pohatu), I don’t usually make the first moves. I encourage others to do so. I delegate, and support.

Any psychology-minded folks out there care to comment on that observation?

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