I’ve been playing World of Warcraft lately mainly because I have not had the mental capacity (due to reading for and prepping literature courses) to do a lot more than level my Paladin, who has recently hit Outland. The whole experience of looking at the game from a new perspective has helped bolster my enjoyment. Because I’ve enjoyed the Paladin so much, I’ve actually taken to really enjoying Paladin lore. One of the things I’ve done is downloaded the Arthas novel for my iPhone Kindle and read it during my spare time. At roughly a quarter through it, I can ...
When I got my Kindle, the first book I went for was John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. I had been told two things about it: that it was a counterpoint to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and that it was awesome. What I was not told, however, was that Old Man’s War was the first in a 4-book series; I thought it was a stand-alone novel. So when I started, I just assumed that I was getting in for a short ride and then moving on. I was wrong. But I was wrong in that really good way, you know? It turns ...
As I ease myself back into blogging after my literature-teaching-enduced hiatus, I figure I’ll start with something relatively easy to write about to get me back in the swing of things: World of Warcraft. Well, my Paladin is level 80 now. I spent some time in instances and got him a 4600 gearscore, which—while not great—is more than enough to PuG anything that Malygos-US is capable of pugging. I have been doing a little of this and a little of that for the last couple of weeks. And then I got bored of running random dungeons just after I became “Beej the ...
I fell in love with World of Warcraft five years ago. It was immediate infatuation. I stepped into Azeroth and immediately knew that I had found my new MMO home. I loved the world, I loved the characters, and I loved that I could play the game according to my schedule—whether that was 30 minutes or 3 hours—and still feel like I was accomplishing something. Here was a game that did not require a lifelong commitment to enjoy. Or so I thought.
No matter what MMO you play, there’s a backstory. If you’re in Fallen Earth, there’s a reason it’s post apocalyptic and a story that the game tells you—generally through quests—to let you know how it got that way. EverQuest has its own mythology, as does Ultima Online—though, God knows what they’ve done with it now that gargoyles are a playable race—and World of Warcraft and any other MMO on the market. The lore is the backbone of the worlds we play in, and generally, there is almost nothing a game can do to make me care. Swords, sorcery, dragons, and ...
