Does Your Character Have A Soul?

The question seems simple enough. Some people would argue no it does not. Its just colored pixels, the way a warlock's pet is just colored bits of light and data. Nothing more.

I say differently. Each character I play and interact with is different, even if it shares a name with another character. Tzia is my primary moniker in WoW, everyone knows me as Tzia, the hunter. I've had my main hunter, the troll, Tzia since at least mid July 2005. I've also had a few Night Elf, Draenei, Orc, and even a Tauren Tzia.

Yet, each one, weither played on a RP Realm or not, feels different; and not just from racials. My main has Ruka, her Pridewatcher. The others have various pets with other names scattered over the known WoW-verse. My Night Elves are always a touch timid, the tauren charged into everything, bull-like to the core, my draenei were always drawn to water. The orc? Just a bit stubborn, but drawn, if I remember correctly, to the wolves of Mulgore.

I always feel most at home playing my main hunter with Ruka next to her. The pet in part makes it home, and any time I play a Tzia, it feels weird to look down and not see Ruka next to her. Yet I wouldn't dream of taming just any old cat and naming it Ruka. Ruka is unique, different, and is only the troll's companion.

The other Tzia's, scattered from 12-55, are almost empty shells, without their stories or personalities told. I haven't played them enough to decide who they are individually. They do share a name, but that is all they share. Each will develop their own personality. I don't believe in cookie cutter of much of anything (even spec). The slightly sarcastic, raised by orcs, fiercely proud of Orgrimmar and the Horde doesn't come through on anyone except the troll. That IS her in-game persona. And even though I am Horde First, and the character gets that from me I can be comfortable enough in an alliance skin to play.

So does this mean that my troll has a soul? I think it does. She is my favorite character after all. The one I've put the most time into. So, it would stand to reason that she is unique, her personality fully developed, and a glimmer of a spark that could be called a soul exists somewhere inside.

WoW Under Siege, or Is It?

I've watched several different MMOs come out over the last few months, several trumpeted as "the WoW Killer" and some that just quietly slip onto the scene and fill in a niche area that was lacking in the past.

From Charge and Gore to Decapitation and Bloodspray
One of the major ones I participated in was the Age of Conan Open Beta, and then in AoC itself for the first month. This game had been screamed as a WoW Killer, that it would be big, bad, and bloody. It was bad, and bloody - that at much it lived up to. The fatalities were awesome- with a decent system, if you didn't have a good system (IE: most WoW capable PCs fell on their face) you'd better not have fatalities running, or the game might crash. But it didn't get WoW's numbers and after that first week membership started dropping because of glitches, and just the general UI issues. It also didn't help that the game had tried to build a reputation as a "mature" MMO, yes AoC had a little M on the back of the box.

I can sit here and list its issues with ease... 1. You had to upgrade your system in a big way just to play. I myself came from WoW and had to upgrade my processor, Ram, and video card. Would have had to upgrade my motherboard if I'd not decided to spend a tiny bit more when I first build my Pink Monster. 2.Everything in the game was instanced. Town/countryside/actual instance/you-name-it it was all instanced, which kinda made it hard to group up if you didn't know exactly what to click... and no, it wasn't obvious! 3. Auction House wasn't displaying half its items. 4. Certain Professions could not vendor finished products to at least make back a portion of the cash spent in the creation. 5. Occasional system crashes due to a major memory leak on the highest end systems, and with certain video cards as well, it seemed.

This game was suposed to Kill WoW, it had more issues than WoW did when it started... and I remember the complaints and server issues with WoW, it was not fun for the first few weeks... WoW was constantly releasing new servers and they were filling as fast as they came on line. AoC was hyped, and fell far short. I left after my free month was up, it wasn't worth the cash I'd paid to buy it.

From Fast Fingers to Study the Wind
I remember when Pirates of the Burning Sea came out. It was by no means hailed as a WoW Killer, in fact it didn't even make a blip on the WoW radar, unless you liked sailing around the Caribbean in a ship and blowing the crap out of other ships at a slower pace that allowed you to think before you reacted. I played for a little bit, at the insistence of my guy... believe me, he really wanted me to play, buying me the Pre-Order + the actual game. So, what could I do other than try it? This was at a time when I was no longer raiding in WoW, but was still playing Yazmin pretty heavily, and I'd just begun to level my orc warrior. I did get a Naval Officer to about level 37 on that game, then it just kinda lost all the fun because the game merged the server I was on and was tossing out transfers like bad fish off a garbage truck.

I hated the server I just transferred too... lost the community feel of Kidd. Believe me, on Kidd Spain was getting its ass kicked by the French, but it was a friendly rivalry. And if a little Spaniard accidentally wandered into contested French/English Territory, the French were kind enough to let the poor Spaniard escape without harm. Now, I wouldn't have put it past the English to try and screw me over (largest faction out there - no honor) but; for the French, when Furett spoke, everyone listened on the French side... 108 guns non-withstanding.

The new server had an honor problem... people forcing port battles at odd hours where there wouldn't be any defense by the other side, because a large portion of its membership just could not be on at 2:00 AM.

I got sick of it, and refused to play any-more. Suspended the account and there it sits. The guy on the other hand? Has gone back to the game, determined to enjoy PvP... hmmm.

I see so many games hyped as Killers by the Fans of these games, and then watch so many do what I did, play for a month, loathe it, and then come back to the tried game that has figured out most of its glitches and fixed them. I will watch Warhammer with interest, because I believe that there isn't as large of a threat from War... Blizzard ran on the Warcraft NAME, and proved a good product. War has to do that + manage to grab a giant portion of WoW's business just to be believed as a "Killer". I don't think I'll be seeing a David to this Goliath any-time soon.

Rogue's Eye View on WoW Killers

Why Do YOU Blog?

I figure this is a question that I personally should answer, and would encourage anyone that reads this to do as well. And its an easy-to-post if you are stumped for something!

I blog most of the time so that somebody will be able to have something to read as they are getting ready for school / work / a zombie killing spree. I actually have two or three articles written in longhand on paper with a pen (ooh, scary hun?) that just haven't quite yet made it through the keyboard and onto the screen. The reason those articles are even on paper is I have an hour on Monday, Wednesday, and a half hour coming up on Thursday to write while my husband is in class. When I get home? Nintey percent of the time? I just want to log in and play, I don't want to blog immediately, unless I've been chewing on something while in class.

Blogging also gives me an outlet when things go really, really wrong in an instance, as a place to try and analyse why things went so horribly wrong, and how possibly somebody else can prevent making the mistake I did. Or, to share a funny incident or a really, really lucky break. My blog is a place to vent, cheer, or just generally be confused, without feeling stupid about it.

As I've said to my husband a few billion times, I had to learn a lot to get where I am now as a hunter. When I first rolled one? I had no clue how to send my pet to attack, didn't know that spiders kinda sucked as pets, or how cool boars eventually would be. If I can pass on even a tiny bit of what not to do to a new hunter, then at least the other hunter won't screw up the way I did so many times!

Note: Most times if you get more than 3 things on you as a new level 10+ hunter with a pet? You are sooo dead. Hunter multi-tasking is done with a growl, a freezing trap, and either a scattershot or an intimidate. Even I don't always survive a three pull if things go bad and the wrong thing traps. So, never feel bad for dying, just be embarrassed if your pet has just come from a battleground and you wipe the group because s/he is on aggresive - been there, done that, never do it again!