MMO 101 (or, what I've been doing for fun for the last 15 months or so)

So, last May 2009 I joined a very obscure, even tabboo demographic: I play an MMO avidly. For the benefit of those of my peers that HAVE a life and DON'T play an MMO, I'll explain in layman's terms. MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online (game).

I have been playing, for a greater part of my last year, the much disputed/reviled/acclaimed World of Warcraft. I started playing it because of a girl, and stayed because it's addicting as hell. The game is, for the lack of a better definition, an RPG- you basically play a role in a video game. You choose from a limited list of avatars, who you want to be, and you go out and do quests. The setting is a quasi-classical fantasy, but I'll go into that in a moment. There are guns and airships too, so it appeals a bit to the steampunk in me. But most of it are swords and armor and magic and stuff. When it came to taking the plunge into this game, I was way in over my head, and had to have it broken down for me in a way that I could digest it better. My now girlfriend, then girl I liked so much I spent 40 bucks over, gave me a list of the classes available to me. The classes are thus-

Hunter: a hunter basically is a guy with an animal doing the fighting for him. S/he uses bows or guns and goes around with a bear or a dog or some other kind of pet (sometimes even a huge spider) and kills stuff from afar. Later in the game you find out this person screws stuff up 80% of the time it goes wrong, much to your chagrin.

Priest: pretty self explanatory. I was not interested in dying as much as this class portends (Hi! Do you need some godly/priestly influence? No don't kill me..yarrgg!!!!! dead)

Mage: again, pretty self explanatory. The prospect of turning stuff into sheep or frogs, or freezing things or blowing them up was pretty enticing, the mortality rate I assumed these suffer (and later confirmed as correct) was a deterrent.

Warlock: a warlock is pretty interesting class- it's basically a mage of sorts that calls upon demonic powers and summons a 'minion', which is just a fancy name for 'ugly pet'. I was not really interested, supposedly it's the hardest class to level, and I was just starting, so no. Skipped.

Warrior: self explanatory. Weapons, armor, the whole shebang. I was partially interested, but I chose another class because it was the 'easier' choice for beginners.

Shamans: Shamans are sorta like spirit warriors. They use totems and call elemental and spirit forces forth to fight with them/for them. I was definitely NOT interested.

Rogues: Rogues are basically thieves. In WoW, the thievery part is more of an on the side thing: they do pick pockets and open locks, but it's not as beneficial in a fight as you might expect. They do sneak around a LOT. And I must say, I was verrrrry interested in this class, and made a rogue eventually, but could not bring myself to making one as my first foray into WoW.

Paladins: Ahhh, the 'easy' class. Basically you're a rolling ball of armor that kills stuff with piety and can heal itself and render itself indestructible. Yeah, a lot of people hate paladins for having it 'easy'.

Druids: Druids are pretty interesting, and will try to make one in the near future- basically, you turn into animals or even trees and use nature as your ally. You can also turn into a manatee, and a blue hawk-owl thing. I am insanely jealous of not having a druid. I didn't choose druids, DESPITE the prospect of having a dancing bear (more on this some other time) because I preferred how Paladins sounded.

There's another class unavailable to me when I started this game, and thankfully so, called the Death Knight. As you might expect, the Death Knight is basically a videogame version of many a death metal band fantasy. You're ...undead. And you go around in plate armor killing things in horrible ways. And when you laugh, it's a spectral laugh. It's eerie. The class has since proven itself fun, but it would've sucked if I started the game with this class.

So long story short, I chose a paladin. Paladins are basically goody two shoes. And they get to wear nice luxurious armor and are able to heal themselves with the power of 'the Light' and yadda yadda yadda. Now came the hard-ish decision of what race (yes, race) I wanted to play. World of Warcraft is a classic (...quasiclassic, we'll see) binomial dichotomy. Good vs Evil. Ish. Not really. See, there's the Alliance (standing for what's good in the world and blah blah blah) and the Horde (misfits who go around looking for fights....that were actually started by the Alliance at some point...because the Horde are fugly)


I went Alliance. Because my now girlfriend hates the Horde. =/ These are the races, per faction:

Alliance

Humans: ....humans. I don't like em. They look dumb. They sound dumb. Just not my cup of tea. The chicks do the macarena when they dance. Yuck.

Gnomes: ...ugh. We hate gnomes. A lot. Like, with a passion. I can't think of any race I dislike more. They're tiny, and their laughter is annoying as feck. Punt-the-gnome is something which dreams are made of, I'll say.

Dwarves: Much like every other dwarf-lore, they drink, they burp, they laugh rambunctiously, and they have scottish accents. I have a VERY soft spot for dwarves. A drawback of playing with a girlfriend (the only drawback) is that they will not allow you to play a character of a race they don't think matches with their own character. And dwarves, as endearing as they are, don't match. Ever. With anything. (Point of interest, dwarf females in this game are like unicorns)

Night Elves: Night elves are spindly, gaunt, tall, very graceful woodland creatures. With bright eyes, pointy ears, and I dunno. They kinda look like tall, kind vampires. I like vampires, but the voice they game 'em makes em sound like a pissed off David Schwimmer.

Draenei: Draenei are basically Eatern European space goats. Let me explain: They are refugees from another planet, they speak in an Eastern European accent, they have tendrils on their faces that make them look like an octopus-head, they have horns, a tail and are cloven. Oh, and they're about twice as tall as most anything. This is the race I chose for my paladin. They had me at space goat.



To offer a counterpoint, here's what I missed on the Horde:


Orcs: Orcs are pretty much what you'd expect of an orc, they're a growling greenish thing that looks like a gorilla mated with a demon. I think that's their origin actually. They are warlike and honorable. They do the Hammertime when they dance. It's...odd.


Trolls: Trolls in this game are unlike trolls elsewhere. They do have the crazy hair, but they have huge fangs and are the response to Jar Jar Binks when it comes to offensive stereotypes: Trolls apparently emigrated from Kingston. But they do Capoeira. I dunno, Blizzard was throwing ideas around after a kegger, and thus the troll was born. I have a soft spot for trolls, they're kinda the representatives of the Caribbean in this game. But alas, they're ugly as sin (see dwarves as to why this is important)

Forsaken: Forsaken are basically zombies. Walking dead. This sounds pretty cool, but the models are sorta lacking, in my opinion. I dunno. Maybe I'm just not into the whole zombie thing as much as I thought I was. Although creating something with a missing lower jaw is pretty interesting.

Tauren: Tauren are minotaurs, basically. Tree hugging minotaurs. Um, yeah. I like the Tauren quite a bit, they make everything else look tiny by comparison, which was quite fun. These were basically made to be the Native Americans of the game. I dunno how I feel about THAT, but it's fine. Whatev. They hug trees. Very menacingly.

Blood Elves: Blood elves are like metrosexual night elves. They're like the foppish, snobby aunt of the Horde family (I dunno about you, but I have a snobby aunt. Meh) They all look delicate, and groomed, and meh. Not very dangerous. And yet they're annoying as heck. They give gnomes a run for their money on 'Race I want to choke to death'.


There are two races coming out in the coming months: the Alliance got Worgens and the Horde got Goblins. Worgen are a cute word for Werewolves. Yes. Werewolves. Nobody wants to say it, so I will: Blizzard loves the Alliance more. Werewolves, are you serious?? How cool is that! Anyway, as you might have guessed, Goblins are an insult by comparison: they are short green gnomes. Good deal huh?



By the way, I know this suddenly turned into a wall of text. But I'm not done. Once I made my Space Goat goody two shoes in armor, I was made to decide what *role* I wanted to play as. Role, wtf?


See, the MMO world is dominated by a powerful triumvirate: Healer, DPS (Damage per Second) and tank. Another brief explanation of this:

Healer- heals. Healers are like the drama majors in high school. Or maybe like the chess nerds. Thing is, healers get stepped on a lot, it's a thankless job, or rather, it's been said, a horrible godforsaken responsibility. To keep 4 other players alive? of which 4 could be potential morons?! of which 4 could blame the healer for everything??!? It's a horrible role, and I wanted no part in it. However, when a healer is good, the recognition is profuse. My girlfriend chose to go the way of the healer, which is cause for much stress whenever we play. I feel her pain. She yells at the monitor a lot. A lot of "NO!!! Don't step on FIRE!!!!" can be heard when we play.

DPS- DPS basically does damage. DPS are the bulk of the game. In a party of five people, three of them should be DPS. DPS are like the jocks. They love numbers. They LOVE outstaging each other. And they LOOOOVE blaming the healer and the tank for their own misgivings. They also like to think they could do the healer and the tank's job. As the saying goes, dpsing is 'fun'. DPS can be clumped into one, but there's different kinds of dps classes: you have casters, which normally mean they do damage from afar. This normally includes anything that casts magic. You have melee damage, which basically includes anything that hits stuff from a closer range, and normally gets killed in the process. And you have hunters, who insist on just hitting random stuff for fun, causing both healer and tank much stress.


Tank- a tank is basically a character that has ways of making everything on screen hopefully hit HIM and not kill the healer...and maybe leave the rest of the group alive. Maybe. Basically, a meat shield. They say tanking is a job. Why a job? Because it PAYS to be a tank, but man, it's thankless. (Basically, tanks and healers are always in demand, because these actually take some skill to play passably well) If something goes wrong, anything, it's the tank's fault. The only time it's not the tank's fault is if the tank dies. ...not really, but...still.


After much debate, I chose to become a tank. Why? Well, those who know me might say that it makes sense for me to have chosen something that looks to get hit in the face repeatedly. All in all, healing sounded too stressful for me, and killing things sounded (and resulted in being) too competitive for me, so I decided to play as an Eastern European Space Goat Goody Two Shoes Meat Shield, or EESGGTSMS for short. Not very catchy. AFTER all that deliberation, I uhh, started playing. More on that some other day, =P