Why You Should Come Back To World Of Warcraft…

I’m having the time of my life playing World of Warcraft, and if you were on the server that I am on…you would, too.
Doesn’t matter if you played for months and months and months and eventually got bored and left.
Doesn’t matter if you’ve never played at all.

I’ve found that, with a little TINY bit of effort, WoW becomes an old school Pen and Paper Roleplaying Game…without the table, or the pens.

In the last 30 days, I’ve…
* …engineered a mutiny on a Pirate Ship, and taken control, expanding it to a fleet of 3 ships.

* …been killed by a crewmember… Not like…duelled and lost…but he RP killed me in a bar fight. In front of witnesses. I logged out of the character, and shall not return…except to mail his stuff to another character, then I shall delete him. I’m considering using this as an excuse to get a second account – so I can recreate the Commodore as an UNDEAD Rogue…

* …Debated a Paladin over her use of a poisoned weapon, and argued that the fact that although an undead priest killed her husband, there is no excuse in the world good enough for her to use poison to inflict horrific deaths upon all other members of the Horde she may encounter (Forsaken, Tauren, and Orc alike), and certainly is no reason condemn members of the Defias Brotherhood (who are as human as she and I are) to a similar horrifically painful, agonizing death.
Keep in mind that I made this argument as a Rogue – the only class that can manufacture poisons.
She was astonished to find that not only had I never used poison, I’d never so much as harmed the hair on the head of a Deer, Bunny, or Rat in the game…
…and double astonished that I never Backstab anyone. (a powerful Rogue in-game ability…but COMPLETELY out of character for me…)

* …been killed by a Dragon. Not as part of an “adventure”, or a quest or anything like that. In the middle of a large city, in the middle of “prime time”…I heard a commotion, stepped outside, and was roasted where I stood. The city was *attacked* by a friggin’ (Gamemaster-controlled) *DRAGON*, and it took “all hands” (well over 100 players!) close to 20 minutes to kill it.

* …Struck up a friendship with a woman…after commenting in character (completely off the cuff – no pun intended!) on her “intriguing blind-stitching technique”…as we both “availed ourselves of the convenience services” (read: “were grinding our Tailor skill”) provided by the tailor in the city of Stormwind. The next time I saw her we were each headed someplace, and we ran into each other (outside Menethil Harbor, for those that care). We immediately Roleplayed the encounter…
“…Manari? *blink* What are YOU doing here?”
We’ve been fast friends since then.

* …have run several of the Dungeons in the game while being entirely in character. That’s a trip. It’s one thing to run through a dungeon like most people (as fast as you possibly can, in order to get the Phat Lewt and get on to other things…what exactly, I’m not sure…maybe showing off your new schwag to your buddies?)…it’s another (astonishing!) thing to ROLEPLAY your way through it…

* …encountered Erkai, a Mage of truly epic proportion…(again, for those that play the game…a day one player with 100% epic gear…”I can’t help it if I like purple” says he!)…and helped him get the smell of Black Lotus off of him…with some guile and trickery… The very first thing he did the day I met him was pour two bottles of wine over his head, and rub it underneath his armpits…the reason why became clear as the situation played out…and I bought into it, and offered a solution as unusual as the character is…”Yes, I know it doesn’t make sense to rub brie (Yes…the cheese… -ed.) all over one’s self…but my Aunti swears by it…” He didn’t go for it…so, as we Roleplayed our way through the Gnomeregan Dungeon…I started to gently pet his hair…then massage his shoulders…then his arms…whenever he would pause and sit… Needless to say, this was VERY disconcerting to him…(“ENOUGH WITH THE TOUCHING, FOUL BEAST!”) and very amusing to me… *grin* At the end of the dungeon, just before teleporting back home…I held out my hands, and showed them to him…yes, Gentle Reader, you guessed correctly as to what they held…it was brie. =)

* …been escorted *on foot* by a character from Auberdine (Think…Seattle) to Stormwind (Think: Dallas)…just because my character asked him where…um…*scratches head trying to remember the name…* Steel…uh…something? No, that’s not it…um…Copper…no….Oh Yeah! IRON…something…Iron…fringe? No…*shakes her head*….um…
It took almost three hours…and we never broke character…not once.

Along the way, we stopped and had a picnic because we were hungry from running so far, we stopped and visited Arispar’s sister in her new home (Yes, that entailed logging out of one character, and into the other…who I logged out of in the house…), stopped to change clothes from something light to something heavy (including the search for a place where one could do so and retain some modesty…) when we got to Loch Modan (Mountain passes and snow)… Stopped to have a long conversation about what all this white stuff on the ground is…(Arispar is from “Clearassil” – a little hamlet outside Teldrassil, which is outside Darnassus…where the weather is so perpetually pleasant that the buildings have only walls enough to hold the roof up. To think that this PLAYER…who clearly came all the way to Auberdine for a reason (It’s a LONG way from the human homelands) would turn around and escort another player (who surely knows the way, especially once he sees that this player has a character of level equal to his own) for THREE HOURS, really says something about the quality of player on this server…

* …while logged into Arispar – who has never met this epic mage in character – heard him discussing (with the tailor lady) his childhood…in great and vivid, and *exceptionally* well roleplayed detail.

* …created and roleplayed the cousin of the Nighttime Second Assistant Manager of a popular fictional Springfield convenience store…Thank You! Come Again!

* …danced with a Big Gay Pirate…

Seriously…
…if you play, but aren’t having fun…move.
…if you play, but *are* having fun…create an alt and come play…
…if you used to play, but quit because you weren’t having fun Raiding night after night after night…re-up and come be an Adrian Proactive Nautical Salvage Engineer!
…if you’ve never played…you can download the client and get a 7-day trial key from many of the popular gaming sites (Fileplanet springs to mind…) and come try it out…

I’m finding that World of Warcraft is nearly everything I ever wanted AD&D/Dangerous Journeys/Pendragon/Ars Magica/Runequest/etc. to be…

Come find me…I’m Commodore/Tryxy/Arispar/AuntiPaladin/Yahvi on the Maelstrom server, or stop by www.jonathonbarton.net/wow