So I started playing World of Warcraft again. Surprise! The excitement of Cataclysm was too much for me to resist. Christina is playing again too! We’re doing a pretty good job balancing that and other games, I think. BUT. That’s not what this post is about.

I don’t really know what makes me do it, but when I play MMOs I like to make up a backstory and personality for my character. Now, I don’t roleplay or anything. I don’t write it up or post it anywhere (except for right now). It’s really just for me, just stuff I come up with as I explore the world that my character inhabits. When there are games with existing worlds and I create a character that lives in that world, I really like to think about where they fit in. I guess it’s the writer in me.

It started when I first played Star Wars Galaxies, which was my first MMO. That game, actually, had an in-game field for writing a short bio on your character that other players could see. Every character bio I’d read would have the same thing: “The Empire killed (his/her) parents…” I was like “Damn, I wonder how the Empire has time to do anything else, what with all the parent-killing they seem to do.” So my character Zeth’s backstory went a different direction.

I don’t remember all of it, because that was like, geez… over seven years ago, but Zeth was from Talus, a planet close to Corellia. His parents were farmers (and both were alive and well!) but he had little interest in agricultural work. Instead he preferred working with mechanics, specifically weapons. As the Empire grew in power, he decided to covertly begin supplying the Rebel Alliance with weapons of his own design and perform the odd mission for them here and there.

In Final Fantasy XI, I played a Hume named Ethran, and my main job was White Mage. I don’t know why but I went more cliché this time around, with my character not having any memory prior to his early teenage years when he was found collapsed in the Gustaberg region just outside the mining city of Bastok. He was found by a Galka named White Wind who, despite Galka not being known for their magical abilities, was a renowned White Mage. The Galka were asexual, meaning that they were neither male nor female, and they reproduced through a form of reincarnation. Hoping to capture a bit of the experience of being a parent, White Wind took Ethran into his home, raising him as a son and teaching him the ways of the White Mage.

For my character in World of Warcraft, the Blood Elf Zetharis, I’ve kinda made up more stuff since the lore in Warcraft is so rich. I guess you need to know a bit about Warcraft lore to understand it, but eh, if you don’t care you don’t care!

Anyway, Zetharis (“Zeth” to his friends) and his wife Serulia (Christina’s character) were once High Elves of Silvermoon City, prior to the Third War. They were in Silvermoon when the Death Knight Arthas Menethil led the Scourge through Quel’Thalas, slaying over 90% of the High Elven population and destroying the Sunwell, a fount of mystical power that bathed the High Elves as a constant source of magic.

The High Elven prince Kael’Thas Sunstrider banded the survivors together and renamed them “Blood Elves” in honor of their fallen kin. While some of the High Elves chose not to follow Kael’Thas, Zetharis felt that remaining loyal to the prince of his people was the best course of action. With their culture destroyed and having narrowly escaped a complete genocide, dividing themselves further seemed like the worst possible thing to do, even if he did not fully understand Kael’Thas.

Shortly after the Sunwell’s destruction, the Blood Elves began to suffer from withdrawls from magic and it began taking a horrible toll on them physically. Kael’Thas insisted that they must learn a new source of magic and began teaching his people how to absorb fel energies from demonic pests. While Zetharis and Serulia never did agree with this method, they saw no other choice for survival and indulged with the rest of their people. As a result, they underwent minor physical changes such as glowing green eyes, the sign of the Blood Elves’ reliance on demonic powers.

The Blood Elves were in trouble. Their prince had taken a large majority of their best soldiers and gone to Outland after being betrayed by the humans of the Alliance during a defense of the city of Dalaran. As drawing fel energies had cut off the Blood Elves from the powers of the Light, Kael’Thas brought them back a captive naaru, a being of pure light energy from which to draw power. Lady Liadrin, a former priestess who had renounced her faith believing the Light had abandoned her people, was the first to draw from the naaru’s power. She was the first Blood Elf Paladin and founded the Order of the Blood Knights. Zetharis and Serulia, wanting to be able to fight to protect their people, joined the order. Again, they did not approve of the methods used, but they endured in order to fight for Silvermoon.

As they fought, though, drawing the naaru’s powers didn’t come as easily for them as it did for others. They had several others who had the same difficulties that they did. They were able to use the same abilities as those who drew the naaru’s power, but the source appeared to be different. While on a mission near Elwynn Forest, they came across an old Human priest who informed the group that due to their selfless dedication to their people and belief that they were doing the right thing allowed them to legitimately draw power from the Light.

As the Blood Elves joined the Horde after Kael’Thas’ betrayal of his people, Zetharis came to have a much greater view of the world. Fighting alongside orcs, tauren, trolls and forsaken exposed him to lifestyles and cultures beyond anything he could imagine. While many Blood Elves look down their noses at other races and view their Horde allies as nothing but brutes to be manipulated for their own ends, he admires their shamanistic lifestyle and sees the many lessons that they can teach his recovering people. He has a great admiration for Warchief Thrall, who wisely leads the Horde towards a future of peace and understanding.

He knows that many in the Horde do not trust the Blood Elves, something which he takes great pains to rectify. He treats all fellow Horde members as friends and offers any aid he can to those who need it. He’s aware that the magical aura that surrounds him and his people offend the spiritual senses of the nature-worshipping tauren, something which bothers him greatly.

As for the Alliance races, Zetharis has fond feelings for the Draenei thanks to the actions of their leader, the prophet Velen, who restored the Sunwell and liberated his people from their reliance on fel energy despite the fact that they were, for all intents and purposes, enemies. He has no particular feelings either way towards dwarves, gnomes and night elves, but he still blames humans for their betrayal of the Blood Elves in the Third War, and doesn’t trust them easily when he comes across them. Any passing Alliance soldier will be greeted with a curt nod, but the first sign of aggression will cause Zetharis to draw his blade and fight as hard as he can until his foe lie lifeless in front of him.

I could go on and on about this, because honestly whenever I’m bored I like to think of stuff like this, but I’ll cut it off for now. I love storytelling, but I’m pretty bad at writing fiction. When it comes to this, though, it’s a story that keeps growing and evolving as my experiences with the world grow, and for me, that’s one of the most interesting things I can experience.

I’m not going to lie to you, the reason I haven’t updated much this past week is because of World of Warcraft. I make no excuse for it, but I would like to talk about it a bit more.

I got sucked into it pretty bad recently, and I’m taking a break for a while so I can get back into other things and try to re-balance my free time again. With Cataclysm, the next expansion, coming out soon, I was just in a mad rush to do too many things all at once so whenever I had free time and as a result everything else started to suffer. I have a bit of an obsessive personality as it is, so it was all really just a recipe for disaster.

One of my favorite things about the Warcraft universe is the lore. I love reading about all the characters, the history of the races and all the events that shaped the world of Azeroth. My problem with that is when I read something about a particular race, all of a sudden I liked them a lot and I wanted to level a new character. I got bored once I got my Blood Elf paladin to level 80, so I messed around with alts and that was fine, I guess.

I have what Christina calls “the grass is always greener” syndrome, where I can never really stick with any decision I made in an MMO. I always want to try a new character or class. In my mind, that character I’m controlling represents me to all the other people playing so I try hard to make one I think is perfect. I wind up making female characters because hey, if I’m going to spend so many hours staring at an ass I want it to be a nice looking one, and that just complicates that issue even further.

Earlier this week I made a Draenei shaman that I REALLY liked. I equipped her with some heirloom items to give her a 20% boost to all experience gains in an effort to get her to level 80 before Cataclysm hits. I got her up 30 levels in about four days. The thing was, when I looked at how much time I had spent on her over those four days, it was close to 15 hours.

For a game that essentially is only costing me $15 per month, that’s a good amount of playtime for what I’m spending. The thing is, it was costing me more in other ways.

No, no, no problems with Christina or anything like that, I just kind of lost my enthusiasm for much else. I didn’t feel like playing many other games and it’s pretty obvious I didn’t feel like writing. All I thought about was getting Kyte, my shaman, as many levels as I could in whatever free time I could spare.

Yesterday I came home from work sick so I had some time alone in the house, and all together I spent probably about four and a half hours total just grinding. I mean, I think WoW as a game is fun, but I wasn’t having fun playing it; I was rushing. I had a deadline. It was work.

After sitting down with Christina and playing some Ocarina of Time and watching a few episodes of Nintendo Week I realized just how much I missed playing other games. I can’t tell you the last time I touched my DS. I had a couple weeks there where I was playing on my 360 a lot but that stopped pretty quick. All roads led me back to WoW and I just couldn’t do it anymore.

I keep my Gmail account open on my work computer and today Yonathin, a regular reader, started talking with me over Gmail’s chat and I realized just what I was pushing aside in order to play a game that wasn’t fun. I love writing this blog because I like sharing my thoughts with all of you and I love the feedback you give me. When he logged off I texted Christina, who was at home, and told her to hide the authenticator I use to log in to my WoW account.

So I’m back. I’m not saying I’ll never play WoW again, because I most likely will, I just need a pretty solid break from it. I have a lot of other games I want to play, and the holiday season is coming up pretty soon and we all know how many heavy hitters Nintendo is going to drop on us. I still need to pick up Halo: Reach and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep here pretty quick. Not to mention I’m GETTING MARRIED and I can’t keep pissing away all my free time playing as a blue lady with horns riding around on a space elephant.

I’m also going to re-focus on the blog, too, especially the forums. I tell people all the time (the ones who know about the blog, anyway) that my favorite part of it is getting to know you guys, and I feel like I really haven’t done enough to try to build those connections with you. I’ll be on the forums more, and I’m totally up to play anything multiplayer with you. My Xbox gamertag is Joe Sunrider, and I have a DS and Wii as well. Just shoot me an email or a PM on the forums and we’ll set something up.

It’s a fun game, but when I’m not having fun I know it’s time to hang it up for a bit.

Also, thanks Yonathin. You didn’t know it at the time, but you gave me the smack in the face I needed!

I’m a World of Warcraft player. I’m not one of those super-hardcore, “Leave me alone because I have a raid” no-life players. I enjoy the game, and I play it quite often, but I mostly play because I enjoy exploring the world and becoming involved in the lore.

One thing that a lot of people don’t know about me, and something I consider one of my more charming character quirks, is that I am completely incapable of playing a bad guy in a video game. When I play BioWare games, I’ve literally reloaded a previous save when I accidentally get Dark Side or Renegade points. I play all games with a morality system as the super-ultra nice guy, because I get really uncomfortable even PRETENDING to be a jerk.

When I play World of Warcraft, I strictly play Horde characters.

Aren’t they the bad guys, you might be thinking?

Not when you really look into it.

When I first picked the game up, I played on the side of the Alliance as a Night Elf Hunter. A friend got me into the game, and she played on the Alliance. I wanted to play with her, so I made sure we were on the same faction. While playing, I considered the Horde races nothing but animals, savage races incapable of compassion and rational thought.

I stopped playing for a long time, and then picked the game back up on a whim and started a Draenei Paladin. I got about 15 levels in before something happened in my personal life that had made me rather upset, angry, and, well, unlike me. I decided I wanted to try playing as a Blood Elf Paladin instead.

Then I started reading the lore, spending leisure time reading WoW Wiki entries on the different Horde races. I came to discover that I, perhaps, had been mistaken about the alignment of the Horde and the Alliance, and it wasn’t as clear cut as I had previously thought.

The tale of the Blood Elves was a tragic one. Formerly High Elves, constantly bathed in magical energies from the Sunwell, their home of Silvermoon had been ravaged by the Lich King’s Scourge armies, destroying the Sunwell and subjecting them to crippling magic withdrawls. Over 90% of the High Elven population was slaughtered, and 90% of the survivors renamed themselves “Blood Elves” in honor of their fallen bretheren. Draining magic from small magical creatures to feed their unending thirst, the Blood Elves found that their once allies, the Alliance, no longer welcomed them amongst their ranks.

Whose idea was it to betray the Blood Elves? Oh, it was the humans.

The Orcs, who had battled the humans and the Alliance many times in the past due to their demonic bloodlust brought upon them while enslaved by the Burning Legion. After being freed from their influence, they still find enemies in the Alliance, who refuse to think of the Orcs as anything other than mindless brutes despite their noble, shamanistic society.

So who’s the real bad guy here? Looks to me like it’s the humans.

One of the great things about World of Warcraft is that it’s the only fantasy property that actually portrays Orcs in a positive light. Tolkien and countless other fantasy writers use Orcs as a failsafe evil race, nothing but an unending legion of dirty, vile soldiers.

On the surface, you’d think World of Warcraft was the same way. On one side you have humans, who are portrayed as heroic and honorable, who are allied with Dwarves, Gnomes, Night Elves and Draenei, who are all very pleasant looking. Their cities are clean and their banners are all a brilliant royal blue. On the other hand, you have the Orcs, the Blood Elves, the hulking Tauren, the undead Forsaken, and the Trolls. They’re not as clean looking, and their cities are more thrown together and unkempt. It’d be easy to take everything at face value and say “Okay, the Alliance is good and the Horde are bad.”

Looking into it, though, it really seems the other way around.

I realize a lot of it has to do with shades of gray, with no faction undeniably “good” or “evil.” Each side has its members who hope for peace and others that lust for war. But when I look at the Orcs, and their Warchief Thrall, who so desperately wishes to cleanse the negative image unjustly earned by his people, and who welcomes all who have nowhere else to turn, it gets a bit easier. They are closely allied with the Tauren, who revere nature and live in harmony with the land. The Trolls of the Darkspear clan were saved by the Orcs, and have given up their previous rituals of voodoo and cannibalism in order to adopt the shamanistic ways of their saviors as a sign of friendship and respect. The Forsaken, victims of the undead curse of the Lich King, have more questionable motives but they had nowhere else to turn. You already know about the Blood Elves.

Meanwhile, you have the Dwarves, Gnomes, Night Elves and Draenei, who, while perhaps not guilty of anything themselves, follow behind the xenophobic humans, who are too proud to look past face value and serve a king who is hellbent on wiping the Horde races from the face of Azeroth.

So who’s really the good guy here? Who’s really the monster?

And who is it that takes this stuff too seriously?

(For the record, I currently play a Blood Elf Paladin and I’ve just started leveling a Tauren Druid on the Stonemaul server.)

Aside from Super Mario Galaxy 2, which I can’t play until we get our Wii back from Nintendo, there’s really only two games I’ve had any interest in playing lately: Pokémon and World of Warcraft. I’ve been trying to think of WHY these are the only two games to keep my attention, and in the process I’ve come to realize what my motivations are for playing video games at this point.

Right now, I don’t have a lot of free time. I’m an adult with a full-time job, I live with my fiancé, I’m trying to run a blog and I have obligations and errands and things. When I sit down to play a video game, I want to make sure I get something out of it and I’m not just wasting my precious free time. What I’m really looking for now when I sit down to play is a sense of accomplishment.

“But Joe,” you’re probably thinking. “You don’t want to feel like you’re wasting time but you play World of Warcraft?” Yeah, that’s true. I should probably start off by saying I am NOT one of those stereotypical WoW nerds. I play casually (in fact, the only time I really play is when Christina’s not home, and it’s rare that I’m home and she’s not) and I’m not a part of any hardcore raiding guild or anything. I play because I enjoy the world and the mythology, and a game with so many tasks to complete gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Right now in the game I’m level 77. I’m trying to hit level 80 and be “ready” before Cataclysm, the next expansion, hits this year. It’s a goal I’m working towards, and when I meet it, I’ll feel accomplished (I know it’s a stupid thing to feel accomplished about but shut up, this is a gaming blog dammit). In the meantime, there’s all kinds of other smaller tasks for me to complete. For example, today I completed between 15-20 quests, ran through five dungeons and made (and spent) some money.

It seems stupid, but for me, these small goals are good motivators and make me feel more relaxed during my leisure time, which is kinda the whole point of leisure time in the first place.

I’m also hitting Pokémon pretty hard as of late. I’ve done a lot in Pokémon over the years. I’ve beaten all the games, EV trained countless Pokémon, and completed the Pokédex. Right now, as I mentioned in the last podcast, my goal is to complete a Living Pokédex, which means I will have one of each of the 493 Pokémon on one game all at the same time. After reorganizing and pulling all of my Pokémon off of My Pokémon Ranch, I realized I’m not as close to completing it as I though I was (I’m only missing around 120, which isn’t all that bad all things considered). Still, it’s a task with a clear goal that I’m enjoying trying to accomplish.

My gaming “moods” tend to change often, so who knows how long this will last. Right now, though, I’m enjoying spending my free time accomplishing meaningless goals and not acting my age. It’s pretty therapeutic, actually!