Project Lore

Feeling a bit down on your luck lately? Run into one too many ganks, Ulduar wipes or failed PuG runs? Perhaps it's time for you to take a break from the grind and get to know your toon's chivalrous side through the Argent Tournament. Now I know some people in our Project Lore forums have expressed skepticism about how popular the Argent Tournament will be in the long run. Others also seem enthusiastic about the idea. I, for one, love being able to kick back for some casual game play in the tourney. I've always thought that WoW has taken a new look at Azeroth as a different kind of take on medieval times. But the Argent Tournament is a bit less subtle, which I find refreshing. We don't have to dig deep to find plenty of pop-culture references that provide framework for how we visualize medieval times. You know, the romanticized, Hollywood version with valiant good guys who wield legendary weapons to defeat a corrupt and overbearing government and win over the hot (and virgin) woman. Right away for the tournament, you start quests investigating a mysterious black knight who is said to be able to defeat anyone who is unfortunate enough to meet him (I won't ruin it for anyone who hasn't started, but it's a fun quest line!) Then you'll progress into proving your jousting worth and venturing around the world to either gather various items, kill random bad guys or rescue helpless maidens (I don't think it matters whether your toon is male or female!) It all leads to more jousting until reaching Champion status and working toward buying some tournament rewards. If you want to speed through the new addition, or if you want a closer look at what you'll be getting yourself into, definitely take a look at iTZKooPA's guide to the Argent Tournament. As for me, I am thoroughly enjoying taking my time through these quests (on my husband's main, haha, I'm still leveling!). It makes me want to join a RP server and see what kind of fun plot lines are being worked into the already awesome tournament goodness. I definitely call the Argent Tournament a win for WoW. So what does everyone else make of the new Argent Tournament addition? Is it holding your interest, or something that you'll be over within a week or two? I'm hoping that the coliseum area continues getting built up so that it maintains a fresh feel.

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When I said that SolidSamm's guild "canceled raiding for the foreseeable future" I knew it wasn't going to last long.  For starters, the GM has been a big PvEer since EverQuest, and many of the officers and other members have been with him since then.  Two of the members outside of that group are formerly from a hardcore guild - where they met the current GM - who still take the game very seriously, but can no longer dedicate the same amount of time.  Thus, they never lost their itch to dominate content, just the time required to do so.  Lastly, the Heroic Wednesday event that I initiated has been quite a success in its short life, with numerous dungeons being run on the formerly inactive day.  The indications were obvious that the Warriors were ready to head back into Naxxramas, so we gathered up the troops and dominated Kel'Thuzad's stronghold in record time. Actually, that is a lie.  We failed.  Epically.  The Warriors of Faith wiped for hours, downing a single boss - Anub'Rekan - over the course of a night.  Yes, yes, it certainly sounds pathetic but the repair bills are forgiven because we attempted to move up to the big leagues, Heroic Naxxramas.  Hey, even Ghostcrawler said 25-man Naxx is "too easy to pug", we just wanted to test out his statements. Our little guild barely has enough raiding ready level 80s in its entirety to fill a full raid, so we had to flesh out the ranks with non-guilded friends and a handful of random players.  Where does the blame for the collection of graveyard runs go?  On everyone.  We allowed pugged players with terrible gear and little knowledge in the raid, we had our own members with inadequate gear, and we even failed to research the subtle differences in 10-man, 25-man and 40-man encounters.  I ended the night with something along the lines of a 110 gold repair bill. Am I upset, annoyed or angry at our failures?  Not at all, we tried something a bit different and difficulties are to be expected.  Heck, there is actually an upside to what didn't go down.  A few of the PUGs joined the guild and have already begun to gear their toons at last night's Heroic Wednesday run.  How those went?  Well, that is a story for another day.  I just hope that our morale stays high and these new members stick around for the long run.  After all, if tonight's second attempt at Heroic Naxxramas doesn't go a bit better, members may just disappear until Ulduar.  But I don't believe our core members expect instant gratification or to be carried through. As masochistic as this may sound, I absolutely love these times in a guild.  Despite the numerous setbacks we are sure to face, they help weed out the weak players or those who are just in it for the good times (read free loot).  They push players to the edge, getting them to eek out every bit of DPS, mana or threat-per-second their class can muster.  They breed competition, creativity, interesting discussions and strategies.  From these difficult times comes good, long-lasting members and friends.  And when there's finally that taste of success, it becomes that much sweeter.  It's the digital equivalent of being in the trenches - just without the trench foot, machine guns, mustard gas, shell shock and death.  See, just like it.

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^ Not Useless.  Welcome Aboard Guys - Via CNN.com

Of course this would happen.  I take the day off for some "house work" and am greeted by not just maintenance, but extended maintenance.  At least by x o'clock - who knows when the servers will be up AND playable - I can wade through all the changes for v3.0.8 that Bastosa mentioned the other day.  Until that time, we always have the patch notes to drool over/shake our fist at. Yesterday's escapades into level 80 didn't go as well as one may have hoped.  Apparently few people have off on Martin Luther King day, making it incredibly difficult to find a group to run with.  I managed to swing only a third of the dungeons I wanted to do before I got fed up with spamming the channels.  Despite the few runs, I did catch myself doing something unexpected. Since the early days I have always used gear to compare myself to other players.  Although gear != skill, it can show how dedicated you are to your toon.  The assumptions made through the technique aren't always accurate, but in general, a toon with good gear while lacking enchants or sockets means that the player just got decked out, doesn't have the money, or does the bare minimum to look good.  While checking how bad I looked in front of the PUG groups, I found another not-exactly-accurate way to measure players, Achievements. I am one of the few people around these parts that isn't too found of Achievements.  Aside from being an Xbox Live rip-off, I just didn't see much cause for them.  Personally, I would rather something like WAR's Tome of Knowledge, a personal diary of sorts, rather than these arbitrary points.  That being said, it can serve a purpose beyond bragging rights.  Paired with a simple gear check, an Achievement check can lend you extra knowledge about your new teammate, partner or prospective guildmate. There are actually a ton of ways this can be used, but here are a few examples.

• A player has good gear, but their achievement score is pretty low for a level 80 and lacking numerous dungeons.  One could reasonably assume that the character is an alt or new player in general.
• A Druid has average gear, but a very high score, including most of the quest based objectives.  Player probably enjoys the game for the universe and may intend on finishing everything the game has to offer.  Likely to continue to subscribe for the foreseeable future.
• Character is decked out in an odd mix of PvP, PvE and crafted gear; has most of the PvP achievements completed.  Get this player on your 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 and PvP guild ASAP, likely a min-maxer based on his eclectic gear choices.

I am pretty shocked that I never really thought of this useful aspect before.  Perhaps I was blinded by my hatred of the Achievement system as a whole.  At least we don't have to pay $50 a year to use it though.  Anyone have some real-world examples?  I know there has to be some GM's out there that have used this as part of their recruiting measures.

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Hardcore. Casual. Newb – however you spell it. These are all terms that are tossed around a lot in World of Warcraft. Our own glossary defines hardcore as the following, oh wait, we don't have a definition. We do have various incarnations of newb though, newb, newbie, noob. All the definitions are the same, a new player or a derogatory term to “suggest that a player is not very good”. I have never tended to agree with the classic definitions of hardcore and casual gamers though. Just because you spend a lot of time gaming does not make you hardcore in my mind. The flip side is true as well, only playing WoW five hours a week doesn't necessarily make you casual in my book. The labels should not be linked to the time spent on just the game but on the experience as a whole. I was hardcore in the traditional sense before The Burning Crusade hit the live servers. I would eat up any and all information on the game while spending more than a few hours a day in Azeroth. Like many hardcore raiders of vanilla WoW – including most of my guild – I drifted off into the sunset when TBC hit. No longer do I raid multiple times a week, or spend more than three hours in front of the screen commonly. But I still consider myself to be a hardcore player. Why do I consider myself hardcore if I only play the game for a few hours ever other day? Because I still dedicate myself to the experience. I have created long standing goals for the game, I spend massive amounts of time reading the background lore, staying up on the latest happenings in Wrath or the PvP scene.  Oh, and I also write about it.  WoW isn't simply a game for me, or the other hardcore players out there. It is THE game. So if the hardcore make it a part of their life, what would casual be then. Casual players to me are the ones who are in it for the short term gains. Mainly, these are the players who just hop on to kill time or chat with friends. They never bothered with the quest text, they don't knit pick over who the first Death Knight really is, they just play the game for something enjoyable to do. Of course, there is no 'a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square' restriction. A player from the casual group can become hardcore at any time and a hardcore player can become casual just as easily. It is all a matter of how serious you take the game, in my opinion.

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