Project Lore

Being the repressed, socially-awkward gamer who lives in his mother's basement and fears the sun, I watch a lot of TV.  To be honest, only one of the cliche descriptions fits me.  I will leave it up to the Internet Sleuths to figure out which.  My point is that no matter how many people continue to sign-up for World of Warcraft, or snap up those Nintendo Wiis, gaming, especially on a computer, is still largely seen as a nerdy hobby that should be shunned. Enter in the mainstream media's latest attempt at "understanding" gamers with NBC's take on our "secret society."  Nicole Riley is the women in charge of the horribly misinformed and unintentionally hilarious person piece.  I don't mean to rag on her reporting, but I highly doubt she thought it was going to win any awards.  In actuality, she, and her boyfriend, probably had some fun putting the clip together.  Especially the boyfriend. Riley claims that Jay Hollanda, her beau, is "ranked in the top ten out of 12 million" players for World of Warcraft.  What?  Where did that stat come from?  Assuming I just may be out of touch with the PvP leagues or sponsored PvE guilds I did a quick Google Search for Jay Hollanda.  You know what I found?  Links to the same video above, or to discussions about how ridiculous it is. Sounds to me like Jay may be playing himself up so he can stay home and cruise by on Riley's career. It gets better, way better.  Riley sits down to play the game and quickly realizes that she needs help. Hollanda informs her that "I need help" in WoW-speak is really "LFM 25 Nex 2 more tanks 2 more DKs."  Lawlz. Personally, it seems that I - and ProjectLore's Glossary - need to work on our WoW, because I have never heard the reference to a "Timmy" in WoW or seen pwnzer spelled in such an odd fashion.  Perhaps it is just his server, or he's so good at the game that everyone follows his lead.  Hollanda isn't playing his girlfriend entirely, he does seem to know a good amount about our favorite MMORPG. In all fairness, much of the piece was probably trumped up by production, like a good reality show - get this, they aren't real!  It's obviously true that we do have our own lingo, but doesn't every hobby?  Either way, this is a must see for all WoW players, so be sure to send it to your friends and post it in your guild forums.  Whether they meant it for a laugh or not, it certainly got me ROFLing.  Just check it out and let us know what ya think. At least none of my family lives in the Bay Area.  If they did, I would expect my grandfather to call and try to speak "gamer" to me... Edit: It looks like YouTube had to take the video down, but we've updated with the video from the NBCbayarea site.

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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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I just finished uploading the first revision of the Project Lore Glossary! I think we have a pretty good start, but I'm sure you guys can think of some abbreviations or terms we are missing. Or maybe you've heard some phrase in game that you just don't understand. If so, just fire off an email to editor@projectlore.com and let me know what you think we should add.

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