Project Lore

Never before has a deep, demanding voice booming angrily at me through Ventrilo made me laugh so hysterically. But Samuel L. Jackson, of all people, stating in that signature big, bad voice of his, "THAT'S A 50 DKP MINUS!"... well, it's just too much for this girl to take without exploding into laughter.

No, I'm not buddies with the actual Samuel L. Jackson (although, I did take my picture with his life-size wax statue while I was in L.A. for BlizzCon... does that count?!) His interaction with my raid group actually came through a nifty little iPhone app that one of my guildies decided to share with the rest of us.

On the surface, iSamJackson isn't much different from other apps that allow you to interact with celebrity voices at the touch of the button. You pay a $2.99 download fee for either a "clean" or explicit version of the app, and in return get a collection of more than 150 Sam Jackson quotes delivered with his stylish swagger. But the best part is yet to come. The app also has two optional quote packs (for an additional $.99 each) -- Sports and "MMO pwnership." I'm sure you can guess which one makes it relevant to this blog!

Jackson takes inspiration for several of his quotes in the MMO pack from the infamous Onyxia wipe animation. So, while our raid leader quickly reviewed strategy for taking down Lord Marrowgar the other night, Samuel L. Jackson chimed in: "Do I really have to tell you NOT to stand in the fire?" (FYI - I'm paraphrasing these from memory). That got our attention, and the quotes kept rolling. "That's a 50 DKP minus!" And when we wiped while bringing down Deathbringer Saurfang because of some ranged coordination issues, Sam declared: "You know, up until the part where we all died, I thought it was going pretty good!" It kept our raid group in high spirits and laughing along with Jackson all night.

So would I personally buy the app? Absolutely -- if one of my guildies didn't already have it for everyone's amusement. It has definitely brought a lot of fun to the group, but I also wonder when the novelty will wear off. Perhaps if I still find it 100 percent funny a couple months down the road, I'll get it for myself, too. What would be GREAT is if, somehow, someone made the MMO-relevant quotes into a WoW addon.

Has anyone else encountered iSamJackson? What are your own impressions?

A few nights ago I was on WoW, not unlike a lot of other nights that I play. But unlike most other nights, I was in a particularly reflective mood. It had been at least a week since my previous jaunt around with Pixiestixy, my alt draenei hunter on Executus, in the alliance Project Lore fan guild. So I logged on to get a quick level or two and to chatter with whoever was online. While running a couple of questlines on Bloodmyst Isle, I noticed someone spamming guild chat with information for logging onto a Ventrilo server. Personally, me and my main character guildies prefer Teamspeak. But a while back, I DLed vent for just such occasions. So I input the info, connected to the server and listened in for a couple minutes. I realized right away that these were not the voices that I had imagined I might hear. One person clearly spoke with a Spanish accent. Another had a boyish, high-pitched voice. I heard a kid screaming in the background of one player's audio. And while I'm used to hearing east coast, and often southern drawl common in Virginia, I picked up from those few short moments of just listening that we were a diverse group. I'm not listing our differences to poke fun or to point out what separated us. I rather enjoy the idea of playing with people from all over the world. But I suppose my perception of their character names didn't match up to what I heard. I could compare it to meeting a giant, rustic Tauren druid who opens his mouth and sounds like an irritated 6-year-old girl. I stopped thinking so much about it and finally introduced myself (and immediately heard exclamations that I was a RL girl.) Apparently, I broke their perceptions, too; They assumed that I would be a guy. A couple minutes later, one of them whispered me, asking how old I am. 26, I replied. Then I realized something. My voice makes me sound much younger than I really am. Or, so I've been told. Another misconception. I'm still unsure whether that's a good thing. I don't usually think that any of this would matter; it's a game, and what someone sounds like doesn't change how the game is played. Unless maybe you're roleplaying through Vent. But it does make me curious - how many of you have ever connected to voice chat and been surprised by what you heard on the other end? Or are you the one providing surprises, if your voice doesn't match up with your character?

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