STILL. NOT. AT. LEVEL. TEN. 

seriously, 

i'm stuck at eight. 

Some things i've noticed as i'm attempting to play to ten is a. the escalation in weaponry, not just fighting skills, and b. the fact that the game almost becomes more fun when the player is allowed to kill other people or those quite resembling people rather than animals or other bizarre creature. the thing that's striking to me about this though is it makes me think-- what is this saying about our society or the people that play this game? obviously the killing of animals doesn't last very long, and even though, that's the way to get places in the game, so the killing of other people, etc in order to complete quests becomes the main goal. is this saying something about the players-- is there some untapped will or want to kills others that this game fulfills? 

further though, the question for me becomes are the people creating this game the messed up ones, or is it being created because there is something wrong with american society that makes us all want to kill-kill-kill? like, i could think the people that play are weird because they enjoy artificial killing, often with violent weapons, but i could say the same for the makers. like, who are these people that are coming up with these plots, and these weapons, and these quests? it's the same thing i always bring up about the saw franchise-- is eli roth really that sick, or did he go into that franchise knowing that his audience would be that sick? 

for my player made media tonight, i've found this video that is interesting to me both as a fan of monty python and the holy grail, but also as someone who is observing the world of WoW and its subculture. here is the link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8455484922324998664

this is a fun idea for players of the game, i think-- to carry out a scene from a favorite movie, if possible. obviously there are visual and thematic similarities between holy grail and WoW, such as the costuming and the idea of being on a quest. additionally, i think this really speaks to how far reaching WoW culture has become. obviously people want to show videos of them going on quests, etc for validation from other players, or as a way to publicize a guild, but the fact that this group of people took a famous film, one that is of cult status, a reproduced in within the game is especially cool to me. it's a fascinating look at a cross-section of subcultures-- hardcore video gamers, and cult fans of a classic film. the amount of work that must have gone in to that is crazy. 

LEVELS

I'm workin' on my levels, man. Katie keeps talking about how awesome level ten is, I just hope its worth walking around killing boars. I'm getting there though, and I'm getting excited for it. Katie also brought up the difference in community when you work your way up the levels-- I'm interested to get there because I'm still pretty intimidated by my surroundings currently. It feels like high school sometimes... I've never auditioned for a cheerleading squad, but I imagine the whole community is a lot like that. In Bring It On, when they have auditions to replace Carver-- that's it. When you're new to it people gawk at you, or similar to the guy who mistook the cheerleading audition to the one for Pippin, people just want to know why you're there. Level six is okay though.

One of the things I do love about the game is how beautiful so much of the scenery is. A lot of the time I just want to wander around looking at the water, or the architecture instead of battling animals and trying to find someone to give me a quest in a pub. It makes me want to have a picnic or have a ride on a magic carpet. It's like a Disney movie, for serious. 

GUYS

I found the most seriously awesome/ridiculous thing ever. And it is a community ont LiveJournal that is pretty much PostSecret... BUT ONLY ABOUT WoW. I die. Some of these are so intense! If you're unfamiliar with PostSecret, it's basically an internet phenomenon where this guy(Frank) started a site where people anonymously mail secrets to him on post cards, and he posts them on the internet. It's very cool, you can check it out at www.postsecret.com... new updates every Sunday. Annnywayyyyyys... this is kind of the same thing, except the secrets are submitted via internet to a photobucket, and posted to the LJ community by mods. 

The thing that is really cool to me about this is that PostSecret is about life in general... there is so much about this world/community that people invest themselves in that they were able to create an entire reproduction of PostSecret simply about WoW. You can find the community here @ community.livejournal.com/wow_secrets. Example-- this one girl submitted a secret about how her guild leader keeps hitting on her and she's not sure what to say, and how another officer who apparently lives nearby asked her out too. She expresses her fear that she's accidentally become the "princess" of the guild. 

This is fascinating to me because it also relates to the women in video games articles/discussions we've had. This girl could be amazing at WoW, but is still sort of pigeonholed into this "guild hottie" corner because her character is really pretty. Her guild superiors don't see her as much more than the pretty one, or at least she feels that way. Hmm... 

later. 

mollz 

Today when I was playing I realized how ridiculous the things we need to do to get a level higher are. I wanted to get to level four so I killed a bunch of wolves... I felt like Sarah Palin. It's kind of sad really, we're just wiping out the entire timber wolf population so we can get a pumpkin or a dagger. Like, I appreciate the pumpkin, but I could also just conjure it myself without causing mass extinction. Something I  noticed about myself though, is that I get sad killing wolves because they're cute and pretty, but I don't mind killing the vermin at all... they're very gross. I guess I'm just feeding into the aesthetic part of it there. 

Also on the aesthetic side, all my guy friends are like, Molly why are you a human? and I'm like duh, because I could make her really pretty. It's the same reason I'm a mage. Again, buying into that, I could make a human mage prettier than any other race, so obviously I picked that. It goes with what we talked about with the Remember Not to Die article-- it's definitely true that I will pick someone prettier even if they're not great at the game. I've always been like that too, I've been playing video games since I was young and I always pick people like Peach or the gorgeous fierce Russian assassin in James Bond games.

Here's a link I found to a funny  article from cracked.com, which you all should read because its hysterical:http://www.cracked.com/article_16782_6-ways-world-warcraft-worse-than-real-life.html

Seriously, the thing about it being like work? YES. It completely gets so monotonous!!! Like, oh I have to go kill another rabbit... why? I just want to do something awesome like have a swordfight. Also the guilds-- it's intimidating! "You might have noticed that most political offices don't have that kind of vetting process." It's funny because it's true. Also number 4: Prejudice is alive and well in the game world. It is! It gets scary being new... I'm always afraid I'll be attacked and pillaged then taken advantage of! I also face prejudice because I'm pretty-- people might think I'm stupid. Which, at this point I still am, but I could totally get completely awesome!! It's too bad, really. 

I'm trying really hard to play this game but it's kind of scary.

I keep dying. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I think a wolf might have killed me today. Not even some other mean hunter or anything like normal. An actual wolf. I'm a mage, I have a scepter. And a wolf is like, oh hey I have fangs... DEAD. It's lame. Before I got on today Sally was playing like ten feet away from me, and when she died she was like "Molly, help!" and I was like, Sally I can't, I don't know what's going on either. 

This is not to say I'm not having fun, I am. My character is awesome and has a fab dress and a name that ends in -ys which makes her completely glamorous. Anyways, I gained some experience today, which was cool. Killing woodland creatures is a great time. I started a quest too but I couldn't find the vermin I had to kill, then some mean guys surrounding a tent attacked me, and I died a bunch of times so I just gave up for the time being. Soon though. Soon I will complete another quest.

Tomorrow I'm going to try talking to more real life people. I saw one today that I talked to briefly, and they were really friendly and helpful. The only thing is that it can be scary cause I'm always afraid people will just laugh at me or try to kill me and take my items... it's interestingto see though, because lots of times people are really nice. Even if I was really good at the game I'd always want to help people, I couldn't just leave them or kill them. It's a fascinating look at people's behavior. 

WOW!!!

Oh hey, 

here's a sample entry. 

Superfab.

molls