Summer of Warcraft: Buff and grind

Part 2 of the Summer of Warcraft series.

As your attorney, I advise you to rent a very fast car with no top. And you’ll need the cocaine. Tape recorder for special music. Acapulco shirts.

- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

My quest list for Elwynn Forest (and environs) read like a manifest for Noah’s Ark – list after list of fuzzy forest creatures needing a good slaughtering. This promised to be time-consuming, considering that my level 8 priest was fighting like a muscular dystrophy patient on opium. Then my friend, a Level 80 mage with a bitchin’ motorbike and sidecar, showed up.

Level 9 Paladin

I’ve discovered that World of Warcraft mainly deals in grind and fetch quests. Being an open-ended, non-linear RPG, I’m not surprised. But it doesn’t mean I have to like it. I have friends who great each new Final Fantasy release as a giant endurance race/Easter egg hunt. They thrive on grind. I do not. I get bored, shut off the game and go watch videos of things blowing up.

So when my friend shows up, shooting blue lightning bolts from his hands like Darth Vader’s idea of an angry god, I put him to work doing the killing for me. Suddenly, what had been a laborious “quest” became closer to a smash ‘n’ grab operation (loot ‘n’ scoot?). Jump into the rumbling motorbike, dash to the quest location, slaughter indiscriminately and then dash out to go cash in. We had the forest cleared within an hour.

Perhaps the purists would view this as “cheating,” not earning my keep. Eff them. The quests are repetitive, designed to kill time and keep you coming back for more (paid) subscription. With few exceptions (Princess Must Die?), my roll playing experience in Warcraft so far has consisted of a humorless culling of dumb-to-semi-intelligent animals. My next destination, Westfall, promises more of the same.

I am grinding the game myself on another server, using a more slaughter-ready character, a Paladin. Initially, I found it easier, since I could actually, you know, fight. But then I realized something. As a priest, I’d been wandering the forest alone and nearly helpless. Other players would often spontaneously help me out by tanking for me, buffing for me or even giving me money. As a Pally, the spontaneous help has been diminished.

Summer of Warcraft: Ethnic Cleansing

The Priest, Level 9

Part 1 of the Summer of Warcraft series.

I wasn’t in Northshire 10 minutes before I got my first assignment – go slaughter a bunch of rat … things.

I’m a World of Warcraft noob. Yes, for nearly five years, I have managed to avoid playing this massively multiplayer online game. I refused to pay for what seemed like work. But then I got an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Back to the rat things. They’re called Kobolds. They talk. They’re imagined as intelligent lifeforms to a certain degree. They wear pants. I designed my character to be a priest – a healer, protector. And, like everyone else, I was expected to slaughter these creatures, because, well, they’re funny looking and “we can’t have too many of them around.”

This is interesting logic. I mean, when I ventured into the forest to find the Kobalds, they ignored me. Same with the wolves who loitered nearby. Here I was, a man (actually, the character is a woman) of the cloth, bashing these things for collectibles. It didn’t sit right with my sense of purity. Most games give you at least a nominal reason to resort to violence.

I chose to be a priest, because my wife is a patient woman. When my friend offered to buy me three months on Warcraft (he wanted some perk from the game’s friend recuitment scheme), she didn’t set my laptop on fire and throw it out the window like she promised to if I ever started a Warcrack habit. So, in honor of her future vocation, I made my character a priest. Just like my wife, she has short red hair, snow white skin and an ass that would make Sir Mix-a-lot blush.

Actually, the ass was a fluke of my screen resolution. For the last day, I’ve been wandering around Azeroth thinking that the game designers had a thing for stocky, buxom chicks. A screen shot I took of the game revealed that my monitor is doing the old wide-screen squash. But the righteous booty was a stark reminder that Warcraft doesn’t give up much in the way of character customization.

Anyway, I am so far not impressed with Warcraft’s fascist tone, at least in the human storyline. I’m not talking about the violence. I’m talking about the authoritarian statues in Stormwind; the emphasis on race and racial cleansing; the High Fructose Purple voice acting; and the Wagnerian score. The whole thing is cheeseball and over the top, glorified gore grinding.

And Warcraft does have a problem when it comes to requiring priests to murder for a Higher Purpose. According to WoW Wiki, the Church of the Holy Light has three tenants – respect, tenacity and compassion. I’m pretty sure braining non-aggressive creatures violates at least two of those three ideals.