What I am thankful for

Just like last year, I missed posting last Friday due to Thanksgiving taking up most of my time and thoughts. I was going to write a post about the things I'm thankful for, but visiting with family and friends just took too much of my time. As such, in a bit of late celebration of the holiday, that is the post I will write today.

WoW-related things I am thankful for:

I'm thankful for the automatic conversion of base weapon DPS to feral attack power. There was once a time when the only weapons feral druids could use were the ones that were specifically designed for us, which had feral attack power as one of their stats (with lowered base DPS to make up for it; we didn't need that base DPS, after all). This lead to us having one or two (if we were lucky) weapons available to us in every tier of content, weapons which were useless to everyone else. Now that base-DPS automatically converts to feral attack power, a whole new world of weapons has been opened up to us: staves, two-hand maces, polearms (which were added to our repertoire the day the automatic feral attack power conversion was added); we can use any of them that we like, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for the ability to track multiple things at once. Sure, I might not be as thankful as my hunter breathren, but as someone who once had a well-worn macro which, when activated, would cause me to switch between Find Fish and Find Herbs, so that I could go out and fish in pools while still collecting herbs, I still appreciate this change. My combined efforts made the activity quite profitable, but needing to use the macro to switch between my two tracking abilities was quite tedious. Now, it is no longer necessary, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for Leader of the Pack, specifically the self-healing aspect of the talent. The feral druid has always been a great soloing class due to the fact that it can heal itself and that its healing spells depend upon a different resource (mana) than the resource it uses to attack (rage/energy). We became even better, however, when Burning Crusade came around we got some passive self-healing in the form of Improved Lead of the Pack, an effect now baked into the main talent itself. The passive self-healing afforded by this talent makes solo-ing as a druid even better because it reduces the frequency with which we need to switch out of our forms and heal ourselves. In fact, I often find that when fighting enemies that don't pose much of a challenge to me, I don't need to shift out to heal at all; Leader of the Pack does it for me, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for Netherwing. That faction gave me some of my best memories of WoW: some of the best daily quests in the entire game, an island that was beautifully designed, the ability to walk around as a fel orc, and a mount which continues to be my favorite to this very day. That content was a great reward for buying epic flying (as if epic flying itself weren't its own reward), back when 5000 gold was serious money and having epic flying was a real accomplishment. Netherwing is part of the reason the Burning Crusade was my favorite expansion pack to experience, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for this blog (hey, without WoW, it couldn't have happened). It has helped me discover my love for typing, it has gotten me involved in a great community (the WoW blogging community), it has encouraged me to think about the game in ways I might not have considered before, and by writing these posts, I can continually create something I can be proud of.

I'm thankful for the Shattering. Because old-world Azeroth needed the reboot.

Non-WoW-related things I am thankful for:

I'll spare you the usual things like my family, my friends, my health, etc., and skip right to the things I am thankful for that might be somewhat unique to me.

I am thankful for music. It helps to quiet my ever-active mind, it keeps me focused when I need to do mindless tasks, it helps me work through my emotions from time to time, and it is generally amazing in every way. Listening to music has been one of the few things that has consistently helped me throughout my entire life. Through all of the bad spots, whatever their nature, music could either pull me through or, at the very least, speak to me in a way that validated what I was going through. And through the good times, music has been there to make them even better. Music rocks; that's all there is too it.

I am thankful for the internet. Neo-Luddite that I am, I still can't deny the great things this technology has done for me. The internet puts a wide array of information at my fingertips, information I can access with but a few clicks and empower myself in the way that only information allows me. The internet is a great melting-pot of ideas, which has opened my mind to possibilities that might have never been revealed to me otherwise. The internet makes accessing the music that I love so much even easier by making more of it available to me and giving me more means to listen to it. The internet allows me to stay connected with friends I never get to see face-to-face anymore thanks to social networking sites. The internet made this blog possible. Though it may waste more of my time than I wish it did, the internet has doubtlessly improved my life in many ways, ways far too numerous for me to list here.

I am thankful for the people in my life who put up no façade about who they really are, the people who really do act like themselves in all parts of their life, and the example they serve for me. They inspire me to do the same thing myself, and while it isn't always easy, I'm getting much better at it, with them serving as my inspiration to keep up at it.

I am thankful that this blog is as successful as it is. When I got into blogging, I didn't have big aspirations to become the next big thing in the blogosphere; I just wanted a place where I could write a lot, and perhaps someone would read it. Sometimes I go to the stats tab in Blogger's editor and am amazed at just how many hits my blog gets in a day. The most amazing thing to me is that I got this far on my own merit. I never asked other bloggers to link to me, I never shamelessly advertised myself, and I never asked my friends to read what I wrote. I just started writing without any fanfare, and over the years (year and a half, specifically), people started reading me. Not because I asked them to, not because I tried any devious schemes to draw them in, but because they liked what they saw.

Which brings me to the final thing I am thankful for: you. I am thankful that my blog has readers and that my posts get comments with a fair amount of frequency. Knowing that people read my posts has caused me to be more mindful of their quality, and practicing writing with quality in mind has made my writing better in all parts of my life. But most of all, it makes me happy to know that people enjoy what I write (or else they wouldn't read it, would they?), so to all those people who deemed my posts worth their time, thank you.

The things we carry with us

Picture, if you will, some times in the future, far enough into the future that World of Warcraft's last server has been shut down long ago, the epics and the mounts now nothing more than a memory. Other games have taken hold of our collective conscious, and all we have left are whatever screenshots we took; whatever merchandise we purchased, merchandise we probably keep just for nostalgia's sake; and the various archives of websites and blogs dedicated to the game. The Wikipedia page about WoW, the tvtropes page about WoW, all of them have stopped being updated as frequently as they once were. Our collective awareness of WoW has moved firmly into the domain of memory.

Now imagine a time even farther into the future. Not much farther, for it probably won't take as long as you may think to reach this point, but at this time in the future, our memories of WoW have started to become fuzzy. We may remember certain instances that made a big impression on us, or certain raid nights that were particularly unique for some reason or other, but the finer details of the game elude us. If someone asked, you couldn't tell them what stat was best for your class or what the best strategy for beating raid boss X was. You couldn't tell them what piece of gear you were most proud of, or what boss was your favorite to fight.

Or could you? I ask that question because of my own experiences with nostalgia related to a favorite game; specifically, Metal Gear Solid 3. I was lucky enough to procure the soundtrack to this amazing game, and though all of the music was enjoyable, I was particularly taken back by one song. It's the song that plays during the ending cinematic of the game, during which the big reveal that makes the game the tear-jerker that it is comes out. I wouldn't dare spoil it for you, but suffice it to say that the Metal Gear Solid series as a whole is one of the few series that has ever made me cry, and the third installment was no exception, thanks to the ending. Listening to the music that plays during the ending, I got chills like I hadn't felt in a long time. I was reminded of just how powerful that ending was, and I even got a bit teary-eyed as I listened. Naturally, this made me want to look up the ending on YouTube and watch it again, which I did. But a funny thing happened: I wasn't nearly as affected by seeing the ending itself as I had been by the music. Thinking that listening to the music had just ruined me for whatever nostalgic experiences I might have otherwise had, I tried listening to the song again, and I had more of those nostalgic chills than I did while watching the ending cinematic. It was this that made me realize that the music had stayed with me more than the actual plot itself, that the music was what I had carried with me.

Now, great as it was, the music was hardly the best part of Metal Gear Solid 3. The story, the gameplay, the boss fights, the sheer depth of the game--everything about it was impressive and worth remembering. So why, of all things, is it the music that takes me back the most? Your guess is as good as mine, but it was a lesson for me. I learned that we can never be sure what will what will make us fondly remember the things we are nostalgic about. What does this have to do with WoW? If nothing else, it made me realize that the things that make me nostalgic for WoW once I stop playing might be the things I least expect. It might, of course, be the music; after all, music from WoW has made me nostalgic before. But music isn't the only thing that has made me unexpectedly nostalgic for something; in conversing with a friend of mine, I once became nostalgic for the original Spyro the Dragon trilogy by remembering this one glitch in the second game that allowed you to swim in the air in one of the levels. It was my first video game glitch that I exploited knowingly, and remembering it brought back fond memories of that time.

I suppose the only useful conclusion I can come to from these ramblings is that developers should do their best to make sure that every aspect of their game (the visuals, the sound effects, the music, the writing, etc.) is superb, because different things make different people nostalgic. Sure, they should also focus on making the game fun to play, but we're going to be living with our memories long after we stop playing this game, and those memories will be the true payoff for our experiences. They will be the lasting trophies of our triumphs, but what good are they if we don't actually remember them? That's where these nostalgic triggers come in, for they are what help us remember those good times, and those triggers will work best if they are well done. Would the music that played during Metal Gear Solid 3's finale have brought me back if it weren't as well done as it is? Probably not. That's why game designers owe it to players to make sure every part of the game is very well designed, so that players can be better served by their memories.

Some miscellaneous advice for Pilgrim's Bounty

A year ago, I posted an advice post with various miscellaneous advice for completing the meta for Pilgrim's Bounty, the holiday we are currently celebrating in WoW. Well, considering it has come around again and hasn't seemed to have changed that much, I would like to post that advice again, for the sake of everyone still going for their Plump Turkey.

-Finish the questline that involves you turning in five of each food to various people outside of the capital cities. It ends with you getting a turkey caller, which you can use every two minutes to summon a turkey which you can kill for a wild turkey. Do this every two minutes while you are out doing other things and you won't need to compete with the people going for The Turkinator when you farm turkeys for Can't Get Enough Turkey, making everyone happier.

-I don't know about your server, but on mine, there are fewer people going for The Turkenator in Trisfall Glades than there are in Elwynn Forest, so try doing a route going around the lake there.

-If you are level 80, you can probably solo Talon King Ikiss for Terokkar Turkey Time as long as you run behind the pillars when he used Arcane Explosion (if you can heal yourself, even this step may not be necessary).

-When searching for rogues for Turkey Lurkey, try going into Dalaran and moving your mouse quickly back and forth over a crowd of people, scanning them. Look at the tool-tip that comes up and you should be able to find your rogues. If all else fails, try going to the starting areas of whatever race you are missing, since there is no level requirement for the achievement.

Where does our pride come from?

This post discusses some experiences I had with a real-life friend of mine who I know reads this blog and whom I make some conjecture about that could be patently wrong. You'll know who you are once you start reading, and if what I say is wrong or portrays you in the wrong light, you have my sincerest apologies. But think about it this way; no one else will know it's you I'm writing about.

I have been playing WoW for more than five years now. I don't say that to show off at all, just to provide background information for the story I'm about to tell. I have a friend who has been playing WoW since the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King (about two years now) and has spent most of that time raiding. As such, he has procured some pretty impressive epics, including the Ring of Rapid Ascent, the Amulet of the Silent Eulogy, and the Gunship Captain's Mittens. Now, he and I have the kind of friendship where we occasionally show off to each other, but never in a legitimate attempt to make the other person jealous; just friendly boasting. As such, one day he logged in to show me his gear. Now, as someone who has no motivation to raid and who is rarely impressed by numbers alone, I wasn't as impressed as he expected me to be, so he asked me to show him what I had accomplished. He should have known better, for he knows I have been playing for more than five years.

You see, when you play for that long, you tend to accumulate various rewards here and there that really add up over time. My friend got the first hint that asking me to show off might be a bad idea when he saw my 4605 achievement points, more than double his 2200 (give or take). We were looking at my armory profile, mind you, so he decided to compare achievements, and his dread became a bit more apparent when he saw that he had many times more raid achievements than I (that was where most of his achievement points came from). Then we logged in to look at my character, and he was greeted by my 85 pets (including my Magical Crawdad, my Kirin Tor Familiar, and my Argent Squire with bridle), my 25 exalted reputations (including Netherwing, Ogri'la, and the Kalu'ak) my Onyx Netherwing Drake, my Chef title, my Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, and my Violet Proto-Drake. See, I'm a big solo player, and when you are a solo player who has been playing for five years, you tend to accrue these kinds of things without giving it too much thought, and at this point, most of these things were just trophies of past exploits, things I hardly even thought about now.

My friend, however, was extremely envious of my acquisitions, and vocally so. I made a point of telling him that everything I had acquired was not difficult to get, just time consuming; of course, having played the game for five years, I had a lot of time to put in to getting those things, but I left that part out. See, this friend of mine is a Kingslayer, something he put a considerable amount of time and effort into achieving, and he is also a raid leader, so he spends more time on raiding than the average Kingslayer. My thought was, if he could put forth that much time (to raid management, the multiple attempts, etc.) to getting Kingslayer, why couldn't he put forth the same amount of time it would take to get any of the things I had gotten? His claim was that he just didn't have the patience to go for something as time-consuming as the Violet Proto-Drake or the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, so I let it rest at that.

But there was a disconnect about the whole thing that piqued my interest. Here he was, with his epics and his raid achievements, quite proud of them, and here I was, with my pets, mounts, and solo-ing achievements, and I had never given most of them a second thought. They were just trophies of parts of the game I enjoyed playing, many of which I probably would have played even if there was no reward (getting exalted with Netherwing certainly falls in that category), so I had no particular pride in most of them, and yet my friend was quite jealous of them. Why this difference between us?

My first guess was that it was just a matter of his inability to obtain what I had that made him jealous, but I realized that I myself had similarly accepted that I would probably never raid and never get epics and achievements like him. If it were that "forbidden fruit" effect that had caused him to be jealous of my acquisitions, then I would be similarly jealous of his epics and achievements. Yet here I was, sitting back as he showed me the things he had achieved, beaming with pride, and I just sat back and nodded, not at all jealous of what he had experienced and obtained that I hadn't. Of course, I thought, maybe I've just had longer to accept that I won't get these things, so I'm more at peace with it than he is about never obtaining the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth or Violet Proto-Drake.

But I found my potential answer in a comment he made as he was showing me his gear and achievements. When he had sufficiently impressed upon me just how much time he has spent raiding, how much time he has put in to get to the point he's at now, he said only half sarcastically, "I hate this game." It was just a joke at the time, but upon reflection, I realize there may be more to read into in his words than I initially thought. My friend may not be the most honest of people (he's not dishonest by any stretch of the imagination, but as someone who legitimately has difficulty with lying, I can say he's more liable to stretch the truth than I am), but perhaps he was being honest when he claimed he disliked that game at this point. I can't help but ask myself, if he really grew to dislike this game, then why did he keep playing? Perhaps he was one of those players who played for the achievements, the loot, the bragging rights; perhaps he had become the type who plays for the objective rewards.

I, on the other hand, am not the type to play for objective rewards, at least I'm not anymore; I may have been that type back in the day, but no longer. I'm definitively in the subjectively-driven camp now, in that I play for the experience more than the end result. Don't get me wrong, the end result is important to me in some respects, but it's the earning of the end result that is most important to me. Perhaps the difference between how my friend and I view the spoils of our exploits lies in this difference in motivation; perhaps he was prouder of his gear and achievements and jealous of my pets and mounts because he was focusing of the rewards, not the process of obtaining them. I, on the other hand, am not at all jealous that he got to experience raiding--which is how he got his achievements and loot, after all--since I don't enjoy raiding. When I saw those purples, I saw the frustration, the time commitments, the needing to deal with other people and depend on them for your success; I saw all of the inconveniences associated with earning that loot, not the loot itself. When you look it that way, is it any wonder I wasn't jealous?

The limitations of our measurement of success

I have not yet had time to log in to see phase four of the elemental invasion, but something else has captured my attention lately; namely, a comment on MMO-Champion's post about phase four of the elemental invasion starting. 'Tis but a simple comment, but the implications it had for my reflections were many:

any FoS for killing them, tabard, etc? if not what the point?

Larisa of Pink Pigtail Inn wasn't pleased upon reading such a comment, for she saw it as a sign that WoW has become nothing more than a game where we play just for the stimuli, for the objective rewards. I have talked about the differences between playing for objective rewards and playing for subjective rewards before, but in that post, I didn't realize the implications of said differences. This comment, though, has made me realize just what those implications are: which rewards we play for changes how we measure our success, and how we measure our success changes how we play.

Success might not be the best word to describe what I am writing about; productivity might describe it better, for I am talking about the general sensation that our play has been fruitful, that some good came out of it. For someone focused on objective rewards, successful play might be defined by the gear he gets or the rank he achieves in arenas or the pets he collects. For someone focused on the more subjective aspects of play, successful play might be defined by whether he had fun or how deeply he was able to immerse himself in his playing or how much of the story of WoW he was able to experience. For someone like our MMO-Champion commenter above, it appears that fruitful play is defined by some sort of tangible reminder of his actions; it seems he cannot be satisfied with his experiences in-game if there is not some visible indicator of what he has done, and thus those objective rewards are his measure of success.

As tempting as it might be to claim that it is somehow better to play for those subjective rewards than to play for objective rewards, both motivators have their drawbacks. Someone who plays for objective rewards will miss out on content that they might otherwise enjoy if that content doesn't give them some sort of tangible reward, and they might continue to play content they don't enjoy for the sake of those tangible rewards. Still, even in that latter case, at least they find the acquisition of those rewards fun, even if they don't find the process enjoyable, and considering how many parts of this game do give some sort of objective reward, it's rare that someone motivated by objective rewards won't find something in an experience to convince them to play. Phase 4 of the elemental invasion just happens to be one of those rare cases.

But what drawbacks could there be to playing for subjective rewards? Self-limitation. Someone who plays the game to have fun, for example, might avoid parts of the game he doesn't think he'll find fun. He might avoid PvP because he enjoys the relaxed pace of questing, potentially missing out on something that he'd find quite enjoyable if he just gave it a try. Someone who plays for deep immersion might not go back and do old quests because he feels that killing enemies easily kills the immersion for him, when he might enjoy the lore he discovers by doing those quests he skipped while leveling. Someone who plays for the lore might skip out on raiding because he doesn't find it to be very story-heavy compared to other parts of the game, which prevents him from seeing the evolving lore to be found in raids and from experiencing a part of the game he might enjoy if he gave it a shot. In all those cases, it is the player himself that is responsible for his measure of success limiting how much he can enjoy the game, and it is the assumptions he makes that hold him back.

From this perspective, whether playing for one kind of reward is better than playing for the other kind depends on whether you think it is better to be limited by the game's design or by your own inhibitions. Now, if players didn't have hesitation about getting into a part of the game they haven't tried yet, then playing for subjective rewards would be the best way to go, without a doubt. But players are human, and one of the many flaws some people have is an unwillingness to go outside of their comfort zone, to try new things that they don't know for a fact will give them satisfaction. For someone like this, it could be better to be motivated by the objective rewards of the game. Sure, it means they can't overcome the limitations on what they play by willpower alone, as someone limited by their own assumptions might be able to, but there are enough objective rewards within the game to motivate someone to try something they might not try otherwise. So, though our intrepid commenter up there might not have wanted to partake in phase four of the elemental invasion because it didn't give him any objective rewards like feats of strength or a tabard, perhaps those rewards have motivated him to try other parts of the game he might not have tried otherwise. Is that so bad?

Now, again, in an ideal world, players would be willing to try all parts of the game, regardless of the objective rewards they receive for doing so and regardless of their own reservations about trying something that they don't think will be fun for them. But again, we don't live in an ideal world, and humans are flawed, and though the two situations I have presented here (avoiding parts of the game without objective rewards and avoid parts of the game that won't reward you with the subjective reward you seek) represent only two possibilities in a sea of ways to WoW, all I mean to say is that given the choice between the two of them, playing for objective rewards doesn't seem as bad as people make it out to be, for it might motivate you to try more parts of the game that playing for subjective rewards might. Whether playing for subjective rewards will allow you to have more fun, though... well, the jury is out on that one.

The consequences of axioms

Philosophy can turn up in some unexpected places. Last week, for example, I was discussing with a friend the implications of a certain plot device in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, one I can't discuss here without potentially spoiling the plot for those of you haven't read it yet but want to. What I can say, though, is that in the discussion of this specific plot device, the issue of fate vs. free will came up, as did the issue of whether our actions are predetermined or not. I voiced a few theories about this plot device that I had either heard or come up with myself, and this particular friend I was discussing the book with said that, though my theories were logically/biologically sound, depending on which one he was talking about, he couldn't accept them on a philosophical level, because they destroyed free will. After some prodding, I eventually got him to reveal why he was so against any idea that precluded the existence free will: to him, life isn't worth living if we don't have autonomy, for his free will and the ability to make his own decisions, decisions which actually mean something, is one of the most important things to him. When I go into a discussion with someone I disagree with, I often do so with the intention of trying to either convince them they are wrong or to understand why they believe what they believe to the extent that I can agree to disagree. In this case, the latter happened, for he and I just didn't see eye to eye on the importance of free will, so I left the issue alone.

Reflecting on this discussion, I was reminded of something the philosophy teacher of a friend of mine once said. Philosophy, when it is done rigorously, is a series of "if, then" statements geared towards coming to a conclusion about life, existence, or just about anything. At best, you'll get a series of statements that are logically sound but based on a premise that either can't be proven or is subjective; at worst, you won't even get the first part of that result. Because of this, the most practical use of philosophy for the common man is to determine whether an action or belief is compatible with one's own personal morals. These morals are called axioms, and they form the basis of our person ethics. An axiom, for those who don't know, is a statement that is not proven, or maybe not even provable, but is used as a premise in proving some other statement. In mathematics, for example, one of the basic axioms is that any number multiplied by zero will result in an answer of zero. It's not something we can prove, but it's something we accept as self-evident, and thus it forms the basis for many other rules.

For my friend, the necessity of free choice was one of his axioms, and thus, in order for him to accept a philosophical idea, it had to be compatible with that axiom. I have my own axioms, as well, which form the basis of how I view philosophical issues. One of my axioms is that, as long as people aren't obnoxious about their preferences, no preference, be it a preference in movies, music, television shows, books, or anything, is superior to another. Based on this axiom, I do not judge people for the music they listen to, no matter how much I may dislike it. Now, this doesn't apply to the media itself. I will openly talk about how unlistenable bands like BrokenCYDE are, but if I met someone who liked them, I'd be happy that they found a band that caters to their... unique tastes in music. One of my other axioms is that no action is morally objectionable if it does not impede the freedom of others to do what makes them happy, with the possible (but not universal) exception of impeding the freedom of someone to impede on the freedom of others. Thus, anything my friends may do behind closed doors, as long as it does not cause harm to anyone against their will, is acceptable in my book, as long as they are willing to accept the consequences.

But I'm rambling, for what I really wanted to talk about is the fact that much of rigorous philosophy (potentially all of it, but I'm no one to say whether or not that is true) is based on these kinds of subjective, unprovable axioms. Many of the posts in my own blog are based on certain axioms that I have never really examined, that I have always just accepted as true. These include ideas like maximizing player enjoyment is a good thing, and that Blizzard should act primarily to please their players. Now, I don't apply these axioms universally to every case. Sometimes having something in the game that players claim they don't enjoy will increase the overall enjoyment and satisfaction they get out of the game, and sometimes Blizzard needs to act against what the players want in order to do what is really in the players' best interests. But my point is, ideas like this form the basis for many of the conclusions I come to when I think about WoW, and though I could try to examine them, any justification I try to write for them will inevitably fall back on more axioms, for that is just the nature of logic.

What does this mean for you, reader? This is nothing special I have outlined here; just a basic write-up on the inexact nature of philosophy. With that said, there is something I would like you to take away from it: if you ever disagree with me concerning a point I make in this blog, or you disagree with anyone else in any situation, it might not be a matter of one person being misinformed, or one person having a bogus opinion; it could just be that you and the other person have different axioms, different assumptions on which you base your opinions. If that's the case, then resolving your disagreements might require deeper discussion than you initially expected.

So what are my axioms about World of Warcraft? They're worth listing, for if you have ever found yourself frequently disagreeing with my points, the cause could just be us not seeing eye to eye on some basic tenet of our opinions.

-One of Blizzard's main goals in designing WoW should be to maximize player enjoyment of the game.
-Players don't always know what will make them enjoy the game the most, and Blizzard should keep this in mind as they design the game.
-A change to the game which can increase the enjoyment of the game by some players while not affecting the enjoyment of the game by other players is superior to one which increases the enjoyment of the game of some players at the expense of the enjoyment of the game by other players.
-Homogeneity should be avoided whenever possible, though it isn't always possible to avoid it.
-Blizzard owes nothing to WoW players who have been playing for a long time, no more than they owe to the newer players.

Should we have competition for quest items/kills?

Whilst doing part 2 of the elemental invasion quests today, I was hit by a sudden thought, a thought which came out of nowhere, yet was blindingly obvious when it came to me. I starting to think about one specific aspect of the design philosophy behind the solo-ing part of WoW. It is something so integral to the MMO landscape (or WoW's landscape, at least) that I have never even thought to consider whether it might really be necessary. As I was looking around for elementals to subdue, a hunter was doing the quest in the same area as me, subduing elementals before I could get to them. It was a manifestation of something very basic to WoW's design: competition in questing. This facet of WoW's questing design manifests itself all the time in ways we barely notice. When a quest requires you to kill a specific enemy, there will be other players in the same area killing that enemy. When a quest requires you to collect an item off the ground, there will be other players around collecting that item. And every time another player does one of the above things, questing becomes a bit harder for you. Maybe it's because of the break I've taken from the game, but when I saw that hunter subdue an elemental I had my eye on, I didn't dismiss it as something that's to be expected, nor did I get annoyed at him, but instead, I asked myself: should quest credit be a limited resource? Should we need to compete with other players while questing?

It's a difficult question for me to ponder, for it is something so integral to the way questing works in WoW that in the more than five years I have played, I have never considered it until today. I suppose the best way to start thinking about it would be to think about it from a realism standpoint, and from such a standpoint, it makes sense that having competition while doing a quest should make that quest harder to do. If there are other people in a forest killing wolves, there will be fewer wolves for you to kill; it's basic math. But then again, many quests often imply that, by doing what you are doing, you are taking care of the problem for good; by killing those wolves, you have solved the wolf problem completely, yet wolves still spawn for other players to kill. Sure, some quests acknowledge that you are just culling the threat a bit, but then, how do you explain the quests that ask you to kill a specific enemy? From a realism standpoint, once that enemy is dead, he's dead for good, and no one else can kill him; of course, this isn't the case. What this means is that we can't examine the issue of competition in questing from the perspective of realism, since any realism-based justifying of WoW's quest design falls apart pretty quickly.

With realism out of the question, the next simplest perspective I can think of to look at this issue from is that of practicality; is it practical for us to need to compete with other players for quests? From the players' perspective, it seems like it isn't; after all, wouldn't questing be faster, and thus more fun, if we had our own enemies to kill, our own items to collect, and other players had their own enemies to kill and items to collect? Archeology is a good example of this kind of game design in action, for everyone who takes archeology will have their own set of phased dig sites to find and explore. From the players perspective, it seems like the game would be better it quests, too, were designed this way.

But there must be reasons that Blizzard hasn't adopted a style of quest design similar to the way players look for artifacts with archeology. Perhaps it has something to do with system limitations. After all, as Wintergrasp showed us, putting a lot of players in one area can reek havoc on WoW's servers. Now think of what would happen if we had a lot of players in one area--say, in Mount Hyjal or Vashj'ir after Cataclysm launches--as well as individual enemies, quest items, and phases for all of those players. Though I don't know much about the hardware behind WoW's servers, I can imagine this would be a huge load for them to bear, probably more than they could.

Pacing also factors into this issue, for having competition for quest objectives works well to adjust the pace of the game to an appropriate pace for different players. When Cataclysm comes out, players are probably going to be rushing to the level cap, flooding those zones as they try to gain experience as quickly as possible. But Blizzard put a lot of effort into designing those zones, and they probably don't want players rushing through it as quickly as possible, which will not only prevent them from appreciating Blizzard's work, but also cause them to get to, play, and exhaust the raid content Blizzard has added at launch, reducing the longevity of the expansion. Artificial as it may be, having quest competition slow down players while playing through solo content does increase the game's longevity. But now, suppose someone has started leveling through the new Cataclysm zones after everyone else is already at the end-game, or someone decided to level an alt to raid with. Both of these players will find themselves with much less competition than the players who quested through those zones at launch found themselves with, and they'll be able to level faster for that reason. Thus the lack of competition will give them an edge in catching up with everyone else.

But perhaps the most important reason for there to be competition for quest credits--and also easiest to overlook--is that this is, in the end, an MMO. We are supposed to inhabit a living, breathing world, but considering how stagnant WoW really is, the only way for that world to be living and breathing is through the players. It is our interactions with other players and the way they influence our play that brings WoW to life. In group content, this influence is easy to achieve, for players' cooperation is necessary to make such content work. But how to bring that influence to solo content? Group quests help, but there can only be so many of them, and once there aren't as many players leveling through a zone as there used to be, they become more of an annoyance than anything. So how can players influence one another's playing if they are off doing their own thing? If they aren't working together to make their questing easier, then the only option left is to have one player's actions have consequences for another player in a way that the first player might not be consciously aware of. And that's exactly what the competition inherent in solo questing accomplishes.

So, in short, annoying as it may be from time to time, the competitive aspect of questing has a reason for being there. To remove it would take some of the second M out of what makes WoW an MMO, and would effectively go one step towards making it a very different game. While change isn't always a bad thing, change in that direction would not be good for the social dynamical that helps keep WoW interesting and alive, that puts it firmly in the MMO genre, and that probably drew many people to the game in the first place.

Justifying the limits on player influence

Bless me, readers, for I have sinned; it has been three months since my last confession. In the past few weeks, I have not been faithful to World of Warcraft. I have been cheating on WoW with another game, and I am a bit ashamed of it because it has meant less inspiration for topics I could write about for this blog. Who is this mistress who has pulled me away from the game, you ask? She is a tempting one, one who has caused many to falter from their chosen paths. She is the indie game sensation... Minecraft.

It's understandable if you haven't heard of Minecraft, but the fact that it is the most successful indie game of all time, and it's only in alpha, should say something about the phenomenon it has become. I could never do the game justice with my own explanations, so I'll just direct you to YouTube user SeaNanners, who explains the game quite well in his "Welcome to Minecraft" series. You can start with part 1 here and go on as you please. I invite you to watch his video (or even a few of them) if you aren't familiar with the game, since it will give you a better idea of where I'm coming from when I talk about these two games, World of Warcraft and Minecraft.

Minecraft is an interesting game. It's a sandbox game, a game that answers the question of, "What do you do in this game?" with "Whatever you want to." It's similar in that respect to games like Dwarf Fortress or Animal Crossing, especially the latter, in the much of the fun that there is to be had is driven by the player's creativity, rather than things like missions or other objective goals. This may sound boring to players used to games where what you do in-game is entirely driven by what the game designers want you to do, but once you adjust to this freedom and all of the possibilities it provides, some pretty amazing things are possible. I, for example, built in my Minecraft world, complete from scratch, a volcano which is continually erupting. Someone else has built a sixteen-bit computer in Minecraft, and a group of people worked together to build York Minster Cathedral to scale in the proper size. It's pretty amazing what one can do in this game.

But what does this have to do with WoW, you ask? Well, playing Minecraft has made me realize just how little freedom we have in WoW, even when it seems like we have so much. Sure, there is plenty to do in this game--raids, leveling, battlegrounds, crafting, fishing--and yet, we are very limited in how we can tackle all of these options. If we wanted to try to take Warsong Gulch by destroying our opponents' entrance into the battlefield, rather than just capturing their flag, we couldn't do it. If we wanted to try taking Icecrown Citadel by just flying to the top of the Frozen Throne, we couldn't do it. If we wanted to finish a quest where we act as a double agent by converting over to the other side, rather than by returning to the side we were working with before, we couldn't do it. Though there are many things we can do in WoW, how we go about those activities is really pretty linear. We can choose how we fight Blood-Queen Lana'thel on our way to Arthas, but we can't try using deception, espionage, or even diplomacy to get past her. When starting a death knight, we can't choose to remain an agent of the scourge and play on the side of evil if we want to. What we do and much of how we do it is all decided for us.

This kind of limited freedom is something I have discussed before, such as when I discussed how we players really don't have any power to change how the plot of WoW progresses, and when I discussed how we players can't use the knowledge we have to change our character's actions, for their actions are dictated by the plot of the game. Having given it some thought, though, I can now see why our actions in WoW are so limited and so inconsequential: for a game of this scope, they have to be.

In terms of justifying the lack of consequences of our options, one of the things that makes WoW, in my opinion, great, is that everyone gets to have the same great experience when they play, as long as they are willing to put in the effort. Someone who started playing five years ago and someone who started playing five months ago both have equal objective odds of being able to complete the Wrathgate questline or take down the Lich King, as long as they are both willing to put in the same amount of work. Now, if our actions had greater consequences for the game's world, some of these experiences could be lost, and new players would have no chance of experiencing them. Without the use of phasing to show the consequences of our questing in Dragonblight, new players would come to the zone and see that every significant thing that needed to be done had been done. If a player completing the Wrathgate questline caused the changes that are currently phased to happen permanently to the zone, newer players would have no chance at seeing this amazing questline. And if killing the Lich King permanently crippled the enemies in Icecrown Citadel (as killing their leader should), then newer players wouldn't experience the satisfaction of beating that raid when it was as difficult as it could be, and their satisfaction would be shallower for that reason. Or even worse, if players killing the Lich King killed him for good, players who were just a bit behind in getting to him wouldn't be able to fight him at all. In short, WoW must remain a static world so that new players can experience it and all its majesty the same way veterans get to.

As for the limitations on the kinds of choices players can make in how they tackle the game, suffice it to say that WoW is a huge game. Blizzard has enough on their hands trying to make a game as expansive as WoW is now; imagine how much work they'd have to do if there were multiple ways of going through it. If, for example, death knights could decide to stay with the scourge, Blizzard would need to design an entire set of quests to see those death knights to level 80 (soon to be 85), and that would take away from time they could spend developing more content for the rest of us. If the game didn't include so many different areas of play, perhaps there could be options like this, but because we have so many options in terms of what we do, we can't have many in terms of how we do what we do. It's just not feasible.

Writing as if we are being read

A friend of mine, with my help and guidance, has recently taken up blogging as an outlet for all of the thoughts he has and as a way to tell tales of all of the crazy things that happen in his life. It has been quite enjoyable to help him in this endeavor, if for no other reason than that he is my friend and I enjoy helping for that reason, but is has also reminded me of something that is quite common to see in new blogs. In my own blog, as well as the few blogs I saw in their very early stages, I found that the authors of fledgling blogs often write as if they already have readers, even if they have no reason to think they do. Now, granted in some of the situations where I saw that happen, the authors in question did have reason to think they had readers: Larisa of the Pink Pigtail Inn commented on my first post saying this sounded like the kind of blog she would be interested in reading, my friend has already told a few of his friends (including me) about his blog, and the other blog I saw in its infancy was one written by someone I know through a forum, many of the members of which had told him they'd be interested in reading his blog. However, this is something I have also seen in blogs I discover by finding a post via google, blogs that don't have any comments save for one or two on later posts, yet the authors still write as if they have readers.

I couldn't help but wonder, why is this the case? Why do/did we fledgling bloggers write as if we already have readerships, even if we don't? It could just be a matter of wishful thinking. After all, anyone who writes down their thoughts in a blog wants what they write to be read, even if they only want it on a subconscious level. If that weren't the case, they'd find a less public outlet for their writing. Maybe, since bloggers want to be read, they write as if they are already being read, as if there are already people who are reading what they write, since they want it to be the case. After all, having a readership isn't just about receiving comments, but it's also about knowing that people are reading what you write. Without something like Google analytics or the stats tab at the top of blogger (which kind of kills the illusion I'm about to talk about), it's easy to imagine that there are people reading your blog when there really aren't, and thus it's easy for bloggers to write as if someone is reading what they are writing.

It could also be a practical choice. If someone happens upon a blog by chance, what's going to make them more likely to stay and read what the author has to say: a post that actually acknowledges the reader's existence, or a post lamenting about how the blog has no readers? As Allison Robert of WoW Insider says, "The one unshakeable rule I've learned about blogging in general is this: people hate whining." A blog author whining about not having readers would be no exception, so it's easy to imagine how a post written as if no one is reading the author's blog could turn off potential readers. This might not matter in the early days of a blog when no one is reading what's being written, but this is also an issue of habit. If someone blogs for long enough, they will usually accrue readers somehow, and its easier to keep those readers if you are in the habit of writing posts that are inviting to those who find your blog, rather than posts telling those readers they don't exist.

But why not take the middle ground? Why not neither acknowledge those imaginary readers nor write as if they don't exist? Well, as you can tell by the way I am writing this post (what with asking questions as introductions to my points and all), that's quite hard to do. Though it may be bad form to acknowledge the existence of a reader in formal writing, in blog writing, the existence of a reader is integral to the writing style. It's hard to pin down exactly what constitutes the general style of blog writing, but if a set of guidelines were written up to describe how blog posts can best be written, they would include acknowledging the reader in the post. Perhaps new authors who write as if they already have audiences have picked up on that fact and are just copying what they have noticed on other blogs when writing in their own blog.

In my own case, I think it was a combination of the first and third possibility that made me write as if I had readers when I very well might not have. For those of you who are bloggers, did you engage in this habit too when you started writing? If so, what motivated you to do so?

Thoughts on the doomsday cultists

As short as the questline concerning the doomsday cults that have recently started appearing in Azeroth may be, it has given me quite a bit of food for philosophical thought (good thing, too; my reservoir was starting to run dry). If you haven't done said quests, I invite you to go to Ogrimmar or Stormwind and do the questline before you read this post, so I don't bore the people who have already done the questline with a summary of what goes down.

What struck me the most about these questlines was the irony in the situation: we as players know the cultists are right when they prophesize the "end of the world", for we know about the coming Cataclysm. Yet, as our avatars, we fight against them, trying to stifle their message and prevent it from spreading. It was an interesting experience for me, doing the questline, for that reason; if the cultists are technically right, how can I be ok with silencing them? The justification I came up with for myself was that their attitude about it was too pessimistic, and that if we are going to survive the Cataclysm, we can't take a "the worst will happen" attitude about it, and that's exactly what the doomsday cults were promoting. If my interpretation is correct, they seem to plan to die during the Cataclysm, but they are sugar coating that fact by saying they are "ascending to a higher plane of existence". Yeah, not the best message to be sending around.

Of course, my druid's reason for wanting to stop the cultists probably wasn't that complex. In the midst of earthquakes and elemental turmoil, these people were causing unrest, both by preaching the end of the world and by stealing citizens away into their ranks. Our characters just want to do what they consider right (unless you roleplay them as otherwise, that is), and keeping the peace is probably considered a good thing. Even though we as players know these cultists are right, with the way the game is set up, our characters can only fight against them. We, in spite of our foreknowledge, are the misled ones here, not the cultists.

There's a good reason for that, though, and a simple reason, too: our avatars are characters within the WoW universe. Just like the leaders we fight for, just like the enemies we fight against, they are limited in their knowledge of what is going on by what they have found out through their experiences. We may know the other faction is comprised of just as many good and bad people as our own, and that we have no reason to not cooperate with them, but our avatars don't; all they know about the opposite faction is their experiences in battle with them and what they have heard from their leaders. We may know that Drakaru is an agent of the scourge as we help him in Grizzly Hills, but our characters think he is an ally. Most significantly, we may know the Cataclysm is coming, but our avatars won't know until they see it, unless they're crazy enough to believe the doomsday cultists.

And in the end, this is Blizzard's game, so they decide how much our avatars know and what course of action they take in response to that knowledge. Just as we lack the power to influence how the plot changes, we lack the power to impart our own meta-knowledge to our avatar. We may know what we know, but they only know what Blizzard decides they can know, so they are the unwitting pawns of a larger plot being written for them. We can do nothing to alter this plot; all we can do is experience it, in spite of knowing what wrongs may be wrought as a result. In the end, all we can do is go with the flow, for WoW is an evolving story, ones whose plot points and conclusion are not ours to decide.

My top 15 favorite video games of all time. Part 2: 5-1

I apologize for this post being posted later than usual, but circumstances beyond my control conspired against me in the past few days that prevented me from posting it on time.

Last week, I wrote the first part of a list of my top 15 favorite video games of all time. This week, we finish that list, as I unveil the top 5. As I mentioned already, WoW is within this part of the list, but it is not number 1.

5. Rock Band
Guitar Hero II was a game I really enjoyed, so when I found out they were making a full band version, I got excited, to say the least. This was the game that cemented my Harmonix-fanboyism in the Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero debate. It's difficult to verbalize what I like about this game so much, for it's not like any other game on this list, so suffice it to say that it took everything I loved about the original Guitar Hero games (being able to experience the music in such a direct way, having a more physical way of playing the game than controller-based games, featuring rock music) and made it full band. It was also a drastic improvement over the gameplay interface of the original Guitar Hero games, and one I liked more than the latter Guitar Hero games' interface.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Rock Band 2 almost as much as Rock Band 1, and I think it improved upon its predecessor in several ways. Rock Band 1 was pretty easy on guitar and bass guitar, and extremely easy on vocals, while being very challenging on drums, and Rock Band 2 corrected all of these balance issues. It also made the general gameplay interface easier on the eyes, added hyperspeed for those of us who need it, and had a better menu for selecting songs. So why does Rock Band 1 get higher billing on this list? For one, Rock Band 2 wasn't all that different from it's predecessor; it was more of Rock Band 1.5 than anything, so it doesn't stand on its own in my memory as much. I also think that, as small as it may have been compared to recent games, Rock Band 1 had the best song selection out of any rhythm game I ever owned, a category which includes quite a few volumes, including Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. Yes, it was heavy on the soft rock and light on other genres, but so much care went into choosing each song that it ended up being an amazing setlist. Rock Band 2's setlist has much more variety, but that combined with its size means some of that polish in the selection is lost. Truth be told, before I bought Rock Band 3, I played my Rock Band 1 exported songs just as often as the on-disk songs on Rock Band 2

4. Dance Dance Revolution (any of the PS2 iterations)
Ah, Dance Dance Revolution, or DDR, as well call it in certain circles. This was my first rhythm game, my first game that involved an unconventional controller (the dance pad), and my first game that required something other than typical button pushing to play. I really enjoyed this game, to the point where I played long enough to become good enough to beat some of the hardest songs on the highest difficulty. I'd say I played this series regularly for about five years before losing interest, and I had some very good time with it. Though I have good memories of all of the games, Extreme 2 and SuperNOVA were my favorites based on setlist alone. Though I don't play frequently anymore, when I go to an arcade, I'll often play and find that I haven't lost much of my skill, for I can still play on Heavy, the game's highest regular difficulty.

3. World of Warcraft
You knew it was coming, but WoW is without a doubt one of my favorite games; if it weren't, why would I write this blog? As it stands, I have been playing WoW for more than five years, making it one of my longest-running video games, soon to be the longest, for it is only behind DDR by a few months. I probably don't need to tell you all of the reasons why WoW is a great game, but one of the reasons I like it so much is that it is constant changing, evolving, improving, to meet the desires of the playerbase. Many mandatory addons have been integrated with the game's default interface in simpler versions, like Omen and QuestHelper. Each round of content (solo content, at least) has improved as Blizzard has gotten better at designing engaging and enjoyable quests, and the changes to Azeroth coming in Cataclysm show that they aren't afraid to admit that something they've already done needs to be changed. I also enjoy just how many things there are to do in game, and even if I get tired of them all, I can roll another class and do them again in a different way. Suffice it to say WoW has provided me with a lot of hours of entertainment, and I'm sure it will continue to do so. In fact, I once did the math and found that for every dollar I have spent on WoW, I have gotten about three hours of play time. No other game I have played comes even remotely close to a ratio like that (though Minecraft looks like it might... but that's a story for another time).

2. Guitar Hero II
This game will always hold a special place in my heart. In addition to being the game that got me into instrument-based rhythm games, this was also the game that got me into rock and roll for good. I listed to rap mostly before playing this game (it's not something I'm proud of), but Guitar Hero II opened up a whole new genre of music to me in a way that was very much suited to my tastes: video gaming. Rock and its sub-genres have taken the primary spot in my musical tastes, and that might not have happened without Guitar Hero II.

Of course, while my personal reasons for liking this game put it high on this list, it wouldn't be this high if it weren't a great game, as well. The soundtrack, though comprised mostly of covers, was excellent (besides, at that time, we were alright with covers), but the gameplay itself was what really drew me into the game. The simulated guitar playing really was a revolution in music gaming that allowed us to experience the music more directly while still playing something that was very much a video game, and a fun game to boot. I also progressed from easy to medium to hard to expert in my time while playing this game, so many of my most satisfying memories of beating challenging songs come from this game. I have often heard people say that this game is the best game ever released in the instrument-based rhythm game genre, and I'm inclined to agree with them.

1. Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
Resident Evil 4 was, in my mind, a perfect game. I couldn't tell you a single flaw that game had, because I didn't think it had one. The action was tense, the game was quite challenging (even on normal difficulty), and the way the combat system was set up left the game open for many different ways of going through an encounter, whether you wanted to run in with guns blazing or wait on top of a ladder and pick the enemies off one by one. I also liked the fact that the game rewarded ammo conservation and resourceful playing--which is something that comes natural to me--much more so than the "more dakka" method of play, which would drain your ammo quickly. The game also rewarded exploration, something else that comes naturally to me, in that careful examination of your environment would often reveal treasures that could be sold to the merchant in the game for money to upgrade your weapons. Add to that the imposing bosses, the tense atmosphere, and the fact that the game was just plain fun, and you have one of the best games to ever come out on the GameCube.

Now, I've been talking about Resident Evil 4 all this time, so you might be wondering why I put the Wii-remake on the list instead of the original game. I put it here simply because it is better than the original in every way. The control scheme, which uses the wii-remote to aim your gun, is much more fluid than the control scheme in its GameCube counterpart, and the lack of the inherent shakiness of your gun (present in the GameCube version) meant aiming was much more about how steadily you could hold your own hand, meaning shots were often easier to make. The Wii-make also added all of the extra features that had been added in the Playstation 2 remake, like the new costumes, weapon, and extra mode. The Wii Edition of Resident Evil 4 took everything I loved about one of my favorite games of all time and added things to improve it even more. Even considering how many times I played through the original Resident Evil 4, I still enjoy playing through the Wii-make, and its incredibly rare that an updated re-release can hold my attention anywhere close to as long as the original held it. Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition did just that.

So there you are, my top five favorite games of all time. I don't have a satisfactory way to conclude this list, so let me just say that if you have been curious about any of the games on this list but never tried them, do give them a shot. They're all excellent in their own way.

From someone who has been there...

If you are new to my blog, you might not have caught on to my general posting schedule, so let me set it out objectively here before I take full advantage of it. On Mondays, I post posts on miscellaneous topics. They might be WoW related, they might not be; I give myself the freedom to go either way. Wednesday's posts can be either miscellany or philosophy (or advice posts, if I have something I can actually give advice on), but I try to make those about WoW whenever possible (though I don't always succeed, as you saw last Wednesday). Friday's posts are the ones that I guarantee will be philosophy posts and will be about WoW. I keep a flexible schedule like this because I know I need a posting schedule of some kind to stay motivated to write, but I also need the freedom to go where my inspiration goes, which doesn't always follow the usual pattern that would otherwise make up a more rigid schedule.

That very phenomenon has happened this weekend, for the source of inspiration for this post comes from a post on the Pink Pigtail Inn that is only tangentially related to WoW. Said post inspired me to write about something that is both personal and somber. My blog normally isn't all that gleeful and light in its subject matter, but it will be especially serious today. My post today will be about a topic that makes many people quite uncomfortable, a topic which is impossible to discuss lightly. If you that's not what you are looking for, then I apologize for disappointing you, but you'd be better off skipping today's post.

So what, exactly, am I planning on writing about that is such a downer of a topic? Well, Larisa's post that I mentioned previously discusses what happens when real-world death and Azeroth intersect, but more than that, it talked especially about suicide, for it was inspired by Aurdon of I Sheep Things's post about the suicide of one of his guild members. A lot of what Larisa wrote about hit close to home for me, for I'm a person who struggled with suicidal thoughts for longer than I would have liked to; about four years, give or take. As someone who has been there and can discuss it from a more personal, potentially less phobic, perspective than most people, it brought up a lot of thoughts in me, so as Larisa herself said, "I'll deal with it the way that bloggers do it: I write. It usually helps."

Now, what do I mean when I say "less phobic"? What I've often found in the few times when suicide has come up in a discussions I am having with other people is that the topic makes people really uncomfortable. This uncomfortable-ness is multiplied ten-fold when personal experience with suicidal thoughts and attempts are brought up, as they often are. After all, a group of people who have never experienced suicidal thoughts will tend to avoid the topic of suicide, and thus, 99% of the time when it is brought up, the conversation involves someone with personal experience with the matter. When that happens, those personal experiences come out, and people get more uncomfortable.

Why do people get so uncomfortable? My suspicion is that someone who has never experienced being suicidal just can't fathom what could push someone to seriously consider ending their own life. When they themselves haven't experienced those kinds of thoughts, I'd imagine that fear can develop, fear of the kinds of thinking that can lead to being suicidal. A wise man once said that when someone we respect attempts suicide, we are left to wonder what they knew that we don't, and perhaps it's fear of gaining that potentially dangerous knowledge that makes people so uncomfortable talking about suicide.

But I'm rambling. I brought up the point of me being less phobic about suicide than most people because that puts me in the position to write about it (the anonymity of this blog and the fact that it isn't connected to any other online identities that could be traced back to me helps, too), and potentially dispel some of the misconceptions about suicidal thoughts. Reading Larisa's post and some of the comments on it really made me realize just how big the disconnect between people who have never considered suicide and people who have really is. The number of incorrect assumptions the former group has about the latter is staggering, as is their magnitude, so today, I'm going to give a first-hand account of what it's like to be there, and account that those who haven't been there can hopefully learn from.

You might ask why I'm posting about suicide on a WoW-based blog, but like I said, Monday's posts can be on any topic; they can go wherever my inspiration goes, and that's where my inspiration has gone today. Besides, real life issues do often make their way into WoW, and as Aurdon's post illustrates, suicide is no exception. (This edition of WoW Insider's advice column Drama Mamas, written by someone who went by the name "Nameless Rogue", further illustrates that point.) And though this may be a WoW blog, all of my readers, simply by virtue of being human, could encounter this kind of situation at some point in their life, so its something we all have the potential to have in common.

Now, back on topic. One of the most common things I hear said about suicide and suicidal people that is patently wrong is that suicide is a selfish act. From the survivors' perspective, it certainly seems that way: someone who has witnessed someone they are close to kill themselves can't help but be focused mostly on how the situation affects them, and the way it affects them is that they will never get to interact with the suicidal person again. It doesn't surprise me that a survivor would, in their grief, focus on what the suicide victim has taken away from him with his act (his presence, namely). From this self-focused perspective, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that the suicidal person thought that his problems were more important than the joy he brought into the lives of those around him, and that that selfishness drove him to do/try to do what he did/tried to do.

In reality, suicide is not an act of selfishness, but an act of desperation. Suicide is the result of a person thinking that there is no solution to whatever problems they are having, that there is no way out of there situation, and no way it can get better. It is motivated not by self-centered-ness, but by a lack of hope. Someone who commits suicide really believes that what they are doing is the best way to handle their problems, and potentially the only way they will escape whatever their problems are. That may seem extreme to someone who has never considered suicide, but the other important thing to consider is that suicide is often a rash act, as well. Though there are people who commit suicide due to a profound existential conflict they cannot resolve, the majority of suicides are much more motivated by isolated periods of depression. The fact that suicides are statistically more likely to occur on Wednesday shows just how small the causes of suicidal thoughts can be in their scope, and how ephemeral those thoughts can be.

I can tell you from personal experience that when I was considering suicide, the thoughts would often last no more than an hour or two, after which I would be right back to normal. Though I did have persistent issues that lead to those thoughts in the first place, had I tried suicide, it would have been because of a small trigger that sent my thoughts spiraling downward, not because of a long-persisting issue I had. That kind sudden rush of melancholy could explain why so many people say about suicidal people, "He seemed so happy, and then he just did it." They probably were happy, but then something brought up those thoughts in them until they were finally pushed over the edge. That kind of pre-act happiness can also sometimes be explained by the fact that once someone has decided to commit suicide, they feel like they have finally found a solution to their problems, and the relief they feel at finding that "solution" could manifest as seeming happiness.

But if suicidal thoughts are often caused by these temporary states of mind, you might be wondering, why can't suicidal people just wait them out? Why can't they recognize the triggers for what they are and learn to ignore their thoughts because of their irrational base? The answer lies in something else someone who hasn't been suicidal has probably never experienced. Since I don't want to make any assumptions about other people's experiences, I'll speak only about my own. When I would consider suicide, my mental state was such that I was incapable of seeing anything good about my life. All I could think of was all of the bad things that were happening to me, usually whatever lead to those thoughts in the first place. In that moment when I was considering suicide, I would forget that those feelings would eventually pass, that life was generally good, and that I really did have a lot to live for. In that moment, none of that would come to mind. I was only capable of thinking about bad things, plain and simple.

The larger point I want to make by bringing that up regards something a survivor will often ask themselves: "Why didn't he just..." That "just" could be going for a walk, or talking to someone, or getting help, but they all share one thing in common: the are incredibly obvious from the outsider's perspective. For someone considering suicide, though, none of those options are that obvious. Because the person's mind is so pervaded by those suicidal thoughts, they either don't think of those options, or, more likely, think that attempting to get help or talk to someone will not help them. To the outside perspective, it's clear that it probably would help them, or at the very least, it couldn't hurt, but someone who is that hopeless has probably reached a point where they are incapable of conceptualizing ever not feeling like that. They become so hopeless that they can't imagine that anyone or anything could help them.

Now, the causes of suicidal thoughts are varied and many, so though I would like to end this post on a positive note saying what you could do for the person suffering from these thoughts, there isn't much I can tell you that I could feel certain would be helpful. I will do my best, however, for it is better than doing nothing. After all, you might one day be like Nameless Rogue, whom I mentioned above concerning when he wrote in to the Drama Mamas about a mage he encountered who talked about wanting to kill himself. You might one day encounter someone who is thinking the same thing, and knowing what to do will make you a lot more comfortable and able to potentially help the person.

If you know the person well, make sure the person knows they matter to you
When I was going through my own period of suicidal thoughts, the thing that always managed to motivate me to pull through was the thought of those I would leave behind: my family, my closest friends, and how much they would miss me. Conversely, often when someone is feeling suicidal, they believe that by ending their life, they'd be relieving those around them of the burden they place on them just by being alive. I've heard many stories of people who say they were suicidal and the only thing that kept them going was the thought of how much those around them would miss them, so if you know or suspect that someone is suicidal, make sure they know how much they matter to you. If they tell you out right that they are considering suicide, you might need to flat out tell them that they're really important to you and you'd really miss them if they were to do it, but if you suspect they might be feeling that way and don't have any concrete proof, it's better to be more subtle, to say that you really enjoy spending time with them, maybe mention how crushed you'd be if they moved away or if they had never come into your life. Now, don't lie and say that is the case when it isn't, because that can make the situation worse, but if you know the person well enough that they would confide in you that they are considering suicide, there's a good chance that you matter to them, and the inverse is likely to be true, as well.

Encourage them to get help
Suicidal thoughts are a sign that something is terribly wrong in the person's mind. In my case, it was really destructive thought patterns that I just needed a therapist to help me break. In other cases, it might be medical depression or some other mental disorder, or any number of things. Point is, as a friend--or maybe just an acquaintance, like Nameless Rogue--there is only so much you can do. If it gets to the point where someone is considering killing themselves, a professional is usually needed to help the person get better. Make sure the person you are talking to does get help. Since I'm no expert on sources of help, I'll copy something I found via a fifteen-second google search; you can recommend these to a friend if you think they need them:
• Send an anonymous e-mail to or call the The Samaritans
• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TTY:1-800-799-4TTY)
• In Australia, call Lifeline Australia at telephone: 13 11 14
• Teenagers, call Covenant House NineLine, 1-800-999-9999
• Look in the front of your phone book for a crisis line
• Call a psychotherapist (this is a more long term solution, but one that will likely be necessary in the long term)
(source)

Don't panic
The natural reaction to finding out that someone is suicidal is to worry about them, to worry that if you don't do something soon, they might go through with their thoughts. If someone tells you that they are feeling that way or hints that they might be, do not visibly make a big deal out of it. Do tell that that you care, do listen if they want to talk, do tell them that you're happy they confided in you, and do tell them that you'd really miss them if they were to do anything. But don't overreact. Overreacting to someone telling you they are suicidal could make them regret ever telling you, and they'd probably be less likely to confide in others for that reason, and if they aren't confiding in others, they're less likely to receive help.

Don't try to solve their problems
This point is courtesy of Sthenno of What's Wrong With WoW: "...there is a natural inclination to try to solve people's problems when they talk to you. When someone is considering suicide and they are talking to you about whatever problem is making them consider it, resist the urge to try to think of solutions for them. It is an emotional state that is driving them to consider suicide. Being there to talk to is a great help, but the real problem is their immediate emotional state, and no solutions you can come up with regarding their job, their school, their relationship, or whatever else they are fixating to put those emotions into words are going to remove those emotions. Just listen, be encouraging, and express sympathy."

Don't tell them to "just cheer up"
I feel like this should be evident from what I have already posted, but in case it isn't, I'll say it clearly: telling someone who is suicidal, or even just depressed (the two do often go hand-in-hand) to just cheer up or just get over it is about as effective as telling a quadriplegic to just get up and walk. If they have reached the point where they are considering suicide, it is because they can't "just cheer up". If it were that simple, don't you think they'd do it? It would certainly have been nice to have been able to "just cheer up" when I was feeling suicidal, but a suicidal person's brain just won't let them do that. This is really a very simple point, so I'm not going to give much exposition; just don't do it. It won't help, and it can often make the person feel worse for not being able to "just cheer up."

And whatever you do, don't ask the person to promise you that they won't kill themselves (or any euphemism for the act). This is quite possibly the most self-centered thing you can do when you find out someone is considering killing themselves, for all it does is reassure you, and it does nothing for the suicidal person themselves. When someone is grappling with suicidal thoughts, they often can't be sure they won't go through with it. If they aren't sure whether they'll go through with it, and you make them promise they won't, you've either forced them to lie to you by saying they won't (a lie which will certainly stress them out later), or you've made the both of you sadder by forcing them to admit that they can't make that promise. And if they really won't go through with it, they don't need a promise to you to motivate them not to. By not asking a suicidal person to make that promise, you show tremendous understanding of what they are going through, and that will make them value your friendship more, which will make your support more effective. What you can ask them to do is to be strong, or to call you when they are feeling down, or something along those lines. You can offer encouragement or support, but don't ask for anything, not even a promise that they won't do it.

The thing about suicidal thoughts is that getting rid of them requires, above all, the effort and will of the person who is experiencing them. As much as you may try to help them, if the problem is a problem in their way of thinking, you can only help them so much. If they are going to really get better, they have to seek help of their own volition. That's a scary thought for someone witnessing someone else going through suicidal thoughts, for it might make you feel helpless in the face of an adversary that intimidating, but if nothing else, it takes the burden of total responsibility for the person's fate off of your shoulder. That might be a perverse consolation, but it's the best I can offer.

And if you yourself are feeling suicidal, try reading that page I linked to before. Here, I'll link to it again for your convenience.

This post last edited on 12/29/10 at 9:42 PM.