Binds to Account

I am Mattias, a human paladin on Elune.  I’m also Priggle (a gnome rogue), Chipotle (a gnome mage), Calsyee (a gnome death knight), and Kamarile (a draenei priest).  And those are just my level 80 characters.  I have a pair of lower level alts, and planned on having all 10 of my character slots on the Elune server filled with characters I intended to play come Cataclysm (including a dwarf shaman and worgen druid).

Not anymore.

Yesterday was my birthday.  I took the step to cancel my account because I believe it is the only action that will demonstrate to Activision-Blizzard that I think this latest change is not acceptable.  My account expires on 14 August, and I am no longer interested in purchasing Starcraft II or Diablo III.  I am not interested in giving Activision-Blizzard any more of my money.

I have seen more responses than I can count stating either “well, then don’t use the forums” or “you use your real name on Facebook, don’t you”.  I think both responses are specious and ignore the dangerous precedent that this latest change creates.  Yes, the forums are an ‘optional’ part of the game experience.  Optional in much the same way that raiding, player-versus-player combat, and the like are optional.  When the main source of technical support and ONLY venue for making suggestions about the game are forums, and game masters, phone operators, and community managers habitually direct players to those forums, they are no longer truly optional.

As for Facebook, it has multiple tiered privacy options for locking down one’s personal data.  Indeed, after Bashiok posted his real name in an act of good faith in a thread about RealID, he was within the space of several hours hounded to the point where he felt it necessary to delete his Facebook and Twitter accounts.  In this day and age where prospective employers generally run an internet search to see if their candidates have any ‘unsavory’ associations on the Internet, and in an era where gaming still carries a heavy stigma with it in ‘mainstream’ culture, I am not interested in having a google search of my legal name yielding my posts to a gaming forum.

My account was created in April of 2005, and has never lapsed between then and now.  I have spent over five years of love on my characters in the World of Warcraft, as well as enjoying a number of Blizzard’s other games.  I quit cold turkey yesterday, and mourn all the plans that will be left unaccomplished.

My paladin will never kill Arthas.  He will never complete the Scepter of the Shifting Sands chain, which he was near to completion of.  I will never achieve the Over Nine Thousand feat of strength, which was a personal goal for before Cataclysm.

My gnomes will never retake their city in Operation: Gnomeregan.

I will never play Starcraft II, Diablo III, or any future Blizzard games.

I refuse to even log into WoW to move my characters to personally important locations as a kind of swan song farewell.

It frustrates me that the official Blizzard responses have all read as canned “party line” PR spindoctoring.  The repeated use of “X-mongering” (fearmongering, scaremongering, etc.) in reference to the concerns that have been raised by the players reads as an intentional word choice to diminish the very real and valid worries that the players have about this latest decision.

Lastly, I believe that the stated purpose of “cleaning up the forums” and cutting down on trolling activity is naive.  While the removal of the veil of anonymity may reduce some of the troll activity on the forums, I think that the powers-that-be at Activision-Blizzard are deluding themselves if they think it will eliminate it.  Trolls act as they do because they do not fear any sort of real consequence to their actions.  Simply putting their real names next to their posts does not equate to a true consequence, and indeed will likely give some of these people the attention that they clearly crave.  There are much better ways to police forum activity than this, if that is the true stated goal of the policy, which I am not entirely convinced of.

In summation, I played World of Warcraft and other Blizzard properties to escape the day-to-day issues of my “real life”, not to have them further intrude.  I am not ashamed of my hobby, but I feel it is my decision to share that hobby with people, and this policy takes that choice away from me and shines the glaring beam of Internet visibility onto it.

I pray that Activision-Blizzard will reconsider this policy, and that some day I can return to the games I love.  But until then, they have lost me as a customer.

As posted earlier by Anea over at her blog and suggested on Twitter:

Let’s play a new game.  Take a screenshot.  Caption it with song lyrics that are funny/clever/sappy/insightful/etc. and post it on your blog.  It can be an old screenshot.  It can be a new one.  It can be of your character, of a raid, of pretty scenery.

And so, without further ado:

You can dance if you want to...

(no, not the druid talent tree)

With four characters at level 80, one at level 70, and plans to have one character of every class on my login screen for Elune when the Cataclysm comes, the number of goals I carry around in my head at any given time for WoW can get pretty staggering.  When you add in a career, a fiancee who doesn’t always want to play WoW as much as I do, a written RPG on Livejournal that could easily take as much of my time as WoW, a large portion of my extended family in driving distance, and friends around the world to keep up with, it becomes pretty obvious that cultivating a sense of balance is pretty heavily important.

Firstly is the issue of balancing WoW play time against the rest of the things in my life.  It was a lot easier to play more extensive hours when I first picked up WoW towards the end of my time in college.  And being a young professional living solo in an apartment and trying to maintain a 3000-mile long distance relationship was actually assisted by WoW, because it gave me and my now-fiancee something to do together that wasn’t simply sitting on the phone bemoaning how far away from each other we were.

But these days things are a bit different.  I stopped raiding full-time late in the Burning Crusade because of the demands it was starting to make on my time (especially because I live in the Pacific time zone and Elune is an Eastern time zone server) as well as for other personal difficulties with the raid I was part of.  And in retrospect, that was probably the first vital step towards regaining balance for myself.  I often give thought to returning to a full-time raid, because I do miss the good parts of being part of a full-time raid force: camaraderie, the high of that first kill in a progression encounter, and of course the phat lewts.  But I enjoy not being locked into a particular schedule too much to go back without a lot of soul-searching and discussion, on top of all the hassles that being a raider meant to me.

As for balancing goals within WoW itself, the first step towards that is to actually lay out those goals that I have.  For some of my characters it involves simply leveling.  I have equally as many characters (four) below the level cap as I do at 80.  Part of those goals is gathering up heirloom gear to pass down to them, as well.  For my characters at 80, most of my goals are gear-involved.  With the shift to Emblems of Triumph as drops in heroic 5-mans, the ability to purchase Tier 9 gear with those emblems, and the heavy connection of those sets to prominent lore figures of their respective classes (especially Chipotle and “idk, my bff, Khadgar?”), those were easy goals for me to set for Calsyee, Chipotle, and Priggle.  For the gear slots not covered by tier gear (primarily belt, boots, and bracers), conveniently enough there are craftable armor from Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader level patterns, which I am slowly gathering materials for (this is one of the reasons I never seem to have more than about 2000 gold between all of my characters at any one time).

For Mattias, who is as much my “main” as is possible (a rather slippery concept for an altoholic like me), the addition of achievements in Wrath of the Lich King has provided a huge pile of goals to work towards, on top of gear-related goals.  I currently have 6650 achievement points, with a goal of reaching the “OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAAND!” feat of strength before the release of Cataclysm.

So, with all those goals, I could easily play 40 or 50 hours a week on top of my job and still not meet all of them.  How, then, do I keep balance?  To sum it up in one easy phrase, “moderation in all things, INCLUDING moderation”.  Now that I no longer raid, I don’t hold myself to ‘gotta log on’ at any particular time.  When I do log on, I pick a particular goal to work toward for that play session.  It may be getting Curacao to a landmark level, farming up enough Emblems of Triumph in heroics to pick up Calsyee’s next piece of tier 9 gear, or trying to get dungeon or PvP achievements on Mattias.  Varying those goals from time to time helps keep things fresh and not feeling like quite so much of a grind (although an MMO is and always will be a grind in one way or another).

And that’s why you won’t ever see me sitting around in Dalaran complaining that there’s “OMG NOTHING TO DO!”  For me, there’s always something to be seen and done over that next hill.  So see you on the other side!

If you have been around the internet for any length of time and have any sort of familiarity with internet culture, you probably know about Penny Arcade’s by now infamous Greater Internet F***wad Theory, or some similarly worded concept.  Essentially, the belief is that if you give the average person anonymity and an audience, that they tend to devolve to the basest possible behavior.  Despite the original source of the theory (Unreal Tournament), this sort of problem can be found in many corners of the Internet, including World of Warcraft.  In some ways the Internet has provided a double-edged sword to us all.  On the one hand, instant global connectivity has made the world a much smaller place.  But on the other hand, without the benefit of face-to-face interaction, it becomes all too easy to forget that there’s a person on the other end of the line.

This lack of personal respect shows itself in a number of ways in our beloved Azeroth.  Some of them are blatant and obvious, others are subtle and insidious.  But all of them can easily ruin the game experience for a player.

The Forums

The amount of vitriol that gets slung around on the official WoW forums, whether directed at other players or at Blizz themselves, is staggering.  Entitlement, anger, and contempt run rampant.  There is even an extra layer of anonymity present in the form of the level 1 “forum alt”.  Ad hominem attacks on a player’s gear, spec, achievements, and gem/enchant choice are now even more possible with a quick click through to their Armory profile.  Swearing and ranting about the latest “SLAP IN THE FACE !!!!11!!11!!!!one!” are de rigeur.

But too often, the forum denizens forget that the percentage of players who play the game and never even come near the forums is in all likelihood far larger than the percentage that spew expletives, post walls of text, and threaten to quit the game in a huff.

In Game Abuse

A segment of the game population also is quick to explore the outer limits of profane and offensive language in the game world as well.  Barrens General chat is a well known “hive of scum and villainy” (with apologies to George Lucas and Sir Alec Guinness).  And the rarity with which the Trade channel is actually USED for trade is one of the reasons that “/leave 1″ “/leave 2″ are two of the first commands I execute upon the creation of a new character.

The random dungeon tool and random battleground tool in some ways simultaneously increase the level of anonymity and exposure by bringing in characters from multiple realms.  This past weekend I got my very own experience with a pair of guild-mates from another realm who called the tank (and then me when I spoke up to indicate that I was reporting them) in rapid succession three very offensive terms, one racist, one homophobic, and one referencing the mentally disadvantaged.

(note: I wrestled with myself for a while on whether to simply include the terms whole, “blank out” a few letters in each, or not include them at all.  I eventually decided to generalize them, because the exact content of the language isn’t as important as the emotion behind them)

Loot Drama

Inevitably, when a commodity is rarer than the demand for it, sooner or later it will cause friction.  Loot drama in WoW happens in a lot of different ways, and for a lot of different reasons, but in my opinion, in some ways much of it boils down to a rather subtle and slippery concept: that of “my loot”.

“[X Boss] didn’t drop my shield.”

“So-and-so ninja’d my helm.”

The minute you start thinking of it as your loot, you start reducing the 4, or 9, or 24 other players in a group with you to faceless NPCs who are merely there to assist you in obtaining what is so obviously rightfully yours.  And that starts you down the slippery slope to a forum blacklist thread.

Anonymity

Because the internet (and WoW) aren’t necessarily as anonymous as you think they are.  A server change, a faction change, a name change, all of these things can be (and are) tracked by various means.  Back before the elimination of the “drama” portion of WoWInsider’s Guildwatch column, it was regularly filled with stories of lies exposed, past behavior following a player to a new realm or guild.  That sort of reputation can follow you despite the measures you might take to escape it.

The Golden Rule

So, what’s my point in all these examples of the crappy ways WoW players can and do treat other players?  Simple.  To borrow another internet aphorism made popular by Penny Arcade: Don’t be a dick.  Try and remember that just because you’ve run the same dungeon 32 times looking for a drop, that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone else who wants it just as bad as you.  Think before you speak (or type, in this case).  Try putting the shoe on the other foot, and think about how you’d feel if you were on the other end of your behavior.

Bottom line?  Don’t be “That Guy”.

Operation: Gnomeregan is NOW.

(source)

So, originally this was going to be a “how i level for rog” post, inspired by Rilgon of Stabilized Effort Scope and his brand new baby rogue.  This would give an excellent opportunity to discuss alts and rogues (as my very first alt was in fact a rogue), and most especially the heirlooms from which this blog takes its name.

But then, on the way home this afternoon, I got to thinking, maybe it would be a better starting point to discuss how I tend to approach alts in general, and get to show some of that “compulsive planning” that tends to go on under the hood with me.  And so, the handy step-by-step “Binds to Account Guide to Alts”.

(Note: this guide to alt-ing assumes that you have a level 80 “main” character who can easily set your shiny new level 1 character up in style, whether through gold, emblems, or other currency.)

Step 0: Concept

Before you click that “Create New Character” button on your character select screen, give some thought to the basic “theme” of your alt.

This may be something as simple as a case of “see how the other half plays”.  This was partially the case with my first alt, Priggle.  I’d been playing Mattias for a fair amount of time, and was firmly cemented in the Holy tree (this was back in Classic, before dual specs were even a glimmer in the devs’ eyes).  Retribution was something of a bad joke back then, so my quickest way of killing things was actually to trudge along behind my “pocket warlock” played by my fiancee (though she wasn’t my fiancee back then) and be her healbot.  Not that we didn’t make a fantastic team at it (and our ability to play seamlessly with each other has improved and matured with time), but I was itching to see some of those flashy yellow numbers over mobs’ heads myself.  And so, a fledgling rogue was born to satisfy that urge.

The character concept in your head may be more fully formed than that, especially if you play on an RP server.  This was the other half of how Priggle came to be for me.  As mentioned before, I came to WoW with a background in playing Dungeons and Dragons.  At the time, I was partial to a very popular “story hour” (transcription of a campaign’s events to a more short story/novel form) by a DM known as Piratecat.  One of the PCs in the campaign he ran was a svirfneblin (deep gnome) rogue named Priggle Gembreath.  The character’s schtick was that, by virtue of a series of feats the player took, enemies tended to completely overlook Priggle as not posing a threat, which would enable him to move into position and unleash crazy backstab damage.  The amusing roleplay side effect of these feats was that Priggle’s COMPANIONS tended to forget about him too.  And so, when I was creating my very first “DPS” alt, those stories had captured me and resonated enough that I decided to create the first (and to this day only) Priggle in the World of Warcraft (US, that is, there are three in the EU).  So, it may be that you have a concept you want to transport into Azeroth, whether it be an absent-minded professor of magic, the “lone gunman” in the wild, or anything in between.

(But please, for the love of tiny kittens, please don’t try to make another night elf hunter with a name referencing Legolas.  Every time you roll a night elf hunter named Legolas, Garrosh kills a kitten.)

Step 1: The Character Creation Screen

Okay, so you’ve roughed out your character concept.  Time to start building them.  Now you’re ready to hit that “Create New Character” button.  Once you do so, you’ll need to make some choices.  The choice of faction is an essential.  Odds are you have at least some sort of faction loyalty at this point, and besides, you’re going to want your alt to be the same faction as your level 80 character so you can reap all the benefits of funneling stuff down to the alt.  Next is race and class, based on the concept in your head and the particular benefits each race carries.  Gender and the appearance variables should not be ruled out as unimportant, either, simply because they have no tangible gameplay benefit.  Although the game now has the barbershop where you can change appearance, make sure you’ve got something you can stand to look at for 80 levels.  (let’s just say there’s a reason Kamarile is a female draenei, and it looks like two cats in a sack when she walks)

Step 2: Log In

Hit that login button, watch or skip the opening cinematic as you prefer, and get to the point where you take control of that character for the first time.  Take care of all the quality of life type of stuff right away.  Tweak whatever addons you have to make sure they’re working correctly, go in and set your camera/sound/toolbar settings to your liking, turn off the tooltips (this isn’t your first time around the block, you probably won’t need them), and so forth.  Deal with all the minutiae up front so you’re not hassled by it when you’re trying to play.

Step 3: Log Out

Notice that I haven’t said word one about what you should be doing with your main character beyond some vague generalities?  Here’s where that kicks in.

Step 4: Bags

Bags, possibly even more than that awesome heirloom gear, will be one of the biggest things your little alt needs.  If you aren’t a tailor, or don’t have easy access to one, Frostweave Bags should still be pretty easy to pick up off the AH for relatively cheap, as it’s a good way to get some leveling points for the aspiring tailor.  Grab four of them, or if you’re feeling completist, grab seven more of them and 111g 10s, and snag that alt a quick achievement in the process.

Step 5: Pick Your Spec and Leveling Style

Now, I’m not saying that you have to plan every single talent point that you’re going to spend from 10 to 80 (though there are a few guides out there that can help you with that if you are that meticulous), but you’re going to want to at least pick one of your new class’ three talent specs as your primary focus.  This is actually more of a choice these days with the introduction of the Dungeon Finder and Battleground XP.  Used to be, your only way to gain XP was kill monsters and do quests.  Therefore, you wanted whatever DPS spec your class had, or the “best” spec in a class with multiple DPS-capable specs.  Therefore, your choice of leveling style will also come into play here and those paired choices will affect your choice of heirlooms in turn.  Enjoy PvP?  Level through battlegrounds!  (and 3.3.3 is bringing a Battleground Finder that will make things even easier!)  Want to try your hand at tanking or healing?  That relatively new Dungeon Finder will be invaluable (and your queues will be shorter if you’re in playing an in-demand role).  Love the lore that Blizz put in the game?  Go ahead and quest to your heart’s content!

(pro tip: “All of the above” is a perfectly valid answer here, as well!)

Step 6: Pick Your Professions

But before you go buying up your heirloom items, you’re going to want to take a moment to pick the professions that your alt is going to have.  Want to make a lot of money while leveling?  Pick a pair of gathering professions (generally pair one of either herbalism or mining with skinning, so you’re not frantically trying to track herbs AND minerals).  Want to supplement your heirlooms with good items in the armor slots that heirlooms don’t cover as you level?  Pick one of the manufacturing professions that fits your armor class (tailoring for cloth wearers, leatherworking for leather and mail wearers, and blacksmithing for plate wearers).  Want to blow things up with bombs and have awesome on-use trinkets?  Engineering is the way to go.  Want to supplement your gear and/or spells as you go?  Take a look at enchanting and inscription.  Each profession has a unique benefit for a character(even gathering profs), though it may only come into play towards the profession cap.

Once you’ve picked your professions, you may want to consider bankrolling your alt with raw materials to powerlevel whatever manufacturing professions you selected.  A quick session leveling to the respective caps as you reach a benchmark level for the next rank of your profession will often give you some powerful gear for the level you can equip it at.

Step 7: Pick Your Heirlooms

So, we finally get to the good stuff.  Those juicy tan-colored tooltips and the text “binds to account” on items named for famous (or infamous) items from the classic World of Warcraft.  The power of heirlooms is this: their stats automatically scale upward as you level, essentially acting as the equivalent of powerful blue-quality gear in their respective slots, and in some cases in slots that you wouldn’t normally see gear in for quite some time normally.

First, if you are lucky enough to win the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby (every Saturday, one winner per week), you will have access to the Dread Pirate Ring.  This is the only heirloom ring, and its stats (Stamina, hit rating, and crit rating) should serve any class and spec in at least SOME way.

After that, it’s shoulders and chest.  These two heirloom slots are so important because of the very last line of the tooltip: “Equip: Experience gained from killing monsters and and completing quests increased by 10%.”  So, unless you choose to level 100% through battlegrounds, you can get yourself an extra 20% (25% if you have the Dread Pirate Ring) XP as you go.  This winds up accelerating the leveling curve considerably, and unless you subscribe to the “journey is its own reward” philosophy, it will come in handy.

Your chest heirlooms only come in PvE stat budgetings, purchasable with 40 Emblems of Heroism (you will need to downgrade them from the Emblems of Triumph you get through running heroics).  Shoulders, however, come in both PvE and PvP versions.  The PvE versions, like the chests, are bought with 40 Emblems of Heroism.  The PvP versions can be bought for 200 Stone Keeper’s Shards, which you get either from bosses in dungeons when your faction holds Wintergrasp, or from completing quests in Wintergrasp itself.  The essential difference between the PvE and PvP shoulders is that some of the stat budget on the PvP shoulders is given over to resilience, which is a primarily PvP-centric stat.  (PvP heirlooms also tend towards a higher budgeting of stamina than their PvE counterparts)  However, if you are swimming in Stone Keeper’s Shards (by this point in the expansion cycle you probably are), it may be easier to pick them up rather than grinding a few more heroics for emblems to get the PvE versions, as the experience bonus is likely what you are most interested in.

Once you’ve gotten your shoulders and chest, your remaining heirloom slots are weapon and trinket.   If you are playing a hunter, there are two ranged weapon options: a PvE-statted bow, and a PvP-statted gun.  Trinkets, like ranged weapons, are fairly limited in the options: a melee-friendly option, a caster-friendly option, and a PvP option.  Melee weapons tend to have a bit more variety to suit whatever your needs might be: 1-handed, 2-handed, caster, melee DPS, PvE, or PvP.

When all is said and done, depending on your class and spec choices, you can wind up with as many as 8 of your character slots filled with heirlooms (a dual-wielder with the ability to equip a ranged weapon, shoulders, chest, two trinkets, and a ring).  See Curacao, my baby warrior, for an example (the only thing missing is the ring, because I haven’t won the Kalu’ak Derby, QQ).

Step 8: Profit!

Send all that hard-earned bounty to your new character, and start making a name for them in Azeroth!

Part of the philosophy of this blog is about not being put in a cubbyhole.  Too often, the trend among WoW players seems to be to distill everything down to its simplest, most black-or-white components.  This presents itself most notably in the sort of polarizing, no-middle-ground types of statements and labeling of other players that is often seen on forums and even some blogs.

“My class needs a buff.”

“Your class needs a nerf.”

“Hardcore raiders have no lives.”

“Casuals want free epix.”

And, of course, the classic inflammatory summation to an argument: “QQ moar, noob.”

The number of labels that get tossed around so cavalierly (casual, hardcore, noob, carebear, etc.) really serve only to diminish and dismiss the opinions and playstyles of other players.  And that is a dirty, stinking, rotten shame, and the number one thing that bugs me in playing or discussing WoW.

The real truth is that, in a game as massive and varied as World of Warcraft, playstyles are an infinite spectrum of shades of gray.  I’ll use myself as an example, since that’s naturally the person who I know best, and it gives me a bit of a chance to introduce myself as well.

I created a trial account with a 10-day guest pass on April 8, 2005 at the urging of a good friend (who is now my fiancee), and have been playing continuously since.  Given that I have a background in tabletop gaming, primarily Dungeons and Dragons, it probably isn’t surprising that my first character in my very first MMO experience was a human paladin.  Five years, a couple guild changes, and six alts later, I play quite a bit (perhaps a bit too much sometimes) and cover a wide variety of content in the process.

After going in to Molten Core on a pickup raid, I proceeded to raid regularly on a weekly basis for the rest of Classic and most of the Burning Crusade.  Our raid was pretty firmly middle of the road, but we generally had a good time, especially whenever our Brooklyn-accented raid leader launched into “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” over Vent to celebrate a new kill or just break the ice.  I wound up getting burned out somewhere between tier 5 and tier 6 content (partly because I was now attempting to raid on an EST server while working and living in PST), and took a step back from raiding.  I do still occasionally fill in for my current guild, but I prefer having more freedom in my schedule these days.

In addition to Mattias, my paladin, I currently have three other characters at level 80 (rogue, mage, death knight), one at 70 (shadow priest), and two others in the mid-20s (hunter, warrior).  I do random heroics fairly regularly in all three roles (tank, healer, DPS) with the advent of the Dungeon Tool, go on pickup raids, pursue older content fairly religiously, plan out characters’ progression and goals to a fare-thee-well, chase achievements like a madman, dabble in PvP, and dispense generic advice/humor in a variety of forums (in the general sense of the word, not the particular meaning of message boards, though I use those too) regarding the game that I love.

So go on, try and put all of that into a single ‘cubbyhole’ of a label.  I’ll wait.

Can’t do it?  That’s the point.  And at the risk of painting with too broad a brush myself, I’d suggest that I’m the rule, not the exception.  Even one of the most focused bloggers I know (Rilgon of Stabilized Effort Scope) takes some time from his math-crunching dissection of raiding as a Marksmanship hunter to inject a little RP to his blog.  The only differences are really what things a person enjoys, and the level to which they pursue each of them.

So, if there is a single piece of advice/philosophy/’wisdom’ to sum up this blog as a whole, it’s this: don’t limit yourself with the labels others use.  Play the way that makes you happy, and don’t be afraid to take big bites in doing so.  And don’t ever feel like you have to apologize for it.

Binds to Account is a World of Warcraft blog.  There’s a lot of awesome WoW blogs out there that focus on particular playstyles, a particular class (or even a particular talent spec in a class), and so on.  This blog is aiming for the opposite approach, what I’ve been referring to as the ‘omnivore’ approach: taking a broad-based look at everything World of Warcraft.  Raiding, 5-mans, PVP, RP, class issues, strategy, gearing…any WoW subject you can think about, we’ll probably cover sooner or later.

As we get started, feel free to give feedback and suggestions, either through comments or email.

/welcome

/wave