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Welcome to my new blog section, “WoW-verse Diaries”.

I first heard the term WoW-verse used in a podcast called WOWCast, where the hostess, Alachia uses the term to describe the metaverse that is the World of Warcraft. For those that don’t recognise the term metaverse, refer to the novel “Snowcrash” by Neal Stevenson.

The reason for this blog section, is a need to validate, somehow, the time I spend in my choice of metaverse.

Why I come home, cook my dinner, chat briefly to my housemates about issues of the day or hearing their work warstories, then log into WoW and live my virtual life, in an attempt to escape my real life.

Alachia’s latest podcast discusses this issue in depth, and she brings up many really valid points for the virtual life. And she also discusses what to do to balance that virtual life with the real life. VL vs. RL…

I play World of Warcraft on the US server Stormrage, having started playing in February 2006, thanks to my best friend, Rozz, who bought the game for me as a belated Christmas present, so that I could play with her, a dream we’d had since the days when her and her then boyfriend ran the local South African Blizzard RTS servers for Warcraft III, Starcraft and Diablo II. She even bought me the Diablo II game and expansion and I did play, but never online as I could never afford to have broadband until January 2006.

I remember the days preceding the arrival of the game in the mail… She’d call me or PM me online, and ask me what class I was going to play, what professions I was going to take, etc.

Having come from a roleplaying background, something I’d done since college days, and having read fantasy and science fiction since my early teens, I was keen to try my hand at a druid, one of my favoured roleplaying classes from Dungeons and Dragons. Admittedly, my choice was also biased toward the druid due to the fact that Rozz’s main ‘toon’ was also a druid, hence she could help me and guide me as I played.

I was also really keen to play as a skinner and leatherworker, the idea of a druid, a man of the wild, living off the land and crafting from the land, quite prominent in my mind. At the time, I was still very much under the impression that druids were more like their Diablo II:LoD counterparts. Rozz, however, soon taught me otherwise and suggested I change to herbalism and alchemy, again something she could advise me on and as I would probably end up being the healer in any group, I’d need potions as well.

At the time, Rozz was already a high level druid, starting to get involved in guild raids and busy farming herbs for potions and trying to earn enough gold to get all the things she needed to be a ‘successful’ player. So I rolled Nyctan, my male night elf druid, and started levelling, and she helped me where she could, either coming to my rescue on difficult quests or financially with gold donations. Slowly but surely, I made my way to 10, then 20… and hit a wall.

So I took a break from my druid and rolled my rogue, Ksenia, a female night elf rogue.

Why a female, you may ask?

Sure, I heard it all before…

G.I.R.L – Guy in real life…

M.M.O.R.P.G – Many men online roleplaying girls…

I never roleplay my female toons. I’m not THAT into roleplaying. But, in using an old excuse, one used by many of my real life male friends that do play online with me, ‘if I’m going to stare at something for hours on end, I’d prefer it to be something I enjoy looking at’.

I do love my little rogue. She’s a very pleasant break from the norm. And I put a lot of time and thought into her creation.

I modelled the character off the main character from Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell : Standalone Complex series, Major Motoko Kusanagi. While the female night elf is not the most anime looking of toons, I took the blue/purple hair from Motoko, her hand to hand combat style, mobility, agility, etc and chose a rogue as the final character that fit that mold. As with many things in WoW, unless you were there first, most of the big names from fiction or mainstream media are already taken. So ‘Motoko’ was out. As was ‘Kusanagi’…

So I turned to another source for names. My friend, Rozz, is of slavic origin, and I’ve always been fascinated with slavic folklore, from the rusalka to the vodyanoi, their naming conventions and I also happen to find many slavic women to be exquisitely beautiful. So I chose a name from that background. Ksenia.

Later, I would use more names from that background. And even one from Hindu folklore, Dushana, one of the demon rakshasa, for my warlock.

So I played my rogue. And my friends that had bought at the same time as I recieved mine, shot ahead on their toons, Rob on his mage, Andrew on his paladin, Sean on his warlock. Then Sean and Andrew both rolled hunters and replaced their mains with these ‘alts’, playing until all hours of the morning.

And I took my time, doing my own thing. Skinning anything in sight. Doing leatherworking… My ‘old’ dream I’d had for Nyctan, now transferred to my rogue, a self-sufficient, hard-hitting, tough survivalist.

It eventually got to the point where Rozz asked me which ‘toon’ I was planning to make my ‘main’… the druid or the rogue. I think I bowed to the pressure of wanting to be more like her, so I continued my druid, leaving the rogue behind for the moment.

So, Nyctan made his way painfully from 20 to 30, 30 to 40… and finally I got my mount, specc’ed Balance tree for moonkin, and suddenly I was rocking again. At the time, Rozz’s guild was fracturing and she was going through a tough time. Now, I’ve known this woman for many years now, so when it comes to her, I’d drop everything to help her. Eventually her guild split and those that split off, formed a new guild, Affliction, and she asked me if I was willing to join and be power-levelled to 60 to help fill sorely needed healer spots in raids.

And so I left Awakened Guardians, at a time when they were ready to make me a guild officer for things that I’d done for their forums, etc. Admittedly, I could have left in a better way, but I guess at the time I wasn’t as close to them as I have since become. I joined Affliction and Rozz and one of the guild masters, her friend and now boyfriend, Nick, helped power-level me to 60. And I started raiding.

Raiding… new places. New bosses. New loot… new gear. Great.

Raiding… pressure to perform, repair bills, lots of screaming and shouting and negative remarks… Not so great.

It’s had it’s highs and lows. Right now I’m happy not to be raiding. Specifically raid healing. Hell, even feral tanking was a nice break from the monotony of healing.

When I wasn’t on the druid, I resumed levelling the rogue. I also got bitten by the PvP bug and was trying to gain ranks and honour in order to get gear, seeing as I was not likely to get raid gear on my rogue anytime soon. And, in the time that I did PvP, with our South African latency, I managed to work my way up to Master Sergeant. I would have liked to go higher, but I was not about to take time off work to PvP AND raid AND sleep…

Eventually, I got tired of my druid. So tired, that I petitioned my guild to allow me to change over to the rogue instead. But I think the idea of them losing a raid-specc’ed, epic’ed out restoration druid that could off-tank when needed, to a rogue in blues and greens that would need Molten Core runs for fire resist gear, Zul’Gurub runs for other gear and rep, before being ready to go back into Black Wing Lair, Ahn’Qiraj 40 and Naxxramas… well, let’s just say it was too much effort.

So I distanced myself from my druid, slowly but surely. And then I moved to Johannesburg from Cape Town and was without broadband for a while. And then The Burning Crusade came out and I made a decision. I was well behind everyone else at this stage, so I made a post on the Affliction forums, stating that I was retiring from raiding for the foreseeable future to resume playing the game on my own terms, on my rogue. I removed my rogue from Affliction, moved it back to Awakened Guardians, my original guild, where I had been helping their pre-60′s group, called the Omegas, led by another friend of mine, Louise, playing her hunter, Shadane.

And I’ve played, sometimes solo, sometimes in duo teams with my friend, Rika, on her retribution paladin, Bracye, where I generally end up rogue tanking and hauling her out of trouble and bandaging her paladin… a standing joke between us as she sometimes forgets she can heal, let alone ‘bubble’.

And as of tonight, I’ve made my way to 68… in fact I’m about halfway to 69 now, I’ve explored most of the Outland maps, power-levelled my druid’s alchemy and cooking with all the mats I’ve sent to him from my rogue… I’ve helped kill a fel-reaver… I’ve gotten my first dungeon set 3 piece, my Assassin Shoulders…

And we’ll continue the story from here… Right now, my bed calls. I have to be up in 5 hours time.

G’night.