Genders in a five-man party – are we stuck in the stereotypes?

When you’re doing a five-man instance, who in the family are you? Are you the mother, the father or the naughty child?

Speaking for myself, I’ve always been the child. We have a great time, trying out our toys (“Zap! You’re a sheep! Mama, mama, look, I’m invisible!”) while we’re fighting our brothers just for fun. (“Haha, I beat you on the damage list, sucker!”) Sometimes we lose our minds, foolishly pulling aggro. But our patient parents, the tank/healer couple, will normally save our asses, and after giving us some well deserved bashing they’ll forgive us.

Recently however I’ve tried a new role. As the regular guests of the inn know, I’m levelling a druid alt, with the ambition to se the game from a different side, as a tank or healer. But for all my intentions to tank, I have gotten more and more into healing. Not only because there’s obviously much more demand for healers than for tanks in the old world, but also because I’ve fallen in love with the task in a way that I hadn’t expected.

Suddenly I find myself, a modern women, playing the traditional female healing role in an MMO. I’m standing in the back, a pretty night elf chick in a beautiful robe, dutifully renewing the HoTs, trying to keep everyone alive instead of boldly killing evil stuff. And it bugs me that I enjoy it so much. It bugs me a lot.

Revolting against stereotypes
The thing is that I hate gender stereotypes with all of my heart. I always have, since they make me feel trapped, reduced into a couple of milk producing body parts on legs, supposed to take decisions out of hormones rather than out of my free will. I want to enjoy the freedom to form my life and display my personality anyway I want. Above anything I want to be treated by myself and by other people as a fellow human being, not as a Sex.

Even though I’m not a Role Player in its true sense, one of the things I love most about MMOs is that you can play around in an anonymous, protected sandbox. You can check out different roles and discover new sides of yourself.

Surely, sometimes we encounter gender stereotypes which seem to be leftovers from the middle ages, but we can always act like Spinksville and turn our back to it. . Back in the early days, female gamers had to struggle quite a bit to get accepted and respected. But now there’s nothing unusual about us, we’re like other players. No more, no less, exactly how I want it to be.

Lack of female tanks
However, when I think about the act of healing, I can’t help thinking “typical girlish thing to do”, no matter how I try to rid myself from this notion.

Maybe it’s related to what I actually see in the game. Until this day I haven’t seen any female tanks or melee dps as I can recall or knew about. Yeah, there are a couple of blogging exceptions, but I’ve never seen any for myself. Girls play healers or possibly ranged dps. They seem to avoid the blood splatter.

I wonder why. I refuse to believe there’s some genetic reason for it. After all, tanking doesn’t require any special physical abilities, such as real life strength. Basically WoW playing is the same for everyone. You push your buttons; you move your mouse and you click. The only difference is what kind of targets you have and what effects your spell have.

Maybe we just need some new stereotypes, alternative images which we associate to the different roles? Why do I insist on thinking about the tank as a father? A tank could as well be pictured as a mother – a raging lioness, a killing machine, who will do anything to protect her children. And the healer could perhaps be the old, wise, white bearded grandfather, whose inner spirits are familiar with the old arcane power? After all, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're gay because you're a male healer... :)

But for the dps I can’t see any other image than the one of the child: innocent, convinced about their own immortality, full of energy and void of responsibilities. Oh, happy days!

It’s the envy that keeps us going

Are you envious of other players? Does your skin shift into a wannabe-NE-colour when you inspect their gear, see their titles or hear about their achievements? Do you feel that hungry surge in your stomach, telling you that you’ll never get happy unless you get the same stuff that they have?

Yes?

Good to hear! It’s just the game mechanisms at work. It’s intended.

Gnomeaggedon wrote a rant a little while ago, where he made a confession about the different kinds of envy that affect him: achievement envy, gold envy, pet envy, gear envy, raid envy, for mentioning a few of them. Even though he says “it’s my lot”, I got the impression that he felt a little bit bad about carrying those feelings.

But I would suggest the opposite. It just shows that you’re still enjoying the game.

Why some envy is enjoyable
I’ve been pondering upon this for a while and my conclusion is that envy probably is one of the most important motivators in WoW, something that keep us going. After all, envy is just another nuance of desire.

If anything should worry you, it would rather be the opposite situation. If you don’t give a damned about whatever gear, mounts and experiences there are available in game, displayed by other players, if your desire has vanished and you just don’t care, you’re probably on the verge of burnout and likely to quit the game in a not too distant future.

The envy keeps us alert and involved with the game. And as a bonus: your envy is the pleasure and satisfaction of someone else. I bet you were delighted, Gnomeaggedon, as a random new player whispered you and told you how awesome your mechanostrider was, as you told us in a comment the other day.

The lack of envy can actually make some players become a little bit annoyed. If other players don’t worship their dresses as much as they had expected, they somehow feel deprived of a big chunk of the pleasure in gearing up. (They would be better off looking for other areas to gain the admiration of the crowd.)

Fuel of the community
Another aspect of envy is that it gives the community something to talk about. It’s the perfect fuel for discussions.

Imagine for a second that all classes were perfectly balanced in every single aspect and didn’t need to change in any way at all. Imagine that gear was handed out as results of our effort, so generously that everyone would get their “upgrade kick” often enough to keep them in a good mood, but still so wisely that no one felt that anyone else had any advantage thanks to their choice of playing style. Imagine this.

What do you think would happen to the blogs, the forums, the podcasts, everything that makes the universe of Azeroth stretch far beyond the scripted events delivered by your game server? How could you create interesting debates if we didn’t have the igniting spark of envy? How long would it take before the community ran dry without this fuel?

Destructive envy
However, Gnomeaggedon mentioned another sort of envy, which is harder to deal with: playtime envy. It’s when you see your friends or guildies doing things that aren’t available to you, due to the restrictions that real life put onto your gaming. I admit that this kind of envy isn’t exactly motivating; it’s more connected to feelings of frustration, bitterness and despair.

Probably we put much more value to the events we can’t participate in than they deserve. I bet that if I could play as much as I wanted to, signing up for the optional 10-man content as undying runs and 10-man runs in Ulduar, I would probably lose my appetite for it sooner than I think. It’s the fact that this fruit isn’t available for us that makes it so sweet and desirable.

I think the best way to deal with it is to stick to your own path of progression, put up your own goals to strive for and not bother so much about what other people are doing. See it as if they’re playing another game than you are. They could as well be playing LOTRO as raiding Ulduar. What does it matter to you?

Newbie envy
I’ll give the last word to Argon, who commented on my bartender’s post about heirlooms:

New players have one advantage over the grizzled altaholic: the content is fresh and exciting to them. I'd trade away all my heirloom items in an instant for that.

Oh, how spot on isn’t this? The sad thing is that no matter how you try, it’s hard to make the newcomer understand how privileged he is. The insight won’t come until it’s too late, and he too has become envious of those guys who still have new and exciting things to discover in the game. It’s the Newbie envy, one of the hardest envies to deal with. I’m afraid the only reliable cure for it is to switch to another game.

Not even the next content patch will make the game as sparkling and exciting as your first stumbling steps in Azeroth. The road is always one-way.

On Heirlooms

I’ll admit that I haven’t paid too much attention to the presence of heirloom items in Warcraft. Not being level 80 until recently and not being an alt-aholic I felt it wasn’t an issue of interest. However, the recent introduction of the Tome of Cold Weather Flight caught my attention. Then this post showed up at Shy at Wow and got me to thinking about heirlooms. The more I thought about Warcraft heirlooms the more I found my distaste for them growing.

A two-tiered structure

Let me say up front that I don’t have any concern about heirloom items in their rawest form; that is to say bind-on-account items that can be transferred to lower level alts. The basic idea itself is nifty. The problem that I have is that the latest developments in heirloom items—the Tome of Flying and the 10% exp bonus—creates a two tiered player structure.

The problem adding these two features to heirloom items is that they are fundamentally unfair to new players. By new players I refer to players that have never played Warcraft before. With the implementation of these features some characters are given a leveling and economic advantage in the game for no other reason than the fact the account owner has created at least one level capped toon. That’s wrong.

It’s important to differentiate this reality from what is happening in other areas like the level reduction in mount availability. Being able to ride mounts at level 20 effects all characters equally. The introduction of the new quest helper and equipment manger features effect all players equally. Heirlooms items don’t; two level 68 characters—equal in experience, equal in equipment, and equal in player skill—yet one will have an inherent and unassailable advantage over the other by being able to fly in Northrend.

In particular this change will have a huge impact on gathering professions. How do you think a new player who is on their first level 68 toon is going to feel when they reach for that Tiger Lily only to have it plucked out of their grasp by another level 68 who swoops in on their flying mount. I’d be angry. In is one thing to have flying at level 77 apply to all; it is a vastly different thing to have flying apply to some characters and not to others. The net result is that the rich get richer and the newbies are put at an even greater disadvantage.

Rebuttals

I recognize there is a sense in which alts already have an advantage over newbies in the sense that the players behind them have an experience base the new players haven’t developed yet. And these alts tend to be better funded in terms of gold and equipment. But I think those realities are different from heirlooms. First, the development of player experience is not uniform and it’s not something Blizzard has deliberately implemented. If anything, a mod like quest helper is a nerf to player experience and helps level the playing field in that regard. Secondly, gold transfers to low level alts don’t really speed the leveling process that much. Equipment purchasable on the AH at low levels is rarely better than what one gets from loot or quest rewards, assuming you can even find it on the AH anymore. While it undoubtedly has some impact on the leveling process, I don’t think it’s significant. Besides, gold is so freely available now it’s a moot point. My level 54 alt has more than 12K gold all which it has earned itself.

Account Development

What appears to me to be happening with heirloom items is a shift in developer focus from character development to account development. There are solid game life-cycle reasons to do this. For one, it’s almost always more profitable to retain a current account than to entice someone to create a new one. If giving you a few in-game rewards like +10% exp and a quicker access to flying mount convinces you to renew your subscription, it’s smart business sense. In fact, in a sly and subtle way it’s another incremental form of micro-transaction like Refer-A-Friend. Yet, unlike heirlooms, Refer-A-Friend had the redeeming feature of bringing new blood into the game.

At the heart of what bothers me about heirlooms items is this. Blizzard is saying that they deliberately want alts to have an advantage over newbies. And they are not being shy at wow about it. Nothing could be more in-your-face than flying. No one but you can see exp gains; most people aren’t paying attention to how fast others level. But everyone can see you fly. When your level 68 toon is riding around on his horse or raptor and the level 68 toon next to you is flying the message being sent in unmistakable: you’re the noob; you don’t count.

This is why I can’t agree with the commentary at Shy At Wow. It’s true that Blizzard can’t take away from one’s past experiences in an absolute sense. But that misses the point. The point of heirlooms is the relative value of future experiences. In this sense the term “heirloom” is a bit of a Jedi mind-trick. Heirloom items are not achievements, they are not laurels, they are not keepsakes. They are designed to give select players real in-game (not vanity) advantages in the future. With heirloom items—and flying in particular—Blizzard is saying that the future experiences of long-time subscribers is more important than the future experiences of new subscribers.

Maybe that’s right. Maybe for the overall health of the game Blizzard needs to give long-standing accounts this advantage to keep them in the game. But as someone who just recently leveled for the first time through Northrend I can’t say that idea of having to ride on my mechanostrider through the tundra while others in the low level 70s are flying around taking cobalt ore from me is a situation that would have given me a thrill. Maybe it would have prompted me to level faster but somehow I think /ragequit is more like it.

How my fps issues were solved and I was born once again

I’ll start with a warning. This post is probably going to become a bit emo and annoyingly cheerful. But considering my state of mind I can’t stop myself.

This is the story:
Last week I made a sad post, sharing my frustration and fatigue after too long time with computer issues. The reception from the community blew me off completely. And somehow I got enough mana regen to wipe my tears and turn my computer over to some professionals. Even if I had done it so many times before that I seriously doubted it would help. My faith was damaged.

The episode ended as a classic cliffhanger, Larísa on the verge of giving up and quitting the game due to her constant PC problems. Now, a few days later, I thought that you deserved to get part two, the conclusion of the story.

I’ll give you the short version straight away: it helped. God help me, it really did. I guess someone will tell me now: “you just jinxed it”, but I can’t hold myself back, since I’m jumping around like a bouncing ball, flowing over with energy that needs to get an outlet. PPI is a place where you can share not only your sorrows, but also your happiness. So if you want more details, I’ll tell you what happened, the long version.

What was wrong
Just like many readers suggested it turned out that my fps problem was related to the processor fan. Even though it looked as if it worked, there was some problem with the attachment. If I had been a normal gaming computer geek and not just a middle aged noob, I guess I could have seen that and sorted it out by myself. But in my case it took the help from a professional eye to spot it. So they fixed it and charged me 40 dollars for the trouble seeking.

Of course I couldn’t be absolutely sure that the issue was all solved until I had tested it for myself. When I logged in the other night I didn’t know what to expect. I hoped that the shut-downs would be over, since the temperature apparently was back to normal. But would it affect the low fps that I’ve had for as long as I’ve been raiding?

I watched the bar on the login screen as it slowly progressed. And then I the world in Dalaran, the place that I’ve avoided as much as possible since the launch of WotLK, sick and tired of the maximum 10 fps and the staggering movements.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Was this the same place? I assure you that the experience is entirely different if you see it at a rate of 50 fps. How beautiful it was! How I enjoyed seeing the buzzing street life! And how strange it felt that I apparently didn’t have to worry about the cluster of people swarming outside the bank. Sure, it dropped a bit, but not any further than to 35. I could still move around in any manner I wanted to.

Wintergrasp
Suddenly I noticed that there was a lot of red coloured shouting going on in /general. Apparently a Wintergrasp fight was about to start any minute. This suited my plans perfectly and I jumped into a raid. It was early night and a ton of people were online. Three full raids and probably also a bunch of non-grouped players were bunching up waiting for the portal. But the expected grumping from my computer never came. As we began to attack the fort, I found myself in the new, peculiar situation to be able to move around, doing the things PvP players normally do - you know – targeting, strifing, jumping, whatever. It was awesome. Soon enough I had rank to drive a siege tank, but to my dismay we won the fight before I had been able to reach the very heart of it, which normally is a nightmare when it comes to fps.

But I already knew: The world had changed for me. I had been born once again as a WoW player.

I don’t know if I can ever explain it to someone who hasn’t experienced it. But I guess it’s as if I’ve been walking around my whole life with an eye problem, giving me a blurred vision. And now I’ve finally got a pair of glasses.

Hesitatingly I tried changing my graphical settings to something above the minimum ones. As I approached Ulduar for the raid of the night I grasped. The beauty and majesty of it was absolutely stunning. So this was how it was intended to look like! How little did I know!

How I sucked
I wish I could say that the first raid with my improved fps was a total success and that I shined, out-dpsing every other mage in the raid, but that would be a lie. On the contrary I did something ridiculously stupid that I’ve never done before: probably because I was so overwhelmed at the new perspective that I got a bit distracted. After killing General Vezax I realized that all the time I had been raiding carrying my fishing hat - through the trash and during the two tries we needed to down him.

/blush. I fail.

Furthermore, I did get hurt a couple of times in shadowcrashes and I died once in a green beam at Yogg, which isn’t exactly something I’m proud of.

There is definitely still room for improvement of my performance. But for the first time for a very long time I feel certain that my learning curve hasn’t stopped yet. I’m full of hope, totally motivated to work towards new, higher goals.

I tell you: I’ve never ever before been as happy in the game. I'm Gene Kelly, in the disguise of a pink pigtailed gnome, dancing through the streets of Dalaran.

THE END

Wanted: protection against the lethargy from the veterans

The sun has passed zenith. I think we can agree on that one.

There are different opinions about how much longer WoW will shine. Most of us expect at least one or two more expansions (wouldn’t level 100 be a nice and even level to end the saga?) But there’s no doubt that the quality of light has changed. It’s older, warmer, and not glowing quite as intensely as it used to.

Still there are various perceptions of this light. Some players have gone further into the dusk. Those who have been around since WoW was launched are starting to look the same as they did when they tried to get from Stormwind to Ironforge swimming, so many years ago. They’ve got a fatigue debuff they just can’t get rid of, even if they try. They grump about how things were better in the old days, about the outrageous nerfs and about how bored they are, and how they can’t bring themselves to level yet another character.

Every time a possible replacement to WoW is launched (most recently Aion), there’s a big buzz going on. Maybe this will be THE one, who will cause the big exodus from Azeroth? But so far the seniors seem to keep hanging around as they always have. I guess it’s hard to break a habit, but they’re also wrapped up in social bonds, to guilds and to game friends. The community seems to be more important than the entertainment they actually get from the game itself.

Like an infectious disease
Since I’ve only played the game half as long as many others, I’m not really at the same level as they are if you look my WoW lifeline. The sun is still pretty high up in the air. It may have passed zenith, but there’s still a lot of power in it. I’m as passionate as ever, at least as long as I’m wise enough to stick to things that I like and skip stupid grinds such as dailies just for vanity purposes.

However, it isn’t entirely easy to always keep up your own enthusiasm when you’re surrounded by people who’re much further progressed on their wandering through Azeroth, people who have lost their hunger and mostly spend their time bitching about the changes and their lost paradise. There is a gloomy layer of dust covering more and more of the community – the blogs, the forums and the general chat channels online.

It’s like an infectious disease, which make you believe that the lethargy of the longtime players is your own, when you would in fact be as happy as ever playing your game, if you didn’t have to constantly inhale the toxic vapours from those “I’ve played the game too long” people.

Protected zones
Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t try to make some sort of protected zones for those who still enjoy the game. Imagine a special server entirely reserved for players who started to play in TBC or WotLK and still have sparkling eyes. Wouldn’t that be enjoyable?

And then we could make an equal server, like a home for elderly people, a place where they could bitch and long back to the old days as much as they like to, surrounded by other players who know exactly what they’re longing for. See it as a protection area for those who have played since the early days of vanilla WoW.

I’m not entirely serious about this suggestion, but I can’t help playing with the thought.

Somehow the situation of today reminds me of how some teachers deal with the trouble boys at school. They put quiet, shy girls between them, treating them as some sort of absorbing padding.

It’s a little bit like this with the newcomers to the game. They’re used as positive energy power field. The old, tired players are allowed to leech on their energy and enthusiasm for the game. (Yeah, Gevlon, there are different sorts of slackers when you think closely about it.)

Maybe we should put an end to this. Maybe it’s about time that we let the grumpy players care for themselves. Let them boil in their own stew and let them whine in company with each other.

Meanwhile, the people who still love the game can flourish and inspire each other in their upcoming adventures.

Of course the older players have a lot to offer to the community in the terms of knowledge and experience. But if this always comes with an equal amount of aoe lethargy, I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off without it.

Or at least we need some resistance gear so we don’t take so much damage.

A Pixelated Life

Have you ever wondered if what we call “real life” isn’t someone else’s World of Warcraft. Perhaps this material world, solid to us, is pixels on the computer screen of some alien creature. What if you are the avatar.

Recently one of my neighbors with several children got a puppy dog. And in that mysterious way that like knows like, the puppy dog wont pay attention to anyone but the young children. She’s so cute as she scrambles after them on her tiny legs and she whines piteously when they go indoors and she can’t get in. But as I stood there with this glow in my heart as she gamboled about it occurred to me that maybe there was some overweight alien with long fangs and two heads in his underwear eating Cheetos and mashing the keyboard, muttering, “God, who designed this stupid Pit Bull creature.”

Angela

For the sake of easy reference let’s call this creature playing your life your Guardian Angel. I’ve decided to call mine Angela. She’s the one that keeps me from running the red light when my mind is away in outer space. She’s the one makes the decisions I fain to call intuition. She’s also a leveling manic.

A few years ago a friend said to me that all parents should enjoy their kids before the age of five because after five all kids want to do is grow up and act like adults. That certainly was true of me. I never was the type to hang out with kids my own age; if adults were doing it that’s what I wanted to do too. I was in such a hurry: got to grow up, got to get that degree, got to get that wife, make those kids, buy that house. It came as quite a shock to hit level 40. What happened. Where did all the time go. Maybe that is the reason I remain opposed to this trend by Blizzard to make faster mounts available at lower levels. It seems the last thing we need today is for youth to be in more of a hurry.

I think this also explains the time period when my life went all haywire. It seemed like I had become another person. Not in a radical way but nothing went right. I was associating with people: who were they, where did they come from. Why was I doing this job. That instance called India; that wasn’t me. I am convinced that an entire ten year period of my life can be explained by the fact that my Guardian Angel loaned her account to a friend.

Here’s a humbling thought: what if I’m just an alt. What if I’m just that character that somebody rolled and played for a while and decided they liked a Ret Pally better. What if they play with me only when they get bored running President Obama. Heaven forbid, what if their main is a Warlock. I don’t think I could handle knowing that.

Here’s another humbling thought. Pride. Think about how poets and other creative people talk about their muse. Oh ha ha ha. What would you think if every time you crafted that bag or enchanted an item your Warcraft character said, “My genius at work.” It sounds silly put that way. Maybe it is silly.

It’s actually quite liberating to realize that you are not in control of your own life. How is it your fault that you crashed the car. It’s that idiot angel who is still using the damn arrow keys to move; that’s the problem. They have a freaking mouse but noooo that’s not the way God taught them to do it.

The Forums

Think about the forums. It must be awesome. All those angels up there complaining about the Business Conference in Brussels lockout timer and how the developers in patch 2009.07.01 in Life: Europe are nerfing the economy and making it so hard to mine holiday time.

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find the forums to be basically the same as on earth.

* Why do races have to be pretty? 06/30/2009 10:11:30 AM PDT

I just saw the dumbest post from a "girl" or troll who wanted the prettiest race. Although that might not have been serious, there are plenty of people who won't roll a class based on their attractive factor. Why must our toons be beautiful? I personally wish I would've rolled Horde when I started playing just because sans blood elf, their characters look more realistic. (obviously in-game realistic, not IRL :P) Orcs in my opinion are the ugliest race, but I'd still roll one. Who cares? To themselves they are attractive. Must we really be so superficial?

I imagine that’s exactly the type of thing they talk about in the Guardian Angel’s forum of Life: The Carebear. ($29.99 today only on Cloud Nine!)

And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if customer support was just as bad. How would you like it if you kept dying in Rwanda and some blue angel told you the game was “working as intended.” Or imagine you were the angel responsible for Adolph Hitler and when you whined about a keylogger and a hacked account they told you to get an authenticator.

An RPG

There is a wise old saying that everything you play, plays you. I think it’s poignantly true. Perhaps this is the reason RPGs are popular. We want to run character’s lives because we grasp in some unconscious way that someone else is running our lives. Those pixilated characters are just the final installment of a chain of RPGs that go all the way up the seven levels of heaven and hell. We know that when we die someone out there somewhere is going to be wishing they had rolled a Tauren instead. So unconsciously we roll a Night Elf. Oh sweet revenge.

I realize of course that a game—perhaps the game—is only a metaphor. I don’t know if Angela is real. Sometimes I think she is. What I do know is if there is anyone out there clicking away, punching out the key strokes that are my life, this I know for certain. She makes me sweat.

Reasons to share your failure stories

Only social people want to read confessions from other players about how their failures. If you blog about how you’re sucking at a certain aspect of the game, you’re just writing crap. No, the way to go if you’re the slightest serious about WoW is to share success stories, preferably including useful information about how to get there.

Well, as you probably suspect, those ideas aren’t my own. I’m trying to make a wrap-up of a recent post by Gevlon. Despite our differences in opinion, I happen to like him. Some bloggers find this affection of mine a bit strange, not to say incomprehensible. But Gevlon is one of my most loyal supporters, being one of the first in the community to read and comment on the PPI. I on the other hand gave him support and encouragement when he started to open his own business. This has created a bond between us, even though Gevlon maybe doesn't see it, since he doesn't believe in networking. And apart from everything else, I find it stimulating to get access to the minds of people who have a completely different view than my own. Sometimes they actually have some good points and if nothing else they force me to think and to find better arguments for my own beliefs.

Attacking I suck-stories

But let's end my defense speech about why I like Gevlon and go back to the topic:

For no apparent reason, Gevlon has suddenly decided to attack a funny little post written by one of my other favorite bloggers, Ixobelle, claiming that he’s writing about his shortcomings just in order to make the “socials” love him. Gevlon also promised in his post that for his own part, he will only share his success stories on his blog, supposedly at the dismay of the socials.

Actually I don’t think Ixobelle cares at all about Gevlon’s opinion on his blog (he would probably be slightly amused at the most if he read his post), so it really isn’t necessary that I pull my sword just to protect his honor. But I couldn’t refrain from picking up the topic anyway, since I'm passionate about how to write, how to communicate effectively and how to improve as an individual and as a group. And I don't share Gevlon's views on this at all.

If anything, I would rather take the opposite position:

I don’t care much about the success stories that are so common at WoW blogs these days. If you’ve manage to down whatever guy - from Hogger to Yogg-Saron - Big grats and good for you, but in 9 out of 10 cases it doesn’t make much of a good read and it’s quite rare that I learn much from it.

I’m more likely to read it and get inspiration from it if you before telling me about your success also share some tales about your less inspired moments. That will grab my attention and make you a trustworthy person.

How storytelling works
This is not rocket science. This is the way stories have been told for thousands of years. Look at the movies! Most of the successful ones, I would say, follow the same pattern. When you’re first introduced to the hero, you’ll probably see him in an everyday situation, which is far from perfect. You’ll see that he’s a human being just like you, and you’ll start to sympathize with him. AFTER this relationship is established, you’ll probably see him raising, being somewhat successful, and overcoming his sucking. Then there will be a little setback somehow, where everything doesn’t work as smoothly as it seemed to. But in the end the hero is likely to win.

There’s a reason why stories are told this way, Gevlon. It works. This actually goes back to my dear old rhetoric divinities, the Romans and the Greeks. They found that a good way to make the audience benevolent was start in a very humble way, pointing at your own weakness and flattering the audience for being bright and enlightened. “Humiliatio” as they called it. It’s still taught in speech classes as one of many tools to make sure that your message will come across. The most skilled speakers are actually the ones who while they’re sharing their fail stories, at the same time giving hints that will let the audience understand that the speaker in fact is awesome – he’s just too humble to notice it. This is a trick that takes a bit of skill. And of course it’s crucial that the audience don’t realize that it’s all a setup, intended to build up some credibility.

So Gevlon, if you want people to listen and learn from your FL+4 stories, you will probably be more likely to succeed if you can make them feel that you’re on the same side, that you’re humble and honest, and that you know what it’s like to fail. Once you’ve caught their attention, they’ll be much more interested to hear about your success, and actually maybe also follow your advice. You are like them. And you managed to overcome your weaknesses and win. There’s no reason that they couldn’t do it as well.

Different sorts of blogs
Another aspect of this is that Gevlon seems to forget that there’s a big diversity among bloggers. There are many sorts of blogs, just as books come in different genres. If you look at the shelves in a book store you’ll find that they offer books for any occasion. Some are for pure educational purposes. Learn to write Japanese in 30 days. 10 ways to become a better lover. How to get rich. Whatever.

Other books are biographies, true stories about fascinating people, that you can get inspiration from, even though you’ll not explicitly learn anything. And yet other books aren’t informative at all, they’re just there for entertainment and relaxation, to make you laugh or cry, to give you stories that you can come back to in your mind and perhaps share with your friends when you come to think about them in a conversation.

If you’ve ever followed the links from my blogroll you’ll probably be somewhat puzzled. There isn’t any clear red thread in my pick of favorite blogs. I read a wide range of blogs for various reasons, just like I read different kinds of books.

For instance, I’ve got a weird fascination for books about climbers other adventurers who who have been dealing with extreme situations, getting stuck at the top of Mount Everest and such. (If anyone reading this shares this taste, I'd like to point you to Touching the Void by Joe Simpson. It stands out since it's not only a good story - the guy is a talented writer as well.)

I re-read The Lord of the Rings every three years or so, not to learn anything, but because I like to escape into the world.

I read educating books about management and communications, because it’s interesting and because it’s helps me in my job.

And I adore the humoristic self biographical books by James Herriot, about the life of some vets in Yorkshire in the 40s (including a lot of “I suck” stories, which really make a funny read). Can I say that one of those sorts of books is better than the other? Do I think that I’m just wasting my time when I read books that aren’t relevant for my career? Of course not!

In the same way I enjoy reading Ixobelle’s spicy recounts from things he has experienced recently (including moments of sucking), as well as I like Tobold’s more dry, intellectual analyzing posts and Gnomeaggedon’s sweet, giggle-provoking weekend reports. They’ve all got a well deserved spot in my heart. And not necessarily because they’re telling success stories or giving useful information. There is a raison d’être for entertainment as well!

You may consider spending time on Ixobelle as wasted, but I certainly don’t.

Sharing fail stories in game
A final thought on this: I seriously wish that more WoW players would share their fail stories, not only in their blogs, but also in the game.

If I meet a player who’s constantly sharing his success stories, never ever mentioning any errors he or she has made, I become suspicious. If I was recruiting for a raiding guild, I would see that kind of attitude as a sign that the player is insecure, lacks self-insight and is generally pretty immature. I would rather look for players who display a sound amount of self distance and don't mind sharing less flattering stories, since they’re confident in themselves and know that they’re in the end are decent players.

I know this is a lot to ask for, and how honest you want to be depends very much on the atmosphere in the group you belong to. In some guilds I can understand that you’d probably think twice before admitting that you suck at something. However I think that establishing such a climate that players feel confident to share stories about their sucking is a very good thing for a guild.

I don’t mean that you should just laugh about whatever error you make. “WTF it’s just a game” and the shrug at it. (I guess it’s OK in a very social guild without any ambitions whatsoever in successful raiding. )

What I’m suggesting is that normal raiding guilds should strive for their players to be confident enough to admit when they suck and then direct their focus and energy towards discussions about what to do about it. The discussion should be lighthearted and yet constructive, aiming for solutions rather than for blaming.

If you use “I suck” stories the right way, they can actually be the beginning of your future success. Share it and gain an audience. Laugh at it. Learn from it. And finally head forward, a little bit stronger and wiser than you were before. And maybe even entertained.

There are many good reasons to tell the world, not only about our glorious victories, but also about our humbling failures.