Ironyca's "Myths and Urban Legends in WoW" – The Bengal Tiger Cave

There are blogs you read for kickarse theorycrafting info (Graylo's Grey Matter) and ones just because they're interesting and usually pretty thought provoking (Lissanna's Restokin or Spinks' Welcome to Spinksville! (though, wow, please stop playing Star Wars already!  ;^D), but the blog that is a legitimate treat every time it pops into my RSS reader is Ironyca's Ironyca Stood in the Fire. (The other blog in my blogroll that's more "literature" than magazine? Cricket Bread, though that's not WoW related in the least, except to remind me that there are better things to be doing than playing WoW -- this is the guy who started the Crop Mob movement.)

The stuff at Ironyca's really has an archivist's and an academic's flair.  Not an industrialist academe, determined to, you know, be relevant by applying whatever theory has their goat to today's hot game (okay, no, really, GTA deserves your attention), but a, "Politics and fads be damned; I'm going to do good work and start chronicling and commenting on this [sub]culture," kind of academic. (Though she's light on the Deleuze.)

So I've been meaning to blog this particular post with more context, but I'm going to stop waiting and share the latest excellent series of material Ironyca's been putting together.  Honestly, if you can't let her work spin you forward a few steps, you're not really interested in non-self-hedonistic WoW [1].

Myths and Urban Legends in WoW – The Bengal Tiger Cave | Ironyca Stood in the Fire:

In Stranglethorn Vale near Zul’Gurub hidden in the mountains, there’s a secret cave with an even more secret mount vendor. She sells a cat mount, supposedly a bengal tiger, but she only spawns once a month for 30 minutes.

I'll admit that I'm much bigger into exploration than I am raiding, for instance, so maybe this is more fascinating to me than most.  I cat form prowled around the Scarlet Monastery for hours before I actually ran it, spent waaaay too much time trying to sneak into Dalaran before I'd leveled high enough, died too many times trying to find where I could drop into Un Goro Crater so I didn't have to run the long way around, and ran around Wintergrasp (hard not to call it "Winterfell" now) for a while well before I was the right level.  Soloing for fun can be, well, fun.  It's nice to take some time off from doing things the way the developers intended and instead see if I can't prank the game -- which, of course, was the whole point of the poorly scanned chapter linked to above.

But Ironyca goes well beyond exploration and strongly into the land of metalepsis.  I've wanted to write about gaming's "industry of metalepsis" for years... how the "real world" and [the horribly backwards notion of] the "virtual world" intersect, whether it's a trick like Rockstar's hidden game or the extra levels in N64's San Fran Rush (iirc)... there are things that can't be found without looking at media that exists only outside of the game (see Picard, via imgur with a small decency edit, above).

And that's why this series is so important. There's nothing in the game that's explicitly there to make you think that there's a vendor than spawns thirty minutes a month in some cave selling mounts. Sure, there's a skin, but that's it. Plus, the skin isn't an Easter Egg by any account. It has a good, reasonable explanation. The mount was in an early beta (alpha?) and was removed. It's a true fossil (again, read the previous link).

But through metalepsis, the digital fossil moves from forgotten mount to legend. That's a distinctly human reaction. We explain the unexplainable through story and narrative, and sometimes prefer to be seduced by romanticism rather than apply William's Razor.

Okay, that's enough. Your homework is to read every link in this post, and then find the cave of metaleptic legend.


And speaking of things not changing, you'll never guess what my first LFG instance was. Okay, well, yes, yes you will. The upside is that I sure as heck remember how to run it.

[1] Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you; beyond capturing the raw materials of my time playing, this blog is essentially just hedonism.

Skylanders -- Swinging virtual markets back into material goods

If you don't have an excuse to play Skylanders, find some family member who does. It's an enjoyable mix of Pokemon with Gauntlet (turns out I'm not the first to think of this, but the gameplay is uncannily similar), though the most fascinating thing for me is its use of good ole, old school, material toys. I'm old enough to remember playing with toys before video games, and even spending most of my free play time using toys I could move, rather than staring at the fancy sprites on the TV. If you asked me to draw the way a Star Wars figure with a lightsaber worked, I could probably create a drawing accurate to within a millimeter or two. You could give me five different types of plastic of varying solidity, and I could tell you exactly which was used to create Luke. That's the sort of obsessive concentration kids give things. I'm not saying you can't obsess over video games -- I have, and jokingly took the author of Indenture to task for not getting wall collisions just right in his remake of Adventure for the 2600. But there's something about holding a toy, not just make-believing, but simply holding, that would seem to be lost with video games. You might know your controller inside and out, but that's where the material exploration ends.

Skylanders puts that back into console gaming in an exceptionally creative way. There's something already magical about a totem. And the portal is awesome. It glows. It changes color depending on what's put on top of it. Seems it even rings the base of your statues with more concentrated color, but I didn't get to play too long before the PS3 was taken over by younger folk.



If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about, this is a video game for one or two players, where you run around blasting monsters, collecting treasure, and occasionally healing yourself by grabbing food. It's decently 3D (as opposed to a 2D platformer). You have two attacks (at least?). And what character you play is determined by which one or two toys you've picked to place on the "Power Portal" pictured above. Your two attacks, the "elemental type" of characters you're using, etc, are all driven by these little statues. The game with 3 statues and the portal runs $60. Statues/figures are sold separately too for at one time as little as $5 and now around $10 a piece. There are, I think, thirty-two of the buggers now, though Toys R Us has their own, slightly different, "legendary" versions of four more, soon to be eight. One of the neatest hooks for me is that these things apparently remember when you earn them new powers, and they (with their powers) can be transferred from one platform to another. So your friend who used his figure on his Wii and powered it up could trade you for another figure you've used on your PS3 to allow you both to access different parts of the game.

I was happily surprised to find that that magic was at least partially inspired by Paul Reiche III. He's one of the fellows behind Mail Order Monsters, perhaps the mother of all of these stat-driven, totem-based games, as well as a number of Advanced Dungeon and Dragons modules. Reiche (who I just noticed I'd misread as Richie for decades) is Skylander's creative director. He also did Archon, and, even more impressive, its sequel, the gaming gem Adept, which for me is still a perfect blend of strategy and gameplay. He's also a guy I can't think of without this music going off in my head.

I'll try not to go too much into how having a good to sell in what was supposed to be a market now driven by digital distribution has to be a game-changer for Gamestop and, with their exclusive "Legendary" skylanders, Toys R Us. Instead, there's a very good article by Matt Matthews (full disclosure: a college buddy) over at Gamasutra from last December called How GameStop Is Conforming To A Digital Economy that details how important GameStop is to game publishers, and how the move to downloadable content (DLC) is affecting their stores. A quick quote:

The genius of GameStop's retail business model is that it combines a quick trade-in program with a large selection of games, both new and used, which can then be bought with trade-in credit. A highly-optimized distribution network ensures that many stores are well-stocked and GameStop's employees are trained to zealously promote products to consumers and extol the benefits of the trade-in system.

Publishers grumble, but the retailer is simply too big to ignore. For example, in its last quarterly statement Electronic Arts reported that 16 percent of its total net revenue came from direct sales to GameStop. Walmart, the biggest retailer in the world? They're just 10 percent of EA's revenue.

He then, and this is why his article is well worth the read, goes on to explain how GameStop has entered the "high-margin" for publishers world of downloadable content, though that sort of distribution seems at absolute odds for a brick & mortar store.

Again, though, Skylanders swaps out both that used-sales-plus-trade-ins and DLC models and swaps them out, I discovered, almost completely. First, the demand for the toys is insane, which is an absolutely unfathomable boon for stores. When I went to Toys R Us to pick up a legendary Trigger Happy (the most Gauntlet-elf-like of the characters I'd tried -- very fast runner with good ranged attacks), the cashier said that the truck that came in the week before Trigger's sold out the same day. In the recent load, they'd apparently recently gotten sixty or more Legendary Trigger Happys, and they'd sell out of them too before a week was out. Insane. Black Friday in March insane. And Toys R Us is smart enough not to sell these things online. I left with Trigger Happy, a Barbie movie, and some other silly stuffed animal that sings. Hello, impulse sales. That's something that's much less likely to happen when I buy online, if only because of the relative minimization of the number of times I hear a high-pitched "please!!!" That Apple put a music store in a pocket that goes everywhere I do was scary, but there's still something singularly powerful about a well-arranged, physical store that DLC will likely never completely recreate.

The flip side is that Gamestop, when I checked in, told me that they won't buy back the Skylanders game, and so had no used copies to sell! I was told that's because so many of the used portals had issues, but I'm not sure I'm buying that excuse. As Matt's article says, GameStop conventionally makes its cash not just selling used games, but "buying" them from customers for locked-in credit at GameStop. GameStop gets to have suppliers who agree, as part of their sales agreement, to become buyers. Brilliant. When GameStop sells used, Activision and other game publishers don't make another dime on those used sales, a position reminiscent of the Writers' Guild when they considered suing Amazon in their stare-down ten years ago.

Is the no-used-Skylanders position some sort of secret handshake? Is Activision saying, "We'll give you something tangible that'll make folks go to your store, but only if you don't sell the game to anyone without giving us our share"? That might explain Toys R Us' inside track on the Legendary Skylanders, who come slightly more powerful than the stock versions, and, obviously, are therefore a heck of a lot more desirable to gamers, a little like the Ultima Online Advanced Character. Toys R Us doesn't sell used.

So Skylanders' system seems to break down the two newest sales models for video game distribution, trade-in-to-used-sales and DLC.

Now the worst for me, and what I'd initially planned on blogging here, is the way even this kids' game requires some serious theorycrafting. That's not new, of course. Somehow, I got roped into writing a game guide for Pokemon Stadium, explaining how to use the in-game "rental" Pokemon to beat each round of foes from the game. Yes, I wrote this, right here. Which means I also played enough Pokemon Stadium to understand what all that jive in the guide means. And though it's not rocket science, it is a science.

A fun breakdown of requirements and their corresponding expense can be found here, at Kotaku, titled, "Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure Could Be The Most Expensive Game You Ever Buy".

For instance, each level in the game features doors that can only be opened by Skylanders of a specific element. The game comes with three. There are eight elements. Behind those doors lie short obstacle courses containing in-game prizes (power augmenting hats) that can’t be completely accessed unless you own a toy of each eight elements. With characters running $US7.99 a piece, that brings the total up to $US109.

But wait, there’s more!

Each Skylander unlocks its own heroic challenge in the game. Completing these challenges grants permanent stat and power buffs to whichever Skylander undergoes the trial, so in order to get the most power out of your characters, you’ll need all of them. Since only 12 additional characters are currently available, the total rises to $US165, and that’s before wave two even hits.

... and that's without having touched expansions. To see all of the game, you have to theorycraft-light your way to eight figures of different elements. If you think parents aren't going to say, "Oooops, I got you a second magic Skylander! Sorry!" fairly often, you've forgotten too much of your childhood. Further, to get the most powerful Skylander, you need every freakin' one. I've barely played, but I think that's meant literally. You have to have each one (and, again, there are 32-36 now, depending on how you count) to maximize the power of each one of your figures. You can't just play the heck out of the game with one or two. They'll still be relatively weak unless you buy THEM ALL. Muahahahaha!!!!

Even smarter? Embedded commercials!

As you play through the console game you’re constantly unlocking special powers for characters you don’t own yet. The game lets you know which power is for what character, and then shows you a preview of that character in action specifically tailored to making young children scream at their parents until they own one.

Eat that, Disney Channel!

The same sort of collecting craziness happens in WoW, of course, and it's what keeps us playing after a certain point; it's just harder to see the money leaving your pocket. There's a Pokemon-like "collect them all" mentality to WoW, whether it's "practical" stuff like gear, but gear that depreciates to worthlessness whenever Blizzard decides it should, or whether we're collecting just for fun stuff like vanity pets that I've managed to almost completely ignore. Minus my cats. And the Warbot. I really like my Warbot.

There's an addiction to collecting and a direct tie-in between addiction and successful marketing and markets (cigarettes, Coke, even Chips Ahoy), and though you can overdo Skylanders (Kotaku tallies up at least $320 of purchases for the "full" Skylanders experience), I'm awfully happy to once again see it popular to do some old school gaming -- where "gaming" here means just plain old "playing with toys". I guess that's also part of why I like FigurePrints, which makes the virtual characters a little more real. But at $28 for the game used with Power Portal and $10 for Trigger Happy, I don't think I've gone overboard just yet.

EDIT: Here's the best list of Skylanders I've found yet with some details on rarity. It's the first I've seen of silver and gold painted Skylanders that are apparently dropped in randomly with shipments to stores. Again, brilliant. The list even has a nice "Full Skylander Character Comparison" section with stats.

Release the mathes!

EVE's microtransactions: Developing profit vs. fun? Virtual vs. Real?

Spinks recently had a post on EVE's apparent plans to put pretty involved microtransactions into the game.  Her response was, well, I can't quite say "common", because it's not the most common response, but perhaps it's the most predictable of the interesting, thoughtful responses.  Here's a bit.

One of the main reasons that I think long term players get concerned about some of these microtransaction plans is that there’s a point where you wonder how far game devs are putting profit above making fun games. And if your main concern as a consumer is to buy (and pay for) fun games, you’d probably like THAT to be their main focus. [emphasis mine]

These are interesting distinctions.  Is there really a fun vs. profit measurement duality for video game developers?  Isn't profit always the primary motivator for, say, Blizzard and CCP Games when they're designing a game?  Whose job is motivated and measured only by fun maximization?  I wonder about playtesters, but I'm having a hard time arguing they're really primarily about fun; having done that a bit, it's more of a bug finding expedition.  In fact, the only game designer I can think of that's really gotten away with "fun" (measured perhaps in unconventional ways) rather than profit is id, where johnc seems to be able to release when he's darned well ready, after the game has whatever techs and features he feels are appropriate.  It's the one place where "When it's done" is always the deadline, and if there's no id software release for, well, years, that's also okay.  But they only get to ignore profit because they already have plenty [and apparently manage that profit fairly well!].  I think you also have to argue that they changed the mode of production with video game design, or at least added an alternative mode, that of shareware.  They could make a game on their own schedule and release, give or take, directly to their market.  PopCap has a lot to thank id for pioneering.

Well, I guess there's another prime example of a "game dev" who puts "fun" above profits, and that's Jonathan Blow.  Braid was a game that was meant to be completely for "fun", though I believe the term of art is (ironically) an "art" game.  Watching what he's doing with The Witness, the currently in-dev Braid follow-up, is also interesting, particularly his undercover demo of the game at the Penny Arcade Expo.


I mean, Blow is a guy who says stuff like, "[My presentation is] about 'best practices' of modern game design that I find unsettling, and the way in which 'social games' and 'gamification' are destructive."  Though Braid has been horribly successful and, I think it's safe to assume, a serious moneymaker, he's likely (?) not primarily motivated by profit.  Rather, he's at the very least actively interested in (vs. id, who was passively hoping to) redefining the mode of production for video game design and consumption. 

Anyone who comments on the state of games should watch Blow's MIGS lecture slides with audio here to see a sort of game developer countculture/alternative.

(There are others who might call themselves academic game developers, but honestly, I'm not sure I've seen anyone more motivated as a group by money, with some exceptionally notable exceptions (he said twice), than academics.  Academics [in the humanities and in "hybrid" or interdiscplinary fields that include or originate largely in the humanities; engineering professors, eg, are much more honest about their profit-centric research] money fetish is revealed largely by their obsession with repressing their pursuit of cash, you know, like when they frame funding as "a necessarily evil", but love to wield the power from grants like children on their birthday.  I can't consider most of these academic game developers in the same boat with Blow though, again, many are doing good stuff.  For example, based on their work that I've seen, I'd like to think Michael Mateas or Nick Montfort is trying, but I don't know either well.)

Let me also mention, just for Google, "singular rhythms" here.

Anyhow, here's the discussion from Spink's blog, copied here in case Spinksville ever goes away (not that it should, it's just that I hate when blogs disappear).

on June 23, 2011 at 5:11 pm | Reply jalindrine

we like virtual worlds because they’re separate from the rat race of the real world. It’s because the real world doesn’t have much effect on the game world that the game world can be relaxed and fun

You’re first going to have to show me which games don’t overlap with the “real world”. Some are softballs, like “time”, which is obviously shared. But you also have to think about links between hardware requirements, internet access, and economic status. Think Bot Fighters (a mobile phone game) vs. World of Warcraft. Also think of cultural overlaps — ever seen someone speaking French in game? Fun, isn’t it?

As brief as I can put it: There’s no way I play Sojourn MUD literally for days if I’m not a student in college, you know? I’m not exposed to it, I don’t have the always-on network connection to play, nor the “free” time at 2am to play.

There’s a willful suspension of belief [sic] when someone goes virtual, but virtual is always about potential (sorry to trend Deleuzian here) rather than an alternative to the real.

• on June 23, 2011 at 5:34 pm | Reply spinks

  
  

  “You’re first going to have to show me which games don’t overlap with the “real world”

  
  

  If you really don’t want to assume people have time and hardware enough to play computer games then I guess board games or storytelling games is where you start, and assume the majority of people could make 20 mins for a social gaming session.

  
  

  But we’re talking about computer games, so let’s assume a baseline of hardware and some available time. It is pretty easy to suspend disbelief in a virtual setting, even with minimal graphics, so it won’t need to be especially good hardware. I’m quite good at suspending disbelief, but not if game mechanics are constantly throwing RL in my face.

  
  

  But ultimately it’s easier to think of it as a continuum. Some games or types of games it’ll be easier for a player to immerse and shut the real world aspects out while they play, others it’ll be more in your face the whole time. You can still play Sojourn MUD without playing it for days on end, right? Presumably a game where power is related to time available is more immersive than one where it’s related to both time available AND RL money available. I did say minimal overlap, not none at all. I just meant a game where it’s easy to pretend it really is another world.

  
  
  • on June 24, 2011 at 3:19 pm jalindrine

    First, just to be clear, I never played Sojourn MUD for days on end. It was just that my /played there was the first I’d seen measured in days, which scared me. Little did I know how low that number would be relative to what I’d be playing in a few years… ;^)

    
    

    In my post, I was just trying to focus you away from virtual vs. real. It’s so much more interesting to talk about how the two interact, as they’re always interacting. The real world always has a direct effect on the game, since there’s really no distinction. Even a board game is highly situated culturally and commercially. What game? Where was it made? How was it made? What supply chains are required for it to be made and distributed? How was it marketed? What are the origins of its rules? Does it require literacy to play? Math? Logic? What types of logic does it favor? How is gender represented in-game? etc etc etc Those are interesting questions, but for me, MMOs raise some more very interesting and specific ones.

    
    

    So here, I wonder what’s lost by having cosmetic items in game? How does the ability to directly translate conventional cash into goods break your suspension of disbelief — and why? Why is a shirt purchased with traditional 1st world currency any more off-putting than one purchased with in-game only currency? Both require time to amass. Both represent work traded for consumables. Both sorts of goods accumulation represent very similar rat races. Why is it that a highly structured and controlled rat race in-game is more liberating to you than the rat race of a gameless life? What’s the benefit of keeping a mental distinction between the two? Is there a point at which the online rat race could become the drudgery and you’re excited about your job? Do[es] anyone work at Starbucks to escape their boutique in Second Life? ;^) These are interesting questions with potentially enlightening answers, I think.

    
    

    The lack of virtual vs. real is largely the point of Edward Castronova’s work, but it’s a line of inquiry that’s worth extending. Sure, there’s a relatively minimal overlap somewhere, but that’s only a relative measurement. Dig a bit under the surface, and that perception of a minimum overlap is actually a heck of a deep interconnection.

I guess I would sum by saying, "Games always throw RL in your face, there are just times we've let ourselves get too habitualized to notice it." And it's there that the real politics begin.

3.1 fishing changes are unethical. [sic]

I put a pretty phat comment up on Restokin, a blog I enjoy even if they spec'd their druid wrong. ;^D Unfortunately they were championing another change in the game that makes it more "accessible," which plays into a number of my pet peeve topics. Here it is, reproduced below (actually, I ended up drafting here then c&p'n there.)

However, I really think they made some great improvements to fishing in the 3.1 patch that convinced me to go back and work on my fishing some more.

What was that change? I can now fish anywhere, even with a terrible fishing skill. I could fish in the dalaran sewers or pond. I can fish anywhere in Northrend.

This reminds me too much of why of Teeth and Claws said he was hanging it up and leaving WoW: the game's becoming too accessible, imo. He's not the only druid that's said see ya to WoW recently either (a bit about it here).

There's a problem with ghettoizing the old world as well as cheapening the work behind the sense of achievement those that truly grinded through parts of the game have "earned". This change in fishing reminds me a bit too much of the reasoning behind dailies. Make the game easier and bribe your players with a little virtual cash. Good thing WoW learned the lesson from Ultima Online that a closed economic system doesn't work, and went straight to manipulating the virtual market in an attempt to maximize reality cash. (I'd say there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but then Jonathan Blow apparently thinks there is. Check the RPG Vault article I linked earlier, and Teeth and Claws is talking the topic up some more now too.)

And seriously (insert smilies! I kid Hasselhoff, I kid!), there's no excuse for a druid not to level up fishing the "right way". Moonglade teleport and a few casts before sign-offs, anyone?! ;^)

History of Proudmoore and the Briefe and True Account of the Purpose of Dailies

This post from Lukov on the WoW Forums does a super job of succinctly describing the Proudmoore server, which just happens to be where Jal lives. From it, I found this section just interesting enough to blog about in particular (though anyone interested in Proudmoore should take a quick read):

Server Economics:
As a day 1 server with a well entrenched raiding population, the server suffers (or benefits, depending on your perspective) with inflated prices on many items. This is much more obvious on Horde due to Alliance, as the population imbalance results in a limited supply with a similar level of demand.

Do your dailies and you'll be fine for cash, even with 4 nights of raiding a week.

(emph mine)

Well, at least we've come clean. I've been a little upset over the inflation that the dailies have caused since my return, even if it means that I'm up over 450g now playing on a very part-time basis. I'm not sure how I feel about it in this context, though -- specifically that the dailies aren't so much about bribing players to stick around until the expansion, but are rather so that more casual players can start raiding without knowing where to go for cash. Now, if you've tried a daily quest or two, you darn well know where they're printing hats of money.

In other news, I decided carrying around only one idol, and one that was only useful for those few minutes I'm in cat form and decide to attack, was sooooo lvl 58 and that I should start hunting up a new one. Enter the The Idol of the Avenger. No, it's not too powerful, and I'd rather have one of the Moonfire idols, but here's the key -- this one is a simple quest reward that doesn't require 300 riding skill (5000g) and running a heroic instance or whacking random trash mobs. It requires only a good, fixed amount of time, which is apparently something resembling 2-4 hours. The gold is about as good as running dailies to boot.

Now, every Wrath I cast is at least 25 points stronger. Woohoo. When you're a Wrath-spamming boomkin, every bit helps.

Idol of the Avenger
Binds when picked up
Unique
RelicIdol
Equip: Increases the damage dealt by Wrath by 25. 

Source: wow.allakhazam.com

Oddly, I mostly ran the quests related to getting the idol in panzer mode. Melee mobs still seem more sustainable when panzer'd up. The picture, above, was when I'd just about put the sustainability theory to the max, as I cycloned one last mob to sneak in a Healing Touch.

Panzerkin Introductions

As this is a first post, introductions are in order. This blog will focus on one type of World of Warcraft gamer, but will hopefully be interesting -- at times! -- for anyone that overlaps at all with the following description:

I'm a casual WoW gamer, trying to ramp my balance druid up from mostly soloing quests to a diet rich in instancing and raiding.

That's it -- the Confessions of a Part-Time Panzerkin.

Confessions: Not the most experienced player here. Solid, but not a know-it-all. Heck, I just main-tanked for the first time in a level-appropriate instance last night. TONS of solo questing, I do have. A good deal of Scarlet Monastry experience and a time share in Blackrock Depths? Got 'em. Key to Scholomance? Yeah boy. But I'll be confessing a lot of naivety here.

Part-time: I don't play ten hours a week. In fact, I've been playing the same main for just over two years, if you'll excuse (but count) the six-month layoff to "get some work done." Over those 18 months to 60, I averaged less than an hour's play a day. My gear has almost always been made up of greens with a few blues. I didn't buy the expansion the month it was released, and waited until March to join in. I've been in two guilds, both social. Until now, I've played for structureless fun. How do you move from casual gamer to raider? Aside from a ton of play time, I don't know. Let's find out.

Panzerkin: I'll relate some of the best, easily found balance gear that has quickly moved me from a decent level 58 to a much more powerful 62; boy, the Burning Crusade has great stuff. If I think I've learned a trick for casual druid moonkins (in that order) I'll share. (They're rare, but if you're below 60 and haven't soloed Lord Roccor, or if you're a balance druid and haven't purchased something "of Nature's Wrath" from the Auction House, you're missing out.)

Critical Thought?
Occasionally, I'll also wax nearly academic, I'm afraid, like when I discuss how Blizzard's incredible political correctness means that half the humanoid mobs are female, that there's no difference between the powers of males and females, and that this means that half the time Blizzard's got you beating the crap out of a woman before taking her money. Luckily, the blogger "key words" should make those "academic" posts pretty obvious.

So that's about it. The only people reading this post, since nobody but me will know about the blog when I post it, will likely be those interested enough to know its quick history. That either means the blog's a partial success, or one heck of a joke. Either way, thanks for dropping by and reading. I hope a few of the posts will be useful, and am eager to hear your replies.