Congratulations! I love being an officer in my guild, despite the fact that it’s impossible to log in without getting three tells from people with problems and two more from people who want something from the guild bank.
That kinda sucks about the “attitude” thing, though. I hope you can get that worked out. I do get highly annoyed by some of the sexism in WoW sometimes. Fortunately my guild doesn’t have an issue with it–they tease some of the women for being ditzes, but they eat it up so it’s no problem. Me, when I joined my guild back in February of '08, I kept my gender ambiguous (male toon, “I don’t have a mic”) until they got used to the fact that I was competent and couldn’t judge me on gender (not that most of them would have, but I hate being “treated like a girl” in a negative or positive way). I didn’t “out” myself except to a couple of folks privately until I became an officer and had to talk on Vent. By then they were all used to me and caught the clue that the “girl” stuff didn’t fly with me.
You can bet someone from Blizzard will have the final sign-off on the screenplay. This is an interesting situation; many game-inspired movies show up after the game has mostly run its course. The game is generally no longer being actively marketed, the publisher has gotten most of the money they expect to get, and so they sell the movie rights to get that much more profit off the name.
Admittedly that all is kind of a WAG, but the point is most games are a one-shot deal; after bug patching, they’re done and the developer’s already moved on to their next project. Warcraft, on the other hand, is an incredibly strong IP for Blizzard. They have an enduring, ongoing investment in the property, continually adding to the lore and refining WoW. The movie will be related to a game that is still strongly popular as of the movie’s release. Not only that, but it’s also the single more profitable game in the history of video games.
The money means nothing to Blizzard; they make more in a month from subscriptions than they will over the life of the movie. What they will care about is how the movie affects public perception of their IP. While a bad movie won’t do much to hurt the game (I just can’t see people unsubscribing because the movie sucks), a good movie has the potential to give them a huge boost in subscriptions, both by one-time addicts resubscribing and by new people who see the movie and get excited about Warcraft.
So yeah, I’m pretty sure Blizzard’s going to make sure this is a quality production. Getting Raimi as the director is the first step toward that (he’s not an amazing director, but he’s not freaking Uwe Boll). Blizzard’s got the money and the interest, and while their decisions on lore can be controversial sometimes (so I’m given to understand), by and large it’s very compelling for a fictional setting.
As for which story, my guess is it’ll be something players don’t get to experience in-game. It’ll also be iconic; I suppose they could do something with Wrynn to promote their new Thrall-clone, but I rather suspect they’re going to pull from before WoW and tap into storylines from WC1-3. My guess is it’s either going to follow Thrall or Arthas. I’m leaning toward Thrall; his story would make for a better conventional heroic movie plot, and Arthas would evoke too much of the Star Wars prequels in his anticipated fall.
Because I raid, people find out that I’m female pretty quickly. There isn’t any blatant, open discrimination–people just have a track record of responding differently to me than to male players making similar or even less-tactful comments. I’m just glad my GM finally decided that the fact that I’m a great tank who busts her ass for the guild means more than QQing from morons who don’t like it when someone with a vagina points out ways to help them suck less.
I agree. I would definitely prefer a Thrall-centered movie. He’s my favorite character in WoW. But do you think America, an openly human-biased nation, is ready for a movie with an Orc leading character?
Why, that’s the most egregiously sexist thing I’ve ever heard
I pulled my human DK out of cold storage last night to try to work his mining up some more. Geez those mithril veins are scarce when you need them. I lucked into finding 2 truesilver veins, which I was able to smelt and raise my Mining skill high enough that I can mine thorium now, which will get me on my way to 300 so I can run him to Outland.
But combat … his mining skill level finally has him in areas where the mobs are at least getting close to his level, so I had to actually start using his special abilities, and yeah … it felt like mashing random buttons. Unlike playing my paladins (or any of my other class toons) I just couldn’t get a sense of what each ability was actually doing. Honestly, I think it’s the same problem you see with people who have bought high-level toons off eBay — too many abilities essentially all at once so you don’t get to gradually learn how to use each ability as it’s acquired. But I did kill enough lvl 51-55 mobs to level him to 59.
Heh. Yeah, it’s nice when that happens. It’s one of the main reasons why I’m in a mostly 18+ guild–most of the officers are over 35, and the ones who aren’t act like it in the ways that count. It worked out well for me because when I joined (with my mage main), the culture in the mage team was very competitive but also very supportive in the sense that the goal was to get all the raiding mages doing the best DPS they can. It was more “mages against other DPS casters” than “every mage for himself.” I ended up having a friendly rivalry with the guild’s then-top mage, and used him as my gauge for where I needed to be. The mage lead (now the guildleader) was also very “doesn’t suffer fools gladly” and was fanatic about competence and skill, and not forgiving of continued screwups. So I guess it would say it was a very “masculine” culture, but again in the right ways due to the fact that everybody was over the adolescent dick-waving phase. I fit in very well. All of this was before anybody but the mage lead knew my gender.
Currently, I’m sharing raid lead duties with my former mage buddy (who’s now the guild’s main tank and a fellow officer)–we work well together, because he’s good at setting up pulls and coordinating melee and tanks, I’m good at the big picture stuff and coordinating ranged DPS, and we’re both good at directing the fight real-time. I’ve never had an incident of anyone disrespecting me or failing to listen to me because of my gender. I think part of that is because of my personality–I just give the impression that I wouldn’t put up with that kind of garbage, and they respond accordingly. I’m also more than willing to admit when I don’t know what’s going on or to defer to somebody with better knowledge about a particular class mechanic or strategy, but when I’m the raid leader, the final decision is mine and everybody respects that.
Sorry about the ramble, but you kind of hit a topic of interest for me.
Yeah, I kind of feel that way too with my DK alt. I pulled him out last night to do Naxx-10 with some of our guild alts, non-raiders, and a couple of PUGs, and despite the fact that his unbuffed attack power is around 3100, his DPS was not very impressive (hanging out in the 1400-1900 range most of the time). I was using a rotation given to me by one of our raiding DPS DKs, but I still felt a lot of the time like I was just following the advice that was given to one of our Holy paladins when she wanted to pick up Ret as an off-spec: “Just hit buttons 1-5, then hit whatever lights up.” :rolleyes:
I’m used to l33t DPS on my mage, and it was quite demoralizing to be at the bottom of the DPS chart even against nonraiding mains. Fun run, though. I’d forgotten what Naxx-10 was like when it was actually a challenge.
Mostly, the GM is good about getting my back when people come bitching to them 'cause Big Momma SFG made them cry. He just needs to learn that not every complaint needs to be considered a legitimate complaint–some of them are just fucking stupid and people need to be told to shut the hell up.
To give you an idea of what I’m talking about… this is not me screaming at people for being morons. Worst-case is generally an in-combat “Person X, MOVE,” e.g. if I’m tanking KT and someone is standing in iceblock range of me. For example, there was a guy who linked his chest piece in response to a shoulder tier token. I said that if he wasn’t sure what slot a piece was for, he could look at what other people were linking or just ask and we’d be happy to tell him. He blew up at me and gquit later that night. (He came crawling back shortly thereafter.)
I do not, however, have problems with people not listening to me when I’m leading runs or explaining particular fights. Just with people taking feedback/comments/suggestions from me more personally than if they were coming from a guy. (And no, I’m not just being paranoid–last week, one of my male friends led some quick runs while our GM was out, and he was borderline-abusive to people who were doing stupid shit. AFAIK, not one person complained about it to the GM.)
Exactly what I was trying to get at. If I hit a Judgment, a bigass hammer conks them on the head, they take a chunk of damage, and I start getting healed or whatever. Consecration, the ground goes yellow and numbers start lighting up. Divine Storm, everything around me dies (:D).
I hit Plague Strike and Icy Touch, and little icons appear by the target’s health. There’s too many numbers going to figure out what’s causing what damage; all I can really tell is that health is gradually going down, and it seems like it goes down at the same rate no matter what I do.
Oh, sure, but it still doesn’t feel right to me. I’m not big on DoTs in general. My Hunter’s the same way; even though I understand Steady Shot and why it’s so damn useful, it doesn’t feel like it’s doing anything, even though I know it’s really helping my DPS when I spam it. Same for Serpent Sting.
Oh, I don’t have problems with people making suggestions, telling me I’m wrong, etc. (in fact, I often preface my briefings on raid encounters with “and as always, if I’m saying anything stupid here or forgetting anything, feel free to chime in”). Basically I have no problem with anything that the same person would do to a guy in the same situation. And I can certainly stand up for myself if anybody gets in my face. It’s one of the positive things about being 44 in a group of mostly twenty-somethings. I don’t intimidate.
It does amuse me to think of what my GM might do if anybody came crying to him about me hurting their widdle feelings. He’d most likely let them have it with some industrial-grade sarcasm before inviting them to STFO or there’s the door. (GM is one of the few people I know who can out-sarcasm me, he’s far less reluctant about being an ass when it’s necessary than I am, and we get along great because we see eye to eye on about 90% of guild issues). This would be particularly amusing given that I’m known in the guild as the diplomatic one–if somebody gets me to say something that hurts their feelings, that means they went so far over the line that they can’t even see the line anymore, and GM knows this.
Heh, this is more likely just your experience at the game coming through as well as being introduced to a different type of class. Fighting multiple enemies at once is how half my characters progress. Four or five is pretty much the average quantity. Warlock was using DOTs, fears and kiting, mage with ridonkulous amounts of focused AOE fire damage (or just sheer kiting immunity when frost - packs of 10-20 are easy as frost), holy priest by simply healing through the damage and feeding off spirit taps of early kills while spamming nova, the warrior by sweeping strikes (and now, Bladestorm), and the prot paladin…yeah, prot paladins. She made me money at level 70 by grinding mobs 25 to 30 at a time. That’s not an exaggeration. I’d still be doing it in Northrend, except I can’t find any place in the world where the enemies actually spawn that densely.
I’ve heard of hunters doing mass AOE with the advent of thunderstomp and a volley that actually does something, but admittedly, masses aren’t the hunter’s forte, they’re better at downing big game. My hunter got benched for a long time at level 28 for being too easy after she soloed an elite quest ( [DEPRECATED] Frostmaw - Quest - World of Warcraft ) - the catch being that the elite in question is level 37. Nine levels higher. Possible because hunter ranged attack mechanics bypass most of the restrictions that keep others from doing nearly anything to very higher level enemies.
In WoW, everybody is overpowered, just in different ways.
I like pets. I am looking forward to having a death knight so I get an amusingly named ghoul.
My draenei retadin has been stuck at 33 for the past day or so because I stopped off in the night elf lands to do a little rep grinding. She’s Revered with Darnassus now, but hasn’t gotten XP from killing anything in ages. Time to go back to somewhere that’s a little more my speed…although throwing down Consecration and watching furbolgs fall all around me is fun.
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