This week New Attitude begins with a story of good love gone bad with WoW and a little bit of payback. 

Better moats and gardens goes to South Qeynos on the Antonia Bayle server, and Knocking about Norath encounters a ticked off Djinn.

 Read on…

I met a cute little baby dragon in my travels this last weekend. We had great fun. You can see him above right where I am dancing with  him. Later on this week I will tell  you about my encounters with him. But in the mean time it had me thinking about some times in another game that weren’t so fun.

It’s not me - it’s you…

Perhaps it is in a movie, or maybe we have used the phrase ourselves, or had it used on us - but at some point we have all heard it - “It’s not you, it’s me.” Ah my friends this is not a story of unrequited love like Charlie Brown and his little red haired girl. Rather this is a story of a love that was VERY requited. Requited in the sense that it is high time for a bit of payback.

Yes, there was a time when World of Warcraft was new, and those of you who know my work from Virgin Worlds or Wowchron know I am a bit of a Rob Pardo fan girl. (For those of you who don’t know, Rob Pardo is the vice president of Game Design for Activision/Blizzard - the company that makes WoW). But somewhere along the line my love affair with the World of Warcraft went wrong - horribly wrong. Now when a woman leaves a man often she says “it’s not you, it’s me” in an effort to save his feelings.

But not this time…

World of Warcraft - Wow, honey, baby - it’s not me. This time it’s DEFINITELY you.

Now there was a time that I might have laid this entirely on the on the doorstep of some of the nasty  self centered gits that seem to fester like an open wound in the virtual universes I have been to - WoW being the most chief amongst these. While it is true that I have met some wonderful people in my virtual voyages, WoW (at least the server I was on) seems to have more than it’s share of bad apples.  A good case in point was one dolt that called himself “Valturo” that recently joined my sister’s pick up group.  She was kind enough to pass the group leader’s position to him when he asked. He returned her kindness by Valturo kicking my sister out of her own pickup group before the raid even started - a big joke to  him. The sad truth is that the anonymity of the internet allows people to hurl hateful behavior in the faces of other human beings, that in the real world somewhere would get them pounded into the ground like a tent stake.

But not all of the woes I experienced in WoW are because of someone with an ego so large it would take a team of Shirpa guides a week to scale to it’s summit. Some of it is because of poor game design. Mind you, the faulty game design in itself might not have been so bad, had the developers at Blizzard had a way to factor in the selfish nature of human beings. If you design your game so that the only way a raid can succeed is with a precise grouping of character classes the selfish nature of many human beings will hurl its ugly way into end game like a run away freight train.  It’s easier to try and dig up a mountain with a tea spoon than get into some end game raid groups. When The Burning Crusade hit and people started to reach end game, guilds started to fly apart, and any suggestion that all members of a given guild be included in the fun is often met with insults that would make Simon Legree proud.  I find it amazing that anyone would value a collection of pixels on a screen over friendship. Yet it not only happens, a while back I read a story about a lunatic that killed someone else over a collection of pixels.

Yet I have experienced none of this in Everquest 2 (EQ2).  Now it may be that I have managed to get in with a great group of people from a VERY large group called “The Older Gamers”.  Perhaps it is simply that EQ2 attracts a different group of people, after all John Smedley has been in the news time and again lately wanting to attract younger audiences to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). Perhaps it is that the developers at SOE have found a way to take into account human behavior in their game design.

All I know is that right now I am sitting in my hot tub in my hall in South Qeynos, the water is running, the tub is full of bubbles, the air is scented and guild chat is full of happy friends.

So what can I say WoW. It’s not me - it’s you.
Better Moats and Gardens goes to Qeynos

My travels this week took me to South Qeynos to the home of Aikia on the Antonia Bayle server.

I began by taking a quick look around the house (that’s me in my tiger identity).  The first room that truly caught my eye was the bedroom at the top of the grand staircase. Of all the houses I have stopped in my travels for better Moats and Gardens, this has to be the nicest of all. Perhaps it was the afternoon sun shining through the windows and the way it played across the fully carpeted room. Perhaps not. All  I can say is that it made me want to stretch out for an afternoon nap.

The six room home contains some rather distinctive fireplaces – all ingeniously assembled from other objects. One of my favorites is the one pictured above right. It has a simple list of items (see list below) from which it is built, the most expensive being, of course, the Spellbinder’s Ebon Sconce – expensive, that is, if you can’t make it yourself or don’t have the rare ingredient to make it. Still the sconce could easily be substituted with a generic wall sconce and be just as effective.

Teak Book Case
Small Ash Table
Spellbinder’s Ebon Sconce
Maj’dul Doorknocker

If you don’t believe me about the use of a generic sconce take a look at another of the fireplaces made from stone. This one graces the basement room that, as you will see, has been set up like a pub. The fireplace is made with inexpensive items – Oggokian stone tables, a wine rack, a Freeport counter (which is a vendor item), some broken chairs and, yes, a generic sconce.  Simple ingredients with a very effective outcome.

And speaking of the pub, take a look at the bar area on the left.  The most expensive items look to be the ironwood counters used for the bar itself.  The barrels (again a vendor item in Qeynos) are used very effectively to make sure the visitor knows just what the area is for, if there was any doubt.

But you won’t be forced to sit at the bar.  Right next to the bar is a comfy area filled with tables for that relaxing evening with friends. And when its time to retire for the night, right in the next room I found room, and to spare, for people to get some shut eye…

The cedar beds at left look comfy. However, as I was walking around this wonderful house in my tiger form the bear skin rugs had me a bit worried.

Upstairs in the small second floor study I found a unique chair – it was made from teak single beds. And as you can see from the picture at the right it made a great love seat that blended in well with the rest of the furniture!

If, like me, you just love the Sinking Sands and all of the wonderful desert decorations the house is not without them! Downstairs in the pub (on the left) there is a small alcove that has as stage which looks as if it was lifted straight out of the City of Maj’dul! The instruments are set and ready for the musicians to play!

But what home away from home would be complete without a spa? And the owner of this house hasn’t missed a thing on that account. Upstairs on the top floor, under the skylight you will find a relaxing oasis, with tubs ready for you to relax as you gaze up at the stars!
Knocking about Norath… Azhar’s Penitence

I feel so…so…used, so dirty. Damsel in distress indeed!  There I was minding my own business, walking out of the Golden Scepter. For those of you who may not know your way around Maj’dul, that is an indoor marketplace near the Court of Coins. As I am leaving a smallish woman (and that is saying something for a gnome!) a movement out of the corner of my eye draws my attention. I turn to my left and there amongst some thugs that call themselves the “Terrorantula Gang” is a woman trying to attract my attention – either that or she has something she has a wicked crick in her neck.  Now mind you I am not to happy having anything to do with a gang of thugs that takes its name from a spider the size of a large building in the deep desert. 

Well as they say, curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought her back. I hop down from the railing and try to talk to her. It’s about that time I feel a hand reach into my pocket. Naturally I think she is trying to pick my pocket – imagine my surprise to find that it’s a note she has trying to give to me. It seems she needs my help to escape her plight. With the note is this laundry list of items she apparently needs to save her – yah right. 

Against my better judgment I set off to retrieve the items. Sometimes to get one item I have to do a favor for a “guy who knows a guy”. Often helping such shady characters involves lengthy trips. On one such trip I was walking down the beach of an island off the coast of the Desert of Ro and there it was, half buried in the sand…

…a smoking lamp.

“A lamp – perhaps a magic lamp?”, I ask myself.

I look at the lamp for some time. Figuring I have nothing to lose I decide to pick it up and give it a quick polish. The result is exactly what I expected – sort of. I should have known. NOTHING in life turns out EXACTLY like we expect!

So out pops this Djinn. By now I have been in the Desert of Ro long enough to have run afoul of a Djinn or two. This one materializes and greats me.

“Muwadi! My master, pardon, pardon! I will never oppose your will again! I will do all you command!” he says.

When he realizes I am not this “Muwadi” person he politely introduces himself as Khalhan al-Azhar and just as politely offers me my choice of ways to die. At this point I figure that if this is what passes for politely manners in Djinn society I want nothing to do with it, but I doubt that I am going to get away that easily.

Then he launches into the whole Djinn stuck in the lamp routine…his master stuck him in there for disobedience…and yada, yada, yada.

He tells me for the first hundred years he swore if someone released him he would make them rich, but no one came. Then he tells me that for the next hundred years he swore he would make anyone who released him a leader of a great nation.  Lastly he tells me that now he’s just ticked off and swore to give anyone who released him their choice of deaths. Just my luck, I think to myself, my ship comes in and I am at the griffon master.

“It makes me wish I had come along earlier” I tell the Djinn.

So I figure the only way I am going to get rid of this guy is the whole “the Djinn is too big to have really fit into the lamp and I won’t believe you unless you show me” routine.  Much to my surprise it works…sort of.

The Djinn promptly whisks me off in to the lamp with him to prove his point. And quicker than you can say “where the heck am I” I find myself inside this lamp with the Djinn.

“Well hells bells” I say to myself.

 

So at that point I figure that I am probably not going anywhere for the next 300 years or so, so I may as well take a look around the place…

 It turns out the Djinn has some pretty nice digs. “Quite a place – high rent district stuff for it being an old tarnished lamp” I tell the ticked off Djinn. So the Djinn points out to me that there is at least one way out of the lamp but that I might not like it.

“What way is that?” I ask him.

“Feet first” says the Djinn.

“Oh so we are back to the whole ‘choice of the ways to die’ thing” I point out to the Djinn.

“Yup” he says and promptly invite me into the next room for a few trials by combat to the death. In the next room I find the walls lined with the Djinn’s floozies. One of them has the audacity to ask me if I am one of the “New Girls”. This is the point at which I think the floozy looks hungry so I give her a gnome sandwich – four knuckles all the way up to the wrist right in her fat kisser.

The Djinn tells me we will start the trials by combat with a little warm up and he sets his pet scorpions on me. Not little fellas – oh no, these guys are about the size of a pony! Still they don’t turn out to be too tough. And I am soon back with the Djinn telling him to “bring it on.”

Well be careful what you ask for. If I thought THOSE scorpions were big, next he brings in their mama. Well in the end it turns out that mama isn’t that much tougher than the babies and soon I am hip deep in dead scorpions.

Now the Djinn decides he hasn’t been polite enough and offers me yet another “way to die”.  He calls out two of this Cyclops lookin’ guys.  They come ambling into to the room, moving about as fast as a rhino being pushed across the rug on it’s horn. When I realize that one of them is a wizard or somethin’ I am a bit worried but this guys ends up being so slow that he would have trouble finding his own butt with both hands.  Soon the floor is getting real messy. What with the dead scorpions and dead Cyclops, the place is startin’ to stink as bad as the djinn’s attitude

So now the djinn gets made and tell me he’s going to call out “the king”.  Now I figure there is now way he has Lucan Dlere in his back room so I have no idea what he has in mind. What he has in mind is something that is one disgusting sight – a cobra called “King Vach” – and a magic usin’ cobra at that.

Now I try not too rude, but at this point I have had about enough of the Djinn’s hospitality and politely decline the last of his choices of ways to die. In the end, it turns out that there is another way out of the place. As happens so often with gnomes, the Djinn just gets tired of me, throws a magic bracelet at me and throws me out of his lamp – offering me his hospitality if I ever decide I want to cross paths with him again.

But that’s not where the story ends…The Sanctorium

Having escaped the hospitality of the Djinn on the beach I took off across the Sinking Sands in the direction of the Pillar’s of Flame.  I reached the mountainside and began riding along the edge of the mountain range. Suddenly I came upon an abandoned graveyard strewn with skeletons.  Now this is not a sight that is all that unusual in a place such as this. However, one of them to died in a rather unusual position. Careful inspection showed it to be a gateway. I soon found myself in a place called The Sanctorium – said to be the burial place of a renowned Paladin.  The truth of this I cannot yet say, but what I can relay is the wondrous yet deadly site that met my eyes.

I had seen the strange beings called “Tempest” in the Maj’dul arena. In fact I have one myself. I had not, until this point, seen one that was full grown.

Until next time…

 See you online,

 Julie Whitefeather