The Magazine

Sweet! The new World of Warcraft magazine arrived. It was in a plastic cover so a bit protected from the elements and the machines of snailmail, but I cringed a tiny bit inside when I noticed the edge of it dented in. The magazine is so pretty I wanted it to be in perfect condition. It is full of glossy artwork and the cover is heavy duty like the cover of a paperback novel.

I took it to work with me yesterday and since most of my time at work is spent on hold I spent all day perusing it. I am thoroughly impressed with the layout, the look, and the information. There were enough bits of information of particular interest to me, so the pages are loaded with stickynotes. The editors have done a good job making the magazine visually appealing as well as informative.

There was information about PVP play - Particularly using line of sight (LOS). I don't PVP much but the article was still a very interesting read. Information about the Trading Card Game (TCG) which I will never be involved in but I did enjoy reading about it, and an Interview with Blizzard Entertainment's president, Mike Morhaime as well as interviews with WOW players of note. I am glad I purchased the subscription. As I turned the last page, I wanted more, but it only comes out 4 issues a year (sigh).
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Okay, enough about the magazine. Last night was family night on WOW. What that means is my Son, his son, and my husbands brother all gather at my and my husbands home and play together. I have 3 computers set up ready to go all the time and two guests bring their laptops. Last night was a bit different as my sister came by, so I set up my laptop and there were six of us for a bit. That meant we needed to do a 6 person raid. Five people constitute a group, more than makes makes a raid. The dynamics of the game are that there are areas that will only allow a group and there are areas that will only allow a raid. My sister's character is a level 51 (at this point in time you can only achieve level 80 but that is changing soon) and the rest of us have all levels of toons but we decided to play with our 80s in a place called Zul'Gurub. Bless her heart, she is so patient. Thything told her to stay by him whatever we do (he was heals for this), Omin the pally tanked, Shadew is a druid and I am Cantique, shadow priest.

Okay for those non players...a Tank is the person with the most ability to stand face to face with the enemy and with the necessary heavy armor to engage an enemy and take a pounding. The tank has to make sure the enemy player (computer generated character- not a real person) stays focused on him/her and leaves the rest of the group alone. While the tank is being beat up, the others in the group have roles -- they stab or cast spells etc, they do what they can with their special abilities to hurt the enemy. The healer makes sure the people in his group/raid stay healed. Spell casting Healing spells is his/her job. (There's much, much more to this - This is simply a tidbit of info.)

So we went into the instance to basically help her get loot for when she levels to 60. The characters that you kill have "loot" on them. Loot can be coins, clothing, cloth, potions, food, weapons, bones and other junk. I love to loot to see what I get for my trouble! Sometimes the loot is very, very nice and will enhance your game play, sometimes not so much! LOL. Loot is so important in the game of WOW that if you don't have good loot armor and weapons and trinkets, rings, and necklaces you simply can't continue on in higher level fights. Luckily you can go to the auction house and get better stuff if you can afford it. But to afford anything you have to loot money, loot junk and sell it, loot good stuff and sell it or use it to make good stuff that other people need for their game and sell it on the auction house. Does this all make sense? In the World of Warcraft, you can have a profession! I think that is amazing!

What that means to me is this: If I don't feel like fighting today, I can work to gather materials (ore, or leather, or plants, cloth etc) and use these items to create things -- armor, potions, elixirs, weapons -- you get the idea? Then I can spend time setting them into the auction house for sale. Later other people playing the game, go to the auction house and look for stuff they want or need and might buy your stuff. You get the gold in your mailbox in the game. You use your gold to buy what you need. See? Anyway, there is a lot to buy, and alot of stuff to find, and a whole world to explore!! It's amazing.

Another thing I do If I don't really feel like stressful war/raid/fight is I stand around in the city and just talk and look at other people and check out what they are wearing (with a couple of keystrokes, you can try their clothes on) - it is very fun for me. Before I joined The Illuminati, most of my time was spent doing this kind of thing. I called the game "High Tech Paper Dolls".

I will write later about how joining a guild, The Illuminati, helped me learn so much more about this game. And yes, my sister did get good Loot last night, but she now has to level up her character to be able to use the equipment, weapons, Armor that she found in there. It's incentive.