Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: It's just a game
by Adam Holisky 
Dec 2nd 2009 at 11:00AM
I might be wrong with this one, but I think World of Warcraft is just a game. I mean, it's something we all do in our spare time, and have fun with, right?
And it doesn't really matter, because at the end of the day everything is just pixels on the screen.
But maybe I'm off base here, and WoW isn't a game. Maybe it's real. What is real? Is there a spoon? I see dead people.
Retadinman asked...
"Why are draenei hated so much? The "lorelol" retcon wasn't really that big, but since my main character and posting avatar on the Forums (who are the same) are draenei, I get a lot of hate. Why is this?"
I think there's a legitimate academic discussion that can take place over the draenei retcon and the associated lore. Retcons are something that should typically be avoided, and Blizzard deservedly should take some flack for it. Of course, this is an ongoing tale, and it could be considered that the draenei are just another chapter in the book, that sort of thing. But, so go the arguments...
Now, the part about people giving you crap for rolling a space goat? They're just being immature and forgetting this is a game. There's a certain segment of the WoW community that gets all up in arms over their class and race, and take anything that's against them as a personal insult. It's just a game, we forget that all too often. Even though you're not personally insulting them by playing a draenei, they take your very presence as a problem, particularly in lore discussions. My advice? Ignore them.
RogueJedi asked...
"Why hasn't Blizzard shut down any more gold sites?"
We don't know, first of all. Secondly, Blizzard has gotten sites shut down in the past, but we don't know under what pretenses they were shut down, and any speculation we throw out there would be potentially slanderous, so we want to avoid that.
Remember that Blizzard's ToS, which says gold selling and buying is against the rules, is not the law. For a site to be forced to close, it has to be against the law civially or criminally. We don't know the specific situations in relation to the law, and we likely will never know, so it's best just to not say anything we don't know much about.
And everyone who says that Blizzard takes a cut from the gold selling sites is lying, there has never been any evidence of that, and any suggestion otherwise is proposterous.
Hyacinthe asked...
"Is Blizzard seriously not planning to itemize things for bear tanks?"
Because the druid kit does not rely on the defense stat and takes much from core and universal stats such as agility, stamina, and armor, there does not need to be gear specifically tuned to druid tanks (although there is some). Instead, druid tanks roll with rogues and cats. This isn't a bad situation, and is about equal with the other classes. Warlocks, mages, and shadow priests roll together (more or less). DPS paladins, warriors, and death knights roll together (more or less). Plate tanks roll together (more or less). And healers... well... healers are just nuts and roll on anything that they need -- same with hunters.
Remember, it's not about the gear, it's about the way your class interfaces with the gear.
Alex started the discussion...
What's your favorite WoW site, besides WoW.com?
Like Alex, I visit a ton of sites every day, and have several hundred in my RSS reader. On a daily basis I find myself visiting MMO-Champion, WoWWiki, and Wowhead. There are about 30 or so that I'll visit once a week, and another 50 that I'll frequent at least a few times a month. I'm working on a very large list of WoW resources for everyone, and that should be posted in the next couple days.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 9)
Jay Dec 2nd 2009 1:25PM
Gnomes are good to lick though. To lick a SpaceGoat is just... well... a little twisted.
marbar Dec 2nd 2009 1:49PM
unless the spacegoat is female, then it's kinky
mtsadowski Dec 2nd 2009 11:19AM
Ego!
That's why people get offended by space goats, minor nerfs or anything else for that matter. Some people LOVE nothing more than to feel offended. It feeds the ego and gives them a false sense of importance.
Sorry for sounding like Eckhart Tolle there, but sometimes WoW is a textbook example of this sort of thing.
jealouspirate Dec 2nd 2009 12:18PM
This.
My main is a Draenei Shaman, and I still encounter Horde players who don't think I "deserve" to play "their" class.
Eli Dec 2nd 2009 1:31PM
Agreed, this.
It's why WoW reflects RL in SO many aspects.
The drive to get gear/wealth (possessions and same)
QQing when your class gets nerfed, another is buffed (QQing over maybe some new law that decreases the amount of income your business makes, or little 8 year old timmy down the road gets an xbox 360, along with assassin's creed 2, bioshock 2, and MW 2 for his half-birthday)
QQ over changes that make certain grindy things easier, i.e. mounts, ways to get gear.
(Also known as "When I was your age (or level) I had to walk uphill both ways in the snow hopping on my broken foot while juggling three senior citizens with a sumo wrestler on my back. And this was to get to preschool everday." Feel free to exchange preschool with 'my level 40 mount')
Making fun of noobs because they basically don't have the experience you do... everyone has to start somewhere. (The seniors in highschools making fun of freshmen for being really awkward and walking slow and blocking the hallways.)
I could go on, but this is already way TL.
DR?
There's a reason why there are some really interesting observational studies on WoW; it mirrors, albeit in an MMORPG-type distortion, real life.
VelcroLizard Dec 2nd 2009 11:20AM
If patch 3.3 is set to come out next week, why hasn't there been a trailer. Doesn't Blizzard usually put out a trailer before every major content patch?
mtsadowski Dec 2nd 2009 11:22AM
Maybe we'll see one next week.
Neroon Dec 2nd 2009 11:27AM
If I remember right the trailers for Ulduar and ToC came out the day or night before the patch hit!
(cutaia) Dec 2nd 2009 11:21AM
Actually, a site doesn't neccesarily have to be against any law to be shut down. The site could just be against its hosting service's TOS. If Blizzard finds that, they can just bring it up with the host and hopefully get it shut down.
loop_not_defined Dec 2nd 2009 11:22AM
What, specifically, was retconned? The only thing I can find has to do with the Eredar being corrupted by Sargeras, instead of the other way around. The relationship between the Eredar and Draenei was not retconned, according to Wowwiki.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Draenei_controversy
peon47 Dec 2nd 2009 11:45AM
@johnnytorrance
"Retcon" means "RETroactive CONtinuity"
It's where someone who's telling a story goes back and changes something that's happened earlier, in order to make the next bit fit in.
Happens in comic books all of the time, movies and TV shows too. An example would be in Star Wars. Yoda trained Obi-wan in the original trilogy, but when they made the prequels, it showed that Obi-wan's trainer was Liam Neeson.
Kyale Dec 2nd 2009 12:02PM
Peon, your star wars analogy is a little off. Yoda did in fact train obi-wan, both as a very young Jedi before he became an apprentice and at the end of episode 3. While perhaps a bit ambiguous, this is not a ret-con as you suggest. Nothing was actually changed in the lore; the most you could say if you want to take issue with it was the lore was both expanded and better explained as the story was revealed.
Angrycelt Dec 2nd 2009 12:27PM
Sorry man - but you can't use the word "better" while describing those other movies. Didn't you get the memo?
The most positive thing allowed to be said about 1-3 is that "At least it makes more sense than Star Trek continuity."
(I know, let the Trekkie wrath begin...)
Perc Dec 2nd 2009 12:35PM
Oh Oh let me try!
As a Star Wars nerd I cannot pass up an opportunity to give an example of retcon between the original trilogy and the prequels. In Ep. 6 Luke asks Leia specifically what her *real* mother was like. Leia goes on to say something about her being beautiful, sad and in a dark place. This cannot happen given in Ep. 3 she dies *immediately* after giving birth: Leia could not have any memory of her or her hiding. Don't even get me started about the fact that in the book of Ep. 6 it has Luke remember being a baby on Dagobah with Leia and his mother before being separated.
On topic, I don't think the draenei is as bad as people make it out to be. But maybe its because I love playing the draenei.
(cutaia) Dec 2nd 2009 12:50PM
"In Ep. 6 Luke asks Leia specifically what her *real* mother was like. Leia goes on to say something about her being beautiful, sad and in a dark place. This cannot happen given in Ep. 3 she dies *immediately* after giving birth"
Yeah, people with dead mothers never give vague answers when asked about them. How absurd! Seriously, though...you're talking about a movie where dead folks constantly show up in ghost form to stare proudly and the force tells you when someone's sneaking up behind you. She can't have a "memory" about a dead person's sad loneliness, though?
I'm not saying that there aren't continuity problems in the movies, but I don't see how that is one of them.
Oni Stardust Dec 2nd 2009 2:24PM
I'd like to jump in with another example of retcon. Another place where retconing is commonplace is professional wrestling.
For example, the wrestler Ron Killings wrestled in the WWE for a fairly long time under the ring name "K-Kwick", during which time he managed to earn a couple title belts.
He then left the company for awhile and worked in a few other promotions before returning to the WWE not too long ago.
When Killings returned to the WWE, they decided to retcon his existence as K-Kwick and brought him in under a new ring name: R-Truth.
Because the K-Kwick character was retconed out and no longer officially existed in WWE history, the announcers and other wrestlers acted as if they had never met Truth before and he is not recognized as being a former champion. Essentially Killings was starting over from scratch with a new character.
Something similar was done with Chris Benoit, but that's a whole 'nother conversation.
Fairlane Dec 2nd 2009 11:01PM
I read this whole thing. Kill me.
Blacksheep Dec 2nd 2009 11:22AM
I like to think it's "just a game" technically it is, it's pixels powered by processors and graphics cards that create images on our computer. We are playing with and against other real people, but nothing we do in the game effects the actual world we live in. It's kind of like the Matrix, we are doing a lot in the "Matrix" the computer world of our avatars, but in real life, where we exist, nothing we do is altered by our in game actions.
However, one day there was a bunch of drama in my guild, right after we had successfully cleared a bunch of ToC bosses for the first time. A friend of mine mentioned that he believed "evil forces try to disrupt people who are doing good things" from time to time in the world. Leaving aside arguments about whether I believed that or not, I replied "I would think that if there are evil forces, they wouldn't really be focusing on disrupting a video game" lol. His response was that while a game, it's all fueled by actual human beings whose real emotions come through their characters, and that counts as human interaction too.
I'd say his latter point did make sense, we are all really a person behind the toon, same issues, emotions and prejudices. What I can't accept though, is that playing WoW changes the world in an discernible way, other than removing our presence from it for a few hours a day/week. So it is "just a game" but maybe a little more, considering, unlike Dragon Age Origins or Oblivion, we are interacting with actual people every time we log in.
loop_not_defined Dec 2nd 2009 11:24AM
Please clarify what you mean by "retcon".
And how is "time travel" more creative?
loop_not_defined Dec 2nd 2009 11:25AM
This was meant to reply to the first commenter. Don't know why it got posted separately. o_O