Posts with tag help

It is very rewarding to help new players adjust to World of Warcraft. It can also be extremely frustrating. In some cases, I wonder if we may ruin players by giving them too much help, like helping a butterfly from its chrysalis.

I remember when I first started playing WoW, I made some serious rookie mistakes. For example I didn't know how to repair my gear until I was level 17 and had no idea that one should train all three talent schools. I got a lot of advice along the way, but I kept more or less to my IRL companions even in game. I never really experienced the MM part of MMORPG until I was level 60 and running Zul'Gurrub. It was exciting and exhausting, but for the first time I really felt like I was experiencing the entirety of the game.

Last week CNN ran an editorial story about online game addictions. Its the typical story about how bad online games can be, and how this addiction can destroy a person's life. The article itself has some good examples of this, from both Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft.

In particular, a specialist at the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery at Proctor Hospital, talks about a young man in his twenties. This poor fellow has lost numerous jobs, his girlfriend, and is quite the recluse since he became addicted to World of Warcraft. It's quite the unfortunate tale, and I'm sure we're all sympathetic to his plight.

Many of us have someone in our family, or otherwise know someone who has dealt with an addiction. They can be a difficult period in everyone's life to deal with. Addictions to WoW and other games in the genera can be no less serious than an addiction to gambling. The results are all the same: people loose their jobs, their families, and can become severely depressed. When that happens disastrous things take place, such as the young man that lost his life in South Korea last year.

The article on CNN doesn't go into any great detail about what you can do if you think you or a loved one has an addiction to WoW. It does give some tips to family members, but CNN is hardly the place to go to for medical advice. Instead, don't bother with anything else then going right to your doctor. Any doctor, at any clinic, anywhere, can at least point you in the right direction.

I'm sure a few of our readers out there have dealt with this in the past, either directly or indirectly. What have you done? What stories do you have to tell?

Private Hudson over at Wife Agro wrote a very thought-provoking article about new players. While on one hand he complains that the lower level areas are becoming ghost towns, he also reports that he's actually seen some genuine new players on his server recently.

I remember reading a story a few months ago in the short-lived (now deceased) MMO Gaming Magazine about one of the writers who attempted to play the original Everquest for the first time, starting from scratch. The author spoke of the attitude he got from the established high-level players and how difficult it was for him to get his feet under him when there seemed to be nobody on the server who would help him with even the simplest task because nobody believed he was truly "new" to Everquest.

Private Hudson goes on describe and differentiate between two kinds of new players, and proposes that the good of the game is best served by helping them rather than mocking them or ignoring them. We were all new once, right?

A year ago when I was on Thorium Brotherhood (before The Burning Crusade), I remember guild events where we used to help new players, where we'd give away free bags to at least try to help them minimize the number of trips they'd have to make into town. Now you can shoot a cannon off in most of those zones, or if you do see people in them they are leveling at warp speed with their eyes closed because they have done the quests so many times.

Do you go out of your way to still attempt to be helpful? Or is there no point in wasting time on low level players when most of them are just re-rolls? How do you balance your availability to your own in-game goals with the task of welcoming new people instead of turning them away?

How well I remember the day I that created my warrior. I had seen a gnome walking around with an adorable name, a cute hat, and all that plate armor much too big for her, and I was suddenly inspired with a character idea that I just had to make real. As a roleplayer, I was fiercely excited to play this undauntedly brave gnome who would proclaim in an adorably child-like voice: "I am NOT cute! I'm the most fearsomest warrior you'll ever see!"

The character was wonderful fun to roleplay for a long time, and brought plenty of laughs with my friends, but after finally reaching level 40 and getting my cute mechanostrider mount, I realized I was getting killed way too often, killing monsters way too slowly, and just not having that much success at the actual "war" part of being a warrior. I had heard of a number of warriors complaining in the forums and it seemed that the class was just way too weak. So I gave up and blamed Blizzard for my bad experience -- but oh, how I was wrong...

When was the last time you helped someone you just met in-game? I don't just mean helped finish a quest, I mean helped at a time when no one else would. That's what Falcore on the European servers did.

He met a very young player who was getting bullied in-game and out. Falcore decided what this kid needed was a little morale boost. He bought the player some in-game shiny (epic mount, etc.) and then talked him up to other players. The boost to this player's self-esteem was immeasurable. So much so that Falcore later received a letter from the player's father explaining the boy's situation and the effect of Falcore's selfless deeds.

Did Falcore have to do this? No. He could have been farming for his own epic mount or yet another exalted faction or whatever was on his to do list. Instead he took time out of his own schedule to help a stranger to no benefit of himself.

If you've logged in to the game this afternoon (US realms), you've probably seen the regular messages showing up in your chat window explaining that the in-game petition system will be unavailable between 10:30AM and 1:30PM PDT. In case you managed to miss those, a message box also pops up whenever you zone in or out of an instance saying "GM Help Tickets are currently unavailable" and requiring you to click OK to make it go away. I do wonder what sort of issue would require them to take the in-game customer support system offline, but at least it's not during peak hours. If you're having problems before the system reappears, the customer service forum usually has a fairly good turnaround time.

Dave Child has been making handy cheat sheets for web developers and server monkeys for awhile now. This Valentine's Day, he's released a cheat sheet for World of Warcraft. While it's probably not that useful to the hardcore gamer, it is quite useful for new or casual WoW'ers.

Thanks to Jonic for the tip!