Ethnography of a Newbie

A) I was getting annoyed with my hair, so I put it in a pony tail. It's too short and layered, though, so most of it fell out. Joey saw it, and declared it to be Young Night Elf hair.

B) Standing, waiting for our coffees, Joey decides that Blink would be the best thing to have in real life out of WoW. Remember: he's been playing for less than a week, and he's already talking about it randomly, without any prompting, in public places. (Other than immortality, sickness only lasting a few minutes at a time, etc, I of course chose my rhino.)

C) Told him I was writing Ethnography of a Newbie, and that I was the Jane Goodall of the new WoW players.
"It's almost as if they're intelligent, and trying to tell us something."
"Yes, but it's hard to tell, they do speak a different language."
"True."
"But I found out what aggro means today!"

Ethnography of a Newbie

Joey has recruited another person into WoW. Already.

Ethnography of a Newbie

My pal, coworker, and future neighbor Joey has just started playing WoW. I don't really expect points for it or anything, but I'm going to just update about it once and a while.

Getting an angry text at 3:00 am because WoW won't work? How fun.

Not really being fair, there...

Alex St. John really bothered me today. Sure, he's an aggressive executive type, I understand that. The dismissive sexism? Not really my favorite thing.

I was sitting in the front row; I generally sit wherever there's the most room. He called the people in the front row something, either suck-ups or overachievers. Probably suck-ups. He went down the line from his left to his right asking everyone's favorite video games. He stopped a person or two short of me, which didn't bother me, but was unfortunate in retrospect.

Later, he was trying to make a point about Bejeweled, and looked at me and saw [Girl in Front Row - SHE MUST PLAY BEJEWELED!]. He asked if I played it, and I said yes. This was just after I added the WoW Addon for it, which I like. I had actually never played Bejeweled until that point. He asked why, and I said it was de-stressing, because it gets rid of all the other distractions I have. So does WoW, for that matter, and Brawl, and every video game ever, but I didn't say that. He looked at the class like "Hey guys, point made!"

Then, sometime later, he asked who hadn't played Halo. I raised my hand. I've just never particularly wanted to buy an XBox. For that matter, I've never bought a console game. I'm a console moocher, especially with my sister. As it happened, none of my friends own XBoxes either, so, no, I haven't played Halo. He asked why I hadn't, I said something stupid, but he got to the point of whether or not I would actually enjoy Halo, it's a huge investment to play console games without even trying them out first. That's a good point. I definitely give him that. I just wish he maybe would have picked someone else out, but he looked at me and saw Girl + Prior Admission of Bejeweled + Doesn't Play Halo = Perfect Stereotype.

So, after class, when both Wanda and I tried to talk to him, he just dismissively said, "Play more games first." I could see Wanda half-heartedly go "But she plays WoW," but for Alex. St. Jerk, it was case closed, move on.

It is a legitimate criticism that if I want to make this my career, I need to play more. I agree. I actually do. There have been a lot of game names mentioned in this class without me having a clue what they are. I just don't appreciate the assumption that Bejeweled is my game, at all.

Announcement.

Everyone knows that you can play Bejeweled and Peggle inside WoW, right?

Kristin is easily taken in by cute.

So, I'm just going to post a bunch of Noblegarden pictures. I don't usually get that involved in holidays, but I wasn't able to attend Easter at my great-grandmother's this year, and I have the feeling that has something to do with it.

On to the adorableness.

Kristin is shaking her bunny-maker.

For the first time in at least a year, I sat down and played WoW with other people in the room. Amazing. (It probably helped that after an hour or so, Cameron gave me his computer, a pretty high-powered desktop with an absurdly large screen, as compared to my very average laptop. It was better than anything else in the world.) I joined a guild for the first time since my original guild split in...2007? I may have my antisocial tendencies, but this was like seeing the sun for the first time in years. I'm not an active guild member, they just let people invite their friends, who can later apply to raid with everyone else.

I logged on for the first time since Tame (Exotic) became available. I now have a woolly rhino named Sweetums, and she completes me.

The real problem here, though, is Noblegarden. It's so horribly cute that I can't stop playing until I finish those achievements. And it's only available for one week, so I can't put it off. Nothing seems to motivate people like things being available for limited times only: score one for Blizzard and its holidays.

It does seem somewhat strange that the whole holiday is unbearably cute. It seems like one of those "know your audience" things, and I'm really wondering what the overlap is for "people who would squeal excitedly after their avatar got turned into a bunny" and "people who like to kill things mercilessly with their epic weapons and big spiky armor." On the other hand...it's Blizzard, and they can do what they want.

Also, a picture of Sweetums.