The Gamer

My brother is a typical person living in a fantasy world. By day, he is thirty four year old mechanic working at Sullivan Tire’s commercial division. He has brown hair and brown eyes and a large frame built from years of working on monstrous trucks. He is married to his teenage sweetheart in a sort of love to hate relationship, meaning I have never seen two people so in love with each other who seem to argue 24 7. By night, however the story changes dramatically. At about 5 PM weekdays and on most weekends, soon after arriving home from work, a sort of metamorphosis occurs. My brother transforms into Mythadin, human paladin fighting to protect the lands of Azeroth.

World of Warcaft is an MMORPG which stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. This game allows its paid subscribers to create avatars in the fictitious world of Azeroth. The lands of Azeroth are as diverse as our own world with lush green pastures, barren deserts, and vast oceans which you can even drown in if you swim to far from shore without a boat. Travel across the land is made easier by buying or learning how to ride different types of transportation, from a good old fashion horse to an oversized elephant, which can also carry other players. Some of the more exotic types of transportation include raptors, griffons, tigers, dragons and even motorcycles. Azeroth contains many types of races but only two primary political factions, the Horde and the Alliance. The Horde is represented by the orcs of Durotar, the trolls of the Darkspear tribe, the tauren of Mulgore, and the blood elves of Quel'Thalas. The Alliance is represented by the humans of Stormwind, the dwarves of Khaz Modan, the gnomes of Gnomeregan, the night elves of Darnassus and the draenei of the Exodar. According to my brother, two more races will be added later this year, the goblins of the Bilgewater Cartel for the Horde and the worgen of Gilneas for the Alliance. In what I could only imagine as a way to diversify the game by the creators at Blizzard, each faction can select one of several classes of fighters. Players can choose such as paladin, warrior, death knight, hunter, shaman, rogue, druid, mage, priest and warlock from many classes, each class with their own specific set of talents and skills. Users of this game start off in a small village outside one of the major cities at level one and through completing feet’s of strengths and quests level unit their avatars reach the current maximum of level eighty. Users can elect to work by themselves or in groups of five or raids of ten, twenty-five or groups as large as 40 other players.

There are three types of paladins’ protection, retribution and holy. Protection paladins or tanks, as the games users refer to them, are designed to take a beating by the enemy. They are covered in armor and have spells designed to reduce the damage taken and to regenerate there life pool or hit points as they are attacked. Their primary function is not to cause damage but to aggravate the enemy and hold there attention while the other players attack. Holy paladins or healers are used to help rejuvenate the hit points lost as the raid group continues is forward assault. Retribution paladins or ret for short, are used to cause a huge amount of damage to their designated target measured only by their damage per second or DPS. These three types of paladins group together with other classes to for a cohesive group in completing the tasks.

My brother prepares himself for the day’s task. He retrieves some snacks from the kitchen and heads to the basement where he boots on his computer and logs into the game. As Mythadin materializes in the city of Dalaran, a floating sky city sanctuary, his fellow guild members, each completing their own routines to prepare for an adventure, greet him. Mythdin is a human about average height as it relates to the artificial environment. He has a pale white complexion and a blonde Goatee and hair barely visible though his blue double horned helmet. His armor is a brownish read with hints of purple on his cape shoulders and wrist guards. He carries a two handed axe which appears to be made of bone which he carries on his back when not engaged in battle. He runs by dwarfs and gnomes, clearly visible by there extremely short stature and night elves and draenei, which appear to tower over the human. Mythadin lead into the stores with an effortless movement of the mouse. He begins filling up on potions, food and candles. Yes, I said candles. The candles caught me a little off guard as well but my brother explains these are used to cast spells on the group, which will increase their abilities while in battle.

Mythadin is a level eighty retribution paladin currently working with 24 other players who are hoping to assault and eventfully kill the Lich King, the Lord of the Scourge. Soon another member of his guild a paladin invites him by the name of Lansolot who was requesting Mythadin to join him. Lansolot is another level 80 paladin however, unlike his teammate Mythadin he is a protection paladin. When the group started to form, it was clear this paladin was meant for some important task. Unlike Mythadin who had who had a mere 26,000 hit points, as indicated by a small icon which displayed on the upper left corner of the Mythadin’s screen, Lansolot had an astonishing 46,000. Thanks to software called Ventrilo, I was able to speak with Lansolot for a short time. He has been playing World of Warcraft for about two years. He has three other level 80 characters, which include a druid name Evet, a priest named Gåheris, and a shaman named Persivåle. He told me all of his characters are named after King Arthur’s knights, less his druid, as he is fascinated by Arthurian times. Lansolot, as the raid leader for today’s events and had to get back to his duties so our conversation was cut short. Suddenly more and more characters were appearing on the screen, a warrior by the name of Gnash a twenty-eight year old living somewhere in the central west of the US, my brother could not remember exactly where, a rogue by the name of Frozo, a fifteen year old from California. Another paladin by the name of Gromber, a twenty something all the way from Australia and a priest named Greenbargroup. One by one, the raid group was filled to its 25-person capacity. Suddenly an announcement from Lancelot “Ok the group is full lets head over and start summons.” The warlocks in the group have a spell, which can be cast which allows them to open a portal, which can be used to summon people to the raid location. Suddenly Mythadin was whisked aware from the safety of the sky sanctuary to a cathedral type room with huge vaulted sealing. It reminded me of an old church without an alter and what appeared to be living skeletons in the distance. It must have been cold there as you could see the breath from Mythadin’s mouth as he breathed. Lansolot begins to describe how the raid will go and how loot will be distributed. Loot is replacement gear, which is dropped by the enemy during the course for the raid. It was all a little too much for me to grasp now but the basic idea is that each class can only use certain types of gear. These classes need to roll the dice to see if they can win it and from what I saw, not everyone is a winner. “Ok let’s get buffed up and let’s get going.” Lansolot said with the authority and respect obviously granted to him by his peers. It seemed like when he spoke everyone else went quite and listened intently to the instructions. “This raid will go to 5 PM server time.” I looked over at the clock and it was now 1 PM eastern time, which translated to 12 Noon server time. Five hours until this was going to be over, I give my brother credit for sitting still that long.

Several minutes later, the group was standing at the doorway to a huge cave, which seemed to be the home a part skeleton part dragon type creature with no legs hovering in the middle of the room. Lord Marrowgar is the first boss encounter in the Icecrown Citidal. The group had fought their way here from our starting point, battling their way past skeleton after skeleton, with what seemed like effortless grace. A couple of people had died along way , but there seemed to be no time to morn their passing and thanks to the priest in the group, could be resurrected from the dead to fight again provide the group is not in combat. “Rebuff, tanks stack up. We will be going left right left. Everyone else please make sure you are standing under his hit box,” Lansolot instructed. Clearly, he had done this before. The hit box he was referring to was an area underneath the boss shown a red highlighted ring on the floor. Moments later the group was in. My brother moved into position underneath the boss and began to hit the keys on his keyboard like a pro. Fire filled the floor and people moved franticly to get out of the way. Then suddenly Mythadin was impaled by a bone shard, which sprung up from the floor. “Mythadin impaled” my brother said obviously attempting to get assistance from his team. The team moved over the spike and began attacking it and Mythadin was free. Without missing a beat my brother moved back into position and began his assault. Minutes later the battle was done, the group was standing over the body of the now dead Lord Marrowgar and Lansolot was congratulating everyone for a job well done. Everyone took a quick look at the loot and then were quickly instructed up the stairs to continue the fight.

The next several bosses appear to go off without a hitch. Lansolot gave his instructions and the group followed. They battled a force field on the second boss, used a jet packs to jump from a sky ship boat to another and attack the bad guys and back again and finished the first wing with a boss that would summon adds which looked like octopus. This trip it appeared my brother was not getting any loot. It was just not his day, but he battled on The group had to run through walls of a fire and kill flying creatures. The group started dying off, people were getting sloppy in what I heard Lansolot term a wipe. This occurs when everyone in the group dies. After about 3 hours you could tell the group was getting tired and people were no longer listening to Lansolots instructions but the accomplishment this group had made to this point was astonishing.
My brothers avatar is an extension of himself and who aspires to be and has earned the respect of his peers and after spending time with this group I can see this is more then just a game to my brother and his team. They work together as a cohesive group of friends spending time together. Many members of this team are close friends with each other despite the fact that they are 1000 miles apart, different ages, sexes, and religious backgrounds. I think the real world could learn a lot from the World of Warcraft and this avid group of gamers.