LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

As most people who read these columns know I am a so-called “lore whore”. I do not PvP. In the rare instances that I do, I generally die. Often. And frequently. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to be the A-Rod of arenas, it is just that my proficiency at PvP mirrors my proficiency at basketball – nonexistent. Like basketball or football the skill set required for excelling at high levels of arena play is rare, and requires extensive practice to hone. Similar to football, basketball, or any major sport watching the best players matched up head to head can be quite entertaining. So why isn’t WoW arenas a sport or Starcraft 2 for that matter? Will they ever be? Read on for my thoughts on the future of “e-sports”.

I am absolutely horrible at basketball. Just really, really bad. Ever seen a Harlem Globetrotters game against the Generals? Well pretty much anyone looks like the Globetrotters when matched against me. I can’t pass, I can’t shoot, I can’t dribble – and despite 16 years of playing soccer and developing some freakishly disproportionate leg muscles – I can’t jump either. Luckily no one is ever going to inform me out of the blue that I have to give up my job and become a basketball player. Our characters in MMO’s though are sometimes asked to do just that: change roles. How do you deal with it?

Last night something akin to a small hurricane hit the town that I live in. Thunder boomed, rain came down in sheets, and the wind blew. The wind blew hard enough to completely topple a huge tree near my apartment complex that resulted in power outages– so no WoW last night. Initially I was disappointed by my lack of entertainment-giving electricity, it would ruin my plans to…run ICC – no, farm frost badges…no, kill Halion again? Nope. I wasn’t doing that either. I realized that even if I had electricity there really wasn’t anything in WoW I was planning to do. Judging by the desertion I’ve seen in Dalaran recently I am betting that many of you feel the same way. We are all in the same boat – waiting on the expansion, and if it seems harder to wait this time than other times – it’s because it is.

My original plan was that as the expansion neared release I would be writing you fanciful stories of the beta and the glimmering new coat of paint Blizzard was putting on our old friend Azeroth. Unfortunately, apparently due to several large scale e-mail errors, I have yet to receive my beta invitation. So instead I am stuck reading other people’s posts and looking at screenies with the “common man” like some sort of punished beast of burden! Since I haven’t been able to immerse myself in Cataclysm – I have been resorting to playing a little Starcraft 2 on the side. After a week or so of playing one thing is certain – SC2 has learned a lot from WoW.

My original plan was that as the expansion neared release I would be writing you fanciful stories of the beta and the glimmering new coat of paint Blizzard was putting on our old friend Azeroth. Unfortunately, apparently due to several large scale email errors, I have yet to receive my beta invitation. So instead I am stuck reading other people’s posts and looking at screenies with the “common man” like some sort of punished beast of burden! But fear not, for I trudge on with the best* non-Cataclysm WoW commentary on the internet (Note: “best” is an opinion and since this is my article, it’s my opinion…). This week we are going to focus on something that I think we take for granted in WoW, something that makes Azeroth the vibrant world (soon-to –be-remade) that we all love, the continuous world.

Can I have your undivided attention? Not anymore. That is what guild leaders around Azeroth will find this week. Tuesday marks the start of the new raid week and the release of Starcraft 2. Good luck filling those raids guild leaders, the lack of new content until Cataclysm and Starcraft 2 are going to take a double-whammy on your raid attendance. Be prepared for no-shows as previously iron clad tanks drop their swords for the chance to control siege tanks, as rogues vanish from your guild roster to appear as ghosts targeting nuclear strikes, and as your most dependable players switch their mastery of guild mechanics for a mastery of micro-mechanics.

A few weeks ago Blizzard came up with an interesting idea. They wanted to extend their RealID system that they use as a social tool in Blizzard games into Blizzard forums. They had the paradigm altering notion that when you post your thoughts and ideas online that they should be associated with your actual name. You don’t have to be an internet archaeologist to know that this is significant change from our normal my “avatar’s avatar’s avatar posted a comment on the forums today” system. Some people liked the idea, lots of people hated the idea, and even more were generally uncomfortable with RealID in the forums. The new wave of accountability for your account will never materialize as Blizzard panned the idea after vocal outcries against it. But what really was the Real problem with RealID?

I was looking around on the internet yesterday, as I am prone to do, and I noticed that the second wave of Cataclysm beta invites were being released soon. My heart instantly skipped a beat and I nearly fell out of my chair as I exclaimed “OOOOH!”. (OK – that isn’t entirely true, my heart skipped a beat for sure but the chair thing was probably more a fault of the missing wheel on one leg that randomly plunges me out of my seat and not so much the force of the exclamation) I want a beta invite so badly. A few days ago I gingerly sat down on my chair and compiled a list of reasons why I am so worthy of the honor of playing Cataclysm before the other peasants. It is long. It is divided into sections. It has doodles of myself playing Cataclysm (although in the doodles my chair is represented as being far sturdier than it actually is) along the margins. It is also not the topic of this article, the topic of this article is the amazing email I found in my inbox this very night.

Sometimes the worst surprises in life, and WoW, are the unexpected ones. We aren’t talking about surprise birthday parties or surprise – “there is a $20 bill in my pocket” – I mean bad surprises, like I was walking down the street and SURPRISE – gunshot wound. Those type of surprises. So I was surprised and disappointed last night when we scrounged up a Ruby Sanctum 10 man raid and ran into some serious difficulties. It was a lot like a surprise gunshot wound except with more purple colored dragons and lethal laser orbs.

So here we go – I will give you the reasons behind my approximation and then at the end give you my date, to the day, Cataclysm is going to come out –