It's the Community, Stupid!

Yesterday Hall headed up to the Black Temple in Nether to deal some damage to some NPCs. As I rolled up I encountered what I could only describe as a surf line...you know, the surfers sitting on their boards at the outside of the surf break, waiting for the next good wave. THere were five folks sitting and bobbing on their flying mounts. I hailed them with a "is this the surf line?" and a hearty lol, and one replied, "yup, waiting for the good wave." Beach culture lives. >grin<

Now I knew my quest was a yellow solo-able and so I replied, "I didn't see this quest listed as group. LOL" or something to that effect. One guy whispered they were on the last part, the big boss quest. So I replied, you need help. He replied, got five. I rejoined, so you need a sixth for insurance? And he invited me to tag along.

They needed the help. And..I got some schooling on what it will take when I have to do it with my group. Egads, waves upon waves of locks and minions...plus the elites...plus the big boss. WHen we got them all down I just had to say, "and now who is going to clean up this mess!"

We lol'd and they ty'd and I np'd and they headed off into the well, not quite a sunset. I went ahead to do my solo quest, found a cool sneaky way to make it easy, posted as much in the Thottbot thread (yeah, I post there), and eventually signed off feeling quite the community member.

After you hit 70 there is less and less appeal in the solo'ing. ANd yes, the instances in groups rock. But there is something supremely enjoyable about just helping out. I know Via thinks this too; we've talked about it a lot. What's nice in the virtual world context is that you don't have to waste time and energy and social capital introducing and glad-handing and getting to know you. You just ride up and offer help, or respond to a tell. You can get to the engagement -- and out of it -- much more cleanly than you can IRL. For those of us who are not gregarious types, this allows us to be sociable, or perhaps a better term would be pro-social, without the schmooze we find so difficult and/or well...icky. (Perhaps that's why I'd rather help strangers than guildmates... less talk.)

So I've started back to exercising (wait, this is relevant) and I thought I'd download the World of Warcast to listen to on the ipod as I slogged away on the treadmill. I grabbed this week's cast and was amused by Cryler's tip of the day. Do farming with a buddy on vent. Makes it go faster. It's sort of a duh, but then I thought, yeah I like chatting on vent with guildies while working on solo stuff. So...maybe my prior remark about schmooze doesn't accurately reflect my true feelings. At any rate, a good deal of the continued appeal of WoW is the community, stupid.

Should have grabbed a shot of either the surf line or the dead mess afterward but I didn't. So here's a shot I took inside a Bloodspire Ogre's house...after I killed him and most of his village. Here Saami stands, pondering this question: "Why does an ogre need a teddy bear?"