About Last Night

Last night James and I were involved with our guild in two instance dungeons. So much happened in such a short period of time, I'm a bit overwhelmed with all there is to comment on. I'm counting on James to share too. When I finally logged off at a bit after 3:00 a.m., I was bursting with hunches and observations, like a good ethnographer I wanted to write them all down, but I was dog tired.

What follows is mostly a set of notes, hopefully I'll expand upon elements later.

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Social Aspects:sociability, rules or code of conduct, social obligation/contract

wanted to log off earlier, but I'd joined the raid party and my departure might have had a crippling effect on the party (or so I like to think), and so felt obliged to hang around in order to fulfill my social obligation to team in the raid. This felt like an obligation from three sources: 1) guild - I joined the guild, this was mostly a guild run; I owed the guild. 2) friends - I don't really know Dimi and Brudie, but I feel like I do and they were especially nice to me when I was the n00b in the first instance dungeon (see prior post) a few days ago. 3) general rules of social obligation that dictate things like not bailing on a group effort. The interesting questions include: how did I aquire this in the game? Do others experience it that way?

Related to Social, but maybe more Leadershp

The non-guild member of the party (1 of 5 people) was instantly not liked by the GM. The GM's gut feeling on this turned out to be correct. The non-guildy was greedy, uncooperative, and not particularly engaged during parts of the experience. He demanded things from me: give me a healthstone, give me the axe. He took things for himself that he didn't need, without asking others. At one point Brudie asked me if I knew the guy, which I took to mean: can you explain his behavior. Then he asked me later did I want to play with this guy again, i.e., should he be allowed to join the guild. I was taken aback by the directness of his question, and hemmed and hawed. Brudie, as leader, did some public, in-party shaping remarks ;intended to help this guy get it. When it didn't seem to take effect, he took the guy aside and whispered with him; and then finally determined he would not let him in the guild and publicly (in-party) told him why. Is that strong leadership or what? It was all very clean and non-aggressive. I went to school on it. The remarks made aloud wihtin the party served the dual purpose of re-norming the guildies and reprimanding the outsider.

Identity and Learning

I had already started thinking about how my role should be played, as a warlock,, thinking about how to best function in a raiding party. Now that I am at a much higher level and have real services to offer a party, the lessons are more salient. The two different instance caves last night, and the repeated runs we tried on the second one, gave me a lot of time to try things out, to notice things, to modify things. I could go on and on, and I might in another blog. But the actually useful notion here is the one that focuses on how I learned those things in the game, and on how those things are wrapped up with my identity in the game. I'll toss out a few examples.

1. Ask who wants a healthstone before we go in. can only make one at a time because of cool down time. who benefits most by having it? the tank or the healer, but the healer can usually heal himself.


2. About the pets: succubus can be directed to participate with tank, as a tank, at no mana cost; voidwalker blocks my view and is best when soloing and not much use in dungeon; imp has to be controlled so he doesn't pull aggro. but he can be used to pull and unlike the others doesn't need a soul shard to summon.

I've also discovered that everyone hits on warlocks to open portals for easy transit. I was soloing and clearing out a quest, knee-deep in melee when some #$%^&*( from another region whispered to me to summon him cause he needed to get to Darkshire. So explained that: 1) I was kinda busy fighting some nasty folks, 2) didn't have the requisite quorum for summoning (it's really intended for use in a party), and 3) didn't appreciate the interruption. The guy should have at least been able to tell from the up and down green life line that I was enaged in battle. But apparently, warlocks get hit on for free transpo a lot.

There are things I still need to learn; in my proximal zone, if you will. That is, I have some beginning sense of what they might be/do, and thus a desire to master, but don't really know enough to do it alone yet: summoning, soulstones, rolling for loot and setting loot prefs in a party, eye of kilrogg. LOL.

So, pondering the HOW more than the actual content of these learning tasks and bits of identity/functional knowledge...

Hallgrima