Filed under: Breakfast Topics

If you've been playing World of Warcraft since it launched in 2004, that's eight years of subscription fees, expansion pack purchases, and character transfers -- not to mention the cost of tshirts, vanity pets, BlizzCon tickets, and any other swag you might have picked up along the way. And while we don't pay much a month, it definitely adds up -- ka-king! -- to the tune of $179.88 a year if you pay month to month. And, while I definitely think I've gotten my money's worth, the amount I've spent on WoW over the years adds up to a frankly embarrassing sum.

And instead of sharing that figure with you, I'm going to segue into today's Breakfast Topic: just how much have you spent on WoW since you started playing? And, in the end, has it been worth it?

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There are lots of things I wonder about the World of Warcraft. Like why can't I be a gnome druid? (Come on, with a kitten form and a bear cub form everyone would be playing one.) Why can't I be a gnome hunter? (Who could ride tamed pets.) Why can't I be a gnome paladin? (Gnomes can already be warriors and priests, so why not combine them?) How can gnomes and goblins jump so high? (This one I don't mind so much, because it's hilarious to see gnomes jumping their own height.) If you're seeing a theme here, well, okay, let's try some questions that are in no way related to gnomes: why can't I fly on Quel'Danas? (Answer: why are you on Quel'Danas?) Why are tamed devilsaurs so much smaller than actual devilsaurs? (Hunter trickery!)

Okay, I admit, there may be practical gameplay reasons for all of these things -- but, come on, Blizzard, can't you see the beauty of gnome druids? At any rate, dear readers, whether you're gnome obsessed or not, you surely have your own strange, unanswered WoW questions: so share them! Do you think your unanswered gameplay questions will ever become gameplay fact?

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We mentioned them last night while covering the surprises of patch 5.4, so now I roll around to you this morning. Did you see virtual realms coming? Do you like or hate them? Are they a cool way to avoid forcing players to worry about name changes and server moves or are they just a half step that needs to go further?

Personally I'm really interested because with this, the day comes ever closer that I could pug any raid with any friend I have of the same faction. It's a change I never expected to see, and one I'm very interested in watching. If this eventually leads to, say, one North American virtual realm for all players, I might be okay with that.

But enough about me. This is about you. What do you think? Let us know, we're keen to hear it. Patch 5.4 definitely isn't afraid to shake up the status quo so far.

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When it comes to our avatars, some of us are better than others at handling anthropomorphism. I don't personally have anything against the non-humanoid races, but I find I don't ultimately bond with a character that looks like a bear or a cow or a wolf. These characters end up feeling like cartoon game pieces that I move around on the game world rather than "my girls," even if "my girl" is undead or has gigantic tusks or a tail. Unbridled fantasy elements? I'm totally down with that. But big, furry critters feel like caricatures that I just can't take seriously -- and if I'm not taking my character seriously, I'm not taking the rest of the game seriously, either.

Are you comfortable reaching outside the humanoid comfort zone by playing goat-people and walking cows? Or do you need a character that's plausibly humanoid?

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Plugging into a level 25 guild after a period of solo leveling is like being loaded into a slingshot and catapulted into a candy shop of delight. More XP! More rep! More speed! More travel! Suddenly, basic game business turns EZ mode. Who wouldn't want that? Last year saw adjustments to guild leveling that made it easier to push a guild up to level 25. The changes helped boost many guilds up to the level cap, allowing their members to reap the benefits of guild membership.

The question is ... now what? Should there be something more to enjoying guild benefits once you've reached the top? Once members have helped the guild reach the level cap and pushed their individual guild reputation to exalted to earn the available rewards, is there enough incentive to keep contributing? Should there be additional benefits for consistently active players? What might those rewards look like?

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Reader Morncreek just recently informed me in the comments of the results of last week's Community Blog Topic that heirlooms were cross-faction as long as the characters are on the same server. Mind blown. This may be common knowledge, but I had absolutely no clue. You can't send cash or even just text, but you can send any Bind on Account item. In my defense, all of my Alliance characters are on different servers from my Horde characters, but still.

In another case of embarrassing ignorance, it took a couple of years for me to discover that you could eat food and drink drinks at the same time. Though I've played since open beta, it wasn't until the tooltip started showing up on loading screens that I found that out. Yay tooltips!

What about you? Did you know about BoA items being cross-faction, but not cross-server? Is there anything in WoW that you've discovered over your playtime that made you facepalm? Fess up!

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Surprise! I'm not into battling pets -– and I don't really understand why not. When vanity pets first started picking up steam in WoW, I scoffed at them. Eventually, though, I encountered the One Pet, the Captured Firefly, that captured my heart. That prompted me to begin collecting, but I never made it to the highest achievement rung at the time before I realized that as long as I had my little firefly friend out and about, I was quite content. Still, I always assumed I'd enjoy capturing and caging pets, if not the actual minigame of pet battling, and I eagerly anticipated the release of pet battles.

Nope, not doing it for me. The itch to catch 'em all remains dormant. I continue on my merry way with my firefly, and I'm happy as can be. Nobody who knows me well understands why I'm not animatedly capturing and caging my way across Azeroth, but it just doesn't click for me.

Is there something you eagerly anticipated in WoW that didn't turn out to float your boat? What do you suppose made it fall short of your expectations?

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What's in a name? Only your character's identity from here onward! Without a doubt, finding the perfect name for a character is the toughest part of character creation. More than once I've created a character, carefully customized the face and looks just how I liked them, and was then stymied by the blinking cursor in the name box. (And, occasionally, I've timed out while trying to think of a perfect name that's untaken after my first choice wasn't available, meaning I had to go back and start again with customization.)

But my trouble figuring out names just means I've all the more respect for those characters with particularly clever names -- those of you who not only managed to think up a clever name but also claim it before anyone else did. So, dish, fellow Azerothians: what's your cleverest character name?

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Picking the right professions for a character is always a bit of a puzzle, or at least it is for me. Do I want to make gold in the short term with a pair of gathering professions or do I want to craft gear for myself that will be useful as I level -- and maybe even at end game? If I pick up a profession now, who's to say it will still be what I want after I've leveled up? And do I even want the hassle of leveling up professions? And, even if I do want to go to the trouble for primary professions, what about secondary professions? Do I really want to level up fishing again?

Of course, I inevitably come to the conclusion that leveling the professions as I level up is easier than leveling them later, but my profession choice is always pretty haphazard. (Except for fishing. I have leveled fishing enough for a lifetime.) Though there are, surely, better ways to pick professions, my selection inevitably boils down to what sounds good to me at moment I hit level 5, regardless of what may be good further down the line.

But surely you, dear readers, have better sense than I. How do you go about picking the right professions for a new character?

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Looking back on the days of vanilla WoW, we had a lot of patches -- and I don't mean that as a figure of speech. Original WoW went to patch 1.12 before Burning Crusade hit the scene. Since then, we've seen fewer patches between expansions -- 4 patches during BC, 3 patches during Wrath, 3 patches during Cataclysm, and, to date, 3 patches during Mists. But with the speed at which Blizzard is rolling out new content lately, I think it's safe to say that we can expect Mists to beat the average number of patches before we get another expansion... but is that too many patches?

More frequent patches could mean we're hard-pressed to keep up with all the new shiny toys presented to us... or they could mean plenty of content to keep us busy and interested. But what do you think? Are patches coming too quickly these days? Or are they just frequent enough to keep you interested? Or are patches still arriving too slowly for your tastes?

From a purely game mechanics point of view, I should love Battlefield Barrens. One of my favorite things to do in Vanilla WoW was head out to the plaguelands and mindlessly grind scourgestones while I read guild chat or watched TV. Sometimes, you don't really want the dedicated direction of dailies or quests, you just wanted to get some progress done on your terms, when you feel like it. Battlefield Barrens, with the ability to grind resources to use for a single weekly quest or for currency for some decent gear and vanity items, would seem to be perfect for that.

But I can't go back to the Barrens, because I'm Alliance. When I go to the Barrens, I've heard from outside sources and little story snippets that I'm supposedly infiltrating the Horde to sew chaos and dissension. Despite that, the actual quest dialogue and gameplay tells a different story. From the moment I hit Durotar, I have to put up with trolls taunting me about the loss of Theramore and trolls threatening to kill me. Even Vol'jin makes me "earn his trust," and threatens to feed me to Sylvanas if I question him. To top it all off, it's not clear that I'm getting anything in return but the vague hope that Vol'jin's Trolls might kill an extra orc or two before the Alliance starts their main offensive.

Temper tantrums aren't really my style. Thanks to years spent onstage in the theatre, my first reaction to any sort of problem is to make sure the audience never knows anything unusual is going on. If something in game irks me that much, I tend to grit my teeth and get through it for the moment. After that, of course, I may well choose to never go back and do that particular thing ever, ever again.

But nothing sends me into a rage faster than those clueless types who bat their eyes while innocently murmuring, "It's just a game, people. It's just the internet. This isn't real life." Players who still manage to think this way even in today's connected age are typically the first ones to thoughtlessly pull the plug when they get their panties in a twist over one thing or another. That whole attitude? Grrr. Stay away from me. If I even so much as get a whiff of that attitude, I'll ... I'll ragequit on you before you ragequit on me.

Have you ever ragequit a WoW group or raid? We're not talking about slipping out of a dysfunctional situation based on sheer frustration; we're talking a full-on, spittle-flecked ragequit with slamming keyboards and turning off the computer power button. What was the thing that broke you down? That bad? Yeah, that bad.

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Blizzard recently released the Armored Bloodwing mount in the Blizzard store. I don't know about you, but I've seen quite a few out in the wild, with some of them just hanging around big cities, showing off. This mount is not quite to my taste -- I'm a huge sparkle pony fan -- but I like its aesthetic and I see the appeal.

Other than the Celestial Steed, I also bought the Wind Rider Cub plushy and in-game pet set. And the Spousal Unit has the Winged Guardian mount. (I think he's eyeing the Armored Bloodwing too. Hmmm. Father's Day is coming up ...) In addition, we each have the collector's editions for several years and all the pets included there.

I admit it: I've been the first domino in guild-killing guild drama. It wasn't anything I said or did that set off the firestorm. But over the course of, oh, nearly 15 years of guild-based MMOs, my curt and final departure from two utterly dysfunctional guilds was most definitely the event that precipitated a cascade of drama leading to the spectacular implosion of both groups.

(See? I told you so. Shoulda left when I did.)

Still, I didn't actually cause the guild-killing drama. I can't say the same for my intrepid spouse, who is quite content to march into the breach of guild dissension with guns blazing. He's not the type to just pack up his toys and go home, like I am. Yeah, he'd be the first to admit he's probably said some things that caused people to go for one another's throats, eventually choking out the entire guild in a frenzy of righteous accusations. Good times. (Not.)

'Fess up: Have you ever said or done something that's set off a guild-wiping drama bomb? Was it a mistake on your part, or would you actually do or say the same thing again? (Yikes.)

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I have two duos going right now. I'm playing a mistweaver with The Spousal Unit's brewmaster and I'm playing a windwalker with The Spawn's frost mage. Both are good times but very different. My daughter and I are leveling very slowly. We stop to smell every peacebloom and sometimes the only questing we get done are the Ironforge cooking and fishing dailies. But we're having a great time tooling around on my two-seater rocket and generally being silly.

The duo with The Spousal Unit is completely different. We're speeding through dungeons on our monk experience buffs and he's definitely a GOGOGOer. I prefer a slower pace -- enough to actually see my surroundings rather than just running from place to place watching health bars. But he wants to get through as many instances as possible in a session. This has led to some discord, but for the most part we are happily GOGOGOing.

Are you playing with a significant other, sibling, parent, or child? Or are you the lone WoW player in your family? Or do you purposely not play with family because of possible out-of-game drama being brought in game or vice versa?

The family that plays together stays together? Maybe? Let us know.

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