The other week, I asked you all if you thought World of Warcraft was a game, based on this (admittedly very specific) definition of a game:

“A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.” – Sulen and Zimmerman

My first instinct was to say yes, WoW is a game. Then I realized something. While WoW attempts to set you up, right from the start, in this artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome, you don’t have to do what they’re telling you to do.

When you start a character, you are placed in the starting zone and you are right next to a quest-giver. (Bear with me, I’ll be speaking primarily of the human starting zone.)

The developers (and common sense, really) expect you to interact with the quest-giver and complete the quest. Right off the bat, there’s the artificial conflict — you need to go kill wolves in Northshire, for example. As soon as you accept a quest, you are thrust into the artificial conflict. That initial human quest (as all others, I would imagine) immediately pits you against the environment and NPC mobs (wolves or what-have-you) in that environment.

Once you accept the quest, you have three options:

1) Complete the quest (quantifiable outcome — experience, quest rewards)
2) Drop the quest (quantifiable outcome — the lack of gaining experience, quest rewards)
3) Ignore the quest (quantifiable outcome — the lack of gaining experience, quest rewards)

All of that, however, hinges on actually picking up the quest.

If you don’t pick up the quest, there’s no immediate conflict. Nothing in the starting area will aggro on to you. You can essentially run around with impunity until you leave the Northshire gates and enter Elwynn Forest.

When you enter Elwynn Forest, you will encounter NPCs that are, for the first time, hostile to you and will attack you upon sight. This is a conflict and it’s defined by rules. The rules are simple: defend yourself with attacks until either you or the NPC dies or run away, knowing that the NPC is limited to a small area and will almost certainly not run away themselves. The quantifiable outcome is either victory (you lived and killed the NPC), defeat (you died because the NPC killed you), or a stalemate (you ran away and both of you lived).

My argument is that WoW itself is not a game. WoW does not inherently force you to engage in any of its sub-games, such as questing or exploring, PVPing or raiding, dungeoning or crafting, gathering or levelling.

Having said that, I believe that WoW is host to many, many games. Everything that can grant you experience, gold, achievements or feats of strength is a game. Anything that puts your character in danger of death is another game. Healing is a huge game with many sub-games, such as tank healing, raid healing, cooldown use, mana management, as well as the various encounter mechanics. (I’m not even going to touch on PVP healing!)

It might be splitting hairs to some, but I feel strongly that WoW is not a game on its own. It is a system that hosts a plethora of games. Most of those games, like healing, have sub-games within them.

However, I feel that WoW is more than just a system. It is definitely a system, but it also comprises all the social interaction that comes with an MMO. While there can be arguments made that “the social game” is a game, I think that the social part of things is less of a game, from the definition I gave, and more of a tool that can either help or hinder you in your game-related goals.

Following instructions in a raid setting will help your team defeat the encounter (assuming a competent raid leader) while not paying attention to instructions will likely end up killing you or others in your group. As such, the game of raiding within WoW relies heavily on communication and cooperation between raid members to emerge victorious after an encounter attempt. This is, of course, very different from the “socialness” of Trade Chat.

Is Trade Chat’s “socialness” a game? Again, I would argue not. It is merely a tool to help you to know who to avoid teaming up with, or that some people may be seeking others to help them with a dungeon or raid. Perhaps people playing the Auction House game (I do believe that’s a game) use Trade Chat to announce their auctions. Chat is a tool, not a game in and of itself. And chat belongs to the system that is WoW.

Essentially, while I do call World of Warcrat a game for simplicity’s sake, there are really just a multitude of games that WoW hosts and those are the games about which we are passionate.

*** All content copyright © Kurn’s Corner, 2011. Reproduction of this guide in full or in part without express permission from the author (“Kurn”), represents copyright infringement and violation of copyright law. Please, if you like this guide, link to it, do not copy it. ***

(Don’t forget to read my Cataclysm Holy How-To #1: Specs and Glyphs before reading this one!)

Once again, welcome to an updated article in my Holy How-To series! Today, we’ll be focusing on the spells and abilities holy paladins have at level 85 and we’ll talk a bit about how best to use each of these spells and abilities in a PVE setting. Please bear in mind that this was written during the time that 4.2.2 was on live realms and, as such, may become outdated with future patches.

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You know, thinking about it, this blog has documented the fall of Apotheosis, my time on Bronzebeard, my time in my last guild and now will document my time on Skywall.

The idea that, five years from now, I could look at this entry and go “oh my God, my first raid on Skywall!” gives me a moment’s pause. Should I record everything for posterity? Probably not. Should I gloss over things in the hopes that I’ll have a shiny entry to remember my first raid by? Probably not.

As always, it seems, the right amount of detail is somewhere in the middle.

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So I’m actively shopping for a new guild. I’ve been approached by several guilds due to a post on a low-level alt in the Guild Recruitment forums.

Some of them just don’t appeal to me. Sorry, I don’t want to raid for five hours at a time, five days a week. Hell, I don’t want to raid five days a week, period. I’m looking for 3-4 days, preferably for about 3 hours.

The top choices right now are a guild on Hyjal and another on Skywall.

The Hyjal guild (8/12 HM ICC25) seems really nice, with decent people and a good economy on the server. The GM is pretty awesome and I chatted with him, the healing lead and a couple of the guildies for an hour or so the other night. The raiding times are Sun/Mon/Wed/Thurs from 8:30pm-11pm ET. Those are the same nights I currently raid and 10 hours a week instead of 12, in sweet little 2.5 hour chunks. Not to mention the fact that the raid *ends* when my current raids begin! How awesome is that? I can have a late-ish dinner, then go raid, then go to the store at 11-11:30 or so if I’m missing milk or have a chocolate craving or something!

The Skywall guild (7/12 HM ICC25) raids Mon/Wed/Thurs from 9pm-1am. So I’d get Sunday off entirely and still have the same amount of raid time I do now, just a little more compressed.

“Kurn,” you may ask, “what the hell? Aren’t you 11/12 HM in ICC 25?”

“Why yes,” I would reply, “I am.”

“And you would go BACKWARDS in progression?” you may ask, perhaps with incredulity in your voice.

“Yes. I would,” I would reply.

Here’s the reason: I am tired of idiots and imbeciles. I am tired of abuse and blame.

In light of yesterday’s revelation, I better know why I’m looking for a new guild where the people don’t SUCK. It’s because I want that more social atmosphere paired with progression. I like approximately three people in my current guild. Maybe four. I loathe the MT/GM. I’m not speaking to the raid leader at the moment. One of the OTs won’t stfu when I tell him I don’t want to talk about X, Y or Z (guild politics, mostly) and don’t get me started on the moronic DPS who don’t know how to STOP DPS or how to move out of my range during Empowered Shock Vortex. Ahem. I’m getting cranky again. :)

Sure, there are a lot of 11/12 HM ICC 25 guilds looking for a holy paladin. But ones that don’t raid HARDCORE and ones that meet my requirements (Alliance ONLY, non-PVP, to start with) are pretty few and far between.

So what makes these two guilds “special”?

The GMs of both guilds not only posted in my thread but contacted me at the email address I left and then responded to questions I had promptly, politely and with a good deal of humour. They treated me respectfully, were honest with me about their progression and why they’re seeking out a new holy paladin. I also basically gave them both the third degree about their healing leads and healing teams.

So far, though the Hyjal guild has the advantage on raid times, the Skywall guild has the advantage with the healing. On their heroic Saurfang kill, the GM (resto shammy, who isn’t the healing lead) healed THE FIRST FOUR MARKS ON HER OWN.

No joke. I saw the parse. They got six marks. She handled four. They had five healers. She was the fifth mark and a priest was the sixth.

And I was bitching about handling marks 1/2 alone. Seriously, this is someone who knows how to heal. I LIKE people who know how to heal! They are awesome! Strangely, I’ve never known a great healer who was a complete tool, either.

The Skywall GM also believes strongly in working with their raiders to up their performance. Unlike my current guild who will either keep someone who sucks because they need X class (see: Idiot Priest) or will throw out someone who isn’t performing rather than talk to them about things first, the Skywall guild works with apps and members alike.

Funny story, I was going to implement that in the Wrath of the Lich King version of Apotheosis, but then Apotheosis fell apart.

The Hyjal guild has more perks, I think — guild repairs, guild consumables, etc. But I don’t think they have the level of effort and care that the Skywall guild has.

Truth be told, I was almost certainly going to go to the Hyjal guild, but the Skywall guild seems fairly compelling.

Another factor to consider with the Skywall guild is that it’s on the same battlegroup as my old server, Eldre’Thalas. The thought of renewing some acquaintances… well, either I would love to or I would leave the party instantly, haha.

So, Whirlwind Battlegroup people, Reckoning Battlegroup people, tell me of your random dungeon queues and the quality of those groups! ;)