"U come heal us is AN"

Healing, oh bittersweet joy. Random whispers from unknown players... all assuming that you will jump to the chance to go healing.

You know, i do love healing. But it isn’t always a joy. There is this thing called PuG. Something I shun like other people shun asparagus/gnomes since I hit level cap. Why is that you might wonder? Personally it’s my view that the healer has the worst time in a bad PuG. When the tank is undergeared, the dps is trigger happy the healer is a wet puddle on the instance floor, struggling to keep the joke of a team up. Not seldom to the sneers and accusations from the group. A good tank is always a good tank and can save a party from the most disasterous mayhem of loose aoe and a stray shot pull. And as an dps... you proabably get a few remarks and probably some comment about inadequate dps... even if the tank/healer is horrible undergeared/lack skill/social manners. But it’s no way near as distressing as going as healer.

Now healing a group of friends and /or guildies is a whole different story. Everyone know their place and their task, there is no competetion. You know people take steps to keep you safe in all situations. That they will come to your aid when you been foolish and managed to pull half an instance cause you had a case of YDD. In a party of friends I know that I might need to be ready to put an extra HoT or basicly everything I have in stock on a player that might hit a crit spree and suddenly have a face full of mob. For a friend we have that extra care.

In a PuG... Mr Platebrain tries and swat a mob to death with what must be a blunt stick while the dps managed to 1, pull an extra group and patrol 2, didnt let tank build aggro so all mobs plays tag with the dps... with a special set of rules. In a PuG no one cares if the warlock you never met before dies (except the warlock) cause of meter psycos. Well... almost doesn’t care. I do have my pride as a healer. But some people just cant be helped. You never know what you get in a PuG. But I want the safety in knowing that the tank keeps an eye backwards that my friends in case of need will forget all about dps and number ratings and rush to save me from a squishy death. So it’s a huge safety.. and often a lot of fun to go with friends.

But yet, as fond as I am of them, some of my darling guildies/friends doesn’t seem to know exactly why I get an allergic reaction when the subject PuG comes up (or someone mentions instance achivements... another of my big in game allergies). Something my dps friends doesnt seem to grasp is how big the toll is on me as a healer. Or the frustration of a bad PuG. Healing a badly geared group, or a party of hotheads is absolutly exhausting. A typical PuG is very spammy for me. I’m almost always casting something and must be fully focused the whole time. It’s 100% or people start to drop In a PuG you often get more fragile players... the gears often aren’t up to heroic instance standard. Or you just get morons that think pulling aggro of the tank is a proof of their awesomeness and that makes my job very hard indeed. Two hit and your dead not defense caped tanks/badly geared trigger happy dps usally means I have to keep HoTs ticking on multiple targets, PoM jumping around, shields and heals. So suddenly I need to be psychic aswell and know when to throw heals on the little eager glass cannon before he pull aggro from the tank. And apart from that I need to protect my own rear, focus on all life bars and from the partys position be prepaired from additional hazards and mobs. It is very draining to be that attentive and aware. And at the same time I’m being called “noob” and other nice things from ignorant players that doesn’t have a clue how healing works or what I’m going through.

Healing isnt hard, but it’s intense. If my focus drift I can easily loose a player in a heart beat. So I just have the energy to carry a PuG through an instance. And not to mention the costs of all mana potions and drinks I use up during a run... The mana it takes to keep them up just is ridiculous... Especially compaired to a nice smooth guildrun.

So, just say no to PuGs... and be nice to your healer. Or you will find yourself without a healer. Cause I know for sure dps is so relaxing to play in comparison

Orange 1, Blogger Nil.

Note to self: Don't try to import blog articles directly from Google Docs into Blogger. According to the Troubleshooting guide, the differences between Documents and Blogs are resolved during the transfer process by a cutting edge conversion module know as "html-code rape-o-matic 2000". Unfortunately, further probing on my part lead me to discover that this does to carefully written and formatted blog posts what a bag of angry stoats does to, well pretty much anything. I retrieved my shredded and soiled post a few hours later and repaired it with the aid of Microsoft Notepad's Special Medicinal Cure. Unfortunately (again), I forgot to include the anti-stoat kernel in the new html, and thus was my post cruelly mangled a second time. Now, at long last I have defeated the evils of Blogger and uploaded something vaguely resembling the article I originally wanted to write. Victory is mine. Until next time we meet in battle Google, fare thee well.

In other news, my good-for-nothing broken sh%$£y fu&*£d-up laptop is still not back from the repair shop. Lyriel and I are off to the zoo tomorrow, and thanks to my now critical Wowdrawl I shall be resisting the urge to set fire to all furry beasts in a 30 yard radius in order to harvest their precious hides with a spork.

Until my next post, most probably from some kind of PETA correctional facility, I bid you adieu. Stay safe, and eviter les hermines.

Orange.

Where, oh where has my little 'lock gone?

Or…

Men are from Azeroth, Women are from Outland.

Edit: Apologies for repeated posting...attempting to defeat the evil format-monster of doom.

"We're not in Kansas any more"

I used to love Quest Helper, back when it was still being updated. Its genius I think lay in essentially removing the need for players to worry about the potentially tedious business of finding their way around. Epic migrations across the vast continents of Azeroth became a simple matter of following the twinkling yellow line towards your quest's end. Just like in that other adventure where they follow the yellow line, you could skip merrily along with your companions: shiny tin men, furry lions or leathery scarecrows desperately lacking for brains. From time to time you might have needed to dodge assaults from flying monkeys, but in terms of navigational complexity questing was about as challenging as taking candy from a gnome (and yet somehow just as fun).

That perhaps the most downloaded and depended-upon addon to emerge from the wow community was essentially an in-game GPS suggests just how important travel and navigation is in this game. I love speeding across the ever (and often abruptly) changing landscape on Charles the dragon, but I have found that for some of my friends travel can become an awkward and disrupting nuisance. It's an old (by which I mean borderline sexist) cliche that women can't read maps, but it has become something of a running joke in our guild that two of our female members spend most dungeons at the back of the group, missing exits, taking wrong turnings and in extreme cases, entering instances from the wrong end. Prejudiced comments aside I think the question of whether men and women do genuinely differ in the way they 'think' is of interest to a great many people. Since Wow has such an uncommonly large female player base, it must have something that other games lack to attract not just women, but all people who are not usually big gamers. I've decided to do a bit of research to find out what Science (with a capital 'S') has to say about this, using my 2/3 of a psychology degree as a point of reference. Read on...if you dare.


Human Mating; Electrodes; Imagination

In psychology persistent differences between groups of individuals are called 'Individual Differences' (we're an inventive bunch), and this term is applied not just to divisions of gender, but also race, age, or any other measurable factor one might care to investigate. This is an important point, since although many of the studies I have come across deal with differences between the sexes, in all cases the researchers (being good scientists) qualify their findings as trends rather than absolutes. It is entirely possible that some men might perform cognitive operations in a distinctly 'female' way, that is to say, with biases or tendencies more commonly found in women. And of course the reverse is true, all as a result of the random nature of human mating (have you seen human mating? It's a pretty random affair). Some women can read maps. Some women can read maps better than some men. Some men can talk maturely about their feelings, appreciate Sex in the City, and walk past a field of sheep without feeling the need to go 'baaah'. It's called the bell curve bitches, welcome to scienceville.

Amongst my psychologist buddies, we have a little test we like to administer when people ask about navigation and sex. First we attach a few electrodes to the scalp, and administer a small electric shock (this isn't in any way relevant to the test but it makes us feel better). We then ask the person to give us directions from say, their house to the local pub, and whilst doing so to think about how they visualise the route taken. Let's kick up the interaction a notch now (BAM!) and get you to try this. As you are probably a WoW player, I'd be interested to try this with some virtual landmarks. The kind of route to request is one that is not too complex, but equally one not so familiar as to be thoughtlessly accessible. I suspect most of you will be large and mighty level 80s by now, long since departed from old stomping grounds in Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor, so how about you describe the route between your main's racial starting area and his or her local capitol city. Directions need to be clear enough for someone who's never even heard of Azeroth, and while you give them pay attention to what your brain is doing.

The two most common responses are as follows: Some people see themselves moving through the landscape in smooth motion, possibly as a dot moving across a map. Others see a series of static 1st person pictures, akin to a slide show of key landmarks throughout the journey. I'll tell you later which is characteristically female and which is male. Of course, you might not see it like either of these. I have come across a few people with entirely different descriptions, and considering how complex and mutable an organ the brain is this is hardly surprising. I also have a sneaking suspicion that the 3rd person perspective used by 99% of WoW players might skew the results somewhat. Anyway, let me know your answers, especially if they fall outside the archetypes I described above. Ask your friends. Spread the good word of psychology to the masses.


Euclid played a Shaman?

Anyway, enough with the fascinating but irrelevant, now for some real science. In 2002 some researchers from the universities of York and Saskatchewan gave participants a real-world navigation task (also called 'wayfinding') in which they had to find an unfamiliar location on a university campus based upon one of two types of instructions. Half the participants were told key landmarks to aim for (Head for the physics department, take a right at the large hadron collider, don't stand in the void zones black hole) whilst the other half were given so-called 'Euclidean' instructions (100 meters north, 30 meters east etc). Overall they found that men made significantly fewer mistakes than women, and tended to reach their destination quicker. Further separation of the results showed that the differences were largely due to women having difficulty when given the Euclidean-type instructions (there was little difference between the groups guided by landmarks). Further testing with a pen-and-paper task involving plotting a route on a map grid found similar results. The patterns of results suggested that men could use both strategies well in either situation, whereas women tended to only be comfortable when using the landmarks. Now right away this starts to seem a little bit like what I got you to do earlier with the directions, and indeed the common finding from self-report questionnaires (and highly unscientific blog articles) is that women tend to use the landmark strategy in imagined and real life situations, whilst men concentrated on the Euclidian aspects of a route.


On the Inversion of Penguins

Obviously in most real-life situations we have the option of using whatever strategy we like, and so such clear differences don't emerge. But psychologists like to try and isolate them becuase that way they get to play with the shiny machines (we do so love our shiny machines). In the wayfinding study they managed to find a correlation between participants' performance and the well-studied process of 'mental-rotation', which is basically what you do when you try and imagine an upside-down penguin. Unfortunately they couldn't persuade the university of Saskatchewan to let them carry a very expensive shiny machine around the campus suspended a few inches over the participants' heads, luckily some more psychologists who really loved shiny machines (and probably computer games too) went on to give participants wayfinding tasks in a computer-simulated 3D environment, which was itself inside a large and extremely shiny functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI). In doing so they produced some quite extraordinarily shiny pictures scans which basically showed that participants who were better at mental rotation were not only better at map-like, Euclidian learning, but importantly showed less brain activity (at least in certain areas) when doing it. This would indicate that men tend to be better at navigation because they don't have to use their brains as much when interpreting the geometric and spatial aspects of a route. Extrapolating slightly this might mean that in real life they are better able to use both this information and useful landmarks. Women by contrast are perhaps inclined to rely more exclusively on landmarks, because it requires less cognitive effort for them than processing Euclidian information.

At this point once again I should like to point out how none of what I'm talking about is meant as an absolute. One of the most convincing explanations for men's greater spatial ability is based on the fact that during early infancy, female brains develope faster in the left hemisphere than male brains. The left hemisphere is fairly well established as the 'language half', which is why girls tend to learn to read and write faster than boys. However, this early advantage tends to slow progression in the right hemisphere somewhat, at least when compared to boys. The slight advantage persists into adulthood, and so we at least partially explain, in a roundabout sort of way, that girls get lost more because their brains aren't as good as boys'. I guess is turns out Mother Nature actually possesses the egalitarian sensibilities of a bigoted Victorian male.


Dénouement (Horses)

Anyway, to drag the article kicking and screaming back to WoW, what implications might this have for the game? Well, probably none to be honest. Though one of the most consistent ways of finding sex differences in navigational ability is when testing with 3D interactive simulations, a great deal of this can likely be put down to the natural law that girls don't play computer games, so aren't as used to them. It's easy to forget this as a WoW-gamer, especially if you're one of the ones who is a girl and/or has a girlfriend. I suspect that women who play WoW might be a lot better at navigation than their non-gamer sisters thanks to all the practice they get in a pretty challenging environment. Coming back to the female guildies I mentioned at the start, though they do still provide the occasional amusing anecdote (half and hour to find the exit from Halls of Stone anyone?), they have got so much better in the year or so that I've been playing with them. Of course to be sure I'd have to test this theory...any volunteers out there?

So congratulations Blizzard, your game helps women overcome a centuries-old prejudice caused by an intractable biological disadvantage. If Nature is a sexist Victorian, Blizzard are chaining themselves to railings and being run over by horses (You go Ghostcrawler!). Crass generalisations aside though, it is still the case that men will have a natural advantage in an integral aspect of Warcraft, which makes me wonder if there might be something Blizz could do about it.

One study I found showed that sex differences are exaggerated in environments that are spatially ambiguous. To cite a WoW example, ever tried to talk your girlfriend out of Sunken Temple? As far as I know mine's still down there. Symmetrical dungeon design or particularly featureless game zones are, I think you'll agree, often the most irritating or boring areas to play in, and I suspect this may stem from having to spend ages working out where the hell you are. Blizzard's dungeon maps are a fantastic addition to the game, but I know that many of my guild mates, particularly the female ones, find them next to useless. Maybe they could be improved, particularly for girl gamers by adding some landmarks like the ones you see on those beautiful northrend zone maps. What the hell let's go crazy with the recommendations, cover the whole map in landmarks. Add tooltip images with screenshots or artwork views of important features. Give those Blizzard artists something to doodle in their lunch-breaks, "500 thumbnail sketches of castles, mountains and exciting trees from a player's-eye-view please. Yes Gary I know they all use the same models...we think that may be part of the problem". Make all this an optional overlay so that the boys can turn them off if they want to flex their Euclidian man-brains, and you've got yourself a big fat feature for the next patch. Thank me later Blizz, I accept Emblems of Conquest and cookies. Mainly cookies.


Orange.



References

Saucier, D. M., and Green, S. M. (2002). Are sex differences in navigation caused by sexually dimorphic strategies or by differences in the ability to use the strategies? Behavioural Neuroscience, 116(3), p403-410.

Shelton, A. L., and Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2004). Neural correlates of individual differences in spatial learning strategies. Neuropsychology, 18(3), p442-449.

Coluccia, E., and Louse, G. (2004). Gender differences in spatial orientation: A review. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24(3), p329-340.

Coluccia, E., and Martello, A. (2004). The role of visuo-spatial working memory in geographical orientation: A correlational study. Giornale Italiano di Psicologia, 3, p523-552.

Sunfire joins the ranks

Well since the other introduced themselves it’s polite of me to try the same. Hello, I’m Sunfire, and I’m an altholic(commanding an army of slightly confused belfcharacters). But that’s not my only problem, oh no. I never been a real gamer. For starters i’m a keyturner. Jeeeez, I just cant shake the habit of moving, turning and navigating with the keys. I often click abilities aswell. As an altholic I play a multiple classes and I really need to play a long time consistenly to start using the fast abilty commands. and even then its sporadic... and usally not using more then 3-5 abilities at most.. then I need to click to find the other skills I might need to use. And by some reason... whenever I tab to get the next target I have the nack to pick a mob far away from the one my group is currently bashing/chopping/burning/scolding/freezing/having a disco of pretty murderous aoe light on.

So why people put up with my is still a bit of a mystery. But I suppose the key is to blame lag/closest hunter or other party member of your choice. Or gnomes, you can always blame gnomes... Shifty little buggers.

What I will write here, I really dont know yet. It will certainly not be theorycrafting. Say a number and see my brain shut down in seldefence. Hitting level cap is somewhat frustrating if you just want a simple answer telling you how much of each stat to aim for... and only get formulas and shifty answers in return. And try ask a guy how much penetration you need when you just happen to be a female player... Yes not a very mature response...

So, to try and get back to the subject... what you cant expect from me. Well misspelling and some very odd typos for a starter. Other then that I hope to atleast dont dissapoint my fellow writers here on the blog... The rest of you lot, baaah, cant be bothered to care what you think. You probably play alliance anyway. Unless you play horde your opinion is insignificant.

Damn, I lack a catchy signature.... Waily waily

RAWR FEZ!

So after much stress i finally work out exactly how this whole thing works. Im tellin ya im far to busy either combing my incredably sexual belf hair or admiring my trolly tusks depending on what im doing of course. Somebody give me an idea what to post since im somewhat stumped at the moment :P

My Two Golds'-worth

Welcome to Cursor Vivat, oh gentle and sexy reader, a blog which could at this stage turn out to be about pretty much anything. One reason for this post is to provide a general introduction and game plan, more for the authors' benefit than anything else. The main reason for it is that my other first post was a 2000+ word discussion of the psychology of spatial navigation as it relates to the gender divide in World of Warcraft, which I felt would be somewhat jumping in at the deep end, if said deep end was in fact a volcano, possibly containing sharks. Flying sharks. Flying sharks on fire.

Anyway, throughout the course of this little endeavour you will hear from me, my lovely lady Lyriel, and hopefully two of our guild mates and good friends, Sunfire and Damofez. The others will I'm sure introduce themselves once they get posting (or just launch straight away into vitriolic tirades against their latest moron-filled Pug), and hopefully once you know a bit about us that will give some idea of what we are likely to be writing about. To illustrate, I play a troll shaman as my main, and so will probably end up writing on such topics as healing, zapping people with lovely lightning, the joy of tusks, or the importance of Mojo in a modern consumerist society. I have also for a long time filled the role of guild tank with my death knight, so may on occasion throw some tin-can love into the mix or rage about omen-blind dps and why they should be burnt at the stake.

Finally, aspects of my 'real life' (for want of a better term) may sometimes worm their way into my posting. You will probably hear a lot about my take on psychology in World of Warcraft, as I study this at university. My next post for example will be on why girl-gamers can't find their way out of dungeons, as I feel a good way to start my blogging career would be to alienate half the demographic. Anyway, that's all from me. I hope you enjoy reading Cursor Vivat, whatever it turns out to be. Once we know ourselves, I'm sure we will let you know. Untill then, bon voyage et evite les squales.

Orange.

Hello world, it's me, Lyriel

Hi, I'm Lyr and most of the time in game I can be found playing a Warlock as despite having been playing for just over a year, it's the only class I've managed to play all the way to 80. I'm probably going to be writing mostly about the various aspects of the warlock class and making terrible jokes (idea for a potential email response column: "(Curse of) Agony Aunts"). Apart from clearing Naxx 10 Arachnid Quarter once, and an incredibly lucky VoA where both bosses dropped warlock tokens, I don't raid, yet I still try to provide competent dps, and many of the blog posts will be focussed on how to play as well as you can without being a full time raider clearing Ulduar 25 every night.
I am absolutely dreadful at pvp and avoid it like the (ebon) plague, so there is likely to be very little in the way of warlock-based pvp advice.


As well as cackling, green-fire filled posts, I intend to muse pseudo-philosophically on issues such as world-building, real life stories and events that lore and races are based on, and the ubiquitous tropes about girl gamers. I'd also like to write about some of WoW's music as it is extraordinarily good, but I wouldn't hold your breath for that post - in fact if you suffer any shortness of breath while reading Cursor Vivat I would recommend checking for stealthed rogues using Strangulate on you. Outside of WoW I love kids' literature and fantasy literature and any combinations thereof, as well as the usual interests in comedy, good bands, trashy american tv such as Gossip Girl and giraffes.


It just remains for me to say that you're very welcome into the hive-mind of our guild, we all hope you enjoy our ramblings and maybe even find out things to make WoW (even) more enjoyable and that there's a real post coming up in the next few days. So long darlings, and thanks for all the feesh,


Lyr