[Infowarrior] - Seven Things I Learned from World of Warcraft

[Richard Forno]

Seven Things I Learned from World of Warcraft - by John August
http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/seven-things-warcraft

Those who¹ve seen my movie, The Nines, can infer that I had a bit of a World
of Warcraft problem back in the day. ³The day² being a period of about four
months in which most of my waking hours were spent either playing the game
or wanting to. The luxury and danger of being a screenwriter is an abundance
of unstructured time. WoW can eat hours in a gulp.

Moderation just didn¹t work. I had to give it up cold-turkey, canceling my
account and throwing out the install disks. With my newfound time, I had a
kid, wrote a couple of movies and directed one of my own.

I have few regrets about giving up Warcraft. But in retrospect, I did learn
some valuable things from my time in Azeroth, lessons that have stuck with
me. So I thought I¹d share a few.

1. Kill injured monsters first

W When facing multiple bad guys, the temptation is to go after the one who¹s
hitting you hardest. This is often a mistake. That injured razorback, the
one who is running away? He¹ll be back in 15 seconds, likely with other
baddies in tow. So take a few clicks to kill him now. Once he¹s dead, you
can focus completely on the guy who¹s smacking you.

The real world may not have druids and paladins, but it¹s chock full of
monsters. They¹re called ³term papers² and ³errands² and ³mysterious car
problems.² At any given moment, there may be one monster that looms larger
than all of the others, who clearly needs to be attacked. But before you do,
look around for injured monsters ‹ the half-finished tasks that probably
need only a few more minutes to complete. If you don¹t deal with them now,
they¹ll be a constant distraction, and may eventually come back stronger.

This ³injured monster theory² is why I try to return every phone call the
day I receive it, and respond to every email within 24 hours. If a warning
light comes on in my car, I go to the mechanic that day. Whenever I find
myself thinking, ³I need to remember toŠ² then I know I¹ve failed. I don¹t
need to remember. I need to do. I need to finish.

2. Grinding is part of the gameŠ

W In WoW parlance, ³grinding² is the process of killing a bunch of fairly
easy monsters, one after the other, strictly to rack up loot and experience.
There¹s no adventure to it, no real challenge. It¹s tedious and mindless,
but it¹s often the fastest way to level up, which is why everyone does it.

Daily life is full of mindless tedium, but there¹s an important distinction:
grinding has a point. While the task may be dull and carpal
tunnel-aggravating, there¹s a clear goal. You¹re doing X in order to get Y.
You¹re xeroxing scripts in the William Morris mailroom in order to get a job
as an assistant. You¹re proofreading your script for the seventh time in
order to send it to your friend, who works for that producer. You have to be
willing to do serious grunt work in order to move ahead.

3. ŠBut grinding is not the game

W It¹s easy to confuse what you¹re doing with why you¹re doing it. Just
remember: you¹re not paying $15 a month to kill the same set of spawning
critters. Grinding is a means of achieving a specific goal, whereas the game
itself is supposed to be entertaining. So once you level (or get enough deer
skins to fabricate that armor), stop grinding and start exploring.

I worked for a year as a reader at Tri-Star, writing coverage on 10 scripts
or books a week. It was good money, $65 a shot, but it was wearying. Most of
the scripts were terrible. Apart from offering lessons-to-avoid, there
wasn¹t any point in reading them other than the money. But I convinced
myself I was ³working in the industry,² so I kept reading them, one after
the other, dutifully writing up my synopses and comments. Executives would
congratulate me on my witty notes, and there was some suggestion that I
could get a job in development. So I quit.

In place of reading, I got a mindless internship in physical production at
Universal: filing, copying, researching clearances. I didn¹t use my brain
once. That left me with abundant energy when I got home from work, and with
it I finished two scripts.

Both jobs were quintessential ³day jobs.² In theory, writing coverage should
have been the better job, because it was closer to screenwriting. And
truthfully, I did learn some valuable things­for the first month or two.
After that, it was a whole lotta more of the same. The second job was a
better fit because there was no confusing it with my true ambitions.

4. Give away stuff to newbies

W You start the game with almost nothing: a weapon and the shirt on your
back. Each new piece of gear you accumulate is tremendously exciting. Cloth
armor seems luxurious. But as you level up, that early gear becomes
increasingly irrelevant and basically worthless. It¹s not worth the trip to
the store to sell it. So don¹t. Instead, run back to the newbie lands, find
the first character of your class, and hand him all the stuff you don¹t
want. It will take two minutes of your time, but give the newbie a
tremendous head start. (Not to mention building your karma.)

This site, johnaugust.com, is really just me running back to the newbie
lands and giving away what I can. There¹s no financial incentive in it for
me. I could certainly put my advice in a book and charge $15.95 for it. But
I see it as the take-a-penny, leave-a-penny flow of information. On a daily
basis, I find myself searching the web for answers on topics in which I¹m a
newbie (Flash programming, DC mythology, teaching toddlers to swim) and
leaving thankful that someone out there took the time to write a tutorial on
exactly what I needed. So in exchange, I write up what I know about
screenwriting.

If everyone took the time to build a site about the areas of their
expertise, the world would be significantly cooler.

5. Keep track of your quests

W WoW is refreshingly open-ended­you could spend all your time skinning
bears, if you felt like it. In order to provide a sense of structure, the
game helpfully provides quests: multi-step missions, generally to collect,
kill or deliver something. While the system does a solid job tracking these
official endeavors (²13 out of 25 tusks²), most of the time what you¹re
really trying to do (²find a better shield²) is frustratingly amorphous. The
trick is to identify these unofficial quests and break them down into
distinct steps:

* browse the auctions to compare prices
* pick preferred shield
* sell off unneeded linen to raise needed cash
* bid

At any given point, you may have 10 of these pseudo-quests, and unless you
take charge of them, you¹re liable keep running around, cursing your stupid
shield.

GTD enthusiasts would label these WoW quests ³projects,² and each of the
bullet points ³next actions.² That¹s geekery, but it¹s an acknowledgment
that most of life¹s work consists of a bunch of little activities in the
service of a larger goal. You don¹t write a script; you write a scene. You
don¹t design a website; you tweak the CSS so the navigation looks better. No
matter what the project is, you can¹t finish until you get started, and you
can¹t get started until you figure out the steps.

6. Storage is costly

W Perhaps sensing that messy teenage boys are a key demographic, World of
Warcraft won¹t let you leave something on the ground. If you don¹t pick up
that fallen warhammer, it will vanish, never to return. So one quickly
learns the importance of storage: belts, bags, backpacks and chests.
Unfortunately, there¹s never nearly enough space, and adding more becomes
ridiculously expensive. (That¹s by design, clearly. The developers want to
minimize hoarding.) So always keep in mind the carrying costs. If you never
use that second bow, get rid of it, and use those slots for something you
need.

Unlike World of Warcraft (or hard drives in the 90¹s), digital storage is
now cheap. Crazy cheap. I remember having to carefully comb through my hard
drive, trying to figure out exactly what I could purge in order to install
the newest version of Quark XPress. Today, I have 80 gigs available on my
startup drive, and this was the first time I checked in over a year.

But while the cost of bit storage has plummeted, the cost of storing atoms
is still huge. My neighbors just had a POD delivered, essentially a cargo
container that gets trucked off. I¹ve watched as they¹ve filled it with
furniture and boxes, all the time wondering, ³Is all that stuff really worth
keeping?² It¹s like paying rent on things you already own.

Last year, we cleaned out our garage. Instead of a traditional yard sale, we
did a virtual version. We took pictures of everything we were getting rid
of, built a page in Backpack, and sent the link to all our friends. Whoever
wanted something could email us and take it. They got a free desk, and we
got a free garage.

7. Overthinking takes the fun out of it

W Remember, the game is supposed to be fun. Yes, you can spend hours pouring
through the forums, finding exactly the right talent tree. Or you could wing
it: explore some new lands and kill some big monsters. Obsessive planning
won¹t make the game more enjoyable. It will just make it more like work.

I¹m often asked about outlines and treatments, and whether they¹re necessary
before sitting down to write a script. They¹re not. Like a map, they can
help you figure out where you¹re going, but when you follow them too
closely, you¹re apt to miss a lot of amazing scenery along the way.

On a bigger level, as you look back at any period of your life, you don¹t
remember what a solid plan you had. You remember what you did. You remember
the adventures, the scrapes, the unanticipated detours that turned out to
fascinating. So don¹t plan your way out of an exciting life.