Pneumonia Week - WoW

So this week I've been staying at my dorm due to my diagnosis of "walking pneumonia," an unpleasant and week-long disease (week-long thanks to horse-pill antibiotics shortening its lifespan). While this does make life somewhat limiting and boring, I've had a chance to actually work on my projects and get them done and over with. And, I've had more than enough time to play World of Warcraft all day long.

I've begun to phase into my former "hardcore" WoW life, the phase that brought on such priceless statements as "No thanks, I can't go to the movies, guys. I've got a Molten Core raid tonight." And who could forget (me, addressing my family around the dinner table) "So I totally just got this awesome new purple from MC last night. Not only does it have stam for raid reliability but also spell haste, so I don't have to worry too much in AV." Who could forget indeed? (Not me. I've learned to hush up about WoW during dinner)

People have asked me over my brief, 4 year addiction to that soul-sucking game why, WHY is it so addicting? "Don't you just hit the maximum level and the game's over?" they ask. I'm going to let all of you in on a little secret (WoW players, silently chuckle and weep as we go through why our lives are so hopelessly taken by this piece of software).

How WoW addicts you:

First, you start out an innocent, naive level 1 character. You only have a couple of abilities, but as you level, more and more abilities make their way into your spellbook every couple levels or so whether you be Warrior or Warlock (my personal favorite). At level 10, many of the abilities belonging to classes begin showing up. Hunters get to train pets to help them on their quests. Warlocks get demons. Paladins are able to resurrect allies and friends. You also get this shiny new tab on your User Interface bar that says "Talents." Whatever could that mean? Well, every time you level, you're able to spend points in various "trees" that give you additional bonuses, spells and abilities.

This is Blizzard's first step: to make sure you play all the way to 80 (yes, there are 80 levels), Blizzard introduces not just spells and talents to get you moving, but also fairly attainable "baby-step" goals like getting a mount at 40 (I believe it has moved down since last I leveled), or an "epic," faster mount at level 60. And then a flying mount at 70, and finally a custom mechanical mount at 80. Lest you think mounts are the only thing besides new spells and talents that you achieve at higher and higher levels, think again. As your level goes up, better and better weapons and armor become available. And some zones (the areas where players actually "play") are only available at certain levels, so you must achieve a certain level just to BE there.

"Ok, we get that part," I can already hear people saying. "But what makes WoW so addicting AFTER you reach your highest level?" Well, there are multiple answers to that. Let's get started.

First of all, Blizzard expects you to make friends in order to raid higher and higher level dungeons. We're talking 25-man raiding. That's 25 people who have dedicated their time for a 5-hour run through the same old stuff just to have a small chance at receiving a glorious blue or purple drop. Before I go any further, I need to explain color drops.

Grey - Items of this color are not useful in any way and can be sold to vendors for money.

White - Items of this color are useful to some but generally not very good to equip. You usually are decked out in white armor at the start of the game.

Green - Items of this color indicate something special about the weapons or armor that you should take note of. Whether it boosts your statistics (health, mana, attacking power, etc.) or just does more damage than ordinary white weapons, it's generally accepted as being better than white. You'll mostly find these materials dropping from "mobs" (enemy Non-Player Characters) around the world.

Blue - Items of THIS color indicate that you just picked up a pretty good item. Better than green (in most cases, although Blizzard screwed with that when they came out with their first expansion), you find these items only rarely dropping from "mobs" and at the end of long quests. You can also find those items dropping in dungeons that you're raiding.

Purple - When you get a purple, expect to jump in happiness. Purples are generally much better than either blues or greens (again, Blizzard's mistake flipped this around with their first expansion) and are highly sought after. Remember, green, blue and purple items can also be crafted, but at a generally increasingly high cost. 

Orange - If you EVER get a hold of an orange item, you will be most likely one out of an entire server. Orange are so rare, they're expected to blow everything that you have in your inventory away. If you come across an orange item, you will be the envy of hundreds of thousands of players who will never ever be able to equip that item for their own use.

That was fun. A little off-topic, but fun. Ok, so you're raiding 5 hours through a dungeon just to "roll" on an item that you desperately want. In many cases, your roll will be much less than the victor, and you'll have to grudgingly congratulate them all while looking sadly at your Green item sitting forlornly in your inventory. 5 hours gone, and for what? Well, at least you're gaining more experience in that dungeon. Maybe you'll get it next time.

Maybe.

So Blizzard pulls you in by forcing you to make 25 friends and going on raids on the off-chance that you might get lucky. Many of these people will make a weekly run schedule, and (obviously) the only time anyone really has "free" is the weekend. "Welcome to our guild!" they'll say. "We're running Black Temple or the new Naxxramus or Utgarde Keep every weekend starting at 7pm on Saturday and ending at around 4am on Sunday. Wanna join?" At first, it sounds good. One weekend just to get your character even better equipped. But then they expect you to be there every weekend. And bit by bit, your social life falls away until you're forced to explain to people that you can't go out with them because you have an obligation to people you've never seen face-to-face to play a videogame for 6-8 hours straight. It may sound nuts now, but just wait. Veteran WoW players will back me up on that one.

But surely you'll eventually get all of the "new" weapons and armor, right? Wrong. I mean, some guilds of players who do NOTHING else than sit in their basements playing WoW will get to the highest level and the highest armor and weapons within one week of new content. Don't argue, it's happened so many times it's disgusting. But you, an everyday player who still has commitments to fulfill (a job, for example, although I've heard of people losing their jobs over this ridiculous game) will not EVER have the newest weapons and armor.

Let's say you're raiding the new instance. You have 4 new pieces of armor from that instance because you've sold your soul to Blizzard for 3 months straight. All of the sudden, Blizzard releases a "patch" (a piece of software that fixes bugs that crop up in WoW with new content) that has 2 or 3 new dungeons. Suddenly, you're going from those old dungeons you slaved away at month after month to new dungeons where, yep, you guessed it, you're going to slave away at month after month just to get your new weapons and armor THAT YOU JUST GOT. What does this do? Well, it helps you run those dungeons more efficiently and kill other players more easily. It allows you to step out into the city of your choice (ingame, of course. You won't be going anywhere once you've installed WoW) and strut down the main halls while other, less fortunate gamers stare at your gleaming armor in awe. Or at least, that's what you'll dream about at night. That's right. You'll start talking in WoW, dreaming in WoW, and thinking in WoW. In a short while, your closest family members will have no idea what you're talking about (unless, of course, your entire family plays WoW. My god, I've seen it and the memories never fade.)

Blizzard's latest ploy is perhaps their most fiendish EVER. Achievements. So you're looking pretty good in all that new armor you got, and you look like you could handle anything that Blizzard can throw at you, when suddenly you discover the "ACHIEVEMENTS" tab. Here, you browse through meaningless achievements that give points when they've been completed. Some of these achievements come with titles, others with actual ingame rewards. You may think you're all that, but you only have 50 points out of 500. What are you doing, just sitting there? You should be out fulfilling ultimately meaningless achievement "quests" that make a cool noise and flash on your screen when you get them. I know how addicting they are because I just got a few. "Make Love, not Warcraft," when I hugged a dead enemy before he released his spirit from his rapidly-cooling corpse. Then I started browsing through the achievements. "Oh, I can do that one. And that one's not too hard." Blizzard has done it again.

There are so many aspects of the game that are addicting in their own right (professions, the economy, and person-vs-person combat) that I don't have time to get into. All I really need to do is let you know that Blizzard, each month off subscription fees alone makes enough money to make a game on the scale of World of Warcraft. That's right. EACH MONTH. Think about that for awhile.

I've seen people who've thrown their lives away for WoW. My old karate teacher's girlfriend threw away her Ph.D, job and ultimately her boyfriend to play WoW. Yeah, it's that serious. Luckily, I have a WoW break built into my system, and I'll get sick of WoW for months at a time before diving right back in again.

I've been playing World of Warcraft since the beta of the ORIGINAL GAME debuted 4 and a half years ago.

I'm Bear, and I'm a WoW addict. Hopefully, my post explains why. 

Vote "Yes" on Proposal 1!!!

Just a quick one today.

For those of you living in Michigan, be sure to vote for Proposal 1 on November 4th! Michigan will have taken a big step forward.

http://michigan.gov/documents/sos/APPROVED_Bal_Word_CCCl821_246348_7.pdf

Speciesism in Modern Times: But Humans Can't Possibly Be Animals!

Every time I hear the thought "Humans aren't animals," my mind cringes in despair. We like to think of ourselves as separate, apart, different than the rest of the animals, but we're not. The Bible unfortunately throws so many people off the track in telling them that "God created man in His own image." To most people, this conveys a total separation from the rest of Creation, which in turn draws a gap between human "beings" and the rest of the world.

It's a tragic turn of events, and it makes many people gaff at the idea that humans actually are animals. Even more tragic is that some people use this excuse that they are separate to do horrible things to those of a "lower species" than them.

Recently I was browsing a messageboard, and one of the topics at hand was about some father who forced his daughter to kill the family cat. While there are many layers of tragedy based around this horrifying act, one found focus throughout the discussion: the fact that this cat was a pet and it was cruelly killed.

Posts like this began to appear:

"So what? It's a cat. It's not like she's murdered a sentient being. Therapy? Whatever for? What's more I think kids should be more exposed to death, and not only animals. The way people overprotect their children is sickening and unrealistic, the world is a tough place. Kids have a right to know that before stumbling into it."

There are several layers of pain here. Let's focus on the fact that she didn't "murder[ed] a sentient being" but instead a cat. Mind-blowing. As speciesist as you can get. Fortunately, this person was trying to play Devil's Advocate, so they simply thought of the most opposite argument they could find and put it up there. If people actually thought that, we'd be in trouble.

Oh wait.

"I think that the fact that people freak out about animal's getting hurt is the stupidest shit i have ever seen. Its an animal. If he had made her stab her brother, I would say differently. Sure, the kid is going to be sad about it for a while, but probably moreso because her father forced her to do it, rather than that she actually did it.

I would let my dog die to save a stranger with no thought about it at all. Call me heartless, but that's just how i see things."

This was from a forum user who actually believed what he was saying. It's impossible to look past the blatant speciesism and total indifference to suffering that the man displayed here (frankly because that's all this post is about). Do people not realize humans are animals? Have these people not taken biology class?

"It's an animal. It's going to die before you do no matter what(unless you have an exotic turtle or those birds that live for ages). It frustrates me where people spend thousands of dollars on their pet to stay alive while it is in immense pain and suffering until the very last day. Circle of life and that stuff. The thing is, this isn't about the pet. It's about the little girl. I feel pretty bad for her in that her dad forced her to stab her pet. At a young age, bummer. She'll get over it and then she'll be sad when the next pet they get dies a terrible painful death of cancer or arthritis so bad it can't walk to the food bowl and it starves to death. 

Its a vicious circle. I decided to remain detached from my dog when I realized that after 4 years of owning her she was already older than me. 

It might be that I hunt with brings me to these feelings about pets, who knows."

The very same poster as the previous ignorant post above poured his thoughts out again, this time railing against the people who "spend thousands of dollars on their pet to stay alive while it is in immense pain and suffering until the very last day." Not only is said poster forgetting that people who spend such money are probably giving said pet painkillers, but he also misses a crucial point: We want our loved ones to live as long as they can. Do you think we send our elders out on an iceflow like the old days, waving goodbye and knowing they'll die a quick death on the frozen waters? No, we comfort them until their very last day. We surround them with these comforts for a reason.

We want them to be happy, but we want them to live.

Going back to the whole humans vs. animals thing, my favorite topic in that area is the Bonobo Ape. The Bonobo is an ape that walks on two legs for long distances, knows how to start and douse a fire (albeit with a scientist's lighter), and is beginning to develop a written language.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write.html

It strikes me how fun it will be when humanity faces its first "sentient" cousin. How will we respond? Hopefully by not exterminating or enslaving the species in fear, for if this speciesism is not dealt with soon, we may have a bit of a problem on our hands. 

If I could have anything besides wishing that my family and friends lived forever (and yes, that includes my dog Chester), it'd be to wish that I could be cryogenically frozen to await the time of the Bonobo. The time when humanity realizes they're not so alone after all, and the time when the question of "Are humans animals?" will be finally answered.

Bear: a Nickname with a Tragically Awkward Interpretation

When I was a kid, "gay" was a word used to describe the ultimate boogeymen: A group of men who would hunt you down if you weren't careful and rape you. Men with uncontrollable libidos out to do Satan's work who cared nothing for emotion and certainly not love. Indeed, this persisted until I finally left my tiny, isolated private school and made my way to Oakland Community College, and then from there to Michigan State University. These "homos" were evil men, men that sinned daily and laughed at God as they did it. "Faggots." "Queers." Rainbow-flag-waving maniacs who french-kissed one another in public to defile the very air they breathed.

Certain things began to happen, though. I read a book called The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, where a man continues to jump forward in time, observing different human cultures. At one point, his jump lands him in a culture where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is a deviancy.

Hmmm... I thought. What would that be like?

Wheels started turning. I imagined myself in that position, where people told me I was a sinner for liking women and denied me homosexuals' rights. I would be frustrated beyond belief. Why can't they see me for who I am? I'd whisper in fury. It came to me then that these "gays" were no different than me save our sexual orientation. 

And at Michigan State, I met gay people. They didn't seem wierd or monstrous. They seemed like average, everyday people trying to get by in life. I began to understand then. Gay is not a choice; gay is how you're born.

It wasn't until a couple of months ago that I was sitting in my office and my friend Scott said "So why do they call you Bear?"

I relayed to him that my high school friends had made a picture of the front half of a bear and the back half of a whale and then posted it on my locker. They thought it was great fun; I didn't know what to think, but the name stuck. I was Bearwhale and that was that.

At college, I made friends pretty quickly, and some of those friends asked me what they could call me as a nickname. I answered "How about Bearwhale?"

They looked confused as an awkward silence settled in. "It's a long story, but-" I began to say, before one of the girls blurted "How 'bout we just call you Bear?"

I finished my story and turned to Scott. He sat in silence for a second and then said, "Oh. I thought maybe you were gay and that's where the nickname came from."

I stared at him. What the hell does that mean? He told me that big hairy men in gay communities were known as "bears." Seeing as how I was a 6'6" big, hairy man, he drew what seemed to him to be a perfectly normal conclusion.

I assured him vehemently that I was not gay, but straight, and had no idea of the implications of my innocently chosen nickname "Bear."

People look at me oddly when I tell them that they can call me "Bear," and I have been left with the awkward thought (every time I see them start at that) that they now believe I am gay. However, I'm glad I know now. I'll be careful to whom I hand that name out to avoid any awkward invites to a date by the same sex.

Plants have won their war

So I was talking with my dad today, being home and all, and we started talking about health and how to eat right; and something monumental occurred to me. 

Plants have many ways of survival, including defensive measures (i.e. poison ivy), transportation (i.e. burrs, dandelion seeds), and methods of attraction such as beauty or some form of allure. Here I'll pause because something has occurred to me and I wondered if anyone else shares my idea.

In the tropics, survival is limited. Due to a much stronger diversity of species, wild storms and the like, most animals in the tropics reproduce quickly at need. Based on this theory, is it plausible that some plants evolve with attributes that make them more desirable to species?

We could talk about marijuana, that gives users a high, pleasant feeling and was incredibly valuable in durable clothing. Or we could discuss the Coca plant, where cocaine and cocoa arise, that gives users a feeling of energy and happiness. We could even discuss poppies, as they affect the users' mood. Hell, we could even talk about coffee and how caffeine has spread almost everywhere.

But the drug I want to focus on most, the drug that's been spread to every aspect of the market, the drug that could be responsible for the obesity epidemic of America, is Sugar.

When first introduced into Europe, sugar was treated as a drug. Doctors gave it out by the spoonful, literally. Today, sugar is in almost every food, and when eaten produces a "high" of satisfaction and energy. People talk about their "sweet tooth," that craving that hits and puts an image in your mind of something mouth-watering that you MUST have, and so you do. Where would we be without sugar? Pop, cookies, brownies, chocolate, white bread... the list goes on. And in all of those things, you consume something that leaves you wanting more.

Try eating a whole wheat slice of bread and compare it to eating a slice of white bread. You feel hungrier and wanting more sugar after the white bread, right?

So, in summary... plants have won their war. They figured out how they could be invaluable to a species and so made it to the top.

Your thoughts?