In Summer 2007 it went a stage further. Two guild members who lived relatively close to each other - Rugal in Brighton and Brodos in Weymouth - agreed to meet up to watch a rubbish film called Transformers: The Movie. A number of other guild members, some of whom lived in Weymouth, decided to tag along too and, as the date approached, more than 20 had showed an interest. Once it emerged that our organisational skills were too inept to book 20 hotel places in Brighton, the venue changed to Weymouth, courtesy of the very tolerant parents of a young man named Exelos.

Dubbed Brucecon, this event attracted people from across Britain and further - including Theta from Ireland, Aakarp from Sweden and Marfu from Norway. It was a profoundly unsettling experience to meet a pack of people of whom you knew some aspects very well and some not at all. Watching a familiar disembodied voice emerge from a genuine human head is odd, at first, but it wasn’t long before it stopped being strange and started feeling normal and, with that barrier overcome, a lot of people had a great deal of fun. By the end, a few days seemed like barely enough and with a cluster of new numbers firmly embedded in our phones, we returned home to our everyday lives, tied together a little more strongly for having finally put faces to names.

Brucecon 2 came a few months later in Reading, courtesy of Xynthia and Henchick. A slightly different and slightly larger group - again including visitors from elsewhere in Europe, like Morani and Moodok - convened for another spate of eating, drinking and geekery. It was one of the best parties I have ever been to, with everyone present already familiar to some degree, already liked, and all with the same hobby.

“I have never encountered so many genuine and friendly people at the same time,” said Silverwave after his return home to Scotland. I felt the same. The journey home, four hours alone on trains playing darts on my Nintendo DS, was a bit of a comedown.

It was pretty clear after this that online socialising wasn’t quite the half measure it was cracked up to be. It’s sad to think that a lot of people you like live too far away to drive in one night, and it’s easy to let your brain fall into the trap of thinking that internet interaction can replace proper contact. But it’s also amazing to think it takes me three clicks and a button press to chat to my a friend in Sweden. I can’t have imagined that ten years ago.

10 Comments

The move to Ahn’Qiraj came after a couple of months of playing. Having roped in another friend, Dave - known online as Davedodger - we found our dabblings in PvP so much fun that one Friday night, following many drinks, we hatched a plan to change from our Alliance incarnations on a PvE server to Horde on a PvP server and, after a couple of false starts, we arrived on AQ. I remember sitting on the phone for the best part of an hour contemplating the choice of character, before eventually settling on a Warlock.

It was a little while before we spotted a recruitment ad for The Bruces. It was the first one we’d seen with a sense of humour and, before too long, we had all joined up.

That was more than two years ago, and a lot has happened, in game at least, between then and now. As the aims of the guild changed over time, and the players in it became increasingly familiar with the game, The Bruces gradually crystallised into the relaxed, social group of people it is today. A colourful cast of characters have come and gone in that time - some sorely missed, some gladly waved off - but many have stuck.

It’s a funny idea, an online social group. A nominal leader, a committee which takes decisions, a set of rules - however loose - an unspoken code of conduct and an application process, all designed to facilitate a set of convergent but physically intangible aims. It’s a complete fabrication, in a sense, because you can switch off your computer and extract yourself from it in an instant, so it’s easy to see how ridiculous it looks from the outside. But even when you’re only communicating by typing or jumping up and down on somebody else’s screen, the people you’re communicating with are still real.

Before too long, it wasn’t just text. After a few failed attempts at instigating voice chat, we eventually signed up to a Ventrilo server, bought ourselves microphones in dribs and drabs, and shuffled awkwardly away from the security of total anonymity. It was weird at first - discovering that shy, polite healer you’d known for months actually had a deep booming voice - but for many of us it quickly became a standard accompaniment to playing.

More pics:

Boss Goat. We met him (or her) in Sweden.
A vague WoW reference in Bulgaria.
The word “fart”. This is funny.

29 Comments

So I was right to be cautious about WoW. The prospect of a game which couldn’t be completed - its hook instead the continual drip-feed of in-game rewards and perceived power - was worrying enough. But the real killer is the other people.

Imagine sitting alone in a blank room with no exits and nothing to do. What’s the most interesting thing that could be placed in there with you? A ball? A dog? The Complete Works of Shakespeare? They’d keep you interested for a while, but the most interesting thing, I think, would be another person. You might love them, you might hate them - if you were stuck in that room forever you’d probably have to kill them - but for better or worse, there is simple nothing more dynamic to us than other people.

With 20,000 people on each WoW server, in theory at least, it makes for a very interesting place. And people being what they are, they cannot help but develop a social structure. It’s framed by the parameters of the means governing their communication, and it’s not real life, but sociologically the two have a lot in common.

It’s a winning formula. Take a good game, insert people, and the result is tantamount to the digital equivalent of crack. A few weeks in, without you even noticing, your childhood trots back from the sunset, sneaks up to your desk and tugs at your trouser leg, wearing a sheepish grin, an apologetic look and a bit of a beard grown on its adventures. And floating next to it, looking as vague and opaque as any abstract concept should, is The Magic.

You know they’re going to play havoc with your social life. But you’re so pleased to see them you don’t mind at all. In your heart of hearts, you even find room to overlook the beard.

You’ll have to bear with me - I’m planning to send this off to Blizzard when it’s done, and a bundle of random pics isn’t going to mean as much without the full story. Here’s a couple to chew over while you wait.

Brodos indicates a drawing of a penis.
A Swedish wall bigs me up.
Peyota’s computer is rubbish.

24 Comments

January 2006 - December 2007

When I started playing World of Warcraft, way back in January 2006, it was my first introduction to online games. I had loved games since my childhood, and had been nerdishly amazed by the wonders of the internet since I first encountered the web, but combining the two seemed like lunacy, a recipe for the complete destruction of my social life. It swiftly emerged I was right about that.

Like a lot of people, it was a free trial from a friend - Tom, or Redstripe as many of you know him - which suckered me in. Those early days were characterised by a sequence of mini epiphanies: the first dizzying moment of loading up the game and trying to make sense of the deluge of icons and text; the first signs of other people occupying the same digital world, jumping about like idiots in the starting zone; the first time their actions made an impact on our game, as a group of three ploughed through a barrage of enemies which had been killing us for the best part of an hour; the first stranger I chatted to, two hours sitting by a campfire just talking; the first party; the first instance; the first PvP; the first tentative steps at becoming part of the bigger picture and joining up with a guild. As a lifelong player of offline games, each of these experiences simply bowled me over.

Reminiscence for the games of your childhood, for their accompanying feelings of adventure and excitement and compulsion, appears to hit a lot of people in their 20s. Nostalgic those memories may be, but losing yourself in a book or a film or your own imagination comes quite naturally to children. They have no trouble experiencing The Magic. But we seem to lose that ability a little with age. The varying concerns of the twenty-something single male - money, mortality, full time work and ironing - are so irritatingly difficult to ignore that I ended up too firmly rooted in my feet to give myself completely to something as trivial as a video game.

And with that - poof! The Magic skipped off into the sunset arm in arm with my childhood, leaving nothing behind but a heap of of rose-tinted dust. Being grown up, I was pretty much obliged to hoover it up before tea.

Continued soon…

6 Comments

On April 25, Brodos and I embarked on a 19 day tour of Bruces across Europe. The trip would take us to seven locations through 11 countries, meeting 13 guild members, 20 WoW players and many of their friends and family members. Most of these people we had never met in person, and even Brodos and I had only met twice. Frankly that was already more than enough for one lifetime.

It says a lot about the people we met that we could visit so many new places without that feeling like the purpose of the holiday. The point, the best part, quickly emerged as spending time with this handful of internet acquaintances who, upon setting out, we were unsure if we could call friends. But we left each place feeling like they were exactly that. The fun of exploring the place they called home was merely a bonus.

If anything, it validates online gaming - at least our little corner of it - as a worthwhile pursuit. And it recasts those people you socialise with while you’re doing it not as pseudo-friends, but as friends in waiting.

All in all, it was the best holiday of my adult life. The ones from my childhood can safely be ignored because everything seemed awe inspiring back then. My first car wash was in Norway at the age of four and I can still remember the fear. Children are stupid.

It’s not a good sign when even the intro is this long. If you’re eager to find out how we got on in Finland, our first stop, you should probably come back in a month. For anyone still with us, the story continues in the next couple of days…

98 Comments

Maybe he’s born with it.

World of Warcraft is a game of many types of bar, in fact, there are 3. Having this many may seem over the top, but it does allow some interesting combinations. The 3 types of bar are sponge, healer, and filler.

Through this guide i’ll assume you have chosen the wrong one, Healer, and will introduce you to your UI:

This is the basic user interface that you will use in order to raid. While many criticise a lack of depth in WoW, its simplicity and ease of use are certainly a benefit. Actions are performed solely with the mouse, with you needing to click bars if they start to fill up with colour. You win when the bars stop filling up at all. If a bar fills up all the way to the top, it will turn black and say “DEAD”. If all the bars turn “DEAD”, it means you lost, and will need to start the level again. If your own bar turns “DEAD”, then the game continues, and you may still be able to win, so go get a snack and hope for the best.

Sponge bars come in 3 types: brown, orange, and pink. Brown is the most common, followed by orange, and then pink. Brown and orange are generally impossible to tell apart, apart from the colour. Pink is quite different, as it acts as a magnet for colour, often meaning if you have a pink sponge, the other sponges will fill up a lot slower. However, this means the pink sponge will fill up very quickly, so will need a lot of clicking.

There will usually be 2 bars for sponges in 10 bar raids, and often 4-5 in 25 bar raids. The rest of the bars will be made up of a random mix of healer and filler bars. While filler bars may appear useless, as they seem to have no affect on other bars, there is a hiddden rule in the game whereby the more filler bars that don’t turn “DEAD”, the sooner the game can be won. Healer bars can be good to click, as they have a basic AI that tries to help you win the game.

With the basics covered, I can now talk you through 3 raids, your first 10 bar, first 25 bar, and a later, very fun, 25 bar.

Karazhan

Your first raid, and the first zone in level 1, will be a fairly straight forward 10 bar raid. If the game is on an easy setting, then only the sponges should take much damage, and it will be over in 4-5 hours. If you are unlucky and have chosen a high difficulty, then the filler bars will often fill up with colour very fast then turn black. This is often followed by them disappearing altogether, and they may take 20-30 minutes for another bar to take their place.

Gruul

Your first 25 bar raid! This is the second zone of level 1. The 25 bar raid interface is an extended version of the 10 bar introduced earlier, looking like:

This can be a lot more exciting, because, while in easy mode Karazhan, the sponges would take most of the colour, even in easy mode gruul, a lot of the bars will be taking the colour. This is exciting, as it means you have more places to click. 25 bar is also more interesting, because there are more people, if you do not like a bar for some reason, you can try not to click it.

Mount Hyjal

This is on level 3, and can only generally be attempted on easy difficulty levels, as the game designers have made playing on hard difficulty almost impossible. One special fact about this zone is that there will almost always be a pink sponge, which will require most of your clicking. While Gruul is exciting because lots of bars take damage, Mount Hyjal is exciting because one bar is filling up very fast, and bouncing around in size. There are also times when random other bars will fill up extremely quickly, forming a reactions test.

I hope this has helped explain raiding as a healer!

7 Comments

3 Comments

WENCHUAN, China - The gold farmer death toll from China’s massive earthquake could soar to more than 50,000, state media has reported, as rescuers struggled to help survivors and hope faded for the thousands of power levellers buried under rubble.

Monday’s 7.9 magnitude quake is thought to have decimated the country’s WoW sweatshop industry. Already some 20,000 players are confirmed dead, with a further 25,000 remained buried in areas rescuers have struggled to reach. An estimated 100,000 Windows PCs are thought to have been ruined.

The disaster has caused havoc on worldwide Warcraft markets, with Adamantite prices rising by almost 20 per cent, American character levelling fees at an all time high and arena servers going unused between 3am and 5am.

More on this unfolding tragedy as we get it.

Donate.

85 Comments

Fuck fuck fuck Hooray Hitler Pix is back! Shit Milky change it all back before he sees It’s so great to have our glorious leader back even though NOTHING AT ALL HAS HAPPENED in his absence!

Fear not I hear Pix is a T-Rex and they cannot read italic.

It’s so great that nobody started rallying an army to overthrow himGO TO PLAN B KINDNAP BRODOS HE WILL MAKE A FINE HOSTAGEwhile he was gone!THE CODEWORD IS “McCHICKEN NUGGETS”

15 Comments

This is some news! This is not a trap! This is proper news about the proper state of things to properly come!

The revolution is here! Pixelsmith will be Tombstone piledrivered off his throne, teabagged and have “LOL” written on his forehead in pink permanent marker! The old king shall fall! Emperor Roogal shall lead you all to sexy freedom! Long live our new, handsome, oppressive ruler! Free booze! Free prostitutes! No loud music after 11pm!

The forums were just the beginning! Soon the guild and then WoW and then the Internet and then all the zoos and then the world will be put in a headlock by the Rugal Empire! It’s such a great name you can spell it two ways, with an ‘oo’ or with a ‘u’! Ways!

Join the Roogle (3 ways!) Empire alongside the ranks of Sargeant Milkman and BFF Drummerhero or be crushed under an iron fist!

You must defeat my dragon punch to stand a chance!

The wheels are in motion! I’ve already spent £20,000 of the year’s budget paying off railway and locomotive staff to delay Pix and Bro’s train home by a full EIGHT MINUTES! We can taste victory!

24 Comments