Monday, May 4, 2009

Nearly Epic'd Out

My guildmates in WoW are very tolerant of my fiber devotion, or just amused by it. It’s a running joke for us that the raids are moving waaaaaay too slow, when ‘Rona’ has time to knit during a raid, lol. They might not get it, but they mostly get me and what yarn means to me – how cool is that? Have I mentioned lately how much I love my guildies?

My knitting friends, meanwhile, might not get my WoW enthusiasm, but they’ve at least heard of WoW. With 12 million players, everybody now knows someone who plays. In every social group I’m in, there’s a subgroup there of WoW players. Two of our regulars at the knit-togethers are WoW gamers themselves. Two of the young gentlemen at my favorite grocery store are WoWers and always manage to be the one who gets to bag my groceries, so we can talk about the game on the way out to my car. A lot of my former coworkers at Borders play, and I see them every Sunday, as well as some regular customers there who have let it be known that they’re WoWers too.

Flipped me right-the-hell out last week, when I saw that WoW sponsored the broadcast of the NASCAR truck race. Our household is plum-eat-up with NASCAR, and it was a surreal moment to see my two worlds collide on TV, lemme tell ya. If WoW ever sponsors a racing team, that driver will be my pick, hands down!

By the way, lots of knitting can happen while watching a race (wink!).

During yesterday's knit-together, Nicole commented about my post comparing WoW and knitting. It surprised her how much they have in common. There’s a small sub-sub group of WoW knitters that I found thanks to Renata of World of Warcast fame. Her blogs are here and here. She mentioned in one of those podcasts that she knits during the game’s downtime. Gasp! I do too! So I posted on their forums, and she turned me onto the WoW knitters on Ravelry (insert squeals here).

I hear tell, that they have a knitting WoW guild, a sort of mix of game guild and knitting circle. They get their toons all gathered together in one spot in the game, sit them in a circle, and . . . . knit in real life while chatting on the game’s built-in voice chat! OMG! One of these days, you know I’m going over there to check it out, lol.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who finds the game inspiring in a knitterly way. Check out these creations from fellow WoWers-who-knit:

I found these two articles about WoW being the new knitting circle, lol.
World of Warcraft: the new knitting circle
Roll Playing Fits the Bill in which WoW is described as a 'faceless knitting circle.'


I’ve said for a long time that Netherstorm makes me want to knit a sweater in those colors. The game designers who chose the palette for that zone have really done something artful! Multiple shades of purples, magentas, pinks, midnight blues, a copper-brown base, and little flashes of peach here and there . . . (dreamy sigh). Maybe just purples and a little peach, and let the copper be in its buttons . . .

The phrase ‘purple drops,’ used to describe very high-end, desirable loot that drop from monsters you kill in the game, has me thinking of a shawl that will be named Purple Drops. The quality and desirability of the game’s loot is designated by the color of font of its name, which you see when you mouse over it. They are junk in gray font, common items in white, uncommon in green, rare in blue, epic in purple, legendary in orange, and heirloom in a new peachy-yellow. So you’ll hear the quality of a character/player’s gear being described as, “She’s in all purple, except just one blue,” or some such. My main toon, Rona, is all purples except for two blue rings that still need to be upgraded. Another unique phrase found among WoWers could be used to describer her, “She’s nearly epic’d out.”

I’m realizing that a lot of game development isn’t just the game’s mechanics, but the art of it too.

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