Insomniac Librarians Why sleep when there's field literature?

Thanks to Ellen Forsyth of the State Library of New South Wales, there's a monthly online gathering in the Saurfang Ironforge Library in World of Warcraft. The lecture series can get quite interesting, and Eli Neiburger was no exception to this.

http://gamesandlibraries.wetpaint.com/page/Eli+Neiburger+transcript

One of the nicest things about World of Warcraft is that you've a certain degree of anonymity. If you're researching, who knows who you're talking to? It isn't unusual to catch fellow researchers conducting surveys. These vary from gender studies, to psychology, to sociology, and any number of different topics. I tend to like WoW for my ability to make plenty of virtual mistakes that I can avoid in real life.

BWS Johnson
mhelmanATillinoisalumni.org

Just what gives me the right to stand up here and lecture, anyway?

Welllllll

I was the Director of the Hinsdale Public Library for four and a half years. If you've not been a small rural Library Director, you're missing out, particularly on baked goods. During my tenure there, I snuck onto the Executive Board of the Regional Library System, and even the State Aid Review Committee, while they weren't looking.

World of Warcraft is a Fantasy genre Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game or MMORPG. Players battle monsters to gain experience in order to advance in level. In Burning Crusade, the level maximum is 70. Players can talk to other players in close to real time and make friends provided the friend is a member of their faction. The humans, night elves, dwarves, and draenei are all members of the Alliance. The orcs, trolls, tauren, blood elves, and undead are all members of the Horde. The Alliance and the Horde are bitter enemies, though in later game schemes are forced to cooperate.

Arathi Basin is a Player vs. Player Instance in World of Warcraft. Your character competes against other people's characters real time in a mass duel. It's much more fun to play a person than it is to play a computer opponent. (Player versus enemy, or PVE is how that's put.) Humans are less predictable and have quicker reactions than a stale artificial intelligence.

There are five bases, or nodes, to capture. They're approximately equidistant. They are

The Stables (ST)
The Gold Mine (GM or mine)
The Lumber Mill (LM)
The Blacksmith (BS)
and
The Farm (farm)

To capture a base, the player works at switching the flag located at the node they wish to control. Once a base has been flying the team colours, a side can collect resources from that base. The more bases a faction controls, the quicker the victory. The first team to 2000 resources wins.

Just like real life, there are basically jocks and dweebs. However, in virtual reality, you get to decide how you're going to turn out. Warriors and Hunters are the jocks of World of Warcraft. Priests and mages are the dweebs. Paladins and Druids can serve any number of functions. The overarching game strategy is to

1) Kill before you are killed (Damage per second {DPS})
OR
2) Be so buff the other guy gets tired and dies (Tanking)
OR
3) Keep another player alive long enough to keep you alive by proxy (Healing)

Sometimes good teamwork is as simple as providing one's fellows with food. There are also buffs, which are beneficial spells, that one may cast on another to help them along. Conversely one may harm an enemy by debuffing. In the first two minutes, it is free to help one's mates, and yet there are still a startling number of occasions where nothing is done.

The largest reason that we fail in life and in the game world is that we don't apply the right tactics to the right situation. The most reliable successful strategy for Arathi Basin - take and hold 3 nodes - is most often applied in the Eye of the Storm Battleground, often to very little avail. Eye of the Storm is best dealt with by a hold 2 and capture the flag approach. People in game are on the wrong map.