Are You Superstitious About WoW?

image by rsgranne
Yesterday at Kotaku, Brian Crecente discussed gaming superstitions. In talking with Nick Yee of the Daedalus Project, he found that lots of MMO players hold an unusual number of superstitious beliefs ranging from theories about in-game luck, to elaborate instance seeding rituals or carrying objects they believe act as "lucky charms" to improve a character's chances at obtaining rare loot drops.

The more complex and enigmatic the details of a game mechanic, the more likely it is for conspiracy theories to emerge. In FFXI, where crafting professions seem to be much more complicated and proc-dependent than in WoW (both time of day and day of the week may affect the success of your crafting session), all kinds of rumors sprang up, like this one which claimed that for characters trying to craft something with a particular kind of crystal, "standing and facing, for example, Southeast with a Wind Crystal, they would be less likely to fail the synthesis and lose the crystal and items." Oof. Yet another reason I'm glad I opted out of my boyfriend's FFXI phase.

What kinds of superstitious behavior do you practice in WoW? Do you loot the dogs? Change up who zones into the instance first? Keep your [Talisman of True Treasure Tracking] on at all times?

While I haven't fallen prey to WoW loot seed theories (yet), I have developed a few raid superstitions of my own during the past few years co-leading Zul'Gurub and Karazhan runs. To start with, I think it's bad luck to discussing boss goals at the start of the night of non-farm content. And there's a part of me which really believes that talking too much about the shiny item I'd like will jinx my chance of ever seeing it drop at all (for my mage, both the [Lightning Capacitor] and [Pattern: Belt of Blasting] have fallen victim to this curse). Last of all, I get very nervous when people call out the inevitable death of a boss before we've actually killed him. Seriously, don't do that around me! What if this isn't Caketown? What if the cake is a lie?

How Safe is Your WoW Account?

World of Raids has a link up today to a Kaspersky Labs study on the evolution of malware targetted at MMOs. It's an interesting read; I was kind of surprised to see that at least in 2006, virus and malware development for WoW and Lineage 2 was such a massively exponential curve, and that over 80% of passwords stolen by trojans or viruses are still stolen from South Korean gamers. I almost feel bad for them, but then I remember that for the same cost as my puny DSL, they get 10Mbps connections. WTB fiber optics already, PST.

Men Can't Play Female Characters in Chinese MMO

So, gamers all over are talking about Aurora/Shanda Entertainment's sudden decision to ban guys from playing female characters in the Chinese MMORPG King of the World. Apparently, tens of thousands of men have had their accounts frozen for being "online gaming transexuals." Now in order to play a female character, gamers will have to prove their gender using a webcam. As a girl whose main is a male gnome in a guild full of guys playing hot Night Elf and Draenei chicks, I find this incredibly cringe-worthy. First off, I'd hate to be in an MMO in which everyone knew for certain that all the female avatars were girls. And secondly, can you imagine the horror that would occur (at least in the US) if you invited a bunch of guys to "prove" their gender via webcam? If not, well... I think Penny Arcade has touched on that already.