Filed under: Breakfast Topics

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I want to share with you all a story. Once upon a time, there was a WoW noob who was known as Donaldserrot the human warrior. I'm pretty sure the only thing he did right was Brewfest. But he had fun, at least until he either grouped up with other players (who made fun of his gear) or went to the Outland (where the mobs showed him how bad his gear was).

It was at this time that Donald reached the end. There wasn't much more he could do as he was, and he didn't have the desire to fix things, so he retired. At that time, a new WoW nooblet showed up. Donhorn was different and decided to try to learn more about not just his druidic class but also his tauren history. He knew of the trials Donaldserrot had gone through and knew that in order to go the distance, he'd need to train.

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We all know about the idea of the overweight, basement-dwelling virgin, the idea that gamers and comic book nerds all look like the comic book guy from The Simpsons. Many of us know that is not the case. You even see people in trade chat calling each other "nerds" and "virgins," although the inevitable response of calling someone else a nerd in WoW is laughable. In my guild alone, we have a lawyer, an author and a chef, along with many happily married people with children. Some are openly proud of their nerdiness; some try to argue they aren't nerds over Vent.

My girlfriend hides her geek from a lot of her friends. She watches anime, is a gamer and even dresses up for our local comic book convention, but many of her friends and work associates have no idea about this side of her. Me, on the other hand -- I let the geek flag fly. I wear my gamer T-shirts. I talk openly about WoW and other games with my friends. I still complain about the fact Firefly never got a second season.

Cataclysm doesn't even have a release date yet (though Blizzard insists it's coming out in 2010), but I'm already getting tired of it. Live servers seem like ghost towns and the blogosphere is Cataclysm-obsessed (ourselves included). It's hard not to get excited about new content, but wherever you turn it's talk of the beta, discussion of changes that may never go live and above all, anticipation. But I just want to be able to play World of Warcraft again. Can't we all just shut up about Cataclysm for long enough to run instances? Do raids? Group quests? Anything? Please?

So sound off, readers -- are you, too, tired of the endless hype around WoW's next expansion? Do you miss being able to play World of Warcraft?

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Atheism is a rejection in the belief of deities. In the real world, that is easy enough to understand. There are many religions practiced on Earth, and most of them (if not all) worship at least one deity. This could be a god or goddess that is associated with a certain characteristic or trait, or it could be a creator, one divine being that shaped everything that is everything from nothing. Whatever your beliefs are, atheism is simply a rejection that any of that happened or exists.

But what happens when we push reality into fiction and bring this thought into the game world that we all log in to? Can atheism really exist in Azeroth? We know that there are gods and goddesses that have roles in WoW. A few of them have even been seen in game, like Hakkar or Yogg-Saron. But there are many that have yet to make an appearance, like Elune or the other Old Gods that we've yet to uncover.

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Spoiler alert: This post contains fairly heavy lore spoilers for the Cataclysm expansion. If that's not your thing, you should stop reading now.

In Cataclysm, during the quests in Silverpine Forest, Horde players learn that human refugees from Hillsbrad have fled to Fenris Keep, and our glorious Banshee Queen Sylvanas sends us with a loyal val'kyr to kill and raise the poor humans as Forsaken, to bolster their forces in Silverpine. Using the new on-the-go questing feature, Sylvanas informs players to find and convert the human leaders inside their keep.

This is when things get a little hairy, as the keep is guarded by elite worgen guards. Battling through, the players find themselves arriving at the middle of a meeting between the big names of Southshore and Lord Darius Crowley.

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Everyone has at least one alt in WoW. It may be the bank alt you send all your items to while questing away from a capital city. Some of us have one of every class, or multiple alts on different realms to play with friends on a different server. Cataclysm is going to change the way we play our alts forever, though. We will have goblins named with every variation of "Gringotts" used as bank alts. People will name their worgen after Twilight characters or make names that mocks Twilight.

But the two new races aren't the only things happening come Cataclysm. We are getting new race/class combos. Roleplayers will have new characters they can roleplay or add the new class/race combo into their character's story. While Blizzard has yet to give us gnome paladins, our little friends can now be healers, which gives us the chance to take 24 of our gnome friends and knock on Deathwing's front door.

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A while back I ran a survey for a course I was taking and I enlisted the help of the WoW community. One of the more interesting results that came out of the survey was what classes the different genders played. From most played to least played, the classes were:

• Men paladin, druid, shaman, warrior, death knight, priest, mage, hunter, rogue, and then warlock
• Women druid, priest, paladin, shaman, hunter, mage, warlock, death knight, warrior, and then rogue

What you might notice is that men prefer the three-role hybrids, then the two-role hybrids, then the pure DPS classes. For women, the order of popularity is classes that can heal, classes that do ranged DPS, then the pure melee classes. The results of the survey would seem to imply that women and men have entirely different ways of approaching class choice. Men seem to judge a class based upon how much utility it provides or how flexible it is, whereas women seem to be more focused on what they'll be doing and where they'll be doing it.

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We all run random dungeons. Usually, we'll just do our job, tanking, healing or DPSing to get through the dungeon as fast as we can. But every once in a while, we may get the inclination to mess around a bit.

My main character is a disc priest. Since all I really have to do in heroics is shield the tank every once in a while, I'll often run around like a crazy person using Holy Nova to try and beat the DPS. Not only does it make the runs go faster, but it's more fun than just standing around doing nothing. Sure I could use other, more normal DPS abilities, but it's fun to see those golden bubbles everywhere.

If I'm in a group with guildies and they know it's coming, it's sometimes fun to play "how low can you go" with the tank's health. I'd never try it in a PUG random, but with friends who can laugh if it goes wrong, it's fun. One thing I've always wanted to try but never have is healing in shadow spec. While it wouldn't really be difficult, I don't really know how random groups would react to it, having their healer running around in Shadowform all the time.

Recently, I was talking to Matticus and Kinaesthesia on one of our podcasts about Ruby Sanctum. Toward the end of the discussion, Kina mentioned how much he loved Halion's voice actor, Matthew Mercer (granted, we didn't know that was his name at the time.) We agreed his voice acting was excellent, and Kina suggested Blizzard ought to keep bringing him back for more parts. To date, Mercer also has done the voice of General Vezax in Ulduar and Overthane Balargarde in Icecrown.

Anyway, some days later while we priests were tossing the PoM around, the subject came up again, and Kina quoted the line Halion says when you enter phase 2: "You will find only suffering in the realm of twilight. Enter if you dare." He gushed at the inflection on the word "suffering," while I stated my preference for the way he taunts you with, "Enter if you dare."

Our talk led to other memorable lines from Wrath. I immediately brought up Sara from Ulduar and quoted her haunting, "I am the lucid dream." Plus, who could forget a first visit to Ulduar? I remember my sleepy raid's wandering into the Antechamber around 1 a.m. the first night that patch 3.1 went live. After accidentally completing Crazy Cat Lady and distributing loot, we stood around deciding where to go next. Vent had gone quiet while we all tabbed out to read up on Hodir until a deafening scream cut through the silence of the Observation Ring. Everyone on Vent promptly freaked out: "What the hell was that!?!"

I loved it.

• Alas, Poor Yorick Complete the Test of Skulls. (Horde)
• You're The Dragon in Disguise Complete the Great Masquerade. (Alliance)
• All Fired Up Obtain the Drakefire Amulet. (Alliance and Horde)
• If I Had A Hammer Obtain the Mallet of Zul'Farrak (Alliance and Horde)
• Because Everybody Works Obtain the Scepter of Celebrias (Alliance and Horde)
• Looking Sharp Complete <class> Dungeon Set One (Alliance and Horde)

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There is nothing better than sharing a common interest with friends, but what happens when you find yourself alone in Azeroth for long period of time? You and your friends used to spend hours playing together, raiding or simply sharing idle banter in private messages or even the dreaded trade chat. But lately, it seems that you are the only person playing. Your friends, for a multitude of reasons, simply can't find the time to play anymore. Now you're alone in a big world with no one to talk to and nothing to take the edge off the quest grinding. So what do you do?

Guilds: a toon's best friend Whether it's on a RP, PvP, normal or mixed server, a guild can keep you entertained and chatting throughout that hard grind to 80. When you find yourself stranded in an area where there isn't another living soul in sight, it's always good to know that one /g away is a group of people who will, more often than not, love to hear how things are going, both in game and out. It's a warming feeling to see that the minute you log on, another person is there to greet you with a friendly "Hey, _____."

General and trade chat If a guild is not your thing, it's always nice to take a few minutes between quests to sit in a capital city and share in some banter with your fellow players. General chat is full of other players discussing either the game itself, movies, music or a multitude of other topics. Even trade chat can be fun if you keep up with the latest internet memes, though after a period of time, it came become annoying.

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I don't know about you, but my husband and I can never agree on what it means to "play" WoW. I'm a pretty casual player, but I log in most days to take care of my regular tasks and check out what's going on in the game world. Most weekends, I have enough time to do a couple of dungeon runs or quests, but my normal weekday visit is usually just long enough to do a couple of dailies and update my auctions. However, my non-player husband doesn't seem to understand that just because I'm logged into WoW, I'm not actually playing the game. Here's a typical evening conversation:

Husband: "Are you playing WoW?"
Me: "No, just resetting auctions."
Husband: "Well, isn't that part of the game?"
Me: "Sure, but I'm not playing right now."
Husband: "OK, well, you know that stuff isn't real, right? You're PLAYING a GAME."
Me: Sigh ...

I just don't feel like I'm playing unless I'm actively questing, dashing around the world killing hapless animals or barging through a dungeon with a couple fellow adventurers. Maybe it's the adrenaline, maybe it's my need for achievement, or maybe it's my innate competitiveness, but grinding, auctioning and banking just don't do it for me. I need to be in the thick of it to feel like I'm actually playing. What is "playing" to you?

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The other day, I was talking to a good WoW friend about some RL stuff. None of it was anything you all would find terribly interesting, until we came upon the topic of my health. I told him I had started a probiotic regimen recently in hopes of resolving an antibiotic treatment I had taken the year before. When I tried to recount the time that it happened, my mind momentarily drew blank before I was able to spit out "it was around Ulduar."

He knew what I meant of course, but I immediately realized the absurdity of me relaying events about my real life in game time.

When I thought about it though, I figured I couldn't be the only one ... So, do your weeks start on Tuesdays? Do you say you have to be somewhere in server time? Do in-game holidays remind you an actual holiday is coming up? Was the last time you went to the dentist when you got your first Anub'arak kill?

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

Your fingers ache from the constant play while sweat beads down your neck. Your eyes become unfocused, the colors and background blending together until they resemble something akin to a Monet painting. Clicking at a furious speed, you slay mob after mob, all the while watching the XP progress bar as it inches towards your final goal: the level cap. Time flies. You ask yourself, "Has it really been 13 hours? No, surely it couldn't have."

You open the drapes, staring at the stars and moon with a challenging look. Their day, too, will come. No matter. Neither man, murloc, nor the perpetual spinning of the earth about the sun will stop you this day ... er, night. Pixilated blood shoots from your prey. Their cries warm your soul, adding another notch to your symbolic belt.

Then, whether expected or not, it happens. Your character is engulfed a soothing light, and the game changes forever. You've done it. After days, weeks or months of work, you've hit the level cap. You can stare proudly at your once-lowly character and proclaim your might to all of Azeroth. You're the new tough guy on the block, and nothing can stand in your way.