Hey, You Exist

What makes a home?

When you play an RPG --video game version or not-- you are frequently out in the world, adventuring. You leave home --whatever it's defined as-- and do your thing.

But what is a home to an adventurer?

Are they just dopamine junkies, moving from one experience to the next, without something to anchor them? Or is their wandering a subliminally driven search for a new home? Or do they have a home they want to get back to, but can't for some reason or another? 

Deep thoughts for a Friday Sunday, I suppose, but this invaded my head when I considered the plight of the Draenei and the Sindorei while I was doing other things. 

In both cases, their original homeland has become untenable, so they flee to what they consider a better alternative: Draenei to Azeroth, and Sindorei to Outland. In both cases, they discover that their new, adoptive home isn't what they thought it was. The Draenei discover that the isles The Exodar crash landed in have enemies that followed them from Outland as well as the ecological disaster caused by The Exodar's crash. The Sindorei arrive in Outland to discover their leaders --and a lot of their best and brightest-- have betrayed the rest of their kin and sided with either Illidan the Betrayer or the Burning Legion itself.*

***

Where does Brig consider her home to be? Shattrath? The Exodar? Somewhere else? Nowhere?

It's kind of hard to say, because WoW --both Retail and Classic-- doesn't have that sort of grounding for a player. It can be both simultaneously freeing and terrifying, because the player is free to do whatever.

And to be fair, most players don't give a crap about existential issues such as finding a home; they'd rather do other things such as raid, PvP, run dungeons, or quest rather than muse about their toon's home or backstory. But there are those --especially those who have played pencil and paper RPGs, who are used to this sort of thing-- who DO care. And I'm one of them.

That doesn't mean that I'm in favor of player housing. WoW tried their own version of that once already, in the Warlords of Draenor expac, and it was widely panned for being more isolating than anything else. My personal opinion is that the isolationist trend was already present in WoW, and the implementation of Garrisons merely encouraged it. After all, there's been a big trend in WoW for quite a while now to login, do your dailies, raid if it's the time and date, and log. There isn't a lot of lounging around; even if you don't do the minimal amount described above, you're likely leveling an alt and/or doing the same thing there. There is a subset that are checking the PTR for info and raid strategies, min/maxing, and other highly obsessive items, but that is a very specific subset.**

***

What I am in favor of is some player grounding.

In BC (and BC Classic, apparently) if you're Exalted with the Cenarion Expedition and you arrive at their home base, some of the guards will acknowledge you as you pass by. I thought this was introduced only in Wrath, but it's an occasional nice reminder of your reputation. Now, what I'm not suggesting is to have everybody acknowledge how great you are, but occasional interactions/commentary from NPCs in locations that, well, you exist. Well, exist without the "sales" angle that you see from that Troll in Lower City, who is constantly trying to sell you trinkets, or "Topper" McNabb trying to shine your shoes for a copper. Kind of the "Hello, Cardwyn, good to see you again," you'd expect when you pass by the guards at the checkpoint in Elwynn (near the logging camp) after you completed quests for them. Or if you hit a certain number of logouts in a specific inn, the innkeeper greets you as a regular. Small stuff like that which are fairly easily implemented.

Kind of like this. Sorta.

 

Of course, I'm talking about this like it's going to happen in Classic, but a guy can dream, right?

But please, no more ego trips about how awesome the player is. After a while it feels, well, ridiculous.

*I could easily see both Card and Neve yelling at those Blood Elves "You are a disgrace to your ancestors!" It's personal for both.

**To that crowd, even our Turkey Award, given out to the player with the most deaths in a raid, detracts from the emphasis on "winning" the raid. I've seen killjoy comments after a Turkey Award posting and it's affiliated banter saying "remember, the point is to avoid deaths" and "it's good to see the number of deaths go down". To me, those comments strike me as tone deaf and missing the point of the Turkey Award: everybody knows you're supposed to not die, but nobody --and I mean nobody-- sits around and says "Hey, remember that time we ran Naxx and had only about 4 deaths at most?" When people remember raids, they remember memorable boss kills, raid drama, or memorable player deaths. This is just like real life: if you're doing your job, you're kind of invisible.

EtA: I started this post on Friday, but finished it on Sunday. So I replaced one with the other.