Women in the World of Warcraft . . .

. . . are, in my experience, neither very rare nor particularly different in any way from male players.

Surprising!

At least, it's surprising if you buy into stereotypes. I'm not interested in performing a demographic analysis of World of Warcraft players, because that sort of thing has been done elsewhere by people who know what they're doing. Nor am I planning to say anything in particular about why I think that gender stereotypes about WoW players exist, because in all honesty I think they're tied into gender stereotypes about not just computer gaming but also hobbies in general.

Instead, I'm just going to write about my personal experiences with female WoW players.

As I mentioned in my first post, the reason I started playing the game was because of Lexa, my then-girlfriend who is my now-wife. Lexa had been exposed to video and computer games while growing up with her brother Brian, who was five years her senior, and ended up playing Dungeons & Dragons with her brother and his friend Ian. Later, Ian and his girlfriend Yoli were involved in the beta testing of World of Warcraft, and encouraged Lexa to try it out with them.

When the game launched, I ended up playing with them on the Doomhammer server in Ian's guild, . While Lexa wasn't an officer in the guild, Yoli was, and so right from the start I was playing with women who were not only experienced and knowledgeable about the game but, in the limited way one can be in a small and casual guild, leaders.

Later, when most of our members were at the level cap of 60, merged with a larger guild, . This merger didn't last long - and in some ways, I feel like the "boys' club" dynamic of their leadership contributed to the poor fit for us, or was at least another symptom of the underlying problems that eventually caused most of us to quit and reform . I'm not sure how accurate my recollections are about all of this, especially since I wasn't directly involved, but I'm fairly positive that didn't have any women among its officers, nor any prominent regular members.

Though Lexa and I have remained friends with Ian and Yoli, we haven't played WoW with them for some years now. On the Nagrand server, as I mentioned in my introductory post, we now play in , a guild formed by Gareth, one of my friends from university. The comparison with is fairly natural; although the guild leader was a man, the first player made an officer was his girlfriend Sarah, and the couple were honestly more like co-leaders right from the start. Lexa was the second officer appointed, and in fact it wasn't until within the last year that the leadership of was "gender balanced" by the addition of Andrew to the officer list.

The third guild with which I have the most personal experience is no longer in quite the same shape as it once was, but it provides another set of examples of prominent female players and leaders. Towards the end of the Burning Crusade era, we formed a raiding alliance with , a slightly larger guild that couldn't quite make the numbers for the 25-player raids that dominated the level 70 endgame. This alliance lasted until partway through Wrath of the Lich King, although we've remained very friendly with a lot of the "Goons" and even brought some of them into as their old guild started to break up.

Just off the top of my head, I can name a half-dozen prominent players, raiders, officers, and leaders from - and, while it's true that men appeared to have been the majority population of that guild just as they are in ours, I think the fact that they had so many prominent female members speaks to a similarity of underlying culture that contributed to the longevity of our raiding alliance, just as the dissimilarity in underlying cultures caused the dissolution of 's merger with .

I'm not suggesting that the extent to which a guild includes women is the only marker of its value, or even the compatibility of its attitudes with my own and those of my friends with whom I play. It is true, though, that none of the people I like and respect in World of Warcraft would tolerate the stereotypical attitudes that I've seen reports of in other players' experiences: ideas like "female players only get attention by flirting with the men in the guild, not because they're skilled or valuable", "chicks can't raid", "female officers are useless", and so on.

I'm glad that I have the opportunity to play with so many skilled, experienced, knowledgeable, and fun women: Lexa, Sarah, Ingrid, Kate, Ellen, Jamie, Sophie, Angela, and many others. I wouldn't enjoy the game half as much without them.

Mage changes in Cataclysm

Here they are.

Revelatory!

Obviously, as a dedicated Fire mage, I'm really excited by everything that Bashiok announced.

Raiding

The first thing I want to do is look at the impact of these changes on the talents and spells I currently use. There are undoubtedly a lot of unannounced adjustments and changes which will render everything I'm about to say imprecise, but from the standpoint of a raiding Fire mage in the current game I do have a few comments.

Scorch - "Our goal is for Scorch to be part of the mage's rotation and a useful damage-dealing ability"

I think this is a very necessary idea. Currently, I don't use Scorch when someone who can provide the same debuff is in the party or raid; their application of that falls into their normal rotation, whereas Scorch is something I don't cast in groups except for the sake of the debuff.

If there is a good reason to throw Scorch into my normal raiding rotation, then obviously my rotation becomes that little bit more complex, which contrary to expectations is actually probably going to be more fun.

Pyromaniac - "Pyromaniac will grant Haste when three or more targets are getting damaged by the effects of your damage-over-time (DoT) fire spells."

Also good. The passive spell critical strike chance and mana regeneration of the current Pyromaniac talent shouldn't be an issue in Cataclysm; the first is rolled into our second passive Fire spec bonus, and the whole shape of mana pools is going to be changed as a consequence of the stat changes. I do feel like dealing with trash packs and adds leaves me few options besides throwing Living Bomb, so casting faster spells will help without necessarily ratcheting up my performance on bosses.

Burnout - "The Burnout talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana."

Definitely unexpected, but in a way it makes sense. I'll be interested to see how this is intended. Currently, Burnout is the single talent in the second-to-last tier in the Fire tree, increasing spell critical strike damage at the cost of extra mana when spells crit; if it stays there with no alternative, that possibly implies running out of mana and having to use health will become a part of PvE encounter design. If it's moved elsewhere, it could become a PvP talent with no real PvE design intention.

Ignite - "All direct-damage fire spells will add a damage-over-time (DoT) component when cast."

If you'd asked me before I saw Bashiok's post, I would have predicted this would be Fire mages' Mastery passive spec bonus in Cataclysm. I even said so to Lexa last night, as we were getting ready for bed and I was gleefully speculating about what today would bring.

It makes a lot of sense to me. Ignite is a talent no Fire mage skips, and it's iconic to the class. I'm delighted that I will literally set my enemies on fire with every fire spell I use.


New Spells

The new spells Bashiok announced are pretty exciting.

Flame Orb sounds like fun, and useful for trash packs as well as some add-heavy encounters; I'm sure it will have plenty of PvP utility I don't care about, too. One thought about PvP, however: can you send a Flame Orb into a rogue's Smoke Cloud, and will it hit a Camouflaged hunter?

Time Warp is a real surprise. I suppose I had imagined that eventually Blizzard would make a Bloodlust/Heroism-like effect available to another class, but I hadn't guessed that it would be mages. The funny thing is that Ascanius already has his Engineering rocket boots, so giving him yet another way to zoom around even when Exhaustion is up is just icing on the cake.

Wall of Fog seems pretty useful in PvP, but again it obviously has uses in PvE encounters with lots of adds and trash. I want to note here, though, that it's interesting how Cataclysm is (intentionally or not) taking some cues from Dungeons & Dragons in its mage design; wall-type spells like this have been in D&D forever, and the potential for Fire mages to get a big kaboom when Flame Orb stops moving is exactly like one of the variants of the tabletop Fireball spell I mentioned in my first post.


Everything Else

I'm surprised and pleased by the changes to Arcane Missiles. I used to enjoy throwing this spell in while levelling Ascanius back in the old days. The fact that it will now be based on a proc like a Hot Streak-enabled Pyroblast is pretty cool, and might even mean that I use it - at least while questing, if not while levelling.

I can't say too much about the changes to either Arcane or Frost specs, but I do think it's interesting that Arcane mages will have more potency at the start of a fight and less as it continues; likewise, that Frost mages will have incentives to use spells other than Frostbolt in a way that doesn't simply replicate the proc-based incentives of Arcane and Fire.

Well, hopefully we'll either learn something more about mages in the next few days, or Blizzard will throw in some information about other aspects of Cataclysm to tide us over while we wait for the final class preview, for paladins. Either way, I'll have more to say in the near future - about my current plans to level a worgen rogue, if nothing else.

Introduction

My name is Chris, and I'm a Fire mage.

Confessional!

I've been a Fire mage since January 9, 2005, when I logged into World of Warcraft for the first time. Ascanius, level 1 human mage, popped into existence in Northshire Valley, on the Doomhammer server, and unwittingly became my anchor in the world of Azeroth for the next five years and counting.

I started playing because of a girl. My wife Lexa, who back then had only earned the title "Girlfriend", was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, while I was here in Sydney. Her friend Ian had encouraged her to try the game during the open beta period, and had set up a guild called on Doomhammer.

Ian, Lexa, and a couple of other people had already been playing since the game launched in November 2004, and even back then a two-month delay meant I was well behind them. Lexa and I discussed what kind of characters were available in the game, and I settled on the idea of playing a mage.

I wonder to this day how many people ended up quitting the game, or sticking with it, based solely on the issue of how well their expectations for their first character lined up with the reality of the game. I came to World of Warcraft from a background in tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, and chose to play a mage because of my experiences with wizards and other spellcasters in those pen-and-paper games.

In fact, Lexa still likes to mock me for the way I ran screaming (metaphorically, anyway) from the wolves and kobolds a level 1 human is asked to kill in Northshire Valley, convinced that a mage couldn't possibly survive melee combat - all because D&D wizards start with a tiny number of hit points and can easily be dispatched by a single blow.

That wasn't the only difference from D&D, of course! I soon learned that WoW's single-target Fireball spells are quite distinct from the area-of-effect explosions in D&D, and as my experience with the game grew I learned about the distinctive features of the world of Azeroth - the primal culture of the orcs, the anachronistic technology of gnomes and goblins, and so on.

I haven't played the game continuously since that day back in 2005, but I certainly have been playing for most of that time. These days, Ascanius has moved to the Oceanic server of Nagrand, a member of the guild run by my friend Gareth. He is my raiding character - you can judge from the fact that he's still a Fire mage that is relaxed about raiding, but we're 6/12 in Icecrown Citadel and close to killing Professor Putricide - and I have three other level 80 characters:

• Catilina, a human Arms warrior
• Concepción, a human Retribution paladin
• Fulvia, a draenei Shadow priest

The things I value in World of Warcraft are playing with my friends, seeing dungeon and raid content, exploring the world, and crafting cool and fun (even if not necessarily powerful) gear and items.

To the latter end, one of my biggest enthusiasms in the game is the Engineering profession. Ascanius is the proud possessor of a Turbo-Charged Flying Machine (the reason I took up the profession during The Burning Crusade) and a Mekgineer's Chopper (earning the gold for which gave me a serious tolerance for daily quests). I was disappointed to learn that the two-seater X-53 Touring Rocket wouldn't be constructable by engineers, but at least Lexa and I can acquire one for Ascanius through the Recruit-A-Friend program.

So what is the point of this blog?

I'm going to write about a few things:

• First, the experience of playing a Fire mage in Cataclysm. It's not a coincidence that I'm establishing this blog the day before we expect to hear from Blizzard about the changes to my class in the new expansion.
• Second, the general experience of the changes and new zones in Azeroth from the point of view of someone who enjoys questing, exploring, and levelling. This includes the new dungeons and raids, and I will be playing a worgen rogue to experience the changes in the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.
• Third, professions - especially Engineering, of course, but between my various characters I have an interest in Enchanting, Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing, Tailoring, and Leatherworking.

The next post should be a look at the changes coming to mages, once Blizzard sees fit to share them with us. I'll see you then.