For this project, of making an in game avatar in an RPG and playing the game for 3 days, I chose the character that I have had for a while. This character has become an integral part of my life and honestly feels like a friend as well as a part of myself. I've had this character since 2008 and I still use them to this day.
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| Casting a type of "frost aura" |
Some people seem to find it strange that I chose a Frost Death Knight, who is also a Gnome and an Engineer, as my avatar. But to me it seemed natural at the time. When I first started playing WoW I was a Night Elf Druid, but once the new expansion came out and you could make a Death Knight with any race I thought, since they are seen as so scary and heartless in a way, that making a Gnome would be fun. I also named her Sweet-n-Low, after the sugar, also because I thought it was funny.
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| Battle stance |
Right before this assignment the newest expansion, Legion, was released. So it was a great chance for my to explore this new world with my character, and do my assignment at the same time!
To explain my character, I already said the race, gender, and class that she is, but I will also add that the specialty is "frost". So all of my abilities are based on frost, ice, snow, etc. Because I'm a DK that means that I am a reanimated corpse, basically, but not really classified under "undead" like the Forsaken in WoW, it's a special class of its own. You begin the game by escaping the control of the Lich King and then the Death Knights form their own free order. Then you can fly away on your undead steed and explore the world as you please, traveling all over Azeroth, Outlands/Draenor, and other dimensions and areas. The most recent expansion is about the demons of the Legion invading (once again) and having to stop them. (It's super intense and I love it.)
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| First mount given to DKs |
I like this character because the way they fight is very aggressive, which is the opposite of my personality. When I play the game I charge head first into everything and emphasize power and strength above all. Being a spunky and headstrong character, who is a genius with electronics, is kind of the person I want to be, and when I play WoW I kind of get to be that person.
World of Warcraft is based primarily around quests, dungeons/raids, and player-versus-player (PVP). I like to focus on quests because the story and lore is what draws me into this game. So for the 3 days I completed different quests to help out NPCs and explore new areas.
Day One:
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| Loading screen |
The first thing I did was the new artifact weapons quest. If you haven't played any Warcraft games before this may not seem that impressive, but to me I was SO excited and waited forever for this quest! Because you get to reforge and wield Frostmourne, the (soul eating) sword of the previous Lich King (the one I talked about earlier that used to control me, and is now dead and replaced, it's all very complicated really...) and there is a whole quest line that you do to get it before you enter the new areas to do quests.
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| The solo dungeon shortly after entering |
The DK base has moved to Ice Crown (originally in the plague lands) so you begin the quest there and soon enter a type of solo dungeon to gather the broken fragments you need to get your new shiny swords. There are specters roaming around that you defeat, and since Death Knights are supposed to be very tough (they wear plate armor and have defense stats) they made the area really difficult so I died a couple times doing this.
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| The current Lich King talks to you throughout the quest |
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| Fighting Arthas (before he became the Lich King) himself |
When you try to grab the sword you are transported to the past (in a way) and have to fight Arthas and Ner'zhul (and it's super difficult) and after defeating them I was finally able to get my sword(s)!
After you get these you ascend to the throne of the LK and he marks you with his sigil and I got upgraded from just a Death Knight to a "Death Lord" (but to officially-officially have that title I need to do a few more quests).
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| I was honestly freaking out when this happened |
After completing this quest I boarded an airship to Stormheim, which I chose to do as my first area because I love Viking/Norse lore. During this quest I ran around getting the ship ready, we eventually raided the Horde ships (the opposing faction to the Alliance) and basically crash landed into the new area.
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| I love the parachutes in WoW |
That was all VERY exciting, so I decided to call it a night and log out.
Day Two:
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| Map of The Broken Isles, the new area/zone for Legion |
The next day I explored Stormheim!
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| Accepting a quest from a fellow Gnome, to charge up something that was out of juice |
Quest/Mint/Collect from
Christine McGahhey on
Vimeo.
After accepting a few quests from the survivors at the camp I went out to fight a few things, mined (because I'm an engineer I also have the mining profession to collect materials I need), got a quest from the stone I mined, and headed out for the next quest I was going to complete. In order to charge up the battery I needed to fight dragons that use lightning against me ('cause video game logic). I also got another quest to free men who were captured and stuck in the cave.
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| Dragon eggs inside the cave |
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| Not attacking him, really, just releasing him for the lightning holding him down (somehow) |
While I was in the cave there was another player there doing the same quest as me so I tried to help him out. However... For some reason they didn't like that I helped them... (Which is why I usually don't interact with other players because a lot of them are mean these days and just make the game way less fun...)
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| They other player is the big panda to the left |
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| You're welcome...? |
I left the caves and found a device that could activate a distress signal for the other gnome to come pick me up, since I traveled pretty far and cannot fly in new areas. Of course activating this made the dragons and Horde all come and attack me, so then I defended the point alone for a while. (I didn't really finish the quest though because of the server ending soon, so I did that on day 3.)
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| The humor in WoW is great, so I love the awkwardness of this dialog |
After finishing this quest I wanted to do more, but then there was a notice that the server was going to shut down for maintenance in 15 minutes, so I had to wrap up quickly.
Right after seeing this notice I also saw a pet that I didn't collect yet. In WoW there's "Pet Battles", similar to Pokemon, where you collect and fight other pets that other players own or that you find in the wild. I wanted that owl so I started a pet battle and knew I could wrap it up in under 15 minutes. After weakening the owl enough to catch it I threw the trap a few times until it worked. Then you have to fight any other pets (you can only catch one per round) to officially win.
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| Gotcha |
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| Unfortunately one of my pets fainted, but don't worry I brought them back |
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| The tab where you can manage, name, and summon pets to follow you around |
Then I added him to my pet journal and called it a night before I was kicked off the game, concluding day 2.
Day Three:
Since the servers were about to go down I wasn't able to finish the quest before, so at the start of day 3 I finished up that quest and fought off dragon riders as well as a giant storm drake.
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| They never really helped me much though... |
After finishing up this quest I went to try out another quest line from one of the giants living in Stormheim. Before he let me do the "real" quest line (fighting off bad guys) he made me cook him some stew. It was pretty fun throwing in the ingredients, although the game glitched and I got stuck for a moment, and then I was able to get his next quest which escalated to collecting heads of champions...
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| He looks especially tall and scary as a gnome |
Cooking Quest from
Christine McGahhey on
Vimeo.
While doing this quest I also noticed a lone goat sitting by some minerals for me to mine, so I took a detour to see the goat and mine a bit. I also saw a rare creature (marked with a silver dragon around their photo) which drops rare items, so I went to "collect" even though they're hard to beat alone.
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| Scary but worth it |
The quest was to collect the heads of other champions because you need them to impress the person in charge so you can take part in the "trials", which will give you lots of benefits. It also helps that they're pretty evil, so they will try to kill you anyways.
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| If you eat their food it's so rich it slows you down |
After doing this I "appeased" the person in charge, and talked to a severed stone head (again, it's a video game so just go with it). He gave me more quests, such as completing the trials and collecting parts of his body to put him back together.
After accepting this quest I ran out of time that I could play and had to stop there for the moment, but I felt like I got a lot of different things done.
Overall it was a fun three days and when I think carefully I can see how I act very differently in-game compared to "real life". While SweetnLow feels like an extension of myself it also feels really separate because of how brave and headstrong she is. I tend to be very careful and take few risks compared to my avatar, and I also find myself less inclined to help out real characters compared to how often I try to help out other people in everyday life. I did a lot of exploring and even though I've had this character for a long time, looking and thinking closely about it was a good exercise and made me realize a bit more about myself.
