Without getting into a long-winded ramble about personal issues, over the last six months I’ve:

• Found out my grandfather has Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (he’s responding well to treatment now, but it was touch-and-go for a while)
• Moved halfway across the continent, from Los Angeles back to my home state of Minnesota
• Found out that I may have celiac disease (an auto-immune disorder where your body attacks itself if you ingest gluten, which is found in wheat, rye, barley, and sometimes oats)
• Experienced joblessness amidst the deepest recession I’ve ever seen in my almost 29 years of life

So, it’s been an eventful enough Winter and Spring that even playing WoW took to the sidelines for a while, but I’m happy to say that life is settling down again finally, and I’m back.  I’m unsure as to what to do with The Ethical Alt for now, what with 4.2 coming out today and plenty of catching up to do.  It won’t get forgotten, but there may not be many new installments for the time being.  I will try to get an “Ethical Alt Does The Fire Festival” out sometime before the Fourth of July, but no promises.

For now, I thank you for indulging in this posting’s brief foray outside of WoW and hope you’ll rejoin me as I write more over the next six months.

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The question that really hasn’t been asked is this:  What are the pros and cons of trying to get a Realm First! Level 85 Feat of Strength?  That’s the question I’ll attempt to answer here.  In truth, the answer is highly subjective and may vary greatly from person-to-person, but this post will at the very least provide a comprehensive review of the potential costs and benefits of trying for this acheivement, along with my take on the matter.

Always Be Prepared.

First, a look at some of the factors influencing success.  After all, the statistical chances of winning a Realm First! are relatively low, assuming an even playing field, which is most likely not going to be the case.  Some players have inside knowledge from having been in the beta while many others have not.  Some have hours of studious examination of the data-mined quest information under their belts.  Some players have geared up better than others.  Some servers have severe population imbalances which may favor or hinder completion of quest objectives on a particular faction.  Players on PvP servers will generally gain XP more quickly if a faction imbalance favors their side, whereas on PvE servers may level faster if their faction is the smaller for one simple reason: lack of competition for quest resources.

Of all of these variables, preparation plays the largest role.  Foreknowledge of the quest chains, zone layouts, and potential bottlenecks allows for a player to map out a faster and more consistent flow of XP ahead of time.  In addition, knowing the territory ahead of you provides more room to improvise when plans go astray.  (And they will. At the worst possible time.)  Having the best gear possible for leveling conditions provides you with a buffer zone to help ensure you die less often.  After all, dead men—excluding the Forsaken, of course—earn no XP.  If you plan to die frequently, race change to a Night Elf, if possible.  Wisp form may not guarantee you the win, but it will minimize your down time by a bit.

But Why? Breaking Down The Benefits.

The first and primary reason for making the attempt is the potential to score one (and possibly two, if you’re the very first level 85 on your realm) Realm First! Level 85 <insert your class here> Feat of Strength.  It’s rare, it’s shiny, and it will give you a flood of congratulatory whispers, and probably some good-natured trolling in trade as well.  You’ll be internet-famous, or at least server-famous and the object of some envy by those you stepped on passed by in your race to the top.  At least until someone else earns their class Realm First! Level 85.  Then you’ll be yesterday’s news.

Of course, there are some marginal benefits to the attempt that apply even if you should fail to gain the Realm First.  Getting to 85 early means your guild has a better shot at a Realm First! raid achievement.  It also gives you a good advantage in gathering materials to sell to crafters (as well as to try for a crafting Realm First, if they’re still not taken) or to fuel your own professions leveling.  Once you’ve hit 85, you also have an edge in gathering points for both PvE and PvP over anyone else who hits 85 a raid reset or more after you.  Essentially, even if you don’t earn a Realm First!, you’ve got a huge head start on a large portion of the playerbase.

Literals and Intangibles, a Brief Assessment of Costs.

The first is the literal cost.  You’ll have spent a lot of time on something.  This time could have been spent doing other, potentially more rewarding, IRL activities.  You may have spent some vacation time from work on the attempt, if you hold a full-time job.  Perhaps you spent a little extra on the Collector’s Edition as well as a digital copy so you can have your Mini-Deathwing pet and also log in at 12:00am when Cataclysm goes live.  You’ll have almost certainly spent some time prepping for the run, if you’re serious about it.  You may also have spent some gold, in-game, on obtaining gems, enchants, and other items essential to a fast and efficient leveling process.  You’ll have bought gear with Justice or Honor points.  There may be other literal costs I’m overlooking as well.

The second part of assessing costs would be the intangibles.  Things that you cannot assign a measurable value in time or money, but which still have value.  When you level as fast as you possibly can, you may miss storyline elements that you otherwise would have enjoyed.  You might be able to go back on an alt, but will it be the same the second time around?  You’ll zip through zones and locales meant to be enjoyed for hours or days.  You’ll miss out on the fully immersive experience that the devs have created in favor of a very rushed and possibly adrenaline-pumping race to the end.  You’ll almost certainly end up out-pacing your friends/guildmates and thus miss out on the fun of leveling and fighting off gankers together, as a team.  You might also discover that you didn’t want all the attention of gaining a Realm First! after all, should you win it.  Once you hit 85, you might still have to go back and help out friends and guild members struggling with particular quests, and until you reach your goal you might struggle with the guilt of knowing you can’t afford to stop and help them out.

You may also discover that in the rush to the top, you find yourself inclined to steal quest objectives, ninja kills and mobs, hinder other players and step on your competition.  In other words, you may uncover a side of yourself that you’re not proud of and would otherwise be ashamed to see.  That, for me, is the ultimate cost associated with the Realm First! Level 85 achievements.  Win the game, but lose your soul in the process.  Caveat emptor!

My Verdict.  What’s Yours?

As you may have guessed, I personally find the intangible costs to be prohibitive.  Realm Firsts may be fun, but the risks outweigh the rewards.  I pay my $15/month (and a bit extra for guild expenses when I can afford it) to play with the circle of friends that WoW has helped me find.  Neither they, nor I, would be at all proud of the person I would become in the race for server-wide fame.  If you can manage it without losing your honor, more power to you.  I know my competitive side is strong, and I just don’t see how any benefit could outweigh the cataclysmic asshattery that would ensue from surrendering to the mad rush for fame.

I hope that I’ve provided some informative discussion here and I’m definitely more than happy to hear your take on it in the comments below.

Episode 1 of the Ethical Alt Livecast, starring Ayenwatha the Tauren Druid and with a special guest appearance by Sriya, the Tauren Shaman. Quest breakdown post to follow tomorrow soon.

First Things First

First choice: which server?  My gut reaction was to roll a toon on Proudmoore-US, a PvE server.  Proudmoore, for those not in the know, has a vibrant and accepting LGBT community.  The frequency of homophobic comments in trade chat there is markedly lower than on other servers, in my experience.  It also is a PvE server, which would limit ganking.  But this comes with a downside that was brought to my attention in a Vent conversation just the other day.  The fact that Proudmoore is a PvE server, as well as something of a social anomaly, means there are less opportunities to make ethical (or unethical) decisions.  This is not ideal.  In other words, as a guild-mate pointed out, in real life you constantly “…have to choose whether or not to punch the ignorant *****bag in the face.”  Also, I’m bringing my real-world ethics into the game.  I would not choose to ghettoize myself in the real world; I will not in the game world.  A server is a community, and while there is nothing wrong with the Proudmoore community, I do not live in West Hollywood or San Francisco’s Castro or any other predominantly gay neighborhood.  I’m content living as a minority, outside of the ghetto.

So this character will not be born on Proudmoore, but that still leaves a lot of other options.  PvP or PvE?  RP or not?  My very first server was an RP server.  I lived on Feathermoon as a lowbie for quite a while, so I do have a soft spot for such places.  Nonetheless, the in-game RP component of this experiment is nearly non-existent.  From time-to-time you may hear directly from the Ethical Alt or read snippets of his journal here, but in-game RP will likely be limited for a couple reasons.  First, this is not an RP project and I don’t want to disappoint anyone who was hoping for a fully fleshed out character biography or storyline for the Ethical Alt.  Second, I can get easily distracted, and so avoiding the potentially pleasant diversions of RP will help this project to stay on task.  Finally, the ethical dilemmas that I truly wish to explore are not the ones that player storylines create via RP.  They’re the ones that Blizzard has introduced via the game itself.

But that still leaves me with the Big Decision:  PvP or PvE?  Part of the Ethical Alt’s purpose is to explore the ethical dimensions of the game and its players and how the game world reflects and reacts to the real world.  Since I moved off of Feathermoon, world PvP (also known as ganking, corpse-camping, auction house griefing, etc.) has been a big part of my experience in game.   While sticking to a PvE server would make it easier to suss out the ethical fabric of questing without interruption, the real world isn’t like that.  Life is full of interruptions and sometimes violent ones.  External annoyances raise our blood pressure and sometimes nudge us towards a course of action we otherwise would not have—or should not have—taken.  While I don’t plan to suddenly become a raging asshat during this project because someone decided to camp me for three hours while in Zangarmarsh, I do think that world PvP still involves scores of ethical decisions, some of which can be influenced by one’s current temper.  So PvP it is.  Stormscale-US, to be precise.

Other Minor Details

Oh, but now I have to name him.  And what will his race and class be?  Obviously Death Knights, Rogues, and Warlocks have huge ethical issues surrounding their skillsets.  Inflicting very painful diseases, ventilating other players, or cursing them and corrupting their very souls… these do not seem to me to be particularly pleasant ways to go.  Reflective of my own ethics, I don’t feel that torturing my foes is a necessary action.  This also rules out several Priest abilities of the Shadow school and the entire Fire school for Mages.  Indeed, even the Shaman’s mastery over Lightning could be considered unethical.  (Emperor Palpatine, anyone?)  Indeed, just about every class has abilities that would constitute clear violations of the Geneva Conventions, let alone my personal ethics.  Perhaps, then, it’s best to focus on a name or race selection first.

From the standpoint of selecting a faction that is reflective of my personal ethics, this may not be quite so easy as I thought.  Humans are out, as are Dwarves.  Both tend to focus a bit too much on all that glitters and too little on how their mining and archaeology negatively impact the ecology  of their world.  Also, if ever there was a faction that promoted the killing of small, basically defenseless, proto-sentient tribes… it would be the Humans of Stormwind.  The Gnomes are problematic for the fairly obvious reason that their unconstrained lust for technology has managed to render their original home uninhabitable.  The only truly eco-conscious factions in the Alliance are the Draenei and the Night Elves.  But one crashed their stolen spaceship into a remote island, causing (unintended) ecological catastrophe, and the other seems to have a problematic relationship with large invasive tree species.  (The fact that the planting of Teldrassil was opposed by Nozdormu is not insignificant.)  And the Worgen?  Too savage to even contemplate seriously.

So the Horde… this may not be much better.  The Blood Elves seem too focused on sating their magic addictions, and too careless of the consequences.  The Forsaken, it should go without saying, are out for obvious reasons, “Death to the living!” not least among them.  While Thrall seems to be a decent fellow, the Orcs of Orgrimmar in general do not always follow his creeds.  <cough>Garrosh<cough, cough>.  The Darkspear Trolls might be a good option, except I’m not keen on tusks.  Goblins would be an option, if not for basically everything about them.  Even the Tauren aren’t perfectly ideal, given their bloody reclamation of Mulgore by force from its centaur inhabitants.

Not As Easy As I Thought

Maybe if I come up with a name, that would be better.  A name that’s reflective of qualities I feel are noble, ethical, and desirable.  It should be reflective of a desire for peace and unity.  It should embody a respect for the spirit of the world and all things living in it.  It should personify ideas of liberty, diversity, and justice.

I can only think of one such name.  Ayenwatha, follower of the Great Peacemaker of the Iroquois, uniter of the League.  Had Ayenwatha not helped to bring the Five Nations together, the entire history of our planet for the last five hundred years would most likely be incomprehensibly different in ways we cannot understand.  You see, it was not from the distant and ancient Greeks or Romans that the American farmers, brewers, shipwrights, and barrel-makers took their strong concepts of individual liberty.  No, it was from their Native American neighbors next door.  It was from early and frequent contact with societies so alien to that of the hierarchical Europeans that the tired, poor, huddled masses developed their yearning to be free.  And like any good idea, this one spread like wildfire.  Not from ancient Athens in the East, but from the roots and boles of the great forests of the American Northeast, where even the lowliest Iroquoian was free.  Indentured servitude, slavery, Jim Crow, fascism… all these are not casualties of American exceptionalism, but of the unstoppable force of Native American idealism.  This seems like as good a time and place as any to commemorate that.

The following quote is taken from a translation of the Gayanashagowa, The Great Law of Peace which formed the constitution of the Iroquois.  It sums up with near precision what I believe to be the most noble qualities of a leader.

So Ayenwatha it is. It seems now that a Tauren Druid is the best choice, given the name. If anyone would like to join me, Ayenwatha will be exploring his starting zone tomorrow on Stormscale-US tomorrow night at 7pm Pacific.

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Ongoing Cleanup

First and foremost, I’d like to thank my loyal readers, both of you.  Without you, this lowly blog would fade into complete obscurity, dropping from the 1297389473rd most read of all the websites on the internet to 1297389474th.  You’re doing a good thing.  In service to you, I’m going to be cleaning up my link rolls over the next week or so, removing some dead/inactive blogs and adding others.  Not other dead blogs, though.  That would be silly.  As a favor to me, if either of you know of any great Paladin-, Alt-, or Achievement-related blogs that I’ve missed, or just some favorite WoW-related blogs of yours that I’ve missed, please let me know in the comments.

For right now, though, I’m going to share some link love (after the jump) on this fine Saturday.

An Achievement Addict Hunter After My Own Heart

First up is Vidalya, over at her new digs on Manalicious.  Yesterday she commented on an achievement-related incident which may or may not have contributed to a wipe, but was definitely related to some literature.  Curious?  Hop on over to find out what’s up.  Suffice it to say I found some startling similarities between her experience and one of my own.  The difference being Minions was only working on trash at the time and I was given permission to bubble-hearth away to get that one hard-to-get book.  Sometimes it’s nice to be have been a Paladin prior to the tragic Patch 4.0 demise of the iconic bubble-hearth.

Tweepery (Is That Even a Word?)

Psynister’s list of wow tweeps (twitterers, twits, tweeters, whatever…) is steadily growing.  If you’re on twitter, check out his list there, too.  If not…  well, why the heck aren’t you on twitter yet?  Also, if you’re on the beta or just want to cyber-stalk the twitter feeds of the lucky sods that are, check out his other list.

How To Tarnish Your Reputation: Add One Unsuspecting LFD PuG, a Pinch of Asshattery, and Herald Volazj.  Stir Vigorously.  Publicly Boast Immediately Upon Serving.

Over at the Warcraft Hunters Union, Frostheim wipes his group in a petulant attempt to solo Volazj, while they’re in the middle of working on the “optional” bosses that he didn’t need.  I’m with Ambrosine on this one.  While Frostheim apparently realizes his own asshattery, his post comes off as a bit of a brag about it.  Instead of an apology, he offers this gem:

…if it weren’t for those other classes holding me back I could totally have solod(sic) heroic Volazj in my MM spec.

Frostheim, your post comes off as insincere, self-centered, and arrogant.  Basically, everything one would expect from a forum troll.  Yes, juvenile behavior in LFD is common, but as a community figure, your behavior is supposed to be anything but common.  Instead, you’ve tarnished your reputation and discredited yourself in the eyes of more than a few.  Give your ego a break and do the grown-up thing here and apologize, publicly.

Because LFD asshattery seems so commonplace these days, I have a few words of general advice for everyone.  If you queue up for an instance, have the time to do a full clear or leave the queue.  If the group wants to do a full clear and you don’t, tough luck.  By queueing for a PuG in LFD, you get a random group of people with their own goals and desires, not one handpicked to further your personal agenda.  Don’t be a poor sport and /ragequit parties or wipe groups or go off and do your own thing because everything’s not going your way.  Be the adult and remember that even if one or two of the others (or even all of them) were pricks about it, you don’t have to be.  I know it’s hard when tempers flare.  Believe me, I know.  My own gets away from me from time to time.  On those rare occasions when that happens, take a step back, a deep breath, and apologize.  You lose nothing by admitting your fault, and you might gain some respect in the process.

The Mess I’m Left With

And finally, the real mess in Aisle Five.  I’m faced with the same sort of dilemma Nibuca describes.  The final days of Wrath are upon us and I am gearing towards the imminent Cataclysm.  But… gearing towards what?  I still have not decided what I will do when I first log in at 12:01am PST on 7 December 2010.  I already have one main and an alt at 80, two more hovering at 70 and working upwards from there.  Plus, the Ethical Alt.  The numerous things I want to do are daunting and difficult to choose between.   They are—in no particular order—as follows:

• Level a Worgen Druid, Hunter, and/or Warrior.
• Attempt to get Dark Iron’s Archaeology Server-First FoS.
• Level a Dwarven Shaman.
• Level a Gnome Priest.
• Level Cayleb, my Paladin and main, to 85.
• Level my Frost Mage, Tank DK, and/or Warlock (haven’t chosen a spec for her yet) alts to 85 from wherever they’re at when the Cataclysm hits.
• Play the Ethical Alt through some new Cataclysm content.
• Max out as many professions/gathering skills as possible to make tons of gold right away.
• Abandon the Alliance, kidnap that handsome devil of a King Varian Wrynn, and run off to some undisclosed-yet-romantic location, hoping all the while that Stockholm Syndrome sets in soon.

What are your plans for the impending Cataclysm?  Are you facing the same indecision I am?  Fighting off an urge to take a course of action that will likely land you in the Stormwind Stockades for the rest of the next expansion?  Lets hear it in the comments.

I’ve been tossing about an idea in my head for quite some time.  More of a question, really.  In Azeroth (and Outland) we regularly encounter quests where we are asked to assassinate some enemy, hunt down and kill rare/endangered species, extract information from our foes via torture, or mindlessly slaughter scores of sentient beings.  In our day-t0-day lives, any of these acts would land us in jail, quite possibly for a very long time.  Obviously, Azeroth is different.  But…

What if it were not?  Or, more accurately, what if I could level a toon as if it were not?  What would it be like, taking my personal, real world ethics, and bringing them into the game world?  Is it possible to level an alt to 85 without wandering into any ethical “grey areas” or beyond into doing things that, in the real world, would directly translate as wrong or unethical?  Is it going to be fun?  What insights could be had?

In discussing this idea with a few of my friends, one suggested a couple additional questions that had not initially occurred to me.  Elik, a very wise mage friend of mine, said that this series would likely be one she would follow eagerly for a couple reasons.  She suggested that this would be an incredible opportunity to gain an inside look at how the virtual world and ours intermesh.  For her, I will be making sure to try to answer a couple more questions.  How are player personalities exhibited through their playstyle?  Which traits do we bring with us into the game world, and (perhaps more importantly) which do we choose to leave behind?

Quite obviously, this has the potential to be an exhausting and grindy process.  It also has the potential to go off the rails, as it were, if there are not some clearly defined parameters at the start.  Of course, even with a set of clear ethical principles there will be dilemmas and challenges along the way.  There will be hard decisions to make.  These are part and parcel of the project.  The four simple ground rules below are not the whole of my ethical system, but merely ground rules that cover the interaction between myself and how I play as the Ethical Alt.  They’re rules established to keep the project productive and entertaining.

The Ground Rules

Thou Shalt Not Wowhead Thy Questchains.

This is the story of the Ethical Alt, not the Ethical Player.  Thus the idea of character knowledge, rather than player knowledge, is paramount.  There will be no looking up quests in advance on community sites like Wowhead or Wowpedia.  There will be no utilization of my foreknowledge of the outcome in order to preselect questlines.  This is good for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, while I’m bringing my ethics into the game, bringing outside knowledge of the end results of quests isn’t really reflective of the actual ethical decisions we make every day.  Second, it forces me to actually rely on only the information that the Ethical Alt can gather in making decisions.  It means I must read the quest descriptions fully, observe my setting, and follow a decision-making process that is more reflective of how we decide whether our real-world actions are ethical or not.

Thou Shalt Not Partake of the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.

Seems like a silly idea, but this rule is an important principle of the US legal system.  It essentially boils down to the idea that evidence obtained illegally is inadmissible in court.  This principle is one of the strongest protections in the US against arbitrary violation of due process.  Warrants must be obtained or the search must meet the Constitutionally mandated test of being reasonable, otherwise the evidence (no matter how good it is) is thrown out.  For my purposes, this principle means that I cannot use heirlooms or other assistance from any of my other toons.  These things are “poisonous” because it comes from other alts or my main, who have not ascribed to the same ethical restrictions that the Ethical Alt has.  If he were to strap on a pair of shoulders purchased with my Mage’s PvP Honor Points, it would be as if he himself were the one inflicting third-degree burns on the enemy.  If I were to send the Ethical Alt some gold, how could that gift be free of the blood (ichor?) of the hundreds of poor murlocs my Paladin slaughtered to obtain it?

Thou Shalt Not Take the Easy Way Out.

In terms of decision-making, the easiest and least controversial way to ethically level from 1-85 would be to pick flowers all day long.  That would be excruciatingly boring.  After the second blog post about how beautiful Mageroyal blooms are this time of year, I’d be ready to run the Ethical Alt off the edge of the nearest mesa and start writing his eulogy.  That doesn’t help me and it’s certainly not very entertaining to you.  Along the same vein, ignoring certain zones or quest chains in order to avoid tough decisions isn’t really reflective of having the courage to face those decisions in the real world.  While it’s perfectly possible to walk past the man being mugged and ignore it, that itself is a choice and not something I’d respect very much in the real world.  It won’t be something the Ethical Alt does, either.

Thou Shalt Show Thy Work.

Like any complex math problem, complicated ethical decisions require some explanation.  If for some reason I do decide to take a quest that involves killing a sentient being, or decide to actively intervene in a complex ecology, I need to be ready to show the reasoning that leads me to conclude that the decision is ethical.  Especially if the morality of a particular decision is highly subjective.  A good real world example of this is parking in a no-parking zone.  It’s not ordinarily ethical to do so something like that, but if you needed to because it was an emergency and someone’s life depended on it, then perhaps it might be more ethical than letting them bleed out while you drive around looking for an open meter near the hospital.  Obviously there will be situations that are less clear cut than that, and so showing my reasoning behind the decisions will help make this series much more interesting to you and a lot less likely to devolve into a simple list of quests that the Ethical Alt cannot do.

Has He Quit Yappin’ Already?

With these basic rules as a guide, using my personal ethics as a compass, and the Ethical Alt’s in-game knowledge and experiences, this should be quite an adventure.  It certainly won’t be easy, but it also won’t be boring.  You’re welcome to roll alts of your own to participate, if you’d like.  If you’d like to roll a regular alt as a sort of control for my little experiment, or an Ethical Alt of your own, or both, that’s completely fine by me.  I welcome it, in fact.  It would be interesting to me to see where everyone else is on this, so if you do decide to participate and document your participation online in any way, I only ask two things.  First, let me know so I can include you in a list of participants.  Second, remember that this experiment is about ethics, which are highly subjective and can vary considerably from person-to-person and culture-to-culture.  If you do create an Ethical Alt, be true to your own ethical code (or conscience, if you feel that’s a better word) and remember that everyone else is not required to agree with you on every decision you make.

The server I’ve chosen is Stormscale-US.  If you want to play alongside me, don’t roll your toon quite yet.  I’ll be discussing character creation choices in a post early next week. Feel free to throw in any suggestions, ideas, comments, or concerns about the Ground Rules and/or Character Creation in the comments section below.