Unable to sleep, I logged into World of Warcraft to sneak in some productive gameplay. I cleaned out the guild bank and discord while waiting on my dungeon group to fill. It took quite some time, as I crossed off a bunch of errands off of my list before the group disbanded and I had to form my own group. Typical late night struggles.
An hour into my dungeon wait, the group finally filled and we were set to start the dungeon. “123” a mage typed. I opened my map; no one was even close to the dungeon. This mage saw the group fill and typed 123 immediately. What a guy. He asked for a summon before anyone was there to do one. “Be considerate.” I replied. He checked his map and confirmed.
No one close to the dungeon and no movement on the map. I guess I’ll find a way to make it to the dungeon. To be able to fly in the continent of Northrend, one must learn Cold Weather Flying, a tome which is tradeable from character to character. I swapped over to my Alliance server and sent this tome over, one of the very few things I can trade between servers and factions. I logged back over and taught my character how to fly. I rose to the sky and pointed myself south by southwest, out of the city and onto the dungeon.
I opened my map and there has been little movement. Except, wait. Our mage has moved. I hovered over his character portrait and checked his buffs. His movement on the map seemed… indirect. As if he was following paths across the land. Sure enough, in his buff list, was a Hawkstrider, a swift ground mount. This mage had ridden across the land and met me at the dungeon’s entrance within seconds of my arrival. Without a word, we began summoning the rest of the team.
A pleasant surprise, this mage. We grabbed our quests and zoned in.
A message appears in guild chat. “when did wow add a playlist”
I replied, “what”
My guildmate went on to describe how there’s weird metal music playing in Terokkar Forest. “when did they add music?”
I’m confused. I tell them there’s always been music.
“no, there hasn’t. i haven’t played in a while but i’ve never heard it until now.”
There are a lot of new players in my casual guild. I explain to him the default keybinds to turning music on and off. I tell him that the game has had music since its initial launch. He pushes back.
“it’s never had music”
I tell him we can simply google it and another guildmate agrees with me. I ask him, “Did you really think the most popular game in the world at one point didn’t have music?” He quickly replied yes.
I didn’t quite know what to say at this point so I told him, “Wait til you get to Northrend, your mind will be blown.” The music director for this expansion was incredible, so his mind will indeed be blown.
The dungeon went on smoothly and guild chat remained silent. His conversation stuck with me until the end of the dungeon. Our tank had never ran the dungeon before and needed a little guidance. While he charged forward rather confidently into what was a mystery for him, our tank took feedback well and the run was very smooth. I shortly after went to bed.
Is confidence a horse-blinder? Allowing us to charge forward? Do we let our experiences and our confidence blind ourselves to reality? Inversely, we cannot be so skeptical and fraught that action can never be taken. Perhaps the availability of information and the veneer of social media encourages us to be bold and brazen first, subtle and skeptical last. I’ll cover generational conversation more in a future post.
Leadership, Design, Writing 