Paqrat

So, as you know, I play World of Warcraft. Not as obsessively as some people who have all the end-game epic gear and such, but a fair bit.

Today I noticed something about my play in World of Warcraft which actually came from my try at EverQuest2, another online multi-player role playing game like WoW.

A friend of mine let me use his second account to make a character and try out EQ2 since that is what he plays a lot and I on WoW. None the twain shall meet. So I made myself a cool little faerie wizard and started zipping around the world of EQ2. Very quickly I realized the immense factor of collection possibility in this game. As in running around the virtual world collecting "stuff". Stuff for main quests, stuff for side quests, and mostly stuff for crafting. Oh, so much stuff for crafting.

In WoW, you can take two major professions and all of the three secondary professions (cooking, fishing and first aid). Your two major professions can be one "creation" type (alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, jewel crafting, leather working, tailoring) and one "gathering" type (herbalism, mining, skinning), or two creation types or two gathering professions. Usually folks will choose a creation type with an appropriate gathering type, such as blacksmithing and mining or leather working and skinning. Now, in WoW, if you have mining, you can gather ore. If you have herbalism, you can pick flowers, etc. But you can't gather other types of "stuff". Unless you have herbalism and skinning, say. Then you can gather herbs and skins. But you can't gather ore. But in EQ2, you could gather EVERYTHING. Oh my gods, it seems that 80% of the game was running around picking shit up, at least for me, because I'm a hoarder.

In real life, I'm not as bad as clinically diagnosed hoarder who keeps everything. And I mean everything. I keep a lot stuff and I have a damn hard time throwing it away. Books, magazines, paper; mostly that sort of stuff. But, well, shells and keys and stuff like that too. So, I'm a pack rat. Yay.

I had to stop playing EQ2 because it felt like it could be way too obsessive for me, collecting so much junk. I mean, I do it in WoW too. But EQ2 felt above and beyond the pale. It had interesting bits of gameplay that I liked but ultimately, I like WoW better. I guess it's all in how one is "raised". Mac or Windows? That sort of thing.

But I realized today that, yes, I am a real life Pack Rat. And I'd rather not be. But, I know I have the tendency. So, since I have that leaning, and I like to play WoW, I figured maybe I could work on bringing my pack rat-ism to the digital-virtual world. Collect and save only there. It's a goal, I guess. Certainly less space to take up and more fun to organize. I can spend hours organizing files and folders. But for some reason, I hate organizing my real stuff. Harder to bend over and pick up something off the floor I guess and then to find some real, physical space for it.

So, let me describe my virtual pack rat-ism. You can have 10 characters per server. And there are tons of servers, so technically, you could have tons of characters for your account. But remember, servers can't play with each other (excepting in battlegrounds but that's a whole different story), so your 10 characters on Shadowsong are only there, your 10 characters on Hyjal are only there. If you have friends on both servers, you can't talk to the ones on the other one. So, most people choose a major server where they have their 10 major characters with smatterings on other servers.

So Hyjal is my main server and I have 10 characters there. Nine playable characters and one "bank alt". This configuration is quite popular since people don't want to use a main playing character to go back to the Auction House to sell stuff all the time, so they in-game mail it to their bank alts who are parked in a major city.

So meet Paqrat, my "bank alt" on WoW. A female gnome warrior, level one. Ain't she ugly? I was so amused by the hairdo and color, face and such when creating her, hitting random a few times, I kept it. (Click pic for a larger version.)


I collect stuff on my characters and send them to her. I have tons of crap in the bank and am always trying to upgrade my bags in order to store yet more stuff. Occasionally, I am forced to go through my bank and bags and sell stuff. Horrors.

But if I could narrow it down to the digital, I'd be doing pretty good. That's my aim for the year. Ack, another New Year's Intention/Goal!!