Remediating for 140 Characters

# tags: The most common tags I found relating to my topic of interest were:

#warcraft

#worldofwarcraft (used less commonly than just Warcraft)

#feraldruid

#catis4fite

Copy of each tweet and retweet:

Responses:

My thoughts:

World of Warcraft is a very active topic on Twitter, and it’s easy to get lost in the masses. The #warcraft tag is very commonly used for many aspects relating to the game, and it may not gain attention to your tweets because of the very high amount of content associated with it. On the other hand, more specific hashtags like #feraldruid are better for finding tweets related to my topic, but vary very much in content. For example, while some tweets may be comments on Feral Druids, many others are simply screenshot “selfies” of people’s characters. Slightly more generalised topics such as #druids don’t tend to be very useful, as they could relate to a number of topics, many completely unrelated.

Aside from tags, developing a network of people with similar topics of interest to yourself seems very beneficial for engaging in discussions, sharing information and promoting interest in your own blog as well as establishing yourself among a community. From my experience with this task, it seems like you generally need a good following already for your tweets to have maximum effect. While you can try and get the attention of other users with @[name] usage, you may never get a response (especially if the person is very well known and too busy to read all tweets). It takes time to develop a relationship and rapport with other users to achieve a network where your tweets are taken notice of. It’s a similar to Blood (2002)’s discussion of integrity and ethics in blogging – the need to establish a network with readers and other writers, and that they can trust the integrity of your writing. Even though Twitter is only a form of microblogging, I feel it requires the same standards as blogging in order for other users to trust that your tweets are trustworthy and authoritative on the subject, and valuable as a person to follow.

Cat is 4 fite!

These famous words by the player Alamo, were part of a spoof post to the World of Warcraft Forums (and a follow up to a previous version, a copy of which can be found here) are words all Feral Druid players in the know live by.

This saying is probably a reference to the fact that early in the game’s history, Druids were primarily Restoration specialisation (healing), and later, less commonly, bear specialisation (which is for tanking). Playing a Druid in cat form was a foreign concept to many players for a long time, emphasised by the example Alamo gives “peeps can always ask if cat druid can B GOOD FOR FITE…” In fact, when I started playing the game around the middle of Wrath of the Lich King, my sister who was helping me learn the game refused to help me get gear if I remained Feral Specialisation and didn’t change to Moonkin (Balance), as people thought they just were not very good.

However, by the end tier of Wrath of the Lich King, Feral single target DPS rewarded high damage output for a highly complex rotation and performed competitively in DPS, through the stacking of a secondary stat called Armour Penetration.

The specialisation has developed through the expansions, and feral continues to excel as a single target DPS, while providing valuable benefits to raid teams, with cooldowns such as Stampeding Roar and Rebirth and off-healing capabilities.The complexity of the spec has been simplified, making the specialisation more accessible to new and inexperienced players. While the skill cap on the spec has inevitably dropped, there has been very little that has changed to the playstyle.

Honestly wish I had something to talk about. There is almost nothing different.

— Tinderhoof (@Tinderhoof) November 12, 2015

Currently, Feral maintains a position of one of the highest single target specialisations in Heroic Gear in Hellfire Citadel behind mages, but do not suffer from the same movement limitations as the ranged class. However, there are only a handful of real single target encounters in the current raid tier, and classes that have strong AOE or cleave options will generally have a competitive advantage. With the sun setting on the current expansion, and a new expansion soon to be available on the horizon, I know I am looking forward to new content and the challenges from new encounters, and how the Feral toolkit will adapt.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Warning! Some nerdy talk and gaming jargon below!

With the next expansion for World of Warcraft still months away, and no substantial new content or raids to expect until that time, it was a nice surprise when Blizzard announced patch 6.2.3 – a mini content patch aimed at improving some of the Timewalking dungeons they introduced previously, and proving better rewards. For those of you who don’t know Timewalking, they are dungeons from previous expansions that had little to no value to most players except for nostalgia purposes, that you can now complete on designated weekend events to receive better rewards. Also, whereas previously only 2 different sets of dungeons were available – from Wrath of the Lich King and Burning Crusade – with this update 5 dungeons from Cataclysm will also be available. Two other dungeons will be added to the rotation for Wotlk and BC also. Currently, there are no Timewalking dungeons for Classic or Mists of Pandaria.

It’s pretty obviously a desperate attempt to dress up old content to try to hold people’s interest – which in itself isn’t a bad idea, as many players spend long hours re-experiencing nostalgic content, or experiencing it for the first time if they began their World of Warcraft experience after these dungeons were released. However, the scope has been woefully small. The weekly quest for Timewalking requires 5 dungeons from that Timewalking event to be completed, but until this patch there were only 4 dungeons available. This means that due to the random nature of which dungeon you will get selected, you could be repeating the same dungeon several times during that weekend event. Not only that, but there were a multitude of dungeons available during each of those expansions and out of the 16 – yes 16 – from Wotlk alone, only 4 are available through Timewalking. Timewalking dungeons could have been much better, but the small pool of available dungeons makes it extremely repetitive. It’s possible more dungeons will be made available in the future to space out the content, to give these nostalgic dungeons continued interest.

©2015 BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT, INC.

It’s not all bad though. Aside from a few small “quality of life” updates in this patch, such as cross realm mythic raiding and item upgrading, there’s also something coming that makes even me excited. A new mount! If you don’t get why this is exciting, all I can say is it’s a WoW thing. 🙂

Trying to explain gaming to a non-gamer is kind of like of trying to explain Australian vocabulary to an American.

Yes, suss is a real word.

“Sif” is a legitimate expression. And response. And retort.

No one actually uses the word “shrimp”, and never in conjunction with “the barbie”.

Mum: “Get off the computer and go play with your friends”

Me: “I am playing with my friends!”

Gaming, and online gaming in particular, has always been surrounded by negative connotations. The pasty white nerd, living in the parents’ basement. This was certainly helped along by the South Park episode, Make Love, not Warcraft (of which the clip above is from). And though most of us gamers are self-professed nerds, over 5 million nerds who currently Play World of Warcraft is a LOT of nerds you wouldn’t want to be messing with… if we weren’t all too busy saving the world of Azeroth from Illidan…

Wait..

The Lich King…

No..

Deathwing…

um..

Garrosh…

uh…

Archimonde! Yes, that one.

But seriously. There’s many kinds of games, but they all give us a feeling that we’re achieving something great, and sharing that achievement with others. That we’re contributing to something bigger than ourselves, or experiencing something epic and amazing. And it’s not just contributing something pretend to a digital world – though it can be. It can be contributing to a community based around the game – helping others get a better, more rewarding experience out of the game. Or entertaining people through stories, artwork, music, and yes even blogging. Gaming creates a sphere of collaboration and creativity, community and friendships. And it’s not just the gamers. Unlike recording studios when you use their music in your youtube video (possibly “time of your life” in your graduation video or slideshow), game creators actively encourage and enable the use and reuse of their games in creative contexts, such as fan art and machinima competitions. (For an excellent example of Machinima, watch this).

On this topic I particularly like the TED talk by Jane McGonigal. In her talk, she says games can give us the things we can’t get in real life. Positive feedback for what we achieve in the game, even if it’s small. (do you think I get sparkles and fireworks when I clean up someone else’s mess at home? NO!) There’s always a challenge we can do, and when we fail the first time, we know we can just get back up and try again. And not only that, there are other people who are willing to help you achieve your goals.

Neopets, Inc., © 1999-2015

© 1999 – 2015 Jagex Ltd

My fascination with online games began with my introduction to NeoPets in high school. I was able to meet other people my own age, from all over the world, and learn about them and their country. My first friends were mostly Singaporean and it opened up the possibility of interacting with people who I never would have met in my real life. Years after that, I started playing a game called Runescape. I made many new friends, from all over the world. From the United Kingdom to Greece, to America and Canada, to Bangladesh. It’s been over 9 years since I started playing Runescape, and I am still good friends with many people I met through that game. Since then I moved onto playing World of Warcraft, though probably the friendships I made, and the people I met through Runescape are the ones that will stay with me the longest.

WoW is such a dynamic game with a distinct culture and player base, with an active community and sub-communities. It’s hard for me to explain my interest in games for people who have never experienced the kind of massively played online games that I like to play. There’s an easy camaraderie and connection with other people based on a similar interest. They give you the opportunity to meet and make friendships with people from all over the world, with different backgrounds and experiences. Where you may never have any cause or opportunity to meet some of these people in your real life, or have nothing in common if you did, games are a gap bridger that doesn’t care about social status, age, gender (usually) or even appearance.

©2015 BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT, INC

Engaging in the online communities based around the game I’ve found very rewarding also. Gaming kind of encourages a community where people share their knowledge and experiences, and take the time to help other people out, usually for no expectation of reward or compensation, but simply for the joy of contributing to the culture and community. There are many many websites, blogs and youtube channels (the latter which probably do generate some income) dedicated to different aspects of the game and helping other people. For my part, in the past I’ve been active in the Druid communities (which is the class I play on WoW) to the point of even blogging about the subject myself in my own time.