If real life were a video game, I'd still be broke.

While I'm not quite the 1% currency-wise in any of the games that I play, I'd say that compared to the Rockefellers bidding max on BMAH mounts and the few people I know who wouldn't be able to raid if their guilds weren't paying for repairs, I'm pretty middle-class. That's not to say "middle class" in a video game translates to "middle class" IRL, for it's so much easier to make money in WoW that not being ridiculously wealthy in it is actually a failure. Honestly, even with as much gold as I have, translated into the real world, I would be just as upper-middle-lower-class as I am in real life, and my in-game tactics for making money are just as inadequate as they are outside.

Unsurprisingly, the money-making lessons one can glean from gaming are pretty analogous to what we see outside of it. Sure, there's meritocracy, working hard so one can save and eventually become rich, both feasible and tantalizing mythical in either environment, for then there are the real methods of making gold/Simoleans/Neopoints/money en masse: stealing, cheating, wage slavery, etc. As much gold as one has, it's nothing compared to what Chinese farmers make teleporting to mining nodes and paying teenagers a few dollars a day to spam in trade. Nothing makes more Neopoints than running an auto-buying program, nothing is as quick and easy to earn Simoleans as good old "motherlode," and there's nothing that makes more money in the real world than organized crime, drug trafficking, and sex slavery.

It's a rather negative but realistic sentiment. I'm not promoting the use of bots nor suggesting that everyone smuggle heroin. In fact, the consequences of subversive activity can be just as harsh in-game when one equates the potential real life losses (assets, freedom, life) to the punishments for cheating (inventory, characters, life-long ban), and many people do equate them. However, it doesn't stop tons of players every day from taking those risks to get ahead, accumulate wealth, or pull themselves out of destitute situations, because for better or worse, in-game societies are a reflection of the ones in which we actually live and are full of the same stratification, inflation, and artificial prestige-laden consumerism that we experience in real life.

-Avia.

Post-Traumatic Progression Disorder

Hello. This is Barkath, Avia's voidwalker. I wanted to inform her readers that, due to a five hour stretch of wiping in Veteran Skullcano in Wildstar, there is, what you would call, a "situation." Rather than reverting back to WoW like a good little casual, she has regressed back many more years to a far earlier, far worse state of gaming docility.

She is playing Neopets.

Hi!

As we speak, she is dressing up sickenly "cute" animals in tiny hats and shoes and pampering them with spa treatments. She reads her pets books, feeds them puddings, and grooms their furry faces with pink powder puffs to make them "happy." Hours can go by, during which all she will do is watch with glazed eyes as a farm of insects obediently collects wood and pollen for her. And perhaps most horrifying of all, instead of fighting off the minions of the Sha in Pandaria with wanton bloodlust, she is playing a Neopets' turn-based mini-RPG. Turn-based!

As her enslaved yet moderately loyal servant, I urge anyone who can help to try to pull her out of this sad psychotic break and bring her gaming identity back to a more current, mature, and hardcore state. Or euthanize her in fel flames. Either is fine with me.

-Barkath.

P.S. NEOPETS! -Avia.

Wildstar made it easier to be a "Pie Vendor."

A guildie informed me of an amazing feature in Wildstar with which I'm going to have as much fun as possible in case the devs decide that it's abuse and remove it. After all, video games aren't about fun. They're about spending hours trying to figure out arbitary Gold objectives in buggy adventures. They're about learning to craft an item and then relying on RNG every single time to craft it again. They're about trying to click on the Commodities Exchange vendor when peoples' hoverbikes are camped on top of it. WTB collision detection.

Anyway, inspired by the fact that the first person to shell out the five gold to start our Wildstar guild went ahead and named it "CRISPY DONKEYTACOS," I found out that I can switch my nameplate affiliation with the name of one of my "Circles." They cost nothing to make, and I can have it say almost anything I want. Let the antics begin!

Ayaliss

<Queen of Ratchet>

I never stop being queen of the goblins.

Professor Ayaliss

<Dept of Sentient Botany>

It seems pretty important to study talking vegetables.

 Ayaliss

<and the Snowmen>

Performing at my home lot every Saturday night.

 Ayaliss, PhD

<Free Pelvic Exams>

Gloves optional.

-Avia.

I decided to get Wildstar.

Stormtalon is the new Stormrage! Hopefully, the queue times will die down after the first couple of weeks. Feel free to find me on the Exiled faction hopping around with my little Avia bunny ears. Yes, I chose Aurin, essentially the Wildstar equivalent of blood elves, the stereotypical pick of female WoW players, but it wasn't my first choice. I was all set to play a human like I always do until I heard the full-on American deep South accent that is characteristic of the humans of the Exile. No offense to anyone with Southern accents; it just isn't me. I'm not quite sure this is either. However, what is decidedly me and strange of this new game to already know is that I picked the Path that seemed the most interesting and it happened to be the one that has the ability to summon people.

Forever a(lock).

-Avia.