. . . [Insert Odd Thing Here]

Today's Choice: World of Warcraft

Completely strange things I've learned here.

1) Nothing makes people angrier than breaking their stuff . . . except mind controlling them.

In WoW, nothing makes a creature angrier (in game term: generates threat/aggro) than the Warrior's ability Sunder Armor, which temporarily reduces their armor.

The only ability that I've seen make anything even MORE angry is the Priest Mind Control ability.

So the question is, which would make you more angry? If I tore up your clothes or if I could mind control you? Heck, if we could mind control people in real life, we'd probably tell them not to be angry with us in the first place.

2) Every race/gender has their own sense of style and dance, and no individual member can deviate from that. EVER.

Seriously, in WoW each race/gender has its own set of emotion (emote) commands and dances. Now, each one looks pretty cool but there's no variance. Everyone in a race/gender can only do one dance. After a while, I think parties would get boring.

3) You can make someone ignore you by doing a cute spinny move with a weapon.

There are lots of cute spinny moves in this game that reduce how threatening you are to a given enemy. Somehow, I don't think if someone did some sort of funky sword kata it'd do anything to make me feel less threatened -- they're still holding a 3-foot tall razorblade, for instance -- but hey, whatever floats those NPC's boats.

4) Shipping companies don't make jack for money.

All the boats are free in WoW and flights are cheap. (Now if this were only true in the real world, I'd be traveling all over the world.)

5) You can travel from the main capitol of any nation to its peripheries in less than an hour.

Azeroth is the dinkiest world in the universe. I think Deimos is bigger.

6) Every group is interlaced in one Illuminati-style utterly ridiculous conspiracy, and just when you thought something was mundane chance, it turns out it's some new group that's part of this ridiculous conspiracy.

Someone at Blizzard played INWO and then took the cards and relabelled them "Defias Brotherhood," "The Burning Legion," "Twilight Lords," "Dark Iron Dwarves," "The Scourge," "The Scarlet Crusade," and so forth. At least, that's how it looks to me.

7) People will mindlessly help the bad guys if it means they get good stuff.

Yes, 99.9% of the player characters take the quests that help evil because no one roleplays on these anyway. (The .1% is my husband's Paladin.) I hope Blizzard has a nasty zap for that in the future, at least on the RP servers.

8) No one cares if you're a class or race that's evil, OF COURSE you're the exception. You and five million of your comrades.

Demon-summoning Warlocks and cannibalistic Trolls. Ooooooooooookay.

9) Major villains have an infinite number of bodyguards and doubles.

It doesn't matter that twenty of your friends killed the leader of the Defias Brotherhood twenty times before you. Van Cleef will be back again to be killed by you and your next twenty friends.

And the collorary...

10) Even if you rescue someone, they'll get themselves back in trouble again.

It doesn't matter that you rescued the Tauren princess from the jungle island or the King from his evil dragon advisor. They'll be back in trouble in less than an hour and the bad guys will be ready to be killed again.