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Back in November 2007, columnist John Himes took a look at a special breed of player who levels from 1 to 70 in a decidedly unconventional manner:hunters who only melee, a naked (well, except for his loincloth)warrior – and Noor the pacifist, who levels without intentionallykilling anything. Now, this isn't the first time we've heard of playerswho've given this idea a whirl, but Noor,a gnome rogue on Maiev, and his Horde counterpart, Reinisch the undeadpriest, seem to have the gumption and persistence to make it to the topof the XP tree.
We checked on Noor and Reinisch's progress this month and foundthem plugging along merrily through battlegrounds, quests ... and yes,levels. Intrigued, we contacted the player behind the toons to find outwhat's behind this novel way of playing World of Warcraft.Read more about the attraction of playing a pacifist character, how togo about getting XP without killing anything – and of course, whetheror not Noor thinks he can actually make it to 70 ... all after thebreak.
Ok, so we gotta ask – why on earth a character that doesn't kill anything? Doesn't that feel like pulling teeth?I prefer doing stranger stuff, as opposed to grinding high-endinstances. Once, my 70 mage was in Southshore, and someone was askingdirections to Ghostlands in zone chat. I told him how to go throughEPL. Then I clicked on him, and he was something like a level 12Draenei hunter. I asked him why he wanted to go there, and it turns outhe wanted a red cat for a pet -- so I escorted him through EPL, and heonly died a couple of times getting there. I've also done a few questson PvP servers with non-hostile Horde players (not pre-arreanged oranything), such as the mechanical chicken escort in Feralas (twice, sowe could all get credit).
So what sparked the idea of starting a pacifist character? I had thought about doing such a character off and on for a while. When I saw Gweryc Halfhand's blogon being a melee-only hunter, that finally spurred me on to try it. Itturns out he had been thinking of trying something similar but wasn'tsure if he'd have the patience for it.
Show us your kung fu: what's the actual nuts-and-bolts reality of this character?Both my priest and my rogue try not to hit anything, although there'salways a chance of a misclick when trying to open a quest item withmobs fighting near it. Both of them always wield a fishing rod, so anyaccidental hits won't increase their weapon skills. Neither of themwill do quests where they have to kill things. In battlegrounds, myrogue will throw bombs to interrupt flag captures and stun people andmay even accidentally kill players low in health or nearby critters. Mypriest only heals, so he is actually closer in roleplaying terms.Neither will "get around" these limits by grouping and having otherplayers do their dirty work.
In terms of bragging rights, Iintend to keep my rogue's weapon skills (dagger, thrown and unarmed) atall 1s. My priest will also have all 1s, but it won't be obvious on WoWArmory that he has no offensive spells beyond the level 1 Smite allpriests start with.
Tell us about the concept behind Reinisch, your first pacifist character.I started him from a roleplaying point of view, based very loosely on areal German priest, Franz Reinisch, who refused to serve in Hitler'sarmy and was executed. My undead priest's back story is basically thesame, and he still refuses to kill.
What made you start a pacifist rogue, too?My priest hit an XP plateau. There were no longer any quests he coulddo without killing mobs -- this was before 2.3 came out, withrepeatable BG quests that grant XP). I had already decided to try bothHorde and Alliance pacifists, so this time I started an Alliancecharacter using what I had learned from my priest.
I thoughtabout using a hunter and have my pet act as a decoy; however, I figuredthat my Alliance character would also have to go into dangerous areas,and a rogue with stealth and sprint would stand a better chance. Isettled on a gnome because they get +15 to engineering, allowing mygnome to use Target Dummies at level 5 (as opposed to 10 for my priest).
As a rogue is a sort of "spy" class, I Googled for a pacifist spy andfound Noor Inayat Khan, a woman who was also executed by the Nazis foraiding the French resistance, so I named my rogue after her. She wasthe daughter of a well-known pacifist in India.
Didn't you originally have a pacifist rogue named Noorkhan?When my first gnome rogue Noorkhan learned Sap, I tried it out -- andmy melee skill went up, so it was no longer a "perfect" 1. I was alsoreminded of the Anh'Qiraj war drive when I saw it again on the publictest realm for patch 2.3. I knew a low-level character could get someextra XP if the war drive was still going on, so I looked and foundthat the Maiev realm still hadn't finished the war drive to open the AQgates. So I rerolled on Maiev. The name Noor wasn't available for mycharacter on Maelstrom, but it was on Maiev -- and I preferred justNoor, anyway.
It's apparent from the research and design behind Noor that you have some WoW savvy up your sleeve. What's your past WoW experience? Do you currently play a "regular" character as well?I've been playing since October of 2005 and have a 70 mage and warlockon Stormreaver (Gummo and Vardlokker) in <Critical Mass> and anumber of alts, mostly in the 40s.
Who do you consider your main character – Noor or Reinisch?I'm working on both; Reinisch is doable but slow, since he can only doWSG dailies now since he's level 15. Both are pretty low-maintenance atthe moment, so I can level both simultaneously. I've been mostlyneglecting my level 70s in <Critical Mass> lately, though I stilldo a few instances with them.
What kind of time do you spend on Noor each week? How often do you play?So far, I've still been playing nearly every day. I'm still collectingitems for future consideration (green whelp armor for battlegrounds,etc.), and I want to earn enough money so I can buy what I can't make.The Charred Vale in Stonetalon Mountains is the best place for aself-twinking miner, as it has mithril and truesilver nodes, most ofwhich are far from the mid-20s mobs. I hit 270 mining at level 23, so Ibought a +5 mining enchant for some gloves and mined a rich thoriumvein in Azshara in the Bay of Storms just for fun.
Itmust take a ton of research time to orchestrate the XP progression.What percentage of the total time you spend on Noor would you guess isspent researching vs. actually playing? At first, it was quitea lot, since there are a lot of quests in four different starting areasto look over. The new "!" markers on the minimap help, too. However,the number of new quests has fallen way off. Level-27-required questsonly shows about half a dozen new entries on wowhead.com, and I canonly do one of them.
It looks like PvP is a huge part of your strategy. Do you foresee continuing to PvP the whole way up?I have to; the repeatable daily battleground quests are the only way to"grind" XP if you aren't going to kill mobs (not counting the veryslow repeatable seasonal quests that you can do each year). Withoutthem, Horde characters would be stuck around level 15 and Alliancearound level 23 ("around" since class quests vary, and exploring veryhigh level areas can get you a bit farther).
What reaction have you gotten from other players in battlegrounds?Some are amused, some are not so amused -- at least for my rogue. Atleast nobody complains in BGs about a priest who runs around justhealing everybody.
What about from your battleground opponents -- can you tell if they've been taken aback by any of your actions?Not that I can tell -- but they might wonder why I'm just whackingpeople with a fishing rod instead of using standard rogue attacks.
You blogged that you recently started throwing bombs in ABbecause you didn't feel you were pulling your weight defending theflag. What other compromises have you made so far? I had to"make up" for some unintentional XP I received when I was grouped withanother player to meet up with him and some murlocs attacked. He killedthem and I got shared XP, so I completed one quest without turning itin to compensate. My priest will actually be much better in roleplayingterms, since he won't need to throw bombs. He'll just heal otherplayers and sometimes interrupt flag captures with a Psychic Scream orMind Control. I did have my rogue do the second part of A Noble Breweven though that kills an NPC, because she isn't told that the drinkwill kill him. But both of my characters will refuse to do quests ifthey know it will kill NPCs.
What about in-game support -- do you have a guild or friends who help you out, or is this strictly a solo effort? I don't have any alts or "rich uncles" helping my pacifists. I've met a few people like Mephisston who read my blogbecause it talked about the opening of the AQ gates, and he decided toopen them on Maiev by buying up linen and turning in bandages. He'smade some potions and bandages for me (at 225 First Aid, you can usebut not make Heavy Runecloth Bandages). ... But no huge support network.
Asfar as a solo effort, I bought a Security DELTA Data Access Card fromthe Auction House and managed to stealth all the way to the "D" Punchograph card readers in Gnomeregan at level 24, so I could learn how to make Discombobulator Rays myself instead of needing to rely on another engineer to make them. The hard part was placing the Target Dummy so all the ranged attackers would attack the dummy instead of me while I got the schematic.
Are you in touch with other pacifist characters such as Gutrot?I've read Gweryc's and Gutgot's blogs, and Gweryc and I have left eachother messages on our blogs. I also sent an in-game mail to Lintilla onDragonblight, which I found by searching WoW Armory for guilds named"The Pacifist," though I haven't heard back. Lintilla's weapon skillsare low for a level 17 rogue (9 in daggers, 2 in unarmed).
Are you a roleplayer outsider of World of Warcraft? Yes, mostly back in college. I've roleplayed with Michael Mornard, who was one of the original playtesters for D&D back when it was just World of Greyhawk.
How long have you been playing MMOs? Not much outside of WoW since I'm on a Mac and many games are PC only, but I was on Steve Jackson Games' Metaverse MOOyears ago, where I created some simple dice-rolling objects to automatepaper-and-pencil gaming. I even got to show them to Steve Jackson (inthe MOO), and he liked them.
And the points many readers will have made so many guesses and assumptions about: How old are you? What do you do in real life? I'm a 50-year-old male computer programmer, and I'm also the main webmaster of the Firesign Theatre website.
So tell us -- is Noor actually going to make it to max level?80 or bust! Hmm, she's now at level 27 with 18.5 bubbles to go, andshe's out of quests. That means roughly 14 daily BGs. That's about fourweeks to go from level 27 to level 28. We'll see. Level 28 opens up theMissing Diplomat quest series, and I might actually do the fights (since nobody actually gets killed) to go as far as I can with them.
Lets just pick up on a few things, and comment on them...
He speaks about the game incredibly anally.
Some commenters are qually obsessive and engrossed in the game...
Quote:
Thank god you're not in my battlegroup. You're an AFKer no matter how much you argue otherwise.
This guy also has no life:
Quote:
Why on earth would that bother you? Just because it's EASIER to levelup by killing things doesn't mean everyone has to do it that way.
I applaud the creativity, as well as the moral stance.
The Digg comments are better "Wow, this dude has no life." ubergeek09 "All you had to see was that he played WoW to know he didn't have a life."
DangerMouse9 ""A college student is attempting to level two "pacifist" characters up to the top of World of Warcraft's ..."
A college student is not getting laid." T8erT0T "Dear college student,
Get laid.
Signed, Life" deebo It's amazing what people will waste their time on... Why take so muchlonger to level when in the end you'll still end up with a level 70character. I'll never understand roleplayers. blah247 Wow, what a great way to just throw another $15/mo onto Blizzards cash pile. Talk about a complete waste.
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