Lore Sjöberg at Wired's Alt Text talked yesterday about the Zhevra mount you get as part of the Recruit-a-Friend program. It's a pretty fun read. He talks about the myriad of vanity items, and how these items can be such a motivator for WoW players, even though they don't really affect your gameplay at all.

I do want to add a point to his article, though. The new Recruit-a-Friend benefit isn't just the Zhevra. For me, the ability to gain triple-XP is the huge motivator. I'm involved in a Guild that's doing it's best to truck through Zul'Aman content. I can't wait to get a good friend of mine involved in the fun, but getting from 0 to 70 is going to take a while.

Even with the speed levelling records out there, going from zip to end-game isn't going to happen overnight. So, while my friend will be starting after Labor Day weekend, there's a little bit of delay before she's rocking out to left-handed Nalorakk. The triple-XP bonus -- and the ability to teleport me to her when she needs help -- overcomes the big hurdle to getting a friend started.

This is the real power of the new Recruit-a-Friend benefit, in my opinion. The Zhevra's cool and all, but the XP bonus and teleportation feature makes getting my friend involved three times faster. The benefit doesn't just reward getting friends involved, it empowers us to get our friends involved.

Warcraft has been a couple of things to me, besides a game. One, I've met a lot of really, really good friends while playing WoW. Some of them are friends I will probably still have quite a few years from now, after WoW is long gone. Two, it has been a bit of an inspiration. Not that big, worldview-changing kind of inspiration, but the kind that makes you stand up and go do things.

The things I've done vary from simple to quite a bit larger. There's the mundane inspirations, like doing a little bit of creative writing (and the writing I do here) but I've written before, so it was more an outlet rather than something completely new. It definitely has inspired quite a bit of writing though, as well as RP as part of that. I've never ever been into comics before, though, and never really had a drive to try them, but I do read the Warcraft comics now, and will probably read the Ashbringer one as well. I still can't say I read a ton of comics, I probably never will, but at least I'm open to giving good ones a whirl nowadays. Maybe you all have some recommendations for me, eh?

Then, going back to the 'meeting friends' bit, I've met a fair amount of raid and guild mates in person now, and will definitely be meeting more come BlizzCon in October. We've formed some pretty strong bonds, and I really wish I could hang out with those people more in person. Elizabeth W. has echoed this one with me, we've both traveled pretty far to meet some great people.

WoW Insider has shown off quite a bit that players have been inspired to do, from crafts to art to uh, military training. Has WoW inspired anything in you guys? Just trying something new, or maybe something a little more substantial?

Of course there's a lot of bad blood between Horde and Alliance, but every once in a while we work together. About half of the times I've done the Ring of Blood quest line in Nagrand I've seen Horde and Alliance fighting side-by-side. There are some other quests that seem to promote this behavior like "Even Gronn have Standards" and "The Skettis Offensive." Some things just bring out our cooperative souls.

Sometimes we just find ourselves compelled to do nice things. Sukalin of EU-Anarchronos told a tale of a complete stranger coming to his rescue:
Just a few minutes ago, I was running down through Stranglethorn Vale on my 20 Warlock, so I could get to Booty Bay and eventually The Barrens to do my Succubus quest. I kept getting attacked by beasts and dying, though.

About a quarter of the way down I was attacked by a tiger and was reduced to about 5% health when a Troll Shaman called Ayisah shocked the tiger and saved me! I was grateful, of course, and expressed my gratitude in the form of emotes - but in addition to that she helped me travel down the rest of the zone by following close behind me on my way to Booty Bay.

Uhohhotdog of Mathrezim has a leveling problem. In the General Discussion forum he announced that fails whenever he tries to level an Alliance character. He asked if others have this problem. Secksie of Tanaris said that she has the same problem, only she can't seem to manage to roll Horde.

It looks like the issues is not so much faction pride as friends and familiarity. Probably the most important factor is having friends or guildies to play with on the other side. Millaneous of Norgannon said that he doesn't care which side he plays, as long as he's playing with friends. Rummi of Ysera finds difficulty in breaking the link with his main character when playing on Alliance side. It's kind of Lonely and outside of one's established element.

I was under the impression that the purpose of a guild is to have a group of folks that you enjoy playing with and have common goals. It's a good way to share the game with friends and family, in addition to experiencing new adventures and progressing together. Triamala of Blackwater Raiders fears that such actions are seen as cliquish, causing drama amongst the ranks.

In a post in the Guild Relations forum she said that a previous guild of hers feel apart because of cliques and her current guild is facing the same fate. Members of her guild apparently get up in arms if she runs instances together with her husband or other friends. In a later post she admits that she is closer to the officers than other guild members because they've been playing together for quite some time.

The official World of Warcraft Community site has updated its Player Stories section with two new stories from military personnel. Both are short and easy reads, so I'm not going to spoil them here for you. They're kind of heartwarming, and help put WoW in a little bit different light. The stories definitely show another side of why some players play the game.

It's pretty easy for some folks to forget that there are people on the other side of the computer. Real live human beings, who have friends and family. And, for some players, the whole reason they're sitting down at the computer in the first place is to get access to those friends and family. And, remember, even Activision CEO Bobby Kotick says one of the great things about World of Warcraft is its social experience.

Rufus on WoW LJ had something happen last weekend that I'd be happens to a lot of us players: He was introduced to someone who he had nothing in common with... except that they played World of Warcraft. It happens a few different ways -- sometimes, it's like what happened to Rufus, in that you share a mutual friend who knows you both play WoW. Sometimes, it's just someone (or you) overhearing something about WoW and realizing that you've found a fellow player. And sometimes it's just your guildies -- out of game, you have almost nothing at all in common, but the game has brought you together.

In my experience, it's usually just as awkward as Rufus makes it out to be -- especially when you're brought together by someone else, they have no idea that there are different factions and realms and that there are probably a good nine million, nine hundred and ninety thousand people you haven't ever met in game. There are some things that we have in common, obviously -- everyone has died to the Defias pillagers at some point, and almost everyone knows how tough it was getting past Moroes that first time. Sometimes, people can actually come together on these things -- I had a good old friend whose husband and I bonded a little for no other reason than that we both played Shamans.

But usually, especially if introductions are made by a third party, it's just awkward. Have you been in this situation? Did you come away as awkwardly as Rufus did or did you make a new friend thanks to your time in Azeroth?

WoW Insider's Zach Yonzon posted an intriguing Breakfast Topic yesterday: Who's your favorite playing partner? Readers seemed to enjoy chiming in with a tip of a hat to their own partners in crime. Suspecting that perhaps WoW Insider readers are a particularly chatty and friendly bunch, we wondered what we'd find if we logged in over the lunch hour to chat with random players going about their city business.

So we logged into Khaz Modan, a PvE realm, where we were lucky enough to run into three friendly players who each have their own ways of sharing World of Warcraft (and no, it's not just about progression with a guild of folks you've met in game!). We dodged the gold-sellers in Stormwind's main square to bring you their stories.

I got a call from my mom on Friday night that she was having an emergency and needed me to call. It turns out the emergency was that she bought World of Warcraft and needed some instruction on how to play. Since I was at work, I told her to get started by reading up a bit on the WoW Rookie until I could spend a little more time with her. I was excited and somewhat terrified. I really hope she likes it and doesn't get too frustrated the first week.

My mom isn't what you would call a gamer. I'm not going to tell you how old she is, but she could tell you where she was when Kennedy was assassinated. She's a master Euchre player and a wiz at Scrabble. Her video gaming experience is limited to Bejeweled and online versions of card games. She used to love me watch play Tetris, but would respond like the controller was made of lava when I tried to hand it to her. I invited her to join Dungeons and Dragons sessions, but she always declined.

I moved 2,000 miles from my native Michigan for graduate school about five years ago. Since then my interactions with my mom have been limited to phone conversations and the occasional short visit. I'm really glad to get to share this time with her.

For people who don't play the World of Warcraft or similar games, or do not spend much time on the internet at all, it's difficult to grasp the idea of bonds and friendships formed over the web. How can you be friends with someone you've never seen before? I can understand the inability to grasp such a thing, it's rarely easy to comprehend what you haven't seen or experienced yourself. To those who haven't had powerful friendships over the internet, it makes no sense how you can grow so close to someone you can't see, you can't touch.

Even through the supposed anonymity of the internet, the greatest of friendships can be formed. Bonds so powerful that you never want to let them go, and may change your life forever, for the better. Despite the distance, despite the inability to touch and feel, you can grow as close as family to these supposed anonymous people. These individuals are more than just "internet people." They're people. In the World of Warcraft, a video game, I have found people that have truly changed me. I would not be the person I am today without them.

I've been playing WoW since launch day, and the community I've been a part of in the game has been a constant for all of these years. People have come and people have gone, but for the most part, I've played the World of Warcraft with the same names, the same faces, the same people. I'm 21 now, and I started gaming with this crew when I was 17. I can safely say I've essentially grown up with these people. We reminisce on the old days, and we realize that we've all changed quite a bit since the beginning. We've matured together, we've grown up together. People who have never had this experience, as I said before, don't understand how you can form such bonds over the internet. Some of the greatest friendships I've ever had, and ever will have, have been on the internet. Some people you will never forget, no matter where you met them. This is something I've had to think about quite a bit the last few days.

We had been running lowbies on a new server. We had a Warrior, a Rogue, a Warlock and a Shaman that we were leveling together. All but the Warlock player live in Las Vegas. decided to spend part of his spring break with us. I went to pick him up at the airport holding a sign with his character name on it- probably not the strangest thing you'll ever see at McCarran International Airport. With the exception of a couple dinners out, we spent the entire weekend playing WoW. No casinos, no strip, no shows, no clubs- just WoW. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

All the World's a Stage is a column for cooperative minds, playing with roles every Sunday evening.

Roleplaying a new character can be hard, even for advanced roleplayers. Usually you only begin with the fragment of a character, some vague idea of what you want your character to be like. Even if you have a pretty clear idea of your character already in mind, you may discover that actually playing that role in communication with others causes issues to come up that you never could have thought of all on your own.

Thankfully, roleplaying is a cooperative activity. Unlike PvE and PvP, there is no "versus" in RP. Even if two characters are bitter nemeses, still their characters must cooperate with one another to share an interesting story. Otherwise, they will find themselves "god-modding," or roleplaying in such a way that they don't give one another any room to improvise. (Two god-modders may fight something like this, using custom emotes: "Darkmystery stabs Elfman and cuts out his heart," followed by, "Elfman dodges Darkmystery's sword and then rips his head off," and so on.) These people aren't really roleplaying in the same way that two people shouting at each other in different languages are not really communicating. Roleplaying's very nature requires that each person work together with every other person, or else it isn't really roleplaying at all.

Though the rare "god-modder" can attract a lot of attention, in fact most roleplayers are quite eager to cooperate and assist one another as much as possible. For every one drama queen or king who simply must be the center of attention at all times, there are 5 roleplayers standing in the background listening quietly, wishing that someone else would talk, and 15 more who went off to roleplay their own stories instead. Most roleplayers reach out to each other for support, suggestions, background story ideas, and are more than willing to lend a helping hand in these areas to anyone who asks. Such mutual reciprocity forms the foundation of what roleplaying is all about.

With Patch 2.3 coming next week, a number of players are going to turn back to some of the old alts they've always wanted to play, and level them up now faster than ever before. If a group of friends had decided to start over from scratch, then all is well and good, but for many players who already have character spread out at different level ranges, friends used to spending a lot of time together may suddenly find themselves with a large level gap in the alts they're most interested in.

Especially considering the new and improved dungeon loot, many players will wish their friends could join them. Of course, their friends could just bring over their level 70s and rush them through, but for a certain kind of player, this is less interesting because it takes away all the real challenge and teamwork of the instance. They may be able to find PUGs at that level, but it likely won't be the same.

Douglas at the Elitist Jerks forums has been having this problem for a long time now. He and his friends very much want to play together, but have never been able to make their schedules work out. Before long, their characters inevitably level at different speeds and can no longer level up together. He says he longs for a "mentoring system" like City of Heroes has, where players of different levels can become one another's "sidekicks" and go to dungeons together as if they were at the same level. At first glance it seems like WoW could implement such a system too, to make something like a temporary downgrade or upgrade in ability power and gear quality so that friends could fight together across the level gap. But further discussion reveals some serious problems.

Reader Poga dropped us a line to this article he wrote for his guild about the "ten commandments of being in a group" (perhaps inspired by my ten commandments of dueling). Pretty much every group problem is in here, from stealing aggro to breaking CC to loot whoring.

The pulling one is an especially good tip-- decide at the beginning of the run who's going to pull, and then only have that person pull. Can't tell you how many times, someone decided to just pull with an instant spell because they felt like it, and not realizing that another pull was already incoming. And I think the "not wear thy gear in vain" tip is an interesting one, too-- you should putting gems and enchantments on your gear already, just to make your character the best it can be. Seeing it as a way of benefiting the group is a new way of looking at it, but it's true as well.

If everyone followed these tips all the time (and even the best tanks I know sometimes forget to wait for mana), we'd all have better groups, whether they be PuGs, good friends, or raids.

Recently, I wrote a piece called "All guilds are is dust in the wind," and our reader Rihlsul has written a "rebuttal" to it, entitled "5 tips for a long lived guild," for which I am surprisingly quite thankful. Personally I don't see it as a rebuttal at all; rather it complements my overall point, which perhaps I did not express as clearly as possible before. Some people heard me flippantly dismissing guilds as pointless and suggesting that we should hop from one to the other selfishly any time we felt the inclination. To the contrary, my post (as well as my reference to mandala art) has to do with unrealistic expectations, and dealing with the sadness that comes along when your guild hopes don't work out.

The majority of my time in World of Warcraft so far has been in two guilds. Both meant a lot to me, and both broke up because we didn't follow Rihlsul's 4th tip, that as a guild you really need to be doing things together, and that means having common goals in the game. In both cases, different members of the guild changed their minds as to what they wanted to do -- which is perfectly natural, since they gained levels, the expansion came out, and new activities opened up. These were small guilds anyway, and they no longer felt like thriving communities. At first, it seemed as if each guild was a failure.