I got the chance this past weekend to take some time off and go to the annual Anime-Expo down in sunny Long Beach, CA. I thought I would be able to enjoy some nice time away from World of WarCraft but I was wrong. I ended up meeting with three wonderful individuals who are so passionate about our game that they cosplayed (that is costume play) as their favorite World of WarCraft characters at Anime-Expo. I got to meet an amazing couple, Cynthia Hall who dressed up in Avatar Regalia (or Raiment? I never did see her in Shadow Form!), the Priest Tier 5 Armor Set, and her boyfriend who got her into World of WarCraft, James Christian who donned the Judgement Set, also known as the Tier 2 Paladin Set. They also met up with another dedicated fan, Alexander Brooks who wore my favorite gear set (based purely on aesthetics), Bloodfang Armor or more commonly known as the Rogue Tier 2 Set.

They were kind enough to take time out of their day on Saturday of the con and get out of the hot sun and talk with us at WoW Stratics about their experiences in and out of game, and what really drove them to actually recreate their favorite class sets into a real life costume and share their love of World of WarCraft with others. If you have seen Cynthia’s post on the World of WarCraft forums you know that she and her boyfriend, James, play on the Bronzebeard server. Alexander is a player who loves PvP and ended up rolling his main on the Darkspear server.

Both of the guys, James and Alexander, got into WoW very soon after launch and consider themselves “old school.” James went on to expand his story of getting into World of WarCraft in that he had played the previous WarCraft RTS games before World of WarCraft. He started playing only a week after the game came out and really got into the Paladin class, and thus his motivation for his coplay. Alexander, as Istated, is a huge fan of the player-vs.-player game play mechanic, liked Ragnarok Online and a friend got him into WoW and he started right at release and wanted to show off his skill.

Cynthia on the other hand has only been involved with the game for roughly eight months, when James convinced her to play in December of 2006. She started her MMO playing days with the beta of Ragnarok Online and when that shifted to the current pay-to-play system she transitioned over to another Blizzard title, Diablo II. After that though she returned to Ragnarok Online and played on a private server and then got into World of WarCraft through James.

I got to talk with them also for a bit about their costumes, and the amount of time and effort that was put into them. For James and Cynthia’s set it took them roughly one and a half weeks to get their costumes complete, and they spend roughly two to three days of work on the weapons. Cynthia works at a fabric store and was able to get the fabrics for less than what people would usually pay, which definitely helped in the funding and creation of the costumes. James was brave enough to admit that, in fact, he is wearing a dress and did admit that it was “quite nice” because of the warm temperatures and the nice bright sun beating down on them during the conference, especially with the group getting stopped almost constantly during their stay, it was tough to get them away from people to even interview them!

Alexander’s amazing Bloodfang Set though took considerable amount of work because of the fact that his costume was 100% real leather and he did the work of hammering in all the grooves on his chest piece. The amount of time he worked on the weapons (a set of daggers, and a set of swords) took about the same time as James and Cynthia’s weapons, at roughly two to three days a piece. He took the time to make the ideal cool looking set of Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker and the Grand Marshall’s Slicer! They are very authentic looking and really added to overall effect of the costume. Later on that day even, some Blizzard employees took the chance to take some pictures with them and get their contact info!

Alexander took a stab at the Bloodfang Set last year also at Anime-Expo and only spent around two weeks getting together and using cloth. This year he came back with a renewed passion and with a much improved costume over last years. Cynthia and James were thinking of what to cosplay at Anime-Expo and started off with maybe some Guilty Gear or Final Fantasy Tactics cosplay and then decided on something complex and went to the WoW Model Viewer to really get the costumes down.

I got to have a nice discussion with them about the current state of the game also, and their thoughts on the community and where the game is headed as a whole. Both James and Alexander work full time and have not been able to dedicate a lot of time to raiding and thus have not made huge progress in terms of raiding. Cynthia seems to have leveled the quickest out of the bunch, hitting seventy in only one and a half months, since getting into the game last December. She said she reached that level pretty much by herself, which is quite impressive to do in such a short time span.

They did have some gripes about the game though, mostly with the reskinning of Tier 1 and 2 sets and the removal of the title earning from the PvP system also was a general complaint amongst the group. Alex as a huge PvP player had a bit of a gripe with the battlegroups system and that there was a disconnect in the rivalry from Horde vs. Alliance on individual servers after that. We discussed Rogues a bit and the subject of the ever vocal Ming came up. He basically said it comes down to the fact that Ming “has a lot of attitude.”

Discussing the expansion, Cynthia felt there was a definite lack of variety in the dungeon looks and that there was not enough exploration. James was curious as to why a lot of the artwork from the Burning Crusade Collector’s Edition Artbook is not in the game, and Alex felt that Burning Crusade absolutely killed world PvP. He sees people on a daily basis just pass each other as they go by, as opposed to legacy WoW when people would drop what they were doing to engage in combat merely because they were the opposite faction. He also feels that WoW is trying, in some aspects, to complete with console gaming with the whole pick up and play feel.

Overall though we had a great discussion about our favorite game, and why continue to pay and play it! It was great to meet up with fans that are so passionate about the game who are not raiding heavily, unlike me, and who really enjoy the game in its current state. They are an astounding group of players and it was a joy to spend some time with them! Thank you James, Cynthia, and Alexander once again for taking the time out of your day to spend it with WoW Stratics and tell your story! Hopefully we’ll get to see you at BlizzCon!

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