This community interview is with someone you may have seen our our Ten Ton Hammer forums. His name is Mikes, one of our moderators. The most interesting thing about Mikes is that he lives in the fine country of Australia. It's also known as the land down under. We've asked Mikes a few questions about his opinions on WoW along with how WoW is in his native country.

Mikes is what you'd consider a casual player. He plays in his spare time for fun and isn't in any rush to hit level seventy at all. He's participated in our Ten Ton Hammer guild as well. His main server is an Oceanic server by the name of Jubei’Thos. For those that don’t know the Oceanic servers cater more to people who are aren’t in North Amercia, like Mikes.

How did you start playing WoW?

Some friends in England introduced me to Everquest 2 in summer 2005.  I’d known about MMOs before that, but never taken the plunge, but I’d just bought myself a new computer and wanted to put it though its paces, so EQ2 it was.  It was pretty much a dream come true for me, I’d never imagined that an online role-playing game could be so submersive!   

Then in November I moved to Australia to live with my then fiancé (we married this past February those who are interested) and had to wait a few a months for my computer to be shipped.  “But my parents have a Mac”, said the missus, “Stop moping around and play on that.”  So after a quick trip to the shops I came back with WoW, the only Mac game that appealed to me.  The rest, as they say, is history.
 
What do you like most about the expansion? 

That I just got it (hee hee).  My main’s only level 59, through a combination of playing on a rugby team, full time employment and several bouts of alt-isis.  So I didn’t get TBC any sooner to avoid the temptation of heading straight off into Outlands and focussing on levelling my main. 

What’s appealing most to me, though?  The new lands to explore.  I love just walking through the different areas and discovering little nooks and crannies of the landscape.  What I loved about The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings when I first read them was how the characters just headed off into the wilderness, and that’s what I love doing too.  Plus being on a PvP server, it’s always a bonus to know the lay of the land for any ambushes in the future. 
 
If you could change anything in WoW what would it be? 

I’d have different, randomly assigned maps for each battle ground.  The battlegrounds are my favourite part of WoW and I hit them quite a lot, but running Alterac Valley 50 times over can get pretty stale.  Mixing up the maps and PvE objectives in the grounds would make them so much more exciting. 
 
What does "community" mean to you? 

Being a casual gamer without the time to raid, to me ‘community’ is the ability to just chat and have fun with like minded people.  WoW is a hobby, after all. 
 
What feature does another game have that you would like to see in WoW 

EQ2’s Guild system.  It gave the guild members a much better feeling of ‘we’re in this together’.  Right now, most guilds in WoW are very malleable;  you don’t quite like you’re guild?  /gquit.  Where as EQ2 allows access to a guild bank, quests and rewards that are only available to you if you contribute through quests to the status of the guild, and if the higher the status the better the reward. 

Our guild in EQ2 had a friendly rivalry with another guild and every time one of us reached a new level (which would be broadcast across the main city) the they’d get boos and jeers from the other.

Also guild housing, which showed off the rewards and wealth of each guild.  Come on, Blizzard, make it happen! 
 
What difficulties present to a player from down under?

Honestly, there are very few difficulties at all.  Blizzard’s servers are very well maintained and lag free for the most part.  Sure we have the odd lag spikes, especially in battlegrounds, but from what the North American players say, no more so than them.  I did have a few rants before TBC came out about how server maintenance was effecting play time here as at the time maintenance could happen at 6pm on a Tuesday night until well after midnight, but since the release it’s gone back to about 10pm until 1am, which is very much more manageable.
 
Have you met other players from Australia in game or real life?

No, I haven’t.  Or in the UK, for that matter outside of real life friends.  It doesn’t stop me from trying to recruit new players, though.

Do you have difficulty matching up with other players even on the Oceanic servers due to time zones?

Not at all, if anything, being on an Oceania server is a boon.  There are more than a few North American’s who make Jubei’Thos home to avoid the peak hour queues on NA servers, meaning there’s very little ‘down time’.  During the soccer world cup I was waking up at 3am to get an hour of WoW in before the games kicked off in Germany and never had to wait long for a group for a battleground. 

My only problem with the servers is that my friends in England with EU copies of the game can’t play on my servers, but with the huge numbers playing, I can understand why Blizzard has it this way.
 
Do you have to import the game or do local retailers carry it?

Local retailers carry all the games, no worries, although there are plenty of Aussie websites that cater for people who’d rather import. 
 
How is WoW covered in the media in Australia, is it mentioned often or not at all? 

Whenever MMOs are mentioned in the mainstream media, WoW is always cited as the example.  Although games never really get out the tech section of the newspapers unless it’s some example of how video games are ruining society as we know it.

Are any other MMORPGs popular in Australia 

I read in a article a while ago that more Aussies play MMOs per head than other ‘western’ countries, but all I have to go on are Australian gaming web forums.  WoW has, as you’d guess, a huge market share, although Vanguard is quickly growing in popularity and I’m sure it only a matter of time before Sigil create an Oceania server. 

And Fury, an Aussie-made combat-based MMO, is coming along nicely and getting quite a bit of positive previews from the press in Australia, Europe and North America.  It will be interesting to see if this kicks off a load of home grown Australian/New Zealand online games.

I can see nothing but a rosy future for MMOs down here. 

Ninjas with cake or pirates with pie, which do you trust more? 

Pirates with pie.  I have a thing for onomatopoeia. (TTH Note: what)

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