There’s one major similarity that strikes me between WOW and LARPing: your chance of surviving an encounter is directly related to your skill out of game and your gear in game. Your in game skills and talents help too, but as long as they’re not totally stupid it’s the OOG skill and your character’s gear that matters most.

Now in terms of gear there’s a huge difference between WOW and the LARP I play. In WOW, everyone pretty much wants the same gear. If you’re into pvp it’s S4. If you’re raiding you need certain pieces before you’re ready for new content.

In Alliance, the LARP I play, no two characters have the same gear. Magic items are fairly random. At the last event I went to, a PA LARP at this campsite, I picked up a web x2 item. That allows me to cast 2 web spells per day. Someone else might find a web x2 item, but chances are slim that the same item will drop again for a while. There are 30 other spells that can be stored into a magic item.

The other thing is that no one needs a web x2 item. It’s sure nice, but it’s not a requirement for anything. In WOW some items are kind of required.

The closest thing to a requirement in the Alliance LARP is a damage aura weapon. Some monsters are only affected by magic so if you have a normal or silver weapon you’re not going to be real effective.

Damage aura swords (or other weapons) are pretty rare, though, and often made by players. Because the scrolls and components a player is able to get can vary, usually magic weapons are a bit different. You can have damage aura from +0 to +3, you can have different spells, you can have different defensives. If I make a magic sword it will be different than the one you make.

Is it just me or does this look like fun? 3 raids head to Ironforge and kill the King. A few allies even came to defend. I guess I’m inspired to go join a city raid but man are they hard to find.

Here’s a neat little video of a quick raid on Stormwind. I wasn’t there but it didn’t look all that exciting because there were only a few Alliance punks who bothered to show up and defend their leaders… Pretty typical I guess, either Alliance outnumbers Horde 3 to 1 or Alliance does not fight…

Because there are a couple of LARPs in my future…

Notes to self:

1. Save up honor and marks for S2 weapon.
2. Save up arena points for S3 gear plus S4 hands and off-hand. I’d like more but who know if my arena ratings will be good enough for it. Rating requirements can be found on this rant.
3. Save up enchanting mats and pvp gems (those will be in high demand when people get their new gear).