Leveling and Growth?

Well hello again my friends, it sure has been a while since I last wrote a blog, if it wasn't for my friend Elder Cabral I think the last post that I did would not have been posted on time. Today I want to talk to you about probably one of the hardest things for me personally in World Of Warcraft and that is leveling. Now Leveling is not as hard as it once was, in fact they made it really easy for someone who is new to the game to level up to 85 way faster then before, but it still doesn't change the fact that I hate leveling. Now what does leveling mean? Well I am going to give you my own definition on what I believe leveling is. Leveling in WoW: When leveling in WoW a player does quest,dungeons and battlegrounds to gain Experience points (XP) to gain a level (LVL). When we level in WoW we gain one level at a time, which brings us one step closer until we reach out ultimate goal of 85.

Now when it comes to relating the Gospel of Jesus Christ to this post I chose to do it on something which I think everyone can relate to, and that topic is growth. Just as we level in World Of Warcraft we level up  in real life. "Just how do we level up Theo?" you might be asking yourself, well let me share with you how we level up in real life...

Battle Shout, War Chapters, and Prayer

Warrior Battle Shout

As some of you know, my first character in WoW was a warrior. One of the unique things about the class is that buffs (changes that make your character stronger) are applied using shouts. Some examples of warrior shouts are Commanding Shout, Piercing Howl, Demoralizing Shout, and Battle Shout. Today while I was reading my scriptures I came across a story that I felt related quite well to these shouts, especially Battle Shout. 

Captain Moroni + War Chapters

So in the Book of Mormon, there are these chapters that are commonly referred to as the war chapters (read another blog about the war chapters). Within them two groups of people, the Nephites (good guys), and the Lamanites (bad guys) are duking it out. In this long drawn out war, the Lamanites are fighting for power and to conquer the Nephites, whereas the Nephites are mainly fighting to protect their lives, families, and freedoms. Within one of the first battles of this war, the Nephites are pretty much owning it up, then as they surround their enemies they start to fight with much fierceness and anger. Seeing this, the Nephite commander Moroni rallys his soldiers and inspires them with thoughts of what their fighting for (v.48). Then in Alma 43:49-50 the story continues:

Know Your Lore

World of Warcraft Calendar

A while back I bought this daily World of Warcraft calendar. Its pretty sweet! besides the basic things you would expect on a calendar, this boasts a daily "lore" question dealing with the back story of the game. Each day I try to guess at the answer, and more often than not I will get the answer wrong. I'm just not that big of a lore guy!

So this calendar really got me thinking. I have no clue as to "Who is Garona's uncle?", but I might be able to figure out my lore and back story in real life. It would probably be a whole lot easier figuring out who I am related to than finding a fictional space goat's uncle.

World of Warcraft Lore

"Well Elder Cabral, could you give us some pro tips to find people in our family?"

Of course I could!

Divine Intervention

Paladin DI in Action

Before Cataclysm launched, paladins had a very unique ability called divine intervention. The ability allowed a player to sacrifice his life to place another in a protective bubble which lasted a couple three minutes. Why would this be important? Divine intervention coincided with the shaman "ankh", and provided a way for a raid to forgo the long run back to a boss while raiding. By one player sacrificing his life, the rest of the raid would be able to be in turn resurrected, just as long as the person "DI'ed" was able to rez.

Services and the Atonement

WoW Race Change

In World of Warcraft there are a bunch of wonderful services which any player can take advantage of fully. Some of these services include character transfers, name changes, race changes, faction change, character customization, etc..... You might be wondering why a player would like these changes and what makes them so great? Well my friends I want to share with you one reason why I love it a lot. Lets say you are a level (lvl) 85 Holy Paladin and you are PvPing (Player Vs Player) and you are one day tired of losing all the time to the Horde, wouldn't it be nice to change your faction and your race because of the mistake you made in picking the wrong faction? Because of these special services that Blizzard provides many players can make the changes that they need to or more importantly want to make.

Now what if I told you there was service that made it so WE (we meaning mankind or people) could repent of our sins and be forgiven, making it so we changed our old ways and made a new us, how would that make you feel? This change that I am referring to is the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

Doing My Dailies Bro!



Mounts in Good Ol' Shattrath City

 Back in the day when I dinged level 70 I desperately needed some gold to buy an epic flying mount. The only problem was that I needed  around 5,00 gold (which was a lot back then) to go and get one. You're probably asking yourself "why would anyone drop 5,000 hard owned gold just for a mount that flew?" For one it was super fast, and Outland was a big place.

"The Isle of QD"

The solution to my problem rested on a small island named Quel'Danas. There I could do repeatable "daily" quests to gain gold. After a while I would eventually gain enough gold to get the epic flying mount that I wanted. However, with the goal in mind, more problems came up!

Loving your neighbor as yourself. ; )

Well its that time of the month again, oh you know writing another blog and relating it to World of Warcraft as well as something spiritual. Today I chose to talk about something that is or can be hard for a lot of people, which is loving our neighbors as yourself. The question that I have always asked is who are my neighbors? Is it the person next door to me? or is it the guy across the street? Well let me share with you somethings that I think will shed some light on this subject. Loving our neighbors isn't just being kind to the person next door to us or even across the street, it means to love everyone as ourselves. In John 13:34-35 , Christ says:                                                                                     

                                                                             
34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

 35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

You might be thinking, that is great and all but how does that show that we need to love our neighbor as ourselves?

Karazhan Books

LFM Karazhan PST!

So in the World of Warcraft there's a raid instance called Karazhan that I really enjoy. Karazhan was the entry level-raid for level 70 characters, so I found myself in 'Kara' pugs quite a bit back in the days of the Burning Crusade. Its a pretty sweet place to be, cause its basically a huge castle with a bunch of ghosts in it that drop loot.  

Oh yeah you read that book!

This one time in Kara, we were progressing through pretty well, and even got to the second half of the instance. I noticed that one of the other players we were running with had this new buff (buffs are spells that make your character stronger) that I had never seen before, so I proceeded to ask him what it was. Unbeknownst to me it turns out that throughout the instance there are books that you can actually pick up and read. Upon reading them your character gets a buff, and there are different books for different class roles like tanks, healers, and dps.

Scriptures!

The books in Karazhan remind me of the effect the scriptures have in our lives. The scriptures are holy books that God has given to us through a prophet. Let me ask you a question... If God were here on earth, would you care to hear what he has to say to you?

Who am I?

In World of Warcraft you can play on a server that is called RP which stands for "Role Play." Well I play on a RP server and I will admit that it can get pretty weird sometimes. Well one day I was walking by a couple of people Role playing and there was a line that has stuck with me, this person said. "Who am I?" My friends I have a question to ask you. Who are you? I am not talking about your name or where your from, but I mean Who are you really? I know that when I first saw that I kinda thought it was cheesy, but I want to share with you, who you really are. In Romans chapter 8:16-17 the Apostle Paul really explains who we are.

 16The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:

 17And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

As we read in Romans, the Apostle Paul just told us, We are the Children of God!

Recruit A Friend

So Happy!

In the World of Warcraft there's this great program called recruit-a-friend.It starts with Blizzard (the creators of WoW) allowing you to send out invites to your friends who don't play the game. Your friends are then given the chance to open up a trial account in which they can play online with you side by side, level up three times fatser, and see if they like the game. 

They should play WoW together!

I think this is a genius idea! First off you get to start playing an awesome game with someone you actually like, and not only that, but you're progressing so much faster than if you started on your own. At the same time, you or your friend are  not really losing anything. The trial account is free, and there's not really any risk or things to buy until he's found out that he'd actually like to play the game. You on the other hand get to play with someone that you know in real life, share something that you enjoy with them, and maybe even get a sweet mount in the process.

Member Missionary!

The recruit-a-friend program is a lot like member missionary work...