Mages come in two general flavors: the kind who love to blow things up willy-nilly, and the kind who love to blow things up based on a precise mathematical model delineating optimal throughput and efficiency. Lhivera of US Aggramar-A is the second kind. His love of theorycrafting landed him in hot water with Blizzard recently, after he posted speculative analyses of Mage performance based on leaked Wrath of the Lich King alpha information. Blizzard didn't like the discussion appearing on their forums, and Lhivera ended up perma-banned from posting there again.

But Lhivera is alive and well and still crunching numbers, both in game and over at the Elitist Jerks forums, where he's made a new home among fellow theorycrafters. 15 Minutes of Fame spent a few days in e-mails with Lhivera to bring you a closer look at the numbers behind magecrafting. This week, we talk with Lhivera about Blizzard's ban-hammer and the appeal of theorycrafting; be sure to tune in for Part II of our interview, next week.