I've long said that once the game becomes more like a job than a diversion, it may be time to reconsider your choice of hobbies. True, to get to the top it takes lot of work, knowledge, and time. But when it comes down to it, what is the game really about? Vagh of Kil'jaeden sent out a shout out to those who aren't the best of the best, but are still enjoying the game. He tipped his hat to:

• A person who is happily running around a main city with greens and blues
  
• A person who is so happy to kill a boss in a 5 man instance
  
• A person who gets a blue off of a non-heroic mode boss for a badly needed upgrade and floods the party channel with "Woot!" or "I'm so happy!!!"
  
• A person whose arena rating hovers in the 1400s but still enjoys the game
  
• A person who doesn't complain endlessly on the forums about imbalance
  

All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, commentary, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening.

WoW Insider is not Mount Sinai, and I am certainly not the Burning Bush, but there is a need for a clear, concise list of "do's and don'ts" which new and experienced roleplayers can refer to in times of need. I therefore submit the following commandments as a guide and a reference to roleplayers throughout the World of Warcraft.

Obviously the list of essential rules I lay out here will be different from a list you might make, but hopefully the basic ideas remain the same. In addition, being as I am hardly a prophet of the Almighty, I reserve the right to edit these commandments over time as times change and new insights emerge.

1. Thou shalt not play God.

You only have control over the actions of your own character. When roleplaying with others, you must never ever use an emote or action which denies others the right to choose their own actions in response to yours. For example: "Moosis glares with white hot anger at Faro" is acceptable; "Moosis glares so intensely that Faro's face melts" is not. Whether or not two people's characters are fighting with each other, their act of roleplaying itself is essentially cooperative -- even in a battle of emotes, both players must work together to tell the story in an interesting way, neither one presuming what the other will do.

My favorite part of the Public Test Realm is pre-made characters and gear vendors. Not because it's "free epics" or anything like that, not because it's particularly anything out of my reach, but because I get a fun little preview of what my characters may look like down the road.

I'm very picky when it comes to style. I adore the style of Warcraft, but other games(and even some cartoons and movies) have turned me off from them by not having an art style that grabs my attention right away. So that being said, I'll admit that even in the highest points of the Black Temple, my upgrade choices are sometimes dictated by what looks the coolest. If the ugly items are a massive upgrade for me, I'll just put them at the end of my list and hold off from looking like a freak as long as possible.

Being able to toss on full Tier 6 the last time they did pre-mades on the Public Test Realm wasn't about being super powered for a week or two for me. It was a glimpse into the future. How cool will I look a few months down the road? What if I'm going to be wearing a clown suit!? That'd be horrible! Let's log onto the PTR and find out!

Sure sure, you can always use the dressing room feature on the live servers, but nothing is quite the same as actually putting it on and running around in it. I spent a little time on the Arena Tournament PTR doing this with clones of my lower level alts, but I was disappointed to heart all of the PvE content, including mobs out in the world, have been deactivated. How am I supposed to look awesome without level 1 boars to slaughter?

All the World's a Stage is a column for classy minds, playing with roles every Sunday evening.

You want to roleplay a character with style, pizzazz, panache -- and class! No matter what race or faction you are, your class is going to have a big impact on who you are and how other people perceive you. How you integrate it into your character can, in turn, give you something distinctive to share with other people.

Usually when we think of roleplaying a certain class, we do so with that class's lore in mind. But our WoW characters all have many spells and abilities that they rarely take advantage of in roleplaying. Admittedly most class spells are geared towards combat, when roleplaying is hardest -- you seldom have time to type out interesting phrases while fighting for your life. Unless you get an addon like RP Helper 2 to help you utter pre-planned phrases automatically (and sparingly enough that it doesn't get annoying), roleplaying during combat just isn't very feasible. So, sadly, roleplayers usually leave their sparkly spell effects totally unused while interacting with other roleplayers outside of combat. Even with the game mechanics as they are, however, it's not always so difficult to use some of these spells in roleplaying as one might think.

Although people have a tendency to separate the video-game and the roleplaying into two mutually exclusive activities, in fact each of these aspects of WoW can greatly enhance the other. Roleplaying gets a whole new visual excitement when it transcends the same word balloons and talk animations we use every day. When someone comes along with an innovative use for a spell or character animation that we had never thought of before, it gives you a memorable impression of who that character is. In fact, using spells like this is a special way that online roleplaying sets itself apart from every other sort of roleplaying, and it is an essential skill that every WoW roleplayer would do well to master in his or her own way. In this article we will look at the different ways that druids, hunters and mages could use their class spells to greater effect in their roleplaying.