For Fun

Zelmaru, at Murloc Parliament, is having more fun than me.  And she's right. She is.

I usually dont tell people who i follow.  It's one of those things i try to do... keep it low key here.  But well, sometimes people write things that are really great.  and this is one of them. it's not a guide, or some awesome insight, or even a story of someone's path to greatness (ie. gold milestones, etc), but its just a reminder as to why i should be playing this game.  to have fun.  and that's really all that matters in this game. 

But fun for me is different from fun for others.  Although, hopefully, we'd all be able to find a like-minded group of people in an MMO and have fun together.  With the addition of cross-realm LFD, having fun turns into little more than mindless dps.  maybe a cc here or there. but that's about it.  for the pvp'er who are forced now to do some rBG's instead of being forced to form "2's for points" fun may be less rewarding now.  Actually, some folks would prefer, if its going to be a grind, to just grind 2's for points instead of rBG's.  But Bliz thinks we'll have more fun in rBGs instead.  who am i to differ?  i dont pvp often and i'm certainly not paid to make these decisions.  Others find fun in leveling alts.  running through LFD all the way to 85 with a few token quests here and there (except throne of the tides, bc who in their right mind would go through the entire zone of just questing just to open up the dungeon quest for this dungeon??? srsly blizz.  you ^#$(@ing suck for this one.) 

But ultimately, what im trying to get at is that there's always different types of fun for different types of people.  there are those Halo/Gears/CoD4 type folks who really enjoy the style of skirmishes and matches these games have to offer.  and then there are those who play RTS like warcraft3 and starcraft.  then there's the folks in WoW who like a variety of things completely non-RTS or non-FPS shooting.  thats me on most days.  So what's my point? im saying play what you want?  sure.  that's great.  but also... be good at what you play.  yes. im preaching. but it makes my gaming experience soooooo much better when i am in a dungeon with people who actually knows how to play.  same with a BG. when two teams of equal strength and skill are matched up, the BG is awesome.  i actually have to work for my win. it feels great!

Really. that's the only point i have.  i was going to give a back story about when i used to play starcraft, the original awesomesauce RTS and how i had to learn blah blah blah blah blah... and it was fun!  but no.  time is pressing and i have a billion other things to do at work right now.  in any case, being conpetent makes fun more fun for other people around you.  im serious.  i hate to be top dps.  i mean i like it, but the feeling is diminished when im doing the most dps by miles.  it's like playing with monkeys.  there is no sense of accomplishment there.  but when i play with actual people who are also trying to top dps, and we're all in it trying to top each other, then being on top is a great feelilng.  that's fun.  no not being on top, but actually trying to be on top--throughout the whole instace.  now that's fun.  it's a little different in pvp, but the idea remains the same. getting matched up with equally skilled people and fighting to attain a goal.  i dont mind if i lose there.  i really do not.  dying is just part of pvp, and so, may the better team win the base, or whatevers.  seriously.  running around chasing seiges in TB is plain dumb.  but fighting at the flag is great fun. 

so folks, really.  play for fun.  the whole progressing thing (ie. leveling an alt to 85 or farming Honor) might be drudgingly horribad, but being the best you can be at every level, and then having some really good competition is great fun.  there's those who only enjoy a dungeon if they're top dps.  i just want to open your eyes to another part of fun.  there's those who enjoy TB by chasing the seige tanks.  i'd like to open your eyes to the stupidity and un-fun of it.  or the guy standing in bad and wondering why heals wont heal him... i'd like to open his eyes to the enjoyment of competent play.  or the dude who is on his 15th alt, and barely understanding how to play it, does 5k dps in heroics.  there's a way to double that.  trust me.  and it will probably make their game a lot more fun.

peace.

Level 100+ Only

Take a look for yourself:

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Zul-G

Last night was pretty amazing when it comes to tolerance levels.  You see i died maybe 10 times in ZulG and we only faced two bosses. 

But before we talk about the stupid deaths in ZulG, i just wanted to mention about my horrendous experience doing the chain quest leading up to it.  Sure, most of you probably had no issues going through the whole thing, but i wanted to bang my head on the table a few times.  first off, who was it? Mwumba wanted to escort me in spirit to STV.  sure, i pick up her quest and then proceeded to the ferry terminal.  erm... zepplin terminal.  Things were fine and dandy as i arrived.  there was the spirit of the troll chick standing next to me, a little over my left shoulder and in full size! well i was a little glad she was transparent.  but hey, if her spirit was with me, why couldnt she be a little smaller? or even just have the top portion of body showing?  that would be nice.  i mount up and began to fly when the zep landed.  turns out, she disappeared quickly after that.  i flew all the way to the camp where i was supposed to go, the one right outside ZulG's entrance.  I killed a bunch of serpents but could not, for the life of me, figure out how to re-summon the spirit troll chick.  sucks.  after many attemps and "inspecting" poisoned bodies with no effect, i began to wonder maybe i am missing something here.  i dropped the quest and tried again.  again i failed.  again, a reset and it still didnt work.  i then proceeded to hearth, then flew back to the original quest giver (hoping that maybe i can get some answers from the real person and not her spirit) but she would not mention the quest at all.  grrrrr.  So i flew back to STV and she returned!  omg nice! 

Then i walked off the boat onto the landing tower and she disappeared again.  wtf?  okay after walking down the stairs, she returned somehow.  okay?  blizz, this is stupid.  then she goes on and says the same two comments/questions over and over and over again.  somehow i wish i had not come back.  but there she was, asking the same questions. in any case, i was not taking any chances so i walked the whole way across the way, killing a few serpents and some crocs along the way.  after that, it was pretty smooth sailing as somehow, the spirit was able to fly with me when i mount up.  yay! 

until.  i got.  to the.  quest with nessingwary.  i went off to look for the panther and lo and behond, it found us!  took my npc dwarf (honestly, a dwarf? why am i helping him?) and ran away.  i proceeded to fly after it and figured out quite easily to follow the trail of smoke.  sure enough we found the panther sleeping, of all things.  aparently this is the second part of the bugged questchain because, instead of turning in the quest to pick up the next one, i killed the panther and started the RP.  so far so good, or so i thought.  then, i talked to the spirit chick and she told me to kill the panther. wtf? i just did. alas, i sat there and waited.  and waited. and waited some more.  finally, she respawned and i tried killing her again.  didnt work.  still no completion.  after the fifth respawn and various tries at redoing the quest, a guildie said to relog.  so i did, and it worked!

So i spent about an hour doing this chain quest that should have taken no more than 20 minutes.  maybe 15.  at least after that, i was able to complete the rest of the quests (saving the zombies, finding vol'jin) and pick up a couple for the ZulG instance.  oh and i was able to queue for that instance as well!  wait time for that dungeon was halved.  ZulG dungeon experience to come shortly...

Thoughts on a few topics

On Looking For Dummies:
Er... i mean dungeon. LFD has been nice to me as of late.  My groups have been wrought with much annoyances, mostly from guild groups.  What i mean is this.  I zone in with my gf to a random dungeon group and find three people of the same guild.  of course, we're queueing as DPS b/c tanking and healing roles are ridiculously unrewarding (we feel like babysitters, really). 

Now these guild groups will do one of two things.  They either really suck, or they're really good with a chip on their shoulders.  Both experiences suck hairy donkey balls.  For the suckage teams, they usually either all quit when they cant do the first boss, or, continue to press on.  After about five wipes or so, they declare that the two dps who arent in their guild must suck because we're not carrying them enough. In both cases everyone drops group. the first case better than the last because at least, we wouldnt have wasted our time after five+ wipes just to get to boss #2.  I would have waited the three minutes to wait for a new random group of strangers if they were going to quit anyway. 

The group of assholes who will check your gear, spec and credit report will continually chat while playing.  they'll tell you that your gear sucks (why am i doing heroics anyway? to get gear, moron), or that our talent spec isnt optimal (for what? EJ's suggestion for raiding? dont be a tool, use your brains).  These are the groups who have tanks that cannot keep their healers alive, ignore any kind of CC's and even some very obvious mob/boss mechanics. It also can include pets who aggro, mages who dont realize their sheeped mob has them on top of their aggro meter, boomkins who like to use typhoon for no fucking reason other than "its cool," and hunters who still dont know how misdirect works.

A little bit of background on why i like dps:  It's less stress.  It's fun, actually.  and i do play this game for fun.  The whole reason why it's fun is because there is less blame, basically, when anyone dies.  there's less responsibilities.   If i miss an interrupt, the healer needs to work harder.  If i miss a decurse, the healer needs to work harder.  If i stand in bad, the healer might have to work harder.  And if i die because i stood in poop, well, it's my own damn fault.  I know that.  I do not have any responsibilities to anyone really.  Even though i have CC duties, decurse duties, aggro responsibilities, etc, they are not as pressing as a tank's or healer's duties.

For the tank, he has to make sure all the mobs that are supposed to be tanked are on him and not on others, that there is a kill order and that nothing touches the healer (treat the healer like your wifey, basically).  Variables such as bad CCer's, CC breakers, and randomtargetingHuntard or rainoffireonlyLock or noMindFreezeDK makes this difficult.  The 5k dps, fully geared ilevel 246 dont know how to play their class or with a group damage dealer is a little bit of dead weight but can be worked around.  but being stupid like the above may cause more stress than enjoyment.

For the healer, same as above.  but it is as so much a problem if you dont mind letting a few of the dps die sometimes.  however, the first comments from the dps isnt that it was their fault or that they were being dumb, but that it was the healer's fault for not healing them when they do stand in bad.

In any case, the main problems the tanks and healers have are with bad dps.  that's basically it.  And when me and my girlfriend went dps, we actually wanted to improve the quality of some of the dps'ers out there who pug.  But its a chore still and is mainly due to the random groups mentioned above.  Now there are idiot tanks and idiot healers out there still.  Far more idiot tanks than there are idiot healers though. 

So what was i trying to say?  Oh yea, LFD has been relatively good to me recently.  but now i feel there's a dark cloud looming (cliche, i know). 

On Call to Arms:
I have many thoughts regarding this new feature.  I've mentioned my thoughts on what will happen through this system in another blog entry, but i wanted to think out loud for a bit right now regarding what i'll personally do with this feature.  Although is it somewhat of a nice feature, i'll probably not use it when queueing for random heroics.  Here are some of my reasons:

1.  I have to queue by myself.  Most of my play is with my girlfriend and half of the time i'd rather play with my guildies anyway.  queueing up by myself robs my guildies of the benefits of being in a guild.  they're there for the social, group aspect of the game.  These have many benefits including grouping with people you know or like.  In this situation, i will not be doing that.  I cant if i want the goodie bag. 

2. A feature like this will only encourage the hybrid spec'ed classes to switch from their usual dps or healing role and queue as a tank for the benefit (or detriment) of those they dont know.  This, to me, is faulty reasoning.  You're putting chocolate flavored bandaids on an infection.  It's not the right treatment for the problem.  Although we'll get shorter queues, there will be people who will queue as tanks and not be good at it.  Although we can say they're just learning, maybe they will be better off learning in normal dungeons.  at least there, there's a little more room for mistakes and overall noobery.  In any case, there will be a huge influx (i may be exaggerating here) of dps'ers, who not only will have quick queue times but will now have even more incentive to queue as tanks, who will know almost nothing about tanking running into the instance, wiping the group several times, then leaves, only to really waste everybody's time.  I am not saying there arent people who will learn to be good tanks.  Maybe some will learn to be awesome tanks.  But grouping with a good tank, or a decent tank learning more about their role is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.  I do hate to drop group just because the tank sucks and no /kick attemp are successful, but hell, if the penalties for dps to drop group isnt already bad, this will just make it almost unbearable to the point where i might find a 30 minute deserter debuff PLUS a 30 minute queue after that very, very desirable.

3. The hybrid class also will exacerbate an already-existing proplem of ninja rolling on offspec gear.   I've been to many dungeons where the paladin tank rolls on healing gear, the DK tank rolls on dps gear and the DPS warrior rolls on tanking gear. and this happens even when the guy with the main spec rolls need on an item.  sometimes the person who actually needs the item wins it.  Sometimes not.  i'll get angrier if the ninja gets it, but its a bad experience whether the ninja gets it or not.  Ninjas are still ninjas.  Successfully ninja-ing something doesnt make it different.  In any case, now we have people who's main specs are DPS, queueing as tanks, and rolling on DPS gear.  Although this has happened many times to both me and my girlfriend before, i can predict that this will happen even more once Call to Arms get implimented.

I know.  the new system gets a whole lot of QQ from me.  and basically the entire blog entry today is one big qq session big enough to fill up a lake with all these tears.  but....

I am trying to find good things to say about playing this game.  And i end up with not much.


On Counting:
One thing i see across the internet is this silly little breakdown of groups: 
In a 5man dungeon setting, 1 of the five players are tanks.  that's 20%.
In a raid setting, 2.5 of the players are tanks. Whether its 10man or 25man, its usually the same. so 25% or 10%, your pick. 
And then they conclude that there are only so many tanks, blah blah blah. and that's why the world is full of dps and short on tanks.
On those who count this way, please stop.  There's NOTHING to keep these tanks, who tank in raids to dps in heroics for points. There's nothing to keep the DPS in raids to switch to a tanking spec and tank heroics.  There's also NOTHING that will keep 100% of the raiders from jumping on their alts and playing whatever class, sometimes tanks, they like when they're not raiding.  Please dont do these stupid calculations and say that the role population distribution of the whole MMO is based on the role population distribution of the raid.

On Common Sense:
And just because someone doesnt tank doesnt mean they cant.  Although, many people who choose to DPS do so because they cant heal or tank, some dps may actually prefer damage dealing and some dps may actually do better as damage dealing, although their ability may span across several roles and classes. There are some excellent DPS out there who do well as tanks.  There are some excellent DPS out there who are excellent tanks.  There are some craptastic DPS out there who are excellent tanks.  Perhaps the role they chose isnt really linked to ability.  I am not trying to contradict my own blog post, but although there are people who may be encouraged to tank, and they probably are very good at it too, there will be those who will screw up the whole experience for them.  Again, i just dont think blizz has it down right when deciding on this new Call to Arms thing.  Sure, it will encourage those who havent tanked in a while to tank, but i do believe it will cause more problems than it's worth.

Another one gone.

There has been quite a few people packing up and leaving WoW or blogging lately.  One of whom i enjoy reading often, Redhawks, has somehow hit it big (GRATS MAN!!!!).  I'll be ordering my first CD via Amazon when his album lands.  He's a rapper, aparently.  I do enjoy meself some good rap. I just hope he doesnt kill any more classics while doing so!

But you know.  this is April 1st..... =P

Still Here

First I'd like to apologize for my absence.  I've actually been really unmotivated to write lately.  I've also been working a lot more at work than usual.  And when i do have the few minutes to write, nothing comes to mind.  Call it what you will, bloggers' block, dryspell, dissatisfaction with the current state of coffee (starbucks wants to buy peet's, wtfno!), the weather, high gas prices, or dysentery, i havent really had any solid thoughts that i'd like to share with anyone.  heck, when i play wow i dont even think of how online social behavior shape the community's perception of harder heroics (though basically everyone think they suck, but heroics are supposed to be hard, correct?).  anyway.  just saying.  wow bores me. im in auto mode right now.  what am i doing? 

1. Half-heartedly doing dailies.  yes, dailies for the fourth year in a row.  dailies to get some cool gear and some enchants.  of course, i'll get a different enchant depending on faction.  but stealing food from dwarves get boring after the 5th day.  and i dont even get to eat any of it.

2. Half-heartedly doing dailies.  what?  yea, the cooking, fishing, jewelcrafting... even the daily transmutes and research/discoveries.  i missed a few researches on my scribe last week.  i missed a JC daily or two last week (and i have two JCers).  i missed a few xmutes, and when i do them, i dont even visit uldum or hyjal anymore, i just do them in orgrimmar and get a random element.

3. Automatically relisting gems twice daily.  Most of my gold is made from JC, or from disenchanting the JC stuff and making enchants.  well my enchants arent selling so i have a bunch of unenchanted rings and neclaces sitting in the mailbox.  my "green" gems are sitting in my xmute character waiting to be changed to "blue" gems and metas.  im always out of red gems and have way too many green gems.  i've given up selling green gems for now, as no one seem to want sensei's, vivid, etc dream emeralds anymore. 

4. I'm leveling a rogue. yes, another melee dps.  i do miss having the instant attacks with very little cooldowns, providing me double the dps of my rogue usually.  im doing half of what most people do, until i use my cooldowns.  it sucks leveling as a rogue.  i mean i get to a mob, get enough combo points to cast slice and dice, then try to build more combo points and lose it because the mob just died.  now im out of energy and have to start over on another, almost dead mob.  after the first finisher, i could never build enough combo points to actually do anything else.  i cant even get enough energy up to do a 2-point finisher.  nerfed content sucks i tell you.  Then the boss fight comes and i shine because that's the only time the fight last long enough (okay, not always. some fights are stupid short) for Adrenaline Rush to last its whole duration, and then, i top the meters and actually feel useful.  haha. tanks dont even care that i tricks them to pull a stray mob to them, which ends up in a messy pull. 

5. My rogue is a skinner/leatherer.  yea, typical.  but that means i am running around killing countless kodos, wolves, dragonkins and yetis to actually make enough garbage items to get through to something useful.  seriously, a rogue takes a ridiculous amount of time killing and skinning, even if the kill takes 1-shot. i cant "train" or aggro more than four mobs at a time unless i want to risk losing the first two mobs.  i gather three or four at once, dismount, kill, loot, skin, mount, repeat. boring as hell. but hey, at least its not archeology.

6. Speaking of Archeology, gonna spend the next few mindless weeks leveling that up too. 

So in conclusion, cata heroics are hard. rogue leveling is stupid.  Jc makes lots of gold.  and wow is pretty boring. 

Garrosh Recycles

Can anyone tell?  Not only is he a bad ass, no brains all action kinda guy, but he is also green.  he recycles!

Look!!!!!  =D

CONGRADUATION!!

Grats to my girlfriend, who started playing WoW about two months ago, on finally getting her first toon to 80.  Krisseven (yes, the seventh Kriss) hit 80 just last night while on her way to the Storm Peaks to meet me for a quest.  well, i got about 25% left to go on my 79 shaman, so we'll be running more dungeons for more gear shortly.  she'll probably end up like my latest three 80s, without any emblem gear since we'll not need them any time soon.  she'll end up loading up on gear from ToC, FoS, PoS and HoR... and anywhere else.  DPS should increase nicely from 1.5k to 2.5k.  OR, she will play her alts and forget she even had an 80.

Okay i lie.  One of my 80s, Devynity, used his emblems to buy pvp gear.  boooooo!  it will all be going to waste anyway.  but it was fun while it lasted. but really tho, i dont know why, at this time, anyone would want to spend any justice points on anything.  perhaps just to be ok geared for leveling in the next expansion, but im pretty sure the ilevel 200 stuff would suffice.  im all for delayed gratification.  my gf thinks im crazy when, for instance, i eat the best stuff last.  she eats dessert first, btw. 

One other thing i noticed while DPS-ing with my paladin, the longer the fight, the higher the dps.  it is really because it takes forfucking ever to build up combo points.  Crusader strike, 4 seconds, crusader strike, 4 seconds, crusader strike, TV!!!!!!! of course, in between CS i judge and watch out for insta-free TV and Art of War procs.  but even that gets kinda dull.  i miss the old FCFS style of play.  =[

again, GRATZ!!!!

Have no fear, Squidman is here!

I have been having difficulty blogging as of late because I am unable to post from work. This is fine with me as I can write and write, then bring the entry home with me and post it when I get home. However, there isnt really much news happening on my end except that I've been making several characters, then deleting them and checking out the Draeneian starting zone. Is that right? Draeneian? or is it Draenei-e?or the Draenese? okay… as Manders put it… the squidmen.



The squidmen starting zone
I've been there before hunting some bloodelves for their masks, but I've never actually been there to level up. Im sure if I go there as horde, I will be their enemies also, since they are part of Keal'Thas' blood elf faction and not the ones from the Horde. Anyway, point is I've been creating alts and checking out how the squidwards play. they arent so bad. tho the women could have better jumping animation and the men, no matter how tall they are, will always look pudgy since their torso is so wide.

For the New Player

This is a post from a blogger i frequent: http://redhawksgaze.blogspot.com/2010/05/recommendations-for-new-wow-player.html

Some of his suggestions are great.  There is one i wouldnt suggest, which is to get questhelper.  I find it almost cheating.  I wish people would actually read their quests.  it would totally help them later on.

For those who are going through their second or 17th character, sure, use questhelper.  even then, blizzard has added a quest objective interface in their map screen so you dont even need questhelper.  now if you're completely spatially impaired and cannot locate yourself on the map (I Am Here) and where you need to go to complete a quest, then you should consider getting questhelper, but turn off everything except waypoints.  waypoints gives you an arrow on your screen that will show you where to go to your next quest objective. 

In any case, i would also like to reiterate leveling to 20 as the benchmark for getting the "feel" for your class. sometimes playing a character is awesome when its your first character.  i know i felt awesome playing a mage for the first time and liking all of the things about it.  six months later, i tried a druid and that blew me away.  i loved it.  then a year later, i tried playing a paladin and that beat all the other classes hands down. 

Why i say this is because i did not try out all the classes to 20 the first time around.  i was fine with leveling maybe three different classes (all of which were similar: Warlock, Mage and Hunter).  they were all ranged dps, with the mage and warlock playing a little differently, and the warlock and hunter playing almost exactly the same since they both have pets, only one is "magical" and the other is "physical".  so what im trying to say is play the different classes first.  play them all.  give each a fair shot and see where it takes you.

And dont forget, each class has three different talent trees, or specialties.  so in reality, you have 3x more choices than you think.  there's a lot to learn, but the fun of the game is the learning.  the game is a journey.  enjoy the ride.

Oh the Things Couples do...

Couples do many things that people would consider strange or omgwow. Like wear matching sweatshirts and sweatpants... to the mall.  or they wear tshirts that says, im with stupid.  or use each others deoderants.

And other couples make a guild and play together. 
This happens in wow with some success and some failings.  One such success is Shadows and Dust, on ravenholdt.  top guild in ravenholdt.  has a few couples in the leadership playing together.  thats great.
then there are the no-name guilds that i've been to that were started by couples.  Army of Tranquility (started by a couple that broke up after a year), Blood of the Sun (very social leveling guild started by a college couple, but bf played a lot less than gf) and a couple others i cant remember. of course, these are no-name guilds because no one really knows them. 

So why am i mentioning these guilds started by couples?  well, because i am going to start a guild in ysondre with my gf.  we're going to have a bunch of social levelers together and manage a group of rag-tag folks just looking to meet friends.  We're going to call ourselves "Team Jacob".  yes..... team jacob. <Team Jacob>

Seriously. 

hey... its what couples do.

So I discover that my girlfriend is a Blood Elf kinda girl

And she loves warlocks because they're evil, dark and mysterious and all.
Then she sees my warlock and yells, "OMG nice.... he looks just like Justin Timberlake!" 


W.  T.  F.


And i told Manders my gf made her first wow character, and her first response was...
"let me guess, she made a belf... lock."


W.  T.  F.


you girls.... *shakes head*

Less WoW is more life.

On the topic of playing less wow.

I play about two instances every day. Except yesterday because i was trying out the new chat features and adding a few people i know with the Real ID. I do like Real ID. It keeps me closer to a few of my friends in WoW. However, i would like to tweak it a little.
1. My Real ID friends will know when im online on any of my 35 toons. yes, any of them, even my banker alts and my "leave me alone" alt. I guess i can add a DND tag, or an "Away" tag. AFK tags are now changed to "Away". which is a nice change because, lets face it, no tech people (as opposed to low tech) dont know what the hell AFK means anyway. DND tag means Do Not Disturb. heck, if i have to use an ignore list on my banker alt, maybe i will have to.
2. Give me windows and not tabs. Yes, like WIM. i dont have WIM, but if im able to separate my chats with others, then i'd like to be able to choose small windows or tabs. right now, we're stuck with just tabs.
3. the textformbox highlights are awesome. but i can see where i am typing. no need to help me there when im not that handicapped. i dont have 20/20 vision but this awesome glow to my textbox really makes this feel like im on a mac. or googlechrome. nice effect? sure. can i turn it off please? thanks.

The other reason i didnt do any instances yesterday was because of Amphitheater of Anguish. Me and manda went to the area and asked in the zone for help. a nice level 80 rogue decided to join in since he was just mining around the area. we waited and waited til manda developed a migrane due to the wait. she's not used to having to wait for anything. i mean she's a healer for elune's sake. her queue time is 4 seconds. that's pretty good and only bested by tank's 1 second wait queue times. so she couldnt stand it and logged off. i hope she took two tylenol PMs, rubbed one out, and knocked the fock out (which movie was this from?). hopefully she'll feel better today.

and after that, my desire for instance queue times diminished to zero. i logged and went on facebook to check status updates. yea really. how sad. i dont know which is worse, wow or fb.

in any case, i spent some time playing with my little girl. she's almost three and has a blast "doing my hair" and offering me tea from her tea set i purchased last weekend. she also sings to disney songs. i really love how she enjoys mimicking grownups. and i cherish the times we have together, alone, with mommy at school.

i also spend more time with mommy as well. been trying to give her more attention and actually listening to her tell me her struggles and feelings. its different. i like it a lot. i enjoy it mainly because she enjoys it. i hope she's a lot happier now without a boyfriend who's sitting in front of the computer completing quests and barely listening to what she has to say. my atttenion span, tho, needs some help. i've had a pretty long attention span years ago, but now, has diminished to about 30 seconds before i think about something else. i blame wow for this. its great to have some practice now, and much better that i actually give some kind of feedback to envoke more conversation. lets hope this doesnt end.

we also went jogging last night. it was a first in two years for me. she, being the thinner and fitter one, ran for about a mile and a half while i struggled along for barely a mile. it will get better over time as i used to run 1-2 miles several times a week in the past. and when i had a gym membership in college, i used to be on the elliptical crosstrainer for 1 hour doing 5-6 miles at resistance level 13 (out of 20), inclined.

So there you have it. less wow. more life. and i like it. for a player that gets deeply involved in games and other projects, i find this change a bit comforting. it shows me that there are more important things in life than to play wow. after i write about my daily routines, i figured it wasnt all that important anyway. i mean all i do are daily fishing, cooking, jc quests and then do a random instance or two. repeat that for serveral months and it becomes a dull game. am i hoping for the cataclysm expansion to come? actually, no. i really do not care about cata right now. i dont think i want to upgrade. i dont think i'll be here for the expansion. i've played through TBC and Wrath. the third expansion may not be for me, as i find this little chapter in my life ending and a new one slowly beginning.

My friends... my friends!!!

Hi guys. I just wanted to thank you guys for reading my blog and, to some, for commenting. i do feel a little more introspective when writing the blog and felt that i wanted to do one after many days driving home from work with the radio off. instead of listening to the latest songs about how someone can make my "bedrock" (which is a really bad song, btw) or how i can brush my teeth with a bottle of jack (in fact, alcohol does kill germs, so squishing with some Jack Daniels can work) and instead, contemplate things related to wow. I will, however, pause my thoughts only for lady gaga. and then i will resume my internal momologues, waxing so elloquently with broken thoughts and clauses that lead to even more broken thoughts and interrelated clauses. think of it as thought association for the drive home.

Again, i thank every one of you for reading my stuff, some of whom i do know and some of whom are pretty anonymous. i dont think i have to many visitors and those that do visit me are probably not even looking for a WoW related blog to read anyway.

So to Carlyn, Tim & Dez, Taylor & Beth, Kylie, Amanda, and my gf who sometimes reads this stuff... thanks for keeping me going, as i believe (believe is the key here) that some of you guys are actually enjoying my blog! And thanks to all the anonymous folks who i think are visiting and benefiting somehow from my blog.

My friday musings is dedicated to my friends as i have them in mind as my audience when writing this stuff.

Friday Musings

I dont feel like i am my characters. well i did before. but i find that im only controlling someone else. it's not my story really. its their story and im the one helping them make the decisions that leads to new experiences and whatnot. it gives me a sense of completeness at the end of the day to know my DK has gotten her 400th dungeon emblem. or that my paladin has reached grand master fishing. or something of that sort.

i logged on to devyn last night, just to see if immortelle was online so i can tell her that i got a ticket for using my speakerphone in the car. aparently, even with the speakerphone on, im still holding the phone. so thats technically not "hands-free". which will lead to a ticket that's about $100. but life sucks. its not a FML kinda thing. actually i never say FML. i dont enjoy my life much but im glad for the only life that i have. so i deal. in any case, break the law, pay the price. i got a ticket so im going to pay the fine. no biggie. live and learn.

so anyway, going back to logging on devyn. she's my dk since the start of wrath, has leveled up as a dps until northrend and then switched to tanking. tanked a few. pissed off a few people, but finally learned to tank well with her. i wasnt stellar. i wasnt great. i thought of myself as a "good" tank. the tank that turns the mobs away from the group (you know, to avoid cleaves and such) the tank that taunts when he can, the tank that use IBF often, and not just one encounters where there's 5 mobs on me, or when the boss is about to drop me like a bad habit. no... i try to incorporate everything i've mentioned before about tanking. im the tank with the stam/def gems. im the tank with, when my def went from 540 to 560+, decided maybe i should gem for strength since i will have issues keeping aggro from those ToC and ICC geared 6k doing dps. the heroic content that im doing is very trivial now, and having more than 560 def really is a waste. now if im tanking icc, then maybe i should gem for more def, and zero str. in anycase, even with the gear that i have, the cooldowns and all the nifty tanking stuffs that i have, i still cant seem to do a decent heroic halls of reflection run. nope. being the worse tank of the four classes, i have a slight handicap when it comes to tanking heroic halls of reflection. heck, sometimes i have problems with pit of saron. on my paladin, never. on my bear, never.

ok wall of text over.

i didnt feel like devyn belonged to me anymore. she's been sitting idly by for so long she feels like a stranger. the buttons are the same. the gear is the same. the face is the same. but somehow the soul is gone. she's not the same anymore and im not the same inside her doing her actions. i guess you can say the fire is gone. there is no excitement, no determination, no purpose and no life. i hold both of her black icicles dripping with runeforged energy oozing out of it, in the dalaran sewers shifting my weight from one hip to the other, looking bored. devyn was bored. i was bored. we were both bored with nothing else to do. we didnt want to go to icc, because i had to go in an hour or two. we didnt want to do any more heroics, because devyn has no use for it. maybe if she had to collect healing gear, then maybe.... no. (i have healers. they're not in plate. my paladins are prot and ret. healers in plate kinda makes no sense to me. but they're there in the game. healers in mail seem a lot more believable. mail is a lot lighter and helps when you need to carry a wounded ally to a ditch in order to bandage him up. plate is what a warrior wears. not the warrior class in wow, per se, but just any generic warrior who will be taking a lot of damage. this is why prot palas make sense and maybe ret palas. but healy palas?) in any case. tangents... lets get back on track.

so devyn is dying. dying a slow and sorrowful death. the pain is not physical, but real nonetheles. the soul is gone and eventually she'll be no more useful than the titanium guards inside halls of stone, lifeless, robotic, empty. but alas, this is the fate of all toons, of all life in azeroth and elsewhere. we will all leave our bodies in time. but in azeroth, their deaths are slow, their souls leaving their bodies long before their bodies decay. on earth, our souls are intricately tied to our bodies and will never leave until our bodies themselves die.

i find this interesting as it speaks of the permanence of our souls. within the worlds of azeroth, our souls are activated when we log in, and live until we log out. eventually, we never log back in and the life begins to die. the body will still be there. but the fire, the ferver, the desire to play this blasted game fades to nothing. it becomes nothing. just a shell.

the souls in our world seem to remain forever in its body, until its body dies. then, it goes somewhere. in most beliefs in our world, the sould goes somewhere else. the energy transfers, the soul lives elsewhere in other beings or finds an eternal home in a fiery lake. whatever the belief, the underlying assumption is that the soul remains somewhere. it does not die. it goes off and becomes something else, something no one really knows. and when we get there, there's no way to get back to this world, to tell others what the new existence is like. but even with the lack of support, we stil believe in a permanence that our souls have. it is within our nature to be forever.

i wonder how long it will be before our characters become nothing. where they will be deleted forever. there is no permanence. the'll just be a memory.