Break Time's Over

Around the time of my last post something became very apparent: I felt obligated to play WoW.

This had only happened once before, but not nearly as bad. And back then the solution was to only log into vent, but not WoW and I was living alone so WoW was my social outlet. This time around, WoW was not my only social outlet and there was no vent.

I think I was actually getting over WoW, but I missed my toons. Plus, I found out a bunch of my college buddies are now all playing again, albeit on Horde side, but still it was on my Horde server. So I came back to the game. But I came back with a new attitude—I was going to play for me.

Sure I feel left out when Jake is playing all night, I'm not and I see all my friends online. But after talking with Sheltem, we're both kinda of relieved to not have to try and hold a guild together anymore. It's a huge weight lifted. I still wish I was playing on Mirax and Rhysati more than I am, but I don't feel pressured to play if I don't want to.

Tearing Up The Charts Again

It's been awhile since I last posted. I'll admit I've been a bit distracted by real life, but I'm still addicted as ever to WoW.

I can gladly report that I am once again running on Mirax as a Retadin for raiding. In fact, I've been consistently the highest DPS in guild for all of my guild's 4.3 raiding. The best part is that I'm actually loving Ret once again. With the introduction of Holy Power in Cataclysm, Retribution changed completely from it's incarnation during Wrath. It took some time to become comfortable with these changes and I was decent at playing my class, but not as good as I could have been. A lot of that had to do with me healing more often than not during both 5-man dungeon runs and raids.

In a previous post I noted my decision to be a main spec Holy Paladin for the remainder of the Patch 4.2 lifetime. True to my statement, as soon as Patch 4.3 came out I went back to being Ret and have kinda put my foot down on the swapping specs for raiding. In fact, I haven't even healed on Mirax since 4.3 came out. Sure, I've gotten some upgrades for her healing gear, just I haven't made that my gearing priority. One thing that has helped me in being able to stay as Ret, are some real-life friends, Rolo and Ruckis, who x-ferred to my server and joined my guild. I have to say they are far better raiders than half the people in guild, and I respect their talent and insight into class and raid mechanics. They've also been supportive of "not making your highest dps heal," as one of them pointed out a few weeks ago when the RL was going to ask me to go Holy and then started looking for a new melee dps even though I had not agreed to heal. Since that time I've proven myself to be a consistantly high dps and being one of the two dpsers in guild who can hold their own against the PuGs we bring in to fill out raid team out, the other being Ruckis.

I'll admit, I'm kinda of missing playing Holy a bit. But ow that I have an equipped ilvl of 390 for my Ret set and average close to 30k dps on boss fights, I think I'm ready to start working on my Holy set and playing Holy again. That's part of why I've been logging out in my Holy gear so I can check it out on Mr. Robot and get it all itemized properly. I don't think I'll be going back to raiding as Holy any time soon, but I won't mind switching into it for a final boss attempt or two if a healer leaves early. This happened two weeks ago and I brought my Shaman, Rhysati, in to heal thinking that we wouldn't down Ultraxion. Well, Rolo and I two-healed it and while I have credit for the kill on Rhys, Mirax doesn't. I don't want my alt to end up farther along in progression than my main again just because the alt is the healer.

Mirax and Ruckis at the Faerie Circle in Tirisfal.

A RIFT in WoW

Most of the officers and long term members of my guild are getting increasingly bored, frustrated, tired of WoW gameplay. Yes, Blizzard did an amazing job updating Vanilla content and there's a ton of new stories to experience. But it's all just the same. End game has nothing for us and the immense difference in the cost of abilities verses their effectiveness from Level 84 to 85 is so crazy that most of us don't want to level another toon to 85. So those of us who log into vent nightly but not WoW have been talking about what game(s) we might all play together once we move on from WoW.

To this extent several of us have rolled toons on a few different games. Our PVP officer, Stormrydr, is currently playing Forsaken World. He got me to roll a character on there, but I don't like the character controls. Myself and Mälik rolled characters on RIFT and we got our guild's MT, Sheltem, to try it out. (If we bounce to anything RIFT would be my preference at this point.) Our main raid healer, Starathir, and a newer member, Greatknight, have stated that they're going to Star Wars: The Old Republic when it comes out. Mälik has also expressed interest in Diablo III and I might have to check that one out. Meanwhile Sheltem and Greatknight have been playing Team Fortress 2 to pass the time and I've been mashing it up on Epic Battle Fantasy 3 on Shelt's recommendation.

I would like to see all of us stay together and continue to play together post-WoW as it's the people that I met in WoW who keep me in the game. Thankfully I've been making friends with most of these people and have ways to stay in contact aside from playing WoW. Don't get me wrong, I still like WoW. But it doesn't hold the same fascination for me that it once did.

The Men Behind the Screen

In video games we rarely see what the person on the other side of the screen looks like. Even thought they may be your childhood friend you just reconnected with on Facebook and shared Xbox Live handles, you still don't physically see them when you are playing games together. In MMO games its even worse where you tend to become close with guild members that you otherwise would never know. When talking to these people on Ventrillo, Team Speak, Mumble, etc, it's a lot like listening to the radio and wondering what the DJ actually looks like. Face it, we all get curious as to what our guild members and fellow player look like in real life.

To quell this curiosity my guild established a forum page to link a picture of yourself to. That way any guild member could see who was who without giving away personal information and in a setting where only registered members of the site could log in. after all, it never hurts to be safe on the internet. Last night we finally got one of the longest standing hold outs per say to post his picture up there. Our MT has always been closely guarded with his information which I always found funny as I can find his blog on there where he gives out of rather personal information. (i.e. "Hi my name is _____. I live in _____. I'm a member of this church and I have my Eagle Scout.") The funny thing about this guy is that the gays in our guild were discussing what he actually looked like just 2 nights ago. They determined that he was a skinny, nerdy white guy in glasses. Well, they got the white part but he is anything but nerdy looking and is built like the Scotsman he is. I would say he's downright good looking, escpecially those eyes.

This brings me to my point. Does knowing a person in a video game allow you to truly get a feel of their personality free of an visual judgement? The gay boys in guild have been straight up about this and told me it was a good thing I was a pretty girl or they couldn't continue to be friends with me. As for the MT who finally posted his picture, I think his personality does match his appearance but I liked his personality before I knew what he looked like. The same was said previously when I fell head over heels for the Ele Shaman in guild. I would have dated that man no matter what he looked like. Then I met him in Vegas and what do you know, he's exactly my type and is incredibly cute. So is it really wise of us to want to see what our fellow game players look like? I know I get hit on more by the guys in guild once they see my picture on the forum. Then again, knowing what the men in my guild look like doesn't help any crushes I may form on them in-game. It just tricks the mind into thinking the men on the other side of the screen are not far away an thus unobtainable. Yet, I think I would be curious no matter what. Afterall, we humans are curious, visually stimulated creatures. Why else do we play video games?