Time line? Time isn’t a line.

Tonight has alternately been one of my best WoW nights and one of the worst.

After well over a year, I finally got an upgrade to my shield – Bulwark of Smouldering Steel finally dropped after all the months we’ve been poking around in ICC 25 (stats say that this was my 13th Marrowgar 25 kill). Ori was my very first healer after I guild hopped to an IRL friend’s guild that was in need of a healer and switched from protection to holy in January of 2009. The very first run I did with them netted me the Voice of Reason from KT 25, and it’s been my faithful shield since, thanks to a lack of any other dropping while I was around. It’s become kind of a guild joke that there’s no such thing as shields, because it’s evaded me for so long. To finally get it was kind of a high point of raiding for the past few months.

Because honestly? Raiding has bummed me out. But I decided not to give a shit about what ever else was going on and just have fun raiding tonight. It actually worked for a while and I was enjoying myself despite the fact that there were stupid wipes. Unfortunately, I also realize lot of the tension has overflown and I’m afraid that my WoW experience just won’t be the same any more. I try not to talk about my guild and our problems any more in this blog, because I know that it upsets the members. But you know what? Being quiet and not trying to fix the problems, or worse – trying to “fix” them in explosive ways, upsets ME. I’m incredibly sad because BoO is a place where I feel that I can have fun and I feel that people enjoy interacting with me, and I’m not sure how much longer that’s going to last. Tensions are driving people away and I’m torn between begging them to wait and acknowledging that if it weren’t for certain people, I might not still be here and happy either.

But no matter what happens to the guild itself, I know that the people that I’ve gotten to know will still be my friends. That’s more important to me than pixels and monsters, and it makes me sad that not everyone feels the same way that I do.

Raiding ADHD

I’ve reached a weird point in World of Warcraft. I enjoy playing, but only when it involves doing things that I don’t have to pay attention to. Everything in ICC up to Dreamwalker? Check, I am happy to raid this because I can dps or heal while talking about rainbows and ballsacks (these may or may not be actual topics of conversation) in three different chat channels.

New content? AHAHA. I have new content ADHD. I can’t wrap my brain around learning new things right now, so instead I babble about boobs and then try to LOL my way through while not understanding at all what is going on. Honestly, until we had done Rotface and Festergut a few times, that’s how I handled those fights as well. Our raid leader gives long explanations over vent about the fine details of each new encounter, and my brain starts going BZZZT and I catch maybe 30 seconds out of the full 5 minutes.

Despite this, we got our first Dreamwalker … kill? Heal? Last night after a few flawed tries. Putricide, being the fight that we hadn’t seen before, was a complete bust, though. I know that I am confused and don’t have a clue what I’m doing when I start shouting “FUCKLE” at the screen.

Sure, I may not be taking raiding seriously or living up to the best of my potential because of my new inability to concentrate or give a damn, but I’m having fun!

Public Service Announcement

Yelling “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE PORTAL LOOKS LIKE WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING” over Vent during your guild’s first attempt at Dreamwalker will instantly out you as someone who does not watch the tankspot videos.

If you do it with enough panic in your voice, it might get you laughs like it did for me though!

Screenshot The Day After Tuesday

This is what happens when I mess up and people try to correct me on vent with tortured cries:

Frost likes to peek up my dress.

What I learned from my former home, Moon Guard:

I like this fellow’s thoughts on gear score.

OUI, OUI.

Kotakh and Evis BOTH win.

Gosh, I don’t know if I can keep associating with all of the perverts in this guild.

I love the whole BoO and everyone in it, boom de yada, boom de yada.

What happens when an enrage kills everyone else at less than 1% health? You bubble and you hit that boss with your weak healer’s arms, RAWR.

What I’ve been up to lately.

I’ve been complaining that alts aren’t really exciting, and now I have to eat my words because I am having a blast with my hunter!

Muffin tabard lives on! My alt guild is VIVA LA MUFFIN – I like having all of them in one place so I can stash low level mats in a gbank and they can easily go to whichever alt needs them. Lysippae is accompanied by the gentleman crab, Soggleby. I love my crab, who was one of my very first pets, but I can’t wait until I can tame exotic pets! I really want a nether ray pet, and maybe a corehound too.

Stuff and things.

I didn’t mean to give anyone the impression that I’m thinking about quitting the game with that last post, or have it be some sort of flouncy, convince me it’s worth it type of thing. I love the WoW community and, while I get bored frequently, I do still enjoy the game. Until I start screaming at the thought of playing (which is certainly a point I’ve reached before, hence a several month break), I’ll be sticking around, whether regularly raiding or not. Chances are that I’ll just keep raiding anyway because I always feel that things will get better, and I don’t want to miss it when they do. :D

ANYWAY. I think most of my actual content that isn’t about my crazy emotions regarding this game ends up being posted on I Like Bubbles. For instance, last week’s Friday Flowchart: Upgrading Your Holy Paladin’s Gear! It got linked on WoW Insider, and I know it mostly got attention because they’re familiar with Amber’s blog, but YAY. Getting linked on wow.com for the first time is kind of exciting (but also kind of … anxiety inducing because of potential comments).

Deciding what’s best for you.

This definitely isn’t going to be a helpful suggestion post, because frankly I wouldn’t even begin to give advice on something that I’m struggling with.

I’m unhappy with WoW right now.

Socially things aren’t really that bad. There’s grumbling about cliques and some people aren’t happy, but I’m coming to accept that there’s nothing that I can do about that. You can’t really make everyone get along, and I’m happy with my friends who I talk to in and outside of the game so I’m just going to let go of everything else and enjoy that.

The problem for me is the game itself. I’m bored with it – there’s simply not much of anything that I want to do, and especially not things that I can do by myself. Most of the time if it’s not a raid night I tend to log in, check my mail, idle around Dalaran dancing or putting down a picnic basket for 5 minutes, then log off. I pretty much play this game for raiding, and when there’s nothing I can do to improve my raiding game outside of raiding itself, I just don’t have anything to do. Leveling alts is an option, but it’s not one that holds my attention for long.

I am having a little bit of a raiding issue now too, though. Since we’ve started 25s, I’ve come to realize that I vastly prefer 10s. I like smaller groups because I find them less confusing. I feel more useful as a healer in a 10 man run because we usually have just enough, while in 25 it feels like it’s no big deal if I bite the dust or don’t bring my A game. My other problem is wipes. I’ve always said that I’m okay with wipes because they’re a part of the learning process. I’m starting to feel like it was complete BS that I had even tricked myself into believing. :P Wipes are frustrating, especially when there’s no sense of progress and it feels like you’re repeating the same mistakes over and over. At the end of a wipe night, all I can think of is that my time would have been far better spent doing something else.

A person who doesn’t play WoW would probably respond to that with “so why don’t you just quit?” (believe me, my boyfriend did) and I can’t explain why that’s not an option for me. I feel a sense of responsibility towards the people who I call my friends, because I’m part of a team. I know what a big set back it can be when one of the team members decides to leave. I don’t want to be the person who lets down others that I care about. I’m really not at the point where I want to leave the game anyway, I just feel like I need a break from raiding for a little while, but I don’t want to be that person who bails when progression content is tough, only to come back and reap the rewards when it’s cleared. That’s really not what it’s about for me, I don’t give a crap about whether or not it’s easy to hoover up all the loot, but what I do care about is how I spend my time. Right now the way that I spend my time just isn’t making me as happy as it used to and I’m at a loss for deciding the best thing to do about it.

Can’t we all get along?

Outside of WoW, I’m a teacher (or at least I was when employed, and that’s the field where I’m seeking employment now). Being a teacher means dealing with a group of kids who are mostly strangers and have no real reason to get along, aside from the fact that doing so will make their goals – primarily those of achieving education and growth – easier to accomplish. In a group of 20 or more students, it’s natural that some will get along better than others, cliques will form, and not everyone is going to like everyone else, but still coming together to work as a team in spite of that is crucial.

Yeah, it sounds a lot like being in a guild. You’ve got a goal that you all want to accomplish, whether it be raiding, making your guild tag the most feared in PvP on your server, establishing an amazing and well-respected RP community, or anything else that your group desires. But if people are mucking it up with bitchy quibbles, senseless fights (if I ever hear “he touched me first!” from a kid again I think my head will fall off), and not coming together as a team, it’s just not going to happen.

My mom, who is also a teacher, tells her class at the beginning of the year that they are all brothers and sisters. They may not always get along, they might not like each other, but they are part of a family that needs to do their best to come together. By the end of the year, she always has a class that can work together and who encourage each other to do their best. If you disagree with someone, maybe it’s not always the best thing to do to tell them that their point of view is dumb. Just keep it to yourself, or at the very least, don’t come across abrasively when arguing. Remember that there are other people who don’t think just like you, and might not have the same priorities. Wiping a group because you don’t feel like waiting for everyone isn’t such a big deal to you? Well to me it is, and I don’t want to play with someone who disregards the feelings, time, and effort of others. Don’t like someone’s plans? Well don’t step on their toes and try to change them – go do something else that you want to do. Feeling excluded? Don’t complain about cliques – go out of your way to communicate with and integrate yourself into other groups. In all likelihood, no one’s going to tell you that you can’t sit at their table in the cafeteria. :P At the same time, you can respect that you can’t instantly be best friends with people who have known each other longer.

I know adult relationships are far more complex than a group of children working together in a classroom, but sometimes that’s exactly what it feels like! And it’s no wonder that I’m left thinking that sometimes working with a group of 7 year olds would be easier, because at that age you can at least enforce respect for your peers.

Sometimes I feel like I sound cheesy when I go off on my love everybody rants, but it seriously is not that difficult to just get along with people. It makes the whole experience so much smoother when you check your ego at the door and try to cooperate.

A little announcement.

I’m staying with my mother this week and that means playing WoW on a laggy laptop, which further means that I don’t actually play much WoW and therefore don’t have much to post about. It’ll be quiet for the rest of the week, but back to usual after that.

Well, almost back to usual. I’m contemplating a redesign/rename because this isn’t really a priest focused blog these days. We’ll see where I end up.

Socializing wut.

My goal for the next couple of weeks is to do more mingling within my guild. I think I generally tend to be friendly for someone who’s very shy – it took me a while to feel like I was really at home after I moved to Azgalor. Heck, I’m even still working on not being afraid to step on toes. But we have lots of new people and I want them to feel welcomed and help them get used to us as quickly as possible. For me it really doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a member of BoO, I want you to be able to get the jokes that get thrown around and have fun with everyone. Really my focus in playing WoW these days isn’t about hardcore raiding, getting gear, or being on top of progression – it’s having fun, period.

Lately there’s been talk of things getting cliquey. Personally, I think cliques are just bound to happen. In a group of 30 or so regular players, some of them are just going to get along better than others, because of personality types alone. Some people will be closer because of a shared role, like those of us who play healers in BoO and tend enjoy working together and socializing. I don’t really even get why clique has such a bad connotation when the group in question is in no way excluding others. Sure, I might be more likely to consider the people who I talk to regularly in the healer channel as my friends instead of just my guild mates (and that’s also because I talk to many of them outside of WoW as well), but I still mingle with and join groups with everyone else too. And lord knows, I do not keep my silly comments limited to just one place – gchat is just as much game for them as raid or other channels.

A group that does exclude others, I can see where that would be a problem. I felt very left out in one of my previous guilds, because almost all of the socialization took place on vent. I had a friend who would talk to me in our paladin channel, and he told me that people felt that I was unsocial because I never joined them on vent. That really hurt my feelings, because I thought that everyone understood that that wasn’t really an option for me. Having conversations on vent makes me nervous because I don’t hear very well, and while I know that people can be understanding about it, that just doesn’t change that it’s just not my preferred way of communication.

Maybe I do come off as cliquish and uninterested in mingling unintentionally? I certainly don’t mean to – I’m trying to have fun with and do things with everyone to the best of my ability.

As an extension of that, I’m picking my lolret experiment back up. I want to be able to run some heroics with other people who are also healers, but since there’s only one per group, I just need to get better at dps so that option is available to me as well. I have … no freaking clue what happened since the last time I tossed on my retribution garb and spec, but yesterday when I did it, I managed to actually hit 4k dps on the target dummies. That’s not WOW AMAZING by most standards, but for me? That’s double what I was doing before. I guess I just learned to push buttons better~! \o/ I’ve done a few heroics with about 3.5k sustained over the course of the run, and I’m pretty happy with that. I have a few pieces that need upgrading, so hopefully I’ll get lucky in some of the new Icecrown heroics. I especially need new trinkets, because I’m using one from Direbrew and the crafted Emerald Boar. Neither are bad, but something better might help. I’m also short on expertise – currently sitting at 16 out of the 28 points I need, I think.