The One Where I Wonder What’s Wrong With Me

This is nothing new, I wonder this all the time. But it’s back on my mind thanks to the news that patch 5.2 will be released in a couple of weeks and I am not prepared for it. Again. As usual. I would love to figure out why I stay so behind. I spend A LOT of hours logged into this game over the course of a week and still I’ve never capped Valor, don’t remember to tend my farm every day, have yet to step foot in LFR, only run an average of 2 heroics a week, still don’t have my Cloud Serpent mount, etc. etc. The list goes on and on.

I can’t blame it on transmogging because I only have 1 (recently completed) transmog outfit for 1 character. I can’t blame it on pet battles because I only have 1 team formed and they are at level 15ish. As far as dailies go, I hit exalted with the Tillers and got everyone to be my best friend very early on but since then the only other rep I’ve completed is Golden Lotus. I haven’t even started several of them. And this is my main, Elfindale, I’m talking about. I have a level 90 on the Horde side who’s accomplished nothing more than opening up all the farm plots. And no, I don’t tend my farm every day on that toon either, thanks for asking.

What the fuck do I do with my time in-game? It’s something I’ve been asking myself for the past 5 years. There is something about WoW that causes me to develop situational ADD, I swear (does not affect me when I do heroics or actual raiding). I log in with no sense of “first this, then this, then this” and I find myself mousing over other players in the area because I like what they’re wearing or to see the name of the mount they’re riding. Then I check my mail. Then I stare at Accountant for 5 minutes and wonder why I don’t make more gold than I do (psst.. it’s because I don’t do enough dailies or heroics or anything at all really).

Then I fuck around with all the stupid shit I carry in my bags that I have no use for but cannot bring myself to delete because OMG THE NOVELTY OF THIS THING (I’m looking at you, Ancient Amber). Then I go to the bank and organize it and look at all the stupid shit I have in there which I have no use for. I stand there several minutes and contemplate deleting things. Then I realize I should be doing something, so I head out to the Shrine’s patio and survey the vast land of opportunity before me. Then I pull up my bags again and wonder if I should store some of the useless crap in the bank with the other useless crap (volatile orbs, landsharks, ugh). I’m also chatting with the guild and/or real ID friends during all of this, which likely slows me down a hair but I will never stop doing. In fact, I would love to have more real ID friends for chatting. Battletag Elfi#1350. Hit me up.

Now where was I? Oh that’s right, standing around not accomplishing anything. I tab out to catch up on Twitter. Tab back in. Remember I wanted to look up how to get that cool object/mount/gear/pet, tab back out to google it. Read every comment on WoWhead just because they’re there. Tab back in. Catch up on guild chat. Scroll through last few minutes of general and trade for God knows what reason. Oh hey, I should fly out to the farm. Take flightpath, tab out to catch up on Twitter. Jump into a Twitter conversation and get ignored (off-subject, but it happens to me a lot). Tab back into game & forget why I flew to this spot. Hearth to Shrine. Immediately remember I was going to farm. /facepalm. Take flight path back. Decide I should gather some herbs while I’m in the area. Spend the next 30 minutes alternating between gathering herbs and tabbing back out to see if I’m actually going to get a reply on Twitter. Spoiler alert: I usually don’t.

Tab back into game, decide I’m tired of gathering herbs. Hearth back to Shrine. DAMMIT I WAS GOING TO FARM. Maybe I should actually run a heroic or do something useful. Queue for heroic, fly to farm. Decide I would be better off working on my DK alt because I really want her to be at 90 before patch 5.2 drops. Switch to DK alt without ever taking care of my farm. Quest on DK alt for a few minutes then decide to head to Stormwind to see if I can make money playing the AH. Stare at AH for 20 minutes and realize I don’t have enough starting capital to do much playing on the AH. Head back out to quest. Decide I should have looked for cool transmog stuff for my DK because everyone needs to be transmogged at level 70, right? Hearth back to Stormwind and look at AH some more. Reprimand myself for not leveling faster, head back out for questing.

By this time, I haven’t eaten dinner, haven’t done any exercising, need to get ready for work and once again, accomplished nothing. I mean, obviously I’m exaggerating this a bit (no, not really) and not every day is quite this ridiculous (but close). I’m seriously considering actually writing out a daily action plan. Something along the lines of:
1. login to Elfindale, immediately queue for heroic
2. while waiting on queue, immediately fly to farm and ACTUALLY TEND FARM
3. if still waiting on heroic queue, do Klaxxi dailies (I’m close to exalted with them, amazingly)
4. While flying to Dread Wastes, pick herbs
5. After heroic, login to Krisstalys (lvl 90 Horde) and tend farm
6. Login to Morrissa (DK alt I want to get to 90) and queue for random dungeon
7. while waiting for dungeon, complete quests

It seems silly that I would need to write down such simple things and I often wonder if I would even actually follow the plan if I did ever write it up. It’s not like I’m incapable of intelligent thought, I should be able to just do these things because I know they need to be done. Which is why I swear WoW triggers some sort of attention deficit for me. I just don’t seem to be able to resist getting distracted by all the shiny things.

I am curious if any others out there find they have a similar issue OR if any of you have some advice on how you manage to do more in 2 hours a night than I do in 4 hours a night. I’m not even kidding, I want to know. Because I’m really disappointed that I probably won’t have my DK to 90 before the patch and that a new raid will once again come out before I ever see the current raid. I need to figure out how to play more efficiently. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because both of my level 90 toons are Balance druids and as such, they are not exactly lean, mean killing machines. I’ve always sworn I hate melee and have no interest in bear or cat but since I’ve been working on my death knight so much recently, I’m starting to change my opinion about melee a bit. Maybe I should consider a bear off-spec for Elfi so that dailies and other general things would go quicker. I often wonder if the fact that everything – including killing vermin on my farm – takes so damn long and is so painful sort of subconsciously keeps me from running out there and doing what I need to do. Of course, I’m not in the best gear thanks to my lack of gathering Valor and my absence from heroics and LFR. And there’s a terrible cycle to be stuck in… without gear I suck, because I suck I don’t do the things that could get me gear. Awesome.

What do you guys do to maximize your efficiency in game? How many people think druids suck? What advice can you guys give me on overcoming this problem?

The One Where I Shouldn’t Be So Damn Impressed With Myself

I talk a lot of big talk and make a lot of big plans around here about how I want to stay current with game content and see all the raids and do all the things. In reality, I’ve only completed 3 different heroics and am nowhere near being raid ready. Just to clarify, I’m not trying to be someone who constantly makes empty promises to myself; it’s just that my eyes are bigger than my stomach. Wait, wut? You know what I mean. So imagine my surprise when I found myself raiding (if you can call what I did raiding) with my guild last night.

Here’s how it all started. I had been logged into the game basically all day just working on alts and trying to figure out how to best replenish my recently diminished gold piles. My plan was to log out right before 8:00pm, fix myself some food, and settle in to watch the season premiere of The Biggest Loser. Partially because I need the inspiration, partially because I have a girl crush on Jillian Michaels. About 10 minutes before that happened, my gm whispered me to see if I would be interested in filling a spot for them because a guildie had something come up unexpectedly. I’m not going to lie, I laughed. I told him he really did not want me in his raid because I haven’t been doing the dailies or running the heroics I need to do to upgrade myself. I think the last heroic I ran was over a month ago and I managed a whopping 15k dps. Yeah, that’s embarrassing. In my defense, I only have 4% haste and my cast times are fucking LOOOOONG. That’s not a very good defense is it? Clearly there is more wrong with me than just my haste, but that’s a whole nother can of worms.

Back to the current story, I told him he’d be better off pugging as on top of my shitty, non-existent dps I also had never stepped one foot into the place and hadn’t yet studied any of the fights. I would be going in blind. Shudder. But it was now just a couple of minutes before 8 and they just weren’t finding anyone who could help them out so he asked me again if I would like to join them. I told him it would be absolutely horrifyingly embarrassing for both me and the guild but I am one of those people who will always do anything I can to help the team. Even if my help is going to amount to nothing more than being a warm body.

Which is exactly what happened, dps wise. I brought them no help at all. And just like I predicted, I was completely embarrassed about my dps. I mean, it seriously barely even registered on Recount, I swear. I can’t give you my overall dps number because after we got to Elegon the guildie who had not been there earlier had finally gotten online and I stepped out so he could join them and save them from me. And I can’t give you my dps number up until that point because the first time I glanced down and looked at it, I died. Of embarrassment. Then I puked. From nervous shame. Then I died again of more embarrassment. BUT. When it was all said and done, if you just ignore dps altogether, (please. ignore it.) I was actually pretty damn happy with my raid awareness and the fact that I really had no issue with standing in poop or falling off platforms or running away from the group when necessary. Obviously I would never say I was 100% on raid awareness, but for being such a nervous noob and just getting some quick, basic instructions before each pull I really think I did a good job. Of course, there may be 9 other people who don’t have that opinion, but no one ever yelled at me to move out of shit or run away or shoot the other guy or anything. I had even recently reconfigured my UI to make sure my battlerez, tranquility and innervate were situated in a prominent position on very large, easy to see buttons and that totally paid off because I got asked to pop both tranquility and my battlerez and I was able to do so instantly. Which is very unlike the past 5 years when I was always worried more about my UI being pretty and symmetrical. Also, even though it really didn’t help much, I had dropped all my money in the AH last Friday on a 30k trinket upgrade and finally buying gems and enchants for my shitty gear that needs to be replaced.

So when it was all said and done, I was starving and dying of thirst due to not knowing I was going to be raiding and getting stuck in my chair without a chance to grab any food or water. My keyboard and my shirt were covered in puke and I had missed every minute of the show I had been anxiously waiting to see for over a week. Thankfully it’s on Hulu+ so that’s no big deal. But even with all that misery and my being seriously (completely seriously) upset that my dps was so fucking ridiculous, I came away from the whole experience happy as fuck. Clearly I will be working on improving my dps, but I am no longer afraid of dipping my toes in LFR (yes, I know they will laugh at me and kick me from group if I try it before the dps improves). I’m just totally stoked about how I’m finally getting all of my other shit together and once I get my numbers up I will rule this kingdom and slay all the dragons.

Maybe.

Oh Come On, Blizzard. So Not Fair.

Ground is too uneven to pet battle

IntPiPoMo 2012: Day 25 – The One Guy I Kill The Most

And still no damn mount

The One Where I’m In A Quandary

As you guys know, I recently created a Blood Elf mage on a random server and named her Elfindale, which is the same name as my Night Elf druid. I decided to name the mage Elfi because she’s temporarily my main character and Elfi is just who I am. It’s my identity. The two toons are on different servers, so it shouldn’t ever cause a problem, right? Wrong. I have been searching for a new server to transfer my Alliance side Elfindale to so I can try and rebuild my relationship with her. She’s the very first character I ever rolled. In fact, when I first began playing I didn’t understand how realms worked and even though my brother told me what realm he was on and that I should choose that one, I didn’t. I let it pick a random server for me not knowing that meant I couldn’t talk to him in-game at all and not realizing it wasn’t free to transfer. I figured it out after only a few days and approximately 8 levels. This was over 4 years ago so lowbie levels weren’t as fast as they are now… and I had never before played an mmo or rpg game. It took me a lot of work and learning to get a few days in. So by then I was stubbornly attached to Elfi and I actually paid to server transfer a level 8 character to my brother’s realm.

I’m still stubbornly attached to her. I have loved / do love this game so much and it’s all tied in with my silly Night Elf druid. The friends I’ve made, the adventures I’ve been on.. it’s all so freaking priceless. Needless to say, even though I’m a bit disenchanted with Elfi right now, I would never dream of deleting her or abandoning her completely. Which is why I’ve been rolling alts on different servers and hanging out with people I know from blogs and from twitter and a few irl. I’ve enjoyed my time on several different servers and I appreciate everyone who suggested their realm and spent a little bit of time with me there. I recently made my decision, I want to transfer Elfindale to Whisperwind and hang out with a couple of my friends on the Alliance side there.

I was getting ready to process the transfer today when it suddenly dawned on me … that is the same server my Horde character named Elfindale resides. So if I transfer my first-born Elfi there I will have to change her name. Hence the quandary. I seriously don’t know if I’m okay with changing her name. I realize that probably sounds so trivial to some people but it’s really freaking me out. And I’ll feel silly if I suddenly change my mind and tell my friends I won’t be joining them on Whisperwind after all because of my name. The Blood Elf is up to level 28 (considering SWTOR is my main game, I’ve done this fairly quickly over the past couple of months) and she’s in a great guild that I’m really enjoying so I don’t want to delete her and re-roll with a different name. I’m trying to convince myself that it will be okay if I change original Elfindale to something like Elfindell or Elfindalle or some sort of variation like that. But I also cringe when I think of changing it.

So, I’m not looking for anyone to make the decision for me but I am curious as to what you guys would do in this situation. How important should this name be to me? It’s not like this is the only server option I have, it just happens to be the one I had decided on based on friends that I actually work with being there. Would you pay to change the name of the level 28 Horde toon, since she’s just an Elfi junior and is only a couple of months old? Would you just slightly change original Elfi’s name because it’s no big deal? Or would you keep looking for a server where you could keep both names the way they are?

The One Where The Darkmoon Tsunami Card Is Killing Me

Several weeks ago, I realized that I had somehow gotten Elfi’s gold up to around 50k. Now I’m sure that’s not a big number to a lot of you, but for someone who doesn’t log in daily and then doesn’t do very many dailies when I do log in, that’s quite a bit of money. And I realized that I was in a position to stop whining about being behind on gear and actually purchase some upgrades for myself from the auction house. So I ran up to Auctioneer Jaxon all excitedly and started searching for the first thing on my list – the Lightforged Elementium Hammer. I snapped it up for 12k and then immediately spent 1200g for the Power Torrent enchant. Next on my list was the Darkmoon Tsunami card and at the moment I was looking it up, the cheapest one on the market was 9000g. I hovered over the buyout button but couldn’t quite make myself click it. Sure, 15 minutes ago I had been all excited about spending money but now I was down almost 15k and I know there are people in my guild who do inscription. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to see if I could get the card crafted for me. So I decided not to buy it and I asked in guild chat if anyone would be willing to help me get what I needed.

Two of my guildies immediately volunteered and I just picked the first one I typed in as my chosen crafter. We whispered each other some arrangements, she told me what mats she needed and she told me that when she creates a card it’s random, so it would likely take a bit of time to get what I needed. I said that’s fine and I sent her all the mats I currently had in my possession and then immediately struck out into the world to gather more. I spent the next several times I logged in farming herbs the entire time. Now this post is not a complaint in any way about my fellow guildie or the work she has done for me. What I’m complaining about here is me. For one thing, I am ridiculously stupid about so many things. I didn’t realize you had to collect a deck of Darkmoon cards in the proper element to turn in and get the relic card you needed. So after a few days, when I had gotten all sorts of five of embers, and three of winds, I didn’t realize I should be keeping certain ones of them. Luckily my friend assured me she hadn’t sent me any wave cards yet so I hadn’t accidentally gotten rid of any I needed. That was good news. But it clued me in to just how long of a process this might be and because I didn’t want to spend all of my time in-game farming herbs, I started buying whiptail and volatile life from the auction house.

I was putting the cards she created that I didn’t need up for auction and making a small bit of money back, but volatile lifes are pricey and since I needed 30 to have her create 1 card I was really knocking my gold down quickly. So I started farming herbs again. And for the entire 1 1/2 hours of gameplay I got in the evenings, I played leap frog with a bunch of assholes in Uldum trying to stock up on whiptail and volatile life. After a few more days of this, I once again got bored with it and started buying from the auction house again. I sold a few more extra cards that were crafted and by this time I had 4 of the cards I needed for my deck, but some of the cards I had for sale weren’t getting any hits. Money was still going out on hundreds of whiptail and volatile life, but money wasn’t always coming in. At this point it’s been around 2 weeks and I’m down to around 20k gold now. If you’ll refer back to the first paragraph, you’ll notice that after buying my new weapon and the enchant for it, I was roughly around 35k. So this means that not only have I seriously spent 12 or more hours logged into the game farming herbs nonstop, I had also spent about 15,000g buying the mats. Are you starting to realize I should have just spent the 9,000g for the Tsunami card that first day? Because trust me, I realized it. But my friend is not at fault and she’s putting a lot of work into doing me this favor. So I keep going. Or at least I intended to.

One day, over a week ago, I logged in and got to work farming herbs straight away and after about 30 minutes I just want to bang my head repeatedly on my keyboard. It’s mind-numbing when that’s all you’ve done for a few weeks. I said my goodbyes and logged out. Then I didn’t login for a week. I mean, I am a bit busier these days outside of the game with the hustle and bustle of the holidays, but I can’t even tell you how long ago it was when I went a week without logging in. So I finally convince myself to login again and in my mailbox I receive a few more ember cards and wind cards and a note saying more mats are needed. I did not immediately start farming. I did the cooking daily and the fishing daily and was just getting ready to take the portal to Hyjal for Firelands dailies when I realized, I didn’t even want to be logged in. I was so miserable, I didn’t even want to be there. Again, let me say I am not upset with my guildie at all for any of this. At no point did I tell her that I wanted to take a break from trying for the Tsunami card. She had no idea I was getting frustrated with myself. Also, I had just spent a weekend in the SWTOR beta and I had been pining away for the chance to get back in that game ever since. I realize I just need to log out and reset myself here.

But right before I do a couple of people in guild chat start discussing running one of the new 4.3 heroics. This was the first time I have been logged in since the patch, so obviously I had never ran any of the new ones. I was asked if I wanted to go but I declined based on my frustration level. But I like these guys, I really do, and when one of them started gently prodding me into running with them I finally agreed. Oh man, I was the Worst. Healer. Ever. I don’t even know which one we were in, but Lady Sylvanas was the first boss. Of course, I wiped us on the first trash pull before we ever got to her because I hadn’t healed in so long I couldn’t remember what my bindings were or what the hell I needed to click. Oops. Then we got through the first trash and on the second trash I let a dps or two die. Then I wiped us on Lady S about 10 seconds in the first time because I couldn’t move out of the purple stuff. I know this was a combination of being a bit rusty and being in a place over the past couple of weeks where I have not looked forward to even being in the game, but I’m so mortified at my horrible performance that I vow to teleport out and repair and then come back in and show them I’m not a total moron. Unfortunately, it didn’t go down the way I planned. After I repaired, I lost another dps. Rezzed him just in time to lose another dps and a finally another wipe. At this point I’m so pissed at myself for ruining this for everyone that my face is bright red and I’m pretty sure I’m going to puke. We gave it one more try and I let us all die so I finally told them I was going to leave group and let them pug a healer. I have never been so humiliated with myself. Sure, there are plenty of times I lose a dps or a tank or just wipe us all for stupid reasons. But I don’t think I’ve ever failed on every pull for 10 damn pulls in a row. And on our way in there they were telling me how easy these new heroics were. Gah! I blame this all on that damn Tsunami card and the unbearable amount of stress and frustration it has placed on both me and my stack of gold.

Sidenote: During my extended time in the auction house spending all of my money on materials I could have just went out and got myself for free, I did at least get a bit of entertainment.

The One Where Being Nervous Makes Me Stupid

This weekend, I moved Elfindale over to a little-known guild named Eff The Ineffable. Maybe you’ve heard of it here, or here, or here, or …. you get the idea. Because of all the wonderful bloggers involved with Eff and because I’ve had an alt already in the guild for a little while, I pretty much knew everybody and had chatted with almost all of them by this point. But somehow, logging in and talking to them as Elfi instead of as some insignificant little alt made a huge difference. I have been nervous as hell about it for days. Elfi is my main, the one toon I should have perfected and know inside-out. I’m suddenly very worried that these awesomely cool people will notice I’m actually a huge dork who really just mashes buttons and gets lucky.

I’m a very shy person so I remain a very shy WoW player. I can get comfortable with people pretty quickly, and once I do, they’re screwed; but until I reach that point, I pretty much spend every moment being so worried about doing or saying something stupid, that I end up doing and saying a lot of things that are stupid. Last night is a prime example. Elfi was going to run randoms with some guildies and I was very nervous about making a good impression on them and proving I could be a valuable part of the guild. You know, useful and stuff. Now, Elfi is a resto druid as her main spec and has been since the very first day she stepped foot into the world (yes, that’s a stupid way to level – but I did it). But over the past few months I have been doing Boomkin dps about 99.9% of the time due to internet lag. If I lag out and stop dps’ing it’s not usually a big deal; but if I lag out and stop healing, things tend to go to shit.

So last night, I decide I gotta put my brave face on and queue as a healer to show my new fellow guildies that I am perfectly capable of having their backs. I activated my resto spec and queued us up as a party. There were only 3 of us from the guild running this time, so obviously once we entered the dungeon we picked up two strangers. I knew I had already put the correct gear on, so as soon as we phased into the dungeon I threw Mark of the Wild on everyone and started fiddling with my VuhDo and making sure I remembered which healing spells were set to which buttons on my mouse, etc. One of my guildies was tanking and after making sure we were all ready, he started off towards the first set of mobs. I waited until everyone filed off in front of me and then I proudly followed the group towards the danger, determined to heal my ass off. I don’t really see him suffering much damage – must be a great tank, yay! No one else is taking much damage either, although to be fair we are at the first group of trash. I throw a wild growth or two and a couple of rejuvs that no one needed and pretty quickly the fight was over. We move on and again, not a whole lot of damage is showing up for any of the group on my VuhDo bars. I throw a few more unnecessary light heals and we’re moving on to the next group. Now into the third fight, we’ve pulled a bigger crowd of mobs and I’m really impressed with how easy of a time I’m having as the healer. I’m seriously just kind of standing around and feeling very good about the fact that even though I haven’t healed regularly in quite a while, I obviously still have very good gear and I’m so good at healing I can do it without even lifting a finger.

It was after all of the mobs from the third fight were down that my other guildie, the one not tanking, whispered me and said “You do know you queued as dps, right?”

And then I died of embarrassment. I can’t believe they didn’t gkick me right then. HOLY SHIT!

Funny Photo Time

This has nothing at all to do with anything related to Azeroth, but I had to share. I stopped at a Subway this morning on my way home from work and was confronted with this atrocity at the register. I had left my cell phone out in the car but I had to get a picture so I actually pulled a camera out of my purse and shamelessly snapped a pic of this sign. The 2 employees behind the counter were just staring at me like I was a weirdo. I really don’t think they had any clue what I thought was so funny.