The One Where I Act Like Brett Favre

For those of you who may not know, Brett Favre is one of the recent great quarterbacks in the NFL (Green Bay Packers for most of his career) who, starting back around 2007, began retiring at the end of the season and then coming out of retirement just in time to play the next season. This went on for 4 years or so. By the time he finally really did retire, the whole thing had become quite absurd and no one really even cared any more. Hopefully, that won’t happen to me.

Yep, I am announcing my retirement from this blog BUT WAIT… I have talked about Brett Favre for a reason here (other than the fact that I am a huge NFL fan (Go Chiefs!)(everyone shut up, I know they suck but they are my team)). See, much like the first time Brett retired from the game, I would love nothing more than to continue on here. But sometimes the desire to play football write blog posts just isn’t worth the time and effort required to do it. However, I am smart enough to know that my love for Elfi and this little world I’ve created here may draw me back. I might decide after being retired for a few months that I’ve got one more season in me.

I love being Elfi. Elfi has been a huge part of my identity since I began playing WoW in January 2008. But I am only Elfi online, in WoW. My coworkers don’t know me as Elfi, my family doesn’t know me as Elfi. And now that I’ve made SWTOR my main game and I am not named Elfi there, I’m only Elfi a few hours a week. Mostly here when I blog. And there’s where the problem begins because of a combination of the following things:

• I don’t have as much time to write posts as I used to – I began blogging in general (personal blogs, photo blogs) around 2006 when I worked 3rd shift all alone in the basement of a hospital where my only job was to answer the phone if it rang and solve whatever pc problem was on the other end. In an 8 hour shift, I’d get 3 or 4 calls and they were 90% password resets. When the phone wasn’t ringing, I was allowed to do anything else I wanted so the job was great for reading, putting together jigsaw puzzles, watching DVDs, surfing the net, blogging, etc. But in case you’re wondering, it wasn’t worth the solitude. Especially considering I worked every Friday & Saturday night and my 10 hour shifts began at 9pm. Talk about not being able to have a social life. Ugh. Actually, forget the social life, when you live alone and work that kind of schedule you rarely get any human contact with anyone. Ugh. But I digress. I began blogging because I had nothing but time and since I worked there for 5 years blogging very much became “something I do at work”. I am now working 3rd shift at a different job where I only get 1 phone call a night. Unfortunately for me (relevant to what we’re discussing here), answering the phone is like 1% of my job. I work my ass off here. There’s no more time for blogging.
• Back in December, I switched my main game to SWTOR. I love it there because it’s a great game and my dearest friends are there. This means sometimes I login to WoW for 2 – 4 hours a week, sometimes I don’t login to WoW for a week or more. Despite the fact there seems to always be some new achievement I’ve … achieved…(how redundant) or some new pet I’ve acquired, or some fail PUG to make fun of, the quality of posts here has been slipping. Spending so much time away from the game means I’m forcing myself to invent things to write about. Even though I still enjoy the writing part of it, it’s just not as inspired by my love of the game as it used to be. I still love the game, but we’re long-distance lovers these days and the flirty, breathless excitement between us has been replaced with “let’s schedule a quickie twice month if it works out”.
• I seriously need to figure out how to get off my ass more. Did I say seriously? Because I seriously do. Seriously, I’m killing myself here. I’m drowning in obesity and diabetes with some almost-old-age mixed in. When it comes to figuring out where I’m going to get the extra time to hit the gym I’d rather take it away from blogging than from getting to play the game. Don’t give me that look… I’m taking it away from other things too. The Nook makes it easy to read while I’m on the treadmill so now I’m not sitting on my ass reading as much.
• Twitter. It’s… what’s the word… it’s constant. I enjoy it, but I can’t keep up. Especially since I keep following more and more people. I love the way it’s such an intimate little community where I really do get the feeling all of you guys are actually friends. Twitter helps me stay on top of the WoW news and happenings while I’m playing SWTOR and of course let’s me know when my favorite people publish new blog posts. It is also a platform I use to let people know I have published a new post. It’s very much connected to blogging for me. Especially because I follow most of my favorite WoW bloggers. And so, it must go. No more spending 6 minutes out of every 20, all day long, bent over my Droid 3 reading Tweetdeck. It’s done. A week ago I tweeted that I was breaking up with Twitter and I haven’t tweeted a single thing in 7 days. No one commented. No one has noticed. So I guess quitting Twitter will be the easy part. I will keep my SWTOR twitter account active to keep up with my guildies tweeting action. But @_elfindale is retiring.

So the struggle is I want to continue being Elfi but all the other crap is true too.

There’s more. I’ve been really emo for a couple of weeks now and I could really begin rambling about some shit right here. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter. What matters is I feel like I’m doing this space and my readers a disservice by forcing content once or twice a week just for the sake of keeping an audience because I like having one. So I’m going to stop. At least for now. Hopefully I will get rid of the emo, get myself into a better routine of fitting things in that should be priorities (seriously someone figure out how to make me exercise), and get a better handle on my time management so that I can Brett Favre it up and announce that I’m back. See, I want to believe I will one day be back. So I want you guys to realize you don’t have to keep coming here to read whatever crap I’ve thrown together in a rush (lately) because I’m stopping. But if you have ever enjoyed Elfi’s World you should not throw away the link and forget it exists.

And in closing, I’d just like to say to Psynister … uh, sorry dude but I guess I will NOT be updating my “About” page for now. 🙂

Elfi’s Treasured Tuesday

It’s no secret that content’s been a little light around here. And I’m not sure when that will change because, well because life is unpredictable. So in an effort to keep some activity going here and entertain you all at the same time, I’ve decided to try some new things. Welcome to the first installment of Elfi’s Treasured Tuesday. This is where I dig up a truly great WoW post from days gone by and shine the spotlight on it all over again. Now, I follow a lot of WoW bloggers and have read many, many amazing posts. So I believe this feature will stick around a while, though I can’t promise it will be every Tuesday.

We’re going to kick the first one off right with a post that I believe is from October, 2009. It was written by Mortigan The Warlock and while the page it used to appear on no longer exists, by the miracle of internet magic, I still have a copy of it.

I now proudly present, for the first ever Elfi’s Treasured Tuesday, Single Set Of Rules On How To Raid Anything, by Mortigan

I find it terribly hard to remember all the nuances of each boss fight. Sorry, but I’m just not hard-core enough to memorize who casts what, and I really don’t care if Pixie McNixie in the bottom of some hole is planning to fear me, sheep me, or chop me in half with a big heavy axe. Why? Because overall things are pretty much the same from one boss to the next, so I figured I could come up with a single set of rules on how to raid ANYTHING. I’ve appropriately named these rules “A Single Set Of Rules On How To Raid ANYTHING.”

Getting Ready:
Many people go to YouTube and watch Tankspot videos to familiarize themselves with the fights. This is a waste of time, because all you really need are my simple rules. Not 100% sure? Here are some additional reasons for skipping the videos:1. Those people in the videos are ELITE WIZARDS and your raid team is not going to do anywhere near as well as them. It’s like watching an Olympic gold medalist do the ski jump and then trying it yourself. Forget about it.2. There are less steps to preparing your taxes than there are to fights like Freya. Watching Tankspot explain it on YouTube will only give you a headache. Your guild is going to wipe on it anyway, so no need to give yourself a migraine. Skip the video and use my rules below!

Let’s Raid!
Ok, so here is my Single Set Of Rules On How To Raid ANYTHING:
1. DO NOT stand in anything that wasn’t there before the fight started, if it visually looks dangerous. This includes fire, black steaming circles of nastiness, green slimy stuff, purple ooze, etc. If you are not sure, stand in it for a second and see if your health goes down. If it does, MOVE.
2. DEFINITELY DO stand in anything that wasn’t there before the fight started, if it visually looks beneficial. This includes pleasant rays of fairy moonlight, air with lightning bug / glittery things in it, shiny sparkly spots on the floor, or anything else that a 3 year old girl might want to color. If you are not sure, stand in it for a second. If nothing bad happens, definitely keep standing it it because it MUST be doing something good.
3. Do the following based on your function:
Tank: Attack the boss with everything you got. Keep doing this and don’t stop until your healer drags you away screaming at you, “STOP! STOP! HE’S DEAD ALREADY!”
Heal: Keep healing until everyone is either dead and blaming you, or the boss is dead. In the latter case, it is your job to drag the tank away from the bloody corpse.
DPS: Do the same as the tank, but wait a fraction of a second before doing so. This way, if you get aggro, you can blame the Tank. Otherwise, he will blame you. That fraction of a second makes all the difference on who gets blamed for the wipe. Use it wisely. Now this next part is important: If adds arrive, you need to make a visual check of how dangerous they look. If they look like they can be ignored, stay on the boss. If they look really nasty, switch to the add. Simple! Or you can always fall back on the “watch what everyone else is doing and copy them” strategy, but I’m training you to be a trailblazer, so get in there and blaze that trail!
Off Tank: You’re on the adds. Someday, if you ever become cool enough or geared enough, the guild might let you be a REAL tank. But probably not anytime soon. So stick to adds. And if you run like a madman all over the map with a trail of adds behind you, creating a hellish conga-line of death, all the DPSers are going to HATE YOU. So keep your butt in one spot, take your beating, and suck it up.
4. DO NOT stand in a Boss’ AOE. The crap raining down on your head should be an obvious sign that it’s time to pack up and move.
5. Should a boss fight require you to operate some sort of vehicle, land mount, or drake, randomly mash buttons as fast as the cool-downs allow. Generally, Button 1 is the biggie one to mash, so mash it more than the others. No one’s really going to notice if you did well or not, so just mash, mash, mash! You’re a pro!
6. If you get aggro, run TOWARD your teammates, not away from them. It’s the surest way to get rid of that unwanted boss who’s taken serious notice of you. Ideally, run toward (and right through) a mage. Mages are a big, big help with getting rid of aggro. If you’re cool enough to be a warlock like me, you can even strategically position yourself right next to a mage throughout the fight, and Soulshatter as needed. Be sure to turn toward the mage when Soulshattering, so that you can watch the look on his face when the boss 1-shots him. If you’re a mage, disregard everything I’ve just said, and take one for the team.
7. The laws of the universe that govern comic books, video games, and science fiction in general require that twins ALWAYS have some sort of symbiotic relationship, and a special power will CERTAINLY exist between them. Therefore, any time there are twin bosses (or even twin adds if they’re extremely dangerous looking), they MUST be killed simultaneously. Very bad things happen when one twin witnesses the death of the other. Heed my warning, and kill any and all twins at the same time. Further, they cannot be allowed to touch each other or send each other any kind of glowing orb, ray beam, soothing rainbow, etc. You don’t want the wonder-twins activating ANYTHING. So keep them apart, kill them apart, and do it at the same time.

If you follow these simple rules, you’re sure to be a success at your next raid. I advise you to print this out and keep it handy. Review it during the boring buff periods before raiding, or when the tank if off in Dalaran begging for another healer. And be sure to stop back by and let me know how it went! Happy raiding!Your buddy,
Mortigan the Lock .

The One Where I Want To Update My Blogroll

See my blogroll over there on the right side? It’s been pretty ignored for quite some time and I’d like to update it. Just this morning I edited the entry for Resto Is Epic to the new link and added The Sisterhood of Kia to the list; but I know there is much more to do. So I am begging you guys to please let me know of any links over yonder that need to be updated, deleted or new ones that I’m totally missing. I already know of a few in my feed reader that are not yet on the blogroll, so I will be updating those later tonight at work.

And that’s that. Another lazy post. Gawd, I’m horrible.

(p.s. – plz send me links so i can read all the things i am missing)