The One Where I Celebrate Business Time

I realize nobody is aware of how special today is to me other than me, but don’t worry… I’m going to tell you. On Jan. 26th of 2013, Elfindale was invited to join BT as a full-time member. WOO HOO. Exciting, right? It is, actually. Because right now, in this guild, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in WoW. That’s saying a lot because I’m a pretty happy person most of the time. Also, my 1st ever guild had 3 or 4 friends irl in it and I became friends irl with several more of them soon afterwards. Trust me, I was happy then. But of course it wasn’t just a guild of friends and there were plenty of other members. Members who caused drama or were never available or didn’t have any interest in being part of a group. I didn’t realize how toxic the whole environment surrounding guilds can be until I dealt with the drama and eventual dismemberment of that 1st guild of friends. Trust me, devastating a person is bad. Devastating a happy person who wants nothing more than to be able to fix things? That’s brutal. It’s crazy to think a video game impacts people so intensely.

No worries about any of that shit now though, cause I’m in the best guild ever. I don’t know if I can really explain why Business Time is so different, at least not without accidentally offending any other guild. Lol. It’s the first time I’ve been in a guild where everyone treats everyone the same and everyone acts like part of a team. We goof off and give each other shit all the time, but there’s never any doubt that everyone actually cares for each other. Obviously I’ve only been here 1 year, so I certainly can’t say the guild has never had any drama or had a less than ideal member in the past. But I’ve never witnessed anything like that since I’ve been here. I keep trying not to say there’s a level of maturity there that I hadn’t found before because of how pissed off that’s going to make everyone else. But oops, I just said it. I’m not trying to troll you or your guild with this post, I promise. But seriously, maturity and respect. It’s amazing.

I accidentally Business Timed, so I am surprised to see how well it’s gone. I had transferred servers in the summer of 2012 and was in a guild on Moonrunner with a friend of mine. Unfortunately, the guild was pretty dead. Not many people logging in and no one chatting. It just wasn’t working out for me. Happy people need to chat. Or something. One day while killing the Sha of Anger in a group, I got a whisper from Vidyala after the fight was over. She was in the same group and had spotted me so she wanted to say Hi. I was obviously familiar with Vid, I mean who the the hell isn’t? I followed her on Twitter and was a fan of her blog posts and artwork. I suppose I sort of knew her guild was on Moonrunner, but I just had never thought about it. We visited for a few seconds after she said hi and then we both went our separate ways. But later that day it dawned on me that if I am not enjoying the guild I’m in I should ask Vid about joining her guild. So that night I DM’d her through Twitter to find out if they accept social/casual members. Apparently it’s dependant on things and I also would need to do a trial period. You guys, this is one of the secrets to having a really great tight-knit guild. Don’t let your membership numbers skyrocket, keep membership around a certain number so everyone is able to get to know everyone and require trial periods to see if the new person’s personality is going to be a good fit. Anyway, I joined BT with an alt for my trial period and in about a week and a half I got approved to become a member. Exactly 1 year ago today. All that brown-nosing I did during my trial really paid off. 😛 I kid.

When I first joined the guild, I only knew Vid sort of and I had heard of Voss (obviously) but I didn’t know who else was there. I spent most of the first few days of my trial trying to be quiet and out of the way (I’ll admit that’s probably not the best way to let people get to know you). Luckily, that didn’t last long because the whole atmosphere there is just so relaxing. I very quickly began feeling like part of a family and started chatting it up with the rest of them. When I am awake/available during their raid times I love logging into Mumble just to listen to them. It’s amazing to witness how quickly it goes from giving each other shit to complete focused concentration. They have that dance perfected.

I’m thankful I got the opportunity to join this group and meet so many awesome people and now be able to call them all good friends. I’m thankful they’ve taken me in. Most importantly, I’m thankful that Vid has super fast fingers because I only got to go to Blizzcon thanks to her. I had already been in BT over 10 months when Blizzcon happened, so I had long ago gotten settled in and loved my BT family, but actually meeting Vid and Voss, Rhidach, and Tass in Anaheim was the coolest fucking thing. And all the other wonderful bloggers and twitter folks and friends I met too, of course. But I’m talking about guild bonding. I’m a sappy person, so I love that sort of shit even if I am shy. The 5 of us went out for a guild dinner and without even talking about the game it was one of the best things I’ve done in a long time.

Anyway, I could go on for days and days about how awesome these people are. Which means I should end this now. Happy 1 year Business Time anniversary to me. Here’s to many, many more.

❤

Note: I am proudly wearing my guild tabard for this screenshot. I also wear the Artisan Members Shirt but you obviously can't see it.

The One Where I’ve Been Monking Around

My guild recently realized we weren’t too terribly far away from earning the Stay Classy achievement and opening up a new bank tab. So the challenge went out to work on some alts if we were interested. Since I am not tied to a toon that has to stay valor capped & raid ready, I knew I should have plenty of time to help so I jumped right in. One of the combinations we needed was Night Elf Monk so I claimed that one as quick as I could. She’s my 4th Night Elf on this server and my first ever monk.

I chose the WindWalker DPS spec and I must say, even though I always claim to hate melee classes, I’m having a lot of fun with her. Am I good at playing her? Doubt it. Am I enjoying playing her? Absolutely. Way more than I expected. The list of what was needed to get the achievement was posted on 11/14, less than 3 weeks ago, and even with an extended 4 day Holiday weekend away from home and making sure I don’t completely ignore my main, I’ve managed to get my Monk up to level 63 (at time of writing). Of course, the 9th Anniversary xp buff could not have happened at a better time; all of us that are helping get these toons up have really benefited from that.

While the Monk herself has been fun, I think the best part of this whole thing has been getting to spend time with some of my favorite Twitter folks who decided to join the guild as social members for the purpose of helping. We’re all leveling pretty quickly and it’s fun to log in and see so many alts all around the same level. I’m lucky in that I’ve got the Monk buff for an hour a day and this is my home server so I have heirlooms – it amazes me that some of these awesome Twitter people are leveling so fast without having any money or heirloom items on this server at all. I’ve tried to offer my money to help them buy new gear, keep up with repairs, etc., but no one will take it. I suppose I should have expected that since you have to be a special kind of crackhead to agree to come to a new server and start a new toon when you have your own stuff you need to keep up with too.

Now that the Anniversary xp buff is gone I am starting to pressure myself to make sure I continue to level as quickly as possible. I’ve been hanging in there around the same level as most people so far, but I am not normally a fast leveler. I get too easily distracted and find myself standing idle quite a bit. But I certainly don’t want to be the person who we’re waiting on for 2 weeks to finish up the achievement. It’s no big deal if I’m the last to hit 85, someone always has to be the last. I just don’t want it to be a situation where I’m the last by a lengthy amount of time.

I will say, leveling up by just running dungeons as fast as the queue will let you has not been as boring as I expected it to be. Maybe that’s because I’m only running each dungeon twice before I’ve levelled away from it. Lol. Now that I’m in the mid 60’s things will likely slow down and I’ll start to get sick of the same ones over and over. I did run Hellfire Rampants 5 times last night & The Blood Furnace 3 times. I’m sure you could tell by the always recognizable weapon in my screenshot that I had been in the Rampants a few times though. The only thing I’ve not been able to do correctly is keep up with two professions. I’m doing skinning and leatherworking and I’ve been making myself stay up with skinning because there’s almost always something to skin in the dungeons. Leatherworking has fallen behind though as I’m not gathering enough of a certain type of leather before I start gathering the next level higher. I suppose if I’d break down and spend some money on some leather I could catch up pretty quickly, but if I’m going to have to do it with money then there’s no difference between doing it now or catching it up later.

Okay, I guess I should do less talking and more leveling. I will be sure to update you once I hit 85 (for the achievement) and 90.

My Blizzcon Experience: Part 2 – The People

While I didn’t get to meet everyone who was there who I follow on Twitter or through blogs, websites, etc., I got to meet so many amazing people. I only wish there had been more time to spend with each of them because what you need to understand about me is I’m sappy. Like, really sappy. I really LOVE my friends and I get the warm fuzzies when interacting with them. I’m kind of like a gushing 13 year old girl in that way. When I really like someone, I get all crazy excited for any opportunity I have to chat with them. I think sometimes I wear people out because I’m pretty much always excited to talk to them when there are times maybe they don’t feel like talking. But I also have a self esteem issue (again, 13 year old girl) that leaves a bit of doubt in my mind when meeting people in real life if they truly enjoy me or if they are just being polite when we chat online and are secretly rolling their eyes during our conversations. So meeting people was my highest priority for Blizzcon and was also the thing I dreaded the most. Seriously, why are we all such ridiculous basket cases? Humans. Ugh.

Obviously the most exciting ones I would meet would be my guildies. I joined Business Time in January of this year and very quickly felt comfortable and at home there. So seeing some of the people I had been talking to on such a regular basis in game was the most important to me. But as I mentioned above, I was a bit nervous that I wanted to meet them more than they wanted to meet me. That’s not a reflection of them at all, that’s totally my issue. I am a product of my raising. When you spend your childhood hearing you’re worthless and no one ever really wants to be around you it becomes entrenched in your brain, no matter how old you are now or how incorrect you know it is. It created an inner voice that won’t go away. But I am a happy person so I do my best to ignore it and power through my fears. I can usually tell within a few minutes of meeting someone face to face whether they actually think of me as a friend or if they are just someone who’s polite. Reading body language and seeing eye contact is a good indicator. Once I’ve established things are good, I relax and get over my doubts. Of course, I still have the “okay, they like me but am I spending too much time in their space” thing but that’s a whole new can of worms.

Okay, this post wasn’t supposed to be headed this way. Let’s get back on track.

So everyone knows Vidyala and Vosskah are awesome right? Because they totally are. I had gotten all sappy about them a long time ago because they’re just fantastic people. They are also the people who completely eased my worries about meeting them before I actually ever did because this happened:

In ALL CAPS even, which makes it mean even more.

They want to meet me? What? Without me initiating it? What? People don’t do that if they don’t actually want to meet you. Okay, it’s Thursday, I haven’t even made it to the hotel yet and I already know I’m going to be fine. Seriously, that was HUGE. These two… the best. I needed that, I appreciated that and I now totally ❤ them even more than I already did. Kim and I checked into our hotel, Vid and Voss walked over to meet us and we walked somewhere and ate something. BUT MOSTLY I GOT TO HANG OUT WITH VID AND VOSS. Yay!

But of course the day got better because later on we met up in the lobby of the Hilton and were joined by guildies Rhidach and Antigen. We grabbed a table and sat down for some drinks and conversation. Our other guildie who had tickets, Tass (@beartank), didn't arrive until later in the evening but we all got a chance to chill out in Vid's room after the WoW Insider party and the line to pick up our badges. It was awesome. Over the course of the next few days we got to spend more time together as a group, including a small, cozy sushi dinner on Saturday night that was just so fantastic and relaxing.

Because it was all happening so fast and there were so many people and so much stuff going on, I am not even going to try and write down any when and where details for most of the others I met. I likely wouldn't get it right if I tried. But I do have a mostly complete list (I believe) of peeps I got to meet from hanging out in the Hilton and attending the WoW Insider party. I'll use their twitter names to make it easier: @KelistiMMO, @Jasyla, @hestiahdruid, @AppleCiderMage, @Tikari, @orkchop, @MarconinWoW, @Kristin @Jedsblog (meeting him involved much Twitter coordination – yay for Twitter), @beruheals and hubby Brade. I had @AngryOrc and @Sha of Happiness pointed out to me, but they were both swarmed with people and don't know me, so I didn't go over to officially meet them. Though I should have. Just like I should have said hello to Ghostcrawler and Chris Metzen on those occasions when I found myself 2 feet from them. Sigh.

I also had two very exciting meetups on the convention floor; one by accident and one that was a determined wild goose chase. Lol. I came across @Draynee while she was in her amazing costume and I didn't even know it was her. I had stopped to take a picture of her and she totally noticed my custom art badge I had commissioned from Vidyala. She pointed at me and was like "hey, I follow you on twitter". I totally stared at her blankly and said "and you are?". Yep, I'm quite the charmer. But as soon as she told me who she was I was so glad she had recognized my name because I got to say hi and gently steal a hug from her while trying not to mess up the costume in any way. Yay for chance encounters. The wild goose chase involved the wildly popular Navimie. I was determined to meet her before leaving Anaheim so I started tweeting her to try and coordinate locations. We missed each other several times by several minutes each time because so many people wanted to be Navispammed she just didn't stay in one spot very long. But it all worked out and we finally found each other and spent a few minutes gushing at each other. I even got her to pose for a picture which I immediately tweeted out to prove I had been #navispammed irl. Meeting these two was awesome.

Sunday involved a trip to DisneyLand with Kim, Vidyala, BeruHeals and a few others. I’m not actually trying to be secretive in any way about who was there, but I totally never asked them if it was okay for me to blog about it, so I will be cautious and not mention them. There was a group of 8 of us though and it was a really fun day. We rode rides, we watched shows, we ate at The Blue Bayou inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Just a fantastic time. I’m glad it worked out that we could all go together. All of us girls bought ears to wear. I’m such a nerd, I bought R2D2 mouse ears. I love ’em.

I’m sure I’m missing someone or some detail, but suffice it to say the whole people thing was amazing. If I get a chance to go again, I’ll totally go in a bit braver and will be determined to be less shy so that I can add even more people to my list. Of course, I can’t end my Blizzcon posting without saying a big thank you to my friend Kim, who attended with me and was my roomie for the weekend. Kim and I have been friends for almost 8 years now (and co-workers that entire time as well) and I take total credit for getting her started playing WoW. She isn’t in my guild, doesn’t have a Twitter account or follow any blogs too closely, so she didn’t have the same sort of agenda I had yet she patiently (mostly :P) followed me around so that I could meet all these people. I did mouth her about the fact that she didn’t adjust away from her normal sleeping hours so she crashed out hours before I did every night (srsly, like 7 – 8 pm LOL) and got up hours before me (2 – 3am) but that’s because of her work schedule so it’s just a total habit for her. She’d go to bed and I’d wander over to the Hilton. It worked out fine. I was just glad she was there as my security blanket – someone I knew well and could be comfortable around at a time and in a place where I was nervous about everything. I may even allow her to go again if I get tickets next time. Maybe. 😛

The One Where I Finally Got My Crawdad

Last Friday morning as I was derping around in game, two of my guildies asked me if I would join them for a Heroic Scenario. I hadn’t ran one yet because, as usual, I was convinced I would fail. But there was no one else logged in and they were willing to drag me along so I let them. I died once because I didn’t move out of bad fast enough, but other than that I don’t think I dragged them down too much. Luckily I had the quest to complete a heroic scenario in my quest log so as soon as we finished it, I got to go turn it in and get some 517 shoulders. Woot. Plus, we all looked really cute as goblins.

Now that I had new shoulders, I needed to enchant them and once again my guildies were there for me and I was immediately sent the enchant I needed. Being in a great guild makes all the difference, I tell ya. I tried to insist on paying and was denied, but I finally got him to admit he would allow me to send him some Outland herbs to help him level up an alt in alchemy. Me being me, I immediately went to the Outlands and started flying around all the zones picking up all the herbs. While in Terrokar Forest I decided to stop and fish from the Highland Mixed schools of fish for a few minutes because I had never gotten the Magical Crawdad box from Mr. Pinchy. In fact, I believe I had only caught Mr. Pinchy once in all my years and he didn’t give me no damn crawdad. But lo and behold, in less than 5 minutes I had fished up a Mr. Pinchy. My first use was just the health increase blessing. Then I had to wait 4 hours to make another wish. I finished up gathering herbs and mailed them to my guildie, then I logged out and took a nap. Obviously, when I logged back in later, I got my Magical Crawdad. It was a damn good day.

The One Where I Join A New Guild & Rant About Tempest Keep

Gather ’round, everyone. I have an announcement to make. As you can see by the magical floating text being displayed above my head, I have joined a new guild. Some of you may recall I recently mentioned I was casually looking for a new guild to be … err, casual in … and I am happy to report I have found myself a new home. The wonderful people at Business Time graciously allowed me to spend a couple of weeks with them on an alt so we could get to know each other and I could gauge if there was more social activity during the main hours I am logged into the game than there was in my current guild. I am happy to report they didn’t immediately hate me and they are indeed more chatty and have more people online at once than I had been previously experiencing. On Saturday night they offered to let me make them my new, permanent home. I moved Elfindale over that night and have really enjoyed seeing all the good-natured guild chat and how they all pick on each other. So while I always get a little sad and totally feel bad when I leave a guild behind, I can’t help but be excited to have a more social experience now. Thank you, Business Time, for letting me hang with you guys.

In other news, I am frustrated. Can you tell? Even though my friend Grace can easily solo Tempest Keep (and in fact, last week she finally got the Ashes of Al’ar mount. YAY!) and has explained her method to me in vent I am still going in there and dying repeatedly after I burn all the weapons down and the 4 asshats that are Kael’thas sidekicks make their way back to me. At the start of the fight, I am running back to the entrance & downing those 4 in varying intervals between the entrance and Kael’s room, but as they all come back to life once the weapons are dead I just am unable to do anything else. Even with the staff equipped and being used, I stay stunned, disoriented, silenced with no chances to heal myself or throw more than one or two instant spells until finally I’m dead. I read on the forums that there seems to be a bug where the buff from the staff does not work and others have experienced the same problem I am having. But it’s odd that I would get that bug every time and Grace never saw it once. Stupid Undead Priests. 😛

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.

It’s 2013 And It’s All About Me Now

Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to 2013. I am not normally someone who makes a big deal about a new year rolling around because all of those resolutions and promises people make on January 1st are usually things that could have / should have been worked on any old random day instead of waiting until you have a new calendar to mark up. But this year I am in the spirit and I am stoked to make 2013 a great year. I certainly wouldn’t say 2012 was bad, but it was definitely typical. I ended the year having the same personal issues I’ve always had, the same unfulfilled desires I’ve always had, and the same opinion of me I’ve always had. But recent events, or at least my perception of recent events, has caused me to spend a lot of time reflecting on the deep, inner workings of myself over the holidays. I knew I wouldn’t like what I saw, which is why it’s something I’ve avoided for decades now, but I was way overdue for a closer look. And I’ve certainly emerged with new motivations and goals as well as the desire and willingness to become a better me.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to bog this place down with my journey towards personal discovery and reinvention. I did have to mention it here though because World of Warcraft is a big part of my life and the things I need to change and the emotions I struggle with are both impacted by the game and have an impact on my time in game. Because of this, it stands to reason that things like determining what I want from an activity and learning to focus on accomplishing goals will apply to both my gaming life and my non-gaming life. The purpose of this post is to try and get the process started and begin figuring out what I want from WoW in 2013.

I have always considered myself an adaptable person because when I am around people I enjoy, I will enjoy doing whatever it is they are interested in doing. Does that make sense? It’s kind of hard to explain. I suppose it can be best explained with an example. Like when I go visit my friend Lisa, she’s a huge fan of shows like Judge Judy and Dr. Phil so almost every time I’m at her house, we’re watching episodes of those shows that she’s dvr’d. Now while I’m there I’m totally fine with it; we’re having a good visit and I don’t hate Judge Judy. We trash talk the defendants and laugh at how mean Judge Judy can be. It’s a good time because I enjoy being with Lisa. But I’ve never watched a single minute of Judge Judy outside of visiting Lisa because it’s not something I’m interested in just for the sake of watching. Hopefully that clears it up a bit. But honestly, most people aren’t like that. When Lisa comes over to my house and I have Duck Dynasty playing, she doesn’t sit down and enjoy Duck Dynasty with me; she asks if there’s any Judge Judy to watch. Now before everyone tries to tell me Lisa is a terrible friend, let me just say no she’s not. She is not doing it to be rude, she’s doing it because she doesn’t like Duck Dynasty and I’ve led her to believe I do like Judge Judy. So she believes if we switch to Judge Judy we’ll both be happy.

I’m getting a little carried away and this is becoming wordier than I intended. Basically what I’m trying to say is I’ve spent almost my entire life being fine with whatever anyone wants to do as long as I get to spend time with them. I’m now realizing that’s a disservice to both them and me. It sort of makes it seem like our friendship is built around a falsehood, though Judge Judy has nothing to do with WHY we’re friends at all. And what it has done for me is made me boring. Vanilla. A blank canvas. Someone who doesn’t actually have my own likes, dislikes and opinions. And the few I do have I generally don’t walk around displaying because I might offend someone and unfortunately, I am the type of person who believes I need everyone to like me. You can see how this is one of the big flaws within myself I need to fix. I promise you (and me) this – I will and I am.

Not surprisingly, this type of behavior spills over into WoW and it’s something I need to fix in all aspects of my life. It affects what I do (or mostly don’t do) in-game and it even affects this blog because I typically censor myself here so as not to accidentally upset anyone. Well fuck that. I’m done censoring myself. Yep, I dropped an f-bomb. I realize that’s a pretty mild offense, but it’s a good starting place. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Guess what, people? I fucking curse like a sailor sometimes. Because I’m an adult, I know where and when it’s inappropriate, but this blog is my space and my mother will never read it. So starting today, you’ll likely see some cursing. I’m pretty bad ass like that. Lol.

So what do I want from WoW? That’s a damn good question. Every time new content comes out I get all excited and start talking about how I want to keep up with content and do raiding and max all the things. Unfortunately, it never happens. I’ve been playing for 5 years now and the only thing I have really accomplished is getting Loremaster before Cata dropped and getting the Holiday meta-achievement way earlier than a lot of people did. Neither one of those are that impressive, though a lot of people do seem to struggle with the holiday pvp requirements and SOMEHOW I had no trouble doing those the first time around. Now I’m at a point where shit needs to get real. I have had a lot of fun over the past 5 years, but I’ve also had a lot of quiet, personal heartbreak and dissatisfaction due to not getting things accomplished. I’ve spent the last several years still mourning the death of my first ever guild. Not being able to let go of that has certainly been hampering things. When that guild split, I had no idea what to do. I wanted to follow some people to the new guild, but I waffled due to a combination of loyalty, not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings and not being sure I was even wanted in the new guild since I wasn’t included in the original decision to split. So I stayed with the old guild and spent months enjoying chatting with a few of the people who stayed, intensely missing the people that left and doing not much more than standing in Stormwind feeling sorry for myself. I finally decided to move to the new guild and I don’t regret that decision, but by the time I got over there it was filled with a lot of people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me and they were months ahead of me in gear and content. I never really worked as hard as I could have to fit in there and I never really made a place for myself on their team. Then that guild split and I left it too.

I transferred servers, I rolled alts on various servers, I played SWTOR almost exclusively for 6 or 7 months. I have missed out on a lot of things in Azeroth I had hoped to experience. Now it’s time for me to take control of the game and make it be what I want it to be. Don’t misunderstand, I have had a lot of fun here. I have some great friends and Elfindale is in a guild with 2 of my longest known WoW friends as well as a whole group of awesome people. But just like before, I don’t seem to fit in. I’m casual, they’re not. I prefer constant rolling guild chat, they’re a very quiet bunch. I enjoy dungeons and heroics more when I can run with people I know, they don’t seem to ever do group runs. I have to put some serious thought into what I want to do with Elfi. My other level 90 toon is in a very tiny Horde guild with another couple of great friends. We’ve been having a blast doing old content for pets and mounts as well as silly things like 5 manning Ulduar 25 to get achievements. But I am not doing dailies, gaining rep to get better gear, learning Heroics or becoming prepared to run LFR. Just like my Alliance guild, I enjoy my time there. But I’m wondering how much of my time in both of these guilds are similar to my story earlier about watching Judge Judy with Lisa.

Part of me is afraid if I’m not actively spending time in these guilds, with these friends, our friendship will fade. I realize that’s part paranoia and is very telling of my self esteem issues. Part of me can see it may already be happening regardless of what toon I spend my time logged in with. So the time has come for me to really sit down and analyze what I want from the game. I will likely not stop derping around in old content laughing my ass off in Vent with my Horde guild, but outside of that do I want to get my Horde toon geared up and start working on dailies and rep? Or do I want to just leave her for derping and start putting serious work into Elfi? If I do decide to become more focused on advancing Elfi what exactly are my goals with her? Do I stay in the guild I’m in and just run heroics and LFR by myself or do I think about finding a guild that’s more in line with my casual, social style and be able to do things with a group? Do I want to level both toons up and have more options?

I don’t have the answers to these questions today, but I am determined to get it straightened out. It will go hand in hand with all of the other self-improvement I need to do and will be doing over the course of this year. I’m excited to finally be ready to work on being me. I am looking forward to seeing what 2013 has to offer, both in-game and out of game. If any of you have been in this type of position or have any special insights or advice you would like to share, I would love to see it. And I promise that if you offer up an opinion, I won’t simply adopt it as my own. 😛

Screenshot Saturday

Finally exalted with my own guild. I’m proud and excited and yet, I’m embarrassed that it took this long. But I’m still proud and excited.