September, September

For the first time in many years, I've moved to and played consistently on a new server with my Paladin, Innana. A server where I don't know anyone, in a new guild. It's a bit of an isolating and lonely experience, but I fully appreciate that this is the lull before the storm. Things will pick up very quickly in a couple of weeks, and then I won't even have the time to breathe, but right now, it feel lethargic. I almost wish I could just log out and not log back in till the 28th of August, but I'm a completionist and there is much work to be done to prepare for Mists.

I only moved Innana over as I didn't want to spend a lot of money, and thus, I've had to level a Druid to farm ore and herbs, and I've also parked a Death Knight in Stormwind to make Flasks and Belt Buckles for me. They still need quite a bit of love and care, and my druid is still wandering in Hellfire Peninsula. Here's hoping I can get both of them to 85 before the 25th of September.

Not to mention churning out 4.8k guild rep every week with fistfuls of Dailies. At least it's worth some gold. Every time I think I'm done for good with Baradin Hold and Molten Front, there's something else to suck me back in.

But it's all busy work. Nothing truly engaging. I miss my friends, and Battle.Net is a great resource, but it can't compensate for what playing on Moon Guard is like. That's the other thing, the new server is so quiet compared to Moon Guard. I flew through Elwyn to get to Darkmoon Faire, and I paused, because General chat wasn't a continuously flowing river of hideous, horrific and hillariously bizarre comments. In fact, Goldshire was practically deserted save for the occasional human in the single-digits hurrying about with quests.

Even during peak hours, I can find standing room in the Auction House and the Trade District and Dwarf District aren't crowded with giant epic mounts. Last night, the old guild went in to finish another Legendary staff and I went along on my Warlock to help. At the end of the night, nearing midnight server, when the staff was finished in Stormwind, the sky was black with wings. Easily at least a hundred people crowding around the dragon, even this late in the expansion.

I'm not complaining, necessarily, it's nice to have such quiet, even though the Auction House is - let's call it strange to be polite. Finishing quests is easy without having to compete for kills or resources, and farming and such seem to be significantly easier, at least in the lower levels so far. I think in all my time so far I've only come across one other competing farmer. And maybe I'll even admit that it's gratifying not to see a dozen Twilight Vanquishers floating above Auction Houses, and any number of Saviors and Firelords and Dragonslayers every time I swung around (back, vanity, back, return to the black pit from whence you rose!)

So for now, I level my alts, switch over to help the other guild when they need an extra body, and wait for September. Well, August 28th, now, which is 12 days away.

I would love to accomplish a few things before that happens.

- Heroic Nefarian, Al'Akir and Ascendant Council
- Heroic Sinestra
- Heroic Ragnaros

Anyone want to join me to work on anything on the list while we wait? Or does anyone need a Prot/Retadin to do any of the above? :-)

Long Time No See!

It's been a while since I wrote!

There are a couple of themes that are going around the blogs that I read lately that I'd love to respond to  but I don't really know how to. Either I'm not affected by them as strongly as the writers, or I feel like what I have to say is so private that I'd either e-mail the person directly or maybe just silent because I don't know the person well enough.

It's an odd time. Raids are quietly falling silent, people don't log in anymore, guilds are falling out of the game, or scaling back their commitments and I kind of see myself doing the same to some degree, but I still enjoy the game. I'm excited about arenas and pushing my team ranking up. I'm excited for whenever we start doing Heroic raids. I'm excited to farm Madness for more loots as we have a fairly repeatable and reliable strategy for killing him now.

I am absolutely loving being a paladin tank lately. We are the most imbalanced and over powered tank class in the game right now and I love it!

And yet, the game seems distant lately. I don't exactly know why. Some of it is the content being old, some of it is the anticipation I have for MoP, I'd rather play MoP than drag my heels in Cataclysm any longer, honestly, and part of it is wondering if I'm missing something when I read about other people dropping the raiding game or the game completely in some cases.

Why do I keep playing, then? People are leaving, apparently in droves based on forum posts and such, for Star Wars, and while I have some dim interest in the game, it's not enough for me to keep up two subscriptions at the same time. I might wind up playing it to fill in time anyway, but I'm not excited about it.

I tried RIFT and was burned by barely playing the game until I canceled it three months in. LOTRO was the only other game I played consistently but it has changed a lot, and for the worse I think, since it went F2P and the audience it has picked up since then. I miss the quiet, mature audience it had before then even if the game was far more populated after the transition. I don't know how it is now, I haven't played it in a long time. Besides, there was no end-game there to speak of.

Anyway. I keep playing WoW because my friends are playing, because I'm enjoying the game, the raiding is great, the PvP is fun, but I guess I just wish I had something to do with my alts other than the same things I'm doing with my main. I don't know. Maybe I'm just... not burned out, exactly, but bored?  I'm done with the leveling game. I love raiding, I love Arena, but the rest of the time I have to convince myself to log in.

MoP can't get here fast enough, or I'm going to have to play SW just to stay amused. Any SW guilds recruiting? :-P