Two weeks ago, after raid, I finally asked the officers to demote me. It took a bit of doing, some hemming, some hawing, a lot of asking, "Are you sure?" and when I demoted my alts from Officer-alt to Member-alt, Thistle finally knocked me down a peg and there I was, for the first time since the summer of 2009 without an officer title in a guild.
It feels strange - liberating in one sense, disenfranchising in another.
Asking one of the officers to withdraw materials from the bank so I could cut gems and enchant the latest drops was strange and confusing when I've been used to having open access for such a long time. Not having to log in until 5 minutes to raid, not having to worry about signups and more-or-less just showing up to play was... refreshing.
It will take me a bit of getting used to as I can't help wanting to contribute my ideas because, at the end of the day, I am a loud-mouth. I can't help it, I just have to talk and say something - I'm one of those people with an opinion on everything, for the better or worse. As a member, I have taken to couching my statements with, "If I might suggest," and "Perhaps we could," instead of, "Here's what we need to do."
That, along with a role-switch has made raiding somewhat new. Pushing numbers, collecting gear (for the third time), and just plain working at the game is a nice break from the usual routine. I think tonight we might finally begin on the dreaded Heroic Spine encounter. When Dragon Soul came out, I still wore a shield on my back. I remember watching the Korean world first kill, and staring at the ocean of Blood chasing the pro-tank as he kited them all over Deathwing non-stop throughout the third plate. It reminded me of Nefarian, and I thought to myself, that's the kind of pain I'm up for. That's my job, right there. And here we are at last, at least two to three months too late, but here never-the-less, and my job is not to kite adds all over Deathwing, after all, it is, instead, to bring the fire and the fury of the Heavens down onto his body and rend it into pieces. We'll see how it goes. I'm prepared for many nights of pain.
But I was talking about being demoted.
I've talked enough about the why and the how and the what if and all that. I also wonder if this is my first, shuffling, slow step towards quitting WoW but I doubt it. I really do love the game, Azeroth is so familiar to me that I would miss it greatly and I still haven't found anything quite as engaging on a regular, weekly basis as raiding is for me. It's 6 hours a week of focused attention and creative problem solving - nothing comes close to beating that in terms of regular activity that keeps me hooked weeks on end.
But perhaps it is a way for me to ease back on the level of control I feel like I need to have in most situations. This releases me from control, it allows me to sit back and let someone else steer the ship without me on the shoulder tapping and pointing out that I would be driving in third gear not second, and maybe they should ease off the curb-hugging. I'm sure that was annoying as hell while I was doing it for the last few months, and now that I'm out of the Officer chat completely, I'm not even capable of that.
What this has opened up to me, are the quiet, secret little conversations that the DPS have, to implement the plan handed down. For example, my rogue friend and I were in charge of kiting lightning on Heroic Hagara for one of the sides, and she whispered me to coordinate our movement and we practiced it and I realized it was something that happened completely away from the eyes of the officers. Same thing on Heroic Warmaster, where we coordinated where and how to soak the Barrages together and when to take them alone. It's the nitty-gritty plan-meets-dirt kind of coordination that I was completely blind to until the last two weeks.
Sometimes, I feel like there are so many undercurrents, conversations, and crosscurrents in any given raid that there would be a network, a tangled web of lines of communications between the different chat channels, the public channels, the actual live audio channel (barring any custom chat channels there) and any number of individual whispers between members. All in the space of a few hours while playing video-games. It's almost enough to make me want to write a book about it.
But I've rambled on long enough, and long past any edge of reason. And my writing is... well, I don't know.
That's a different topic entirely, one of great consternation, frustration and anxiety. I feel little and less confidence in my writing, as if all sense of meter and verse has evaporated. I feel as one might on the far side of grace, downhill momentum growing as gravity takes hold. I don't know. Even this feels dull and monotonous, leaden and heavy with ill-intent. As if what I'm writing is just blunt commentary, deaf to any sort of poetry or insight, mute in any significant, or even insignificant matter. Mechanized metronomic words.
We'll see. We'll see. We'll see.
Showing posts with label rambling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rambling. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Two Years
Warning!
This post will be a bit sentimental and melodramatic, so you have full rights to skip this - it might even get sappy and mopey in places.
I've been writing this blog for two years as of today.
155 posts, 192 comments, 31k page-views and about half of those from non-US sources, including Brazil, Denmark, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden...
The bulk of my traffic has come from a very small subset of posts - the story got a lot of attention, another entry picked up WoWInsider got some eyeballs, and my transmog posts seem popular, as do a couple of guides in particular, but the rest of my entries are not particular standouts. Some posts that I put a lot of thought and effort and emotion into just kind of slipped into oblivion and I find that sad, but such is the way of things in the frequent writing market - you produce a bunch of stuff and throw it up on the wall and some of it will stick and most of it will just kind of melt into the plaster becoming the background for the standouts.
It's kind of crazy (and somewhat depressing) when I think about the number of number who've read this blog is bigger than the number of people who've seen my plays or read my fiction. But it's a privilege to have people read and take an interest in anything one writes, and I do appreciate the people who've followed me for this long, or have even taken an occasional gander at a Google-result that plopped them here. I appreciate every one of you who has taken a few minutes to read what I had to say, and if it helped you in any way, I'm twice as glad.
155 posts in 2 years is almost 1.5 posts a week. That's not a terrible average, though I've had more productive months than others. Especially in the end-tier of the expansion, when MoP is bringing so many changes, a lot of what there is to say seems somehow irrelevant or too-late or after-the-fact so I find myself starting topics or looking at old drafts and slowly deleting them one line at a time, as I realize they're well past their best-use date.
I've also been thinking of stopping completely, but I don't think that'll happen. Even if my readership dropped back to the dozen or two views a month I used to get when I started, I think I'd just keep writing to catalog my thoughts.
Often, I find myself wanting to blog about topics that aren't relevant here - my issues with politic and economics, my struggle with atheism while trying to bond with a religious family whose culture is tied into faith, I could write all day about my son who's nearly a year and a half, and I want to write about the last year of depression treatment that I went into... but none of that is relevant here, none of these are things I want to tie into Warcraft, even if all of these are entangled with my Warcraft experience in deep, intractable ways.
My guild that I play with, my friends that I play with, are all carefully chosen people who reflect my political and non-religious ideals. Not only their tolerance, but their acceptance and involvement with me and my family keeps me engaged. My wife doesn't play, but some members of my guild are friends with her on Facebook, they ask me about my son, I share videos with them over YouTube. I bond with some of them about my treatment, and... it's all tied up.
Two years ago was also, more or less, when we started this guild, when the six or so of us decided we would play the game on our terms, and wouldn't be held to crappy standards of play, nor would we be exposed to homophobia or sexism just to be able to progress as raiders or have strong PvP teams. And we've succeeded in almost every way imaginable.
And through it all, I kept writing, about my frustrations, about my triumphs, about my concerns, during that time I went from co-GM and Raid-Lead to Raid-Lad to merely an officer and attended nearly 95% of the raids that happened during this time. I did Arena in three seasons reaching ~1600 rating every time on two classes.
All of that to wind up exactly where I started two years ago. The end of an expansion, goals in hand, hope and excitement for the future, surrounded by friends... but there are two fundamental differences from the way things were two years ago.
1. I'm a dad.
2. I'm not depressed.
The dad thing and its constraints on time is obvious, but the depression thing is a bit more complicated. At some point in 2009/2010 I slipped into a major depression, and it sapped me of all ambition and creativity. I couldn't write or play music, couldn't follow through on projects, or do much of anything really, and the last year of medication and therapy have slowly brought me back to life and a lot of that creative energy that I was missing has started seeping back into my life.
And with it come the constraints on time.
There is the small game-development company I'm working with as a designer and programmer. There are the numerous publishing projects I'm working on with my wife and a friend. There is my own writing to pursue, my first major play that I'm trying to finalize and find a company to read, my book that I want to draft and send to an agent, the songs I want to record...
Do I have time to raid? Do I have time to write about Warcraft?
I don't know. Not yet. I'm trying to do everything, and a lot of it is suffering from a lack of attention - but my philosophy about creative projects has always been to enjoy the process and not worry about the product, and that's what I'm doing right now. After two years of gray, dull depression, just being involved with these collaborative projects is enough to fill my life with color.
As my son gets older, that time squeeze will get tighter and tighter, and at some point I will have to do something to curtail my Warcraft time-slot. But that's still some time away, even though time seems to be accelerating. When I think of my son being a year and a half old, it seems crazy, how could so much time have passed by already?
But it has. And more will be gone soon. The patches keep on coming, the dungeons and raids get cleared, dragons die, gold is collected from sold auctions, we run our dailies, log in and out, make alts, laugh over vent on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and after enchanting the loots and cuts some gems to fill empty slots, we say good-night and turn off the monitor plunging the room into darkness.
And, as well all know, it doesn't end there, completely, does it? In the secret moment, in the instant of vulnerability when the day's exhaustion catches up, we sometimes experience an out of body moment of connection.
In the darkness, motes of light dance on the screen, illuminating the outline of my avatar, Innana, my identity present in Azeroth, Innana, a stronger, braver version of me with the strength to protect her friends from harm, with all of her issues, her stories, her nightmares and dreams, she looks back at me, waves, wondering who I might be, and I wave back, knowing exactly who she is, before she fades into the matte, shadow shimmer of the black screen and I turn slowly to climb into bed, well past midnight, and close my eyes, caught between her and me for an instant, between dream and reality, before sleep takes over.
I don't know if I'll still be here in 2 more years, but I know I'll be here 2 days, 2 weeks, and 2 months from now, and more than that, I'll just have to wait and see.
Thank you for sticking with me for so long.
This post will be a bit sentimental and melodramatic, so you have full rights to skip this - it might even get sappy and mopey in places.
I've been writing this blog for two years as of today.
155 posts, 192 comments, 31k page-views and about half of those from non-US sources, including Brazil, Denmark, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden...
The bulk of my traffic has come from a very small subset of posts - the story got a lot of attention, another entry picked up WoWInsider got some eyeballs, and my transmog posts seem popular, as do a couple of guides in particular, but the rest of my entries are not particular standouts. Some posts that I put a lot of thought and effort and emotion into just kind of slipped into oblivion and I find that sad, but such is the way of things in the frequent writing market - you produce a bunch of stuff and throw it up on the wall and some of it will stick and most of it will just kind of melt into the plaster becoming the background for the standouts.
It's kind of crazy (and somewhat depressing) when I think about the number of number who've read this blog is bigger than the number of people who've seen my plays or read my fiction. But it's a privilege to have people read and take an interest in anything one writes, and I do appreciate the people who've followed me for this long, or have even taken an occasional gander at a Google-result that plopped them here. I appreciate every one of you who has taken a few minutes to read what I had to say, and if it helped you in any way, I'm twice as glad.
155 posts in 2 years is almost 1.5 posts a week. That's not a terrible average, though I've had more productive months than others. Especially in the end-tier of the expansion, when MoP is bringing so many changes, a lot of what there is to say seems somehow irrelevant or too-late or after-the-fact so I find myself starting topics or looking at old drafts and slowly deleting them one line at a time, as I realize they're well past their best-use date.
I've also been thinking of stopping completely, but I don't think that'll happen. Even if my readership dropped back to the dozen or two views a month I used to get when I started, I think I'd just keep writing to catalog my thoughts.
Often, I find myself wanting to blog about topics that aren't relevant here - my issues with politic and economics, my struggle with atheism while trying to bond with a religious family whose culture is tied into faith, I could write all day about my son who's nearly a year and a half, and I want to write about the last year of depression treatment that I went into... but none of that is relevant here, none of these are things I want to tie into Warcraft, even if all of these are entangled with my Warcraft experience in deep, intractable ways.
My guild that I play with, my friends that I play with, are all carefully chosen people who reflect my political and non-religious ideals. Not only their tolerance, but their acceptance and involvement with me and my family keeps me engaged. My wife doesn't play, but some members of my guild are friends with her on Facebook, they ask me about my son, I share videos with them over YouTube. I bond with some of them about my treatment, and... it's all tied up.
Two years ago was also, more or less, when we started this guild, when the six or so of us decided we would play the game on our terms, and wouldn't be held to crappy standards of play, nor would we be exposed to homophobia or sexism just to be able to progress as raiders or have strong PvP teams. And we've succeeded in almost every way imaginable.
And through it all, I kept writing, about my frustrations, about my triumphs, about my concerns, during that time I went from co-GM and Raid-Lead to Raid-Lad to merely an officer and attended nearly 95% of the raids that happened during this time. I did Arena in three seasons reaching ~1600 rating every time on two classes.
All of that to wind up exactly where I started two years ago. The end of an expansion, goals in hand, hope and excitement for the future, surrounded by friends... but there are two fundamental differences from the way things were two years ago.
1. I'm a dad.
2. I'm not depressed.
The dad thing and its constraints on time is obvious, but the depression thing is a bit more complicated. At some point in 2009/2010 I slipped into a major depression, and it sapped me of all ambition and creativity. I couldn't write or play music, couldn't follow through on projects, or do much of anything really, and the last year of medication and therapy have slowly brought me back to life and a lot of that creative energy that I was missing has started seeping back into my life.
And with it come the constraints on time.
There is the small game-development company I'm working with as a designer and programmer. There are the numerous publishing projects I'm working on with my wife and a friend. There is my own writing to pursue, my first major play that I'm trying to finalize and find a company to read, my book that I want to draft and send to an agent, the songs I want to record...
Do I have time to raid? Do I have time to write about Warcraft?
I don't know. Not yet. I'm trying to do everything, and a lot of it is suffering from a lack of attention - but my philosophy about creative projects has always been to enjoy the process and not worry about the product, and that's what I'm doing right now. After two years of gray, dull depression, just being involved with these collaborative projects is enough to fill my life with color.
As my son gets older, that time squeeze will get tighter and tighter, and at some point I will have to do something to curtail my Warcraft time-slot. But that's still some time away, even though time seems to be accelerating. When I think of my son being a year and a half old, it seems crazy, how could so much time have passed by already?
But it has. And more will be gone soon. The patches keep on coming, the dungeons and raids get cleared, dragons die, gold is collected from sold auctions, we run our dailies, log in and out, make alts, laugh over vent on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and after enchanting the loots and cuts some gems to fill empty slots, we say good-night and turn off the monitor plunging the room into darkness.
And, as well all know, it doesn't end there, completely, does it? In the secret moment, in the instant of vulnerability when the day's exhaustion catches up, we sometimes experience an out of body moment of connection.
In the darkness, motes of light dance on the screen, illuminating the outline of my avatar, Innana, my identity present in Azeroth, Innana, a stronger, braver version of me with the strength to protect her friends from harm, with all of her issues, her stories, her nightmares and dreams, she looks back at me, waves, wondering who I might be, and I wave back, knowing exactly who she is, before she fades into the matte, shadow shimmer of the black screen and I turn slowly to climb into bed, well past midnight, and close my eyes, caught between her and me for an instant, between dream and reality, before sleep takes over.
I don't know if I'll still be here in 2 more years, but I know I'll be here 2 days, 2 weeks, and 2 months from now, and more than that, I'll just have to wait and see.
Thank you for sticking with me for so long.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Catching Up
There is so much going on in game, and at the same time, so little. This will be rambling, I guess!
After a weird week of suck on my part, we're back on track with killing new bosses and progression is chuggling along. I expect we'll get to 6 heroic bosses within a month or so - definitely before the next patch, and that makes me happy. I'd love to spend at least a whole week on Heroic Ragnaros with a rock-solid group before the next patch comes, just to experience it. But that's some ways away for us, we're just starting to collect heroic gear now.
Our main issue is still that last one or two floating spot that becomes difficult to juggle.
I was informed that one of our core raiders who has been with us for over two years now, is going to be retiring after Deathwing. Which is awesome, he's excited to move on with his life and stuff, and I wish him the best, but it does leave a rather large hole in our roster, and not just in terms of a slot to be replaced, but in terms of a person who was our friend for a long, long time. We'll fill the slot, but we can't replace the person.
Last night, our decked out and geared hunter's PC overheated to the point of making the game unplayable for her and she bowed out until she can afford a replacement machine but we brought in someone who was benched for the night and were able to do stuff.
I hope she's able to come back soon but we'll do what we can in the meantime. The issue becomes that if I do recruit another person to replace this hunter, I'll wind up in a situation where I'll have to play musical chairs again (and after the fiasco I went through last month with a raider upset about progression vs. gearing, I really don't want to deal with it again.)
Our Legendary continues to build, our first collector is about a third of the way through the Cinders and the second person collecting Embers is about two weeks from getting the Branch and we have a third person lined up for it after that. We'll get one Legendary out, I think, maybe get to phase 2 of the second one if 4.3 doesn't come out till late December. But still, it's nice to have it accessible - even if the process if fairly dull to collect mat rather than a series of awesome events like the extra boss.
Speaking of Legendaries, I'm seriously considering leveling a rogue just so I can do the quest-line in 4.3 - it looks freaking awesome. We only have one raiding rogue, and I'd be glad to build a second set of daggers. I love the sneaky, underhanded, do whatever it takes to win, not evil but not good by any measure, anti-hero protagonists like the new Prince of the Black Dragonflight is shaping out to be. Let's hope he is elevated to becoming the new aspect and reinvigorating the Flight and transforming them into what they were meant to be!
Of course, there is no tank legendary on the horizon, and I'll just cry about that over here after I've seen Valy'nar, Shadowmourne, and Dragonwrath crafted for other classes and specs. I look forward to crafting Father's Fangs for our resident rogue in the future.
After playing this game for so long, I just want one Legendary I can use on my main. I'll whine about this later, I have a feeling I have more to say on this topic.
After a weird week of suck on my part, we're back on track with killing new bosses and progression is chuggling along. I expect we'll get to 6 heroic bosses within a month or so - definitely before the next patch, and that makes me happy. I'd love to spend at least a whole week on Heroic Ragnaros with a rock-solid group before the next patch comes, just to experience it. But that's some ways away for us, we're just starting to collect heroic gear now.
Our main issue is still that last one or two floating spot that becomes difficult to juggle.
I was informed that one of our core raiders who has been with us for over two years now, is going to be retiring after Deathwing. Which is awesome, he's excited to move on with his life and stuff, and I wish him the best, but it does leave a rather large hole in our roster, and not just in terms of a slot to be replaced, but in terms of a person who was our friend for a long, long time. We'll fill the slot, but we can't replace the person.
Last night, our decked out and geared hunter's PC overheated to the point of making the game unplayable for her and she bowed out until she can afford a replacement machine but we brought in someone who was benched for the night and were able to do stuff.
I hope she's able to come back soon but we'll do what we can in the meantime. The issue becomes that if I do recruit another person to replace this hunter, I'll wind up in a situation where I'll have to play musical chairs again (and after the fiasco I went through last month with a raider upset about progression vs. gearing, I really don't want to deal with it again.)
Our Legendary continues to build, our first collector is about a third of the way through the Cinders and the second person collecting Embers is about two weeks from getting the Branch and we have a third person lined up for it after that. We'll get one Legendary out, I think, maybe get to phase 2 of the second one if 4.3 doesn't come out till late December. But still, it's nice to have it accessible - even if the process if fairly dull to collect mat rather than a series of awesome events like the extra boss.
Speaking of Legendaries, I'm seriously considering leveling a rogue just so I can do the quest-line in 4.3 - it looks freaking awesome. We only have one raiding rogue, and I'd be glad to build a second set of daggers. I love the sneaky, underhanded, do whatever it takes to win, not evil but not good by any measure, anti-hero protagonists like the new Prince of the Black Dragonflight is shaping out to be. Let's hope he is elevated to becoming the new aspect and reinvigorating the Flight and transforming them into what they were meant to be!
Of course, there is no tank legendary on the horizon, and I'll just cry about that over here after I've seen Valy'nar, Shadowmourne, and Dragonwrath crafted for other classes and specs. I look forward to crafting Father's Fangs for our resident rogue in the future.
After playing this game for so long, I just want one Legendary I can use on my main. I'll whine about this later, I have a feeling I have more to say on this topic.
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