Demoted

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.

Worse and worse

For a variety of reasons, I can't really get into guild groups for heroics on the days we raid - I log in just before raid time and after raid most folks are too burned to run anything so I wind up PuGing, which is why I've been writing about these unsuccessful runs lately.

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But last night's adventure after raid was a rare bit of insight that I can't even bring myself to recollect. I'm hoping copious amounts of alcohol will suffice to diminish the memory of that PuG.

I'll try to be as objective as I can and say that I think I'm not a terrible person to run PuGs with. I throw in a lot of emoticons and happy faces when I ask people to do stuff. I explain things if anyone is unfamiliar with stuff and always ask if my explanation was sufficient. When possible, I'll take on the ugly roles of the fight so people can do a minimum amount of work to win. I'm happy to do most of the typing as well so long as I can get a minimal acknowledgment from the person I'm addressing.

I don't think that asking for someone to say "ok" after telling them to, for example, kite adds or block a beam is too much - it's just common, polite, human, civil courtesy to reply when addressed directly, I think. Or maybe I'm just too much of a social chatter box for expecting such behavior from PuGs who're only there for gear and Valor points.

As we hacked and sawed our way through a dungeon (wherein the entire group died to AoE that they couldn't run out of to the first boss and I kept myself alive for 2 minutes while they ran back and helped top me off and do some damage to the boss before... all of them died to the same mechanic again and I slowly whittled at the 1 million health left on the boss), I asked the silent mage if she could please block the right beam.

No answer. I ask again. And what I get is a reply that beggars belief.

"I'm not illiterate, I can read."

Am I being a completely over-sensitive bastard when I just want to make sure that when we're planning placement for a crucial mechanic that the person ACKNOWLEDGE the request being made of them?

A bit of back and forth later, we pull, I block one beam, the healer another, and the mage stands by the beam without blocking it, neither of the other two DPS step in, and as I stare helplessly, the add evolves and murders me dead.

I just don't get it.

Communication is such a vital part of this game. If you can't be bothered to acknowledge the existence of other players in the game why bother doing content that requires you to work with them? Just run quests and do solo instances for stuff you out gear or out level.

But if you do choose to PuG - please acknowledge text directed at you or the group in general. There is nothing more helplessly frustrating than staring at an unmoving chat-box after asking for input.