Oh, hello, again!
It's been a while. Two or so months, now? I had a lazy summer, but I still managed to complete and publish a small anthology
of stories with some friends, and that was a very gratifying process,
we're going to continue and do a much bigger book in the spring. You can
read about it here on my writing (and general interest) blog (where I
will probably be writing more often, if you're especially hungry to read
my stuff.)
Unable to help myself, I tipped my toes back into raiding as well, with some friends, or tried to, but it didn't work out very well. My dear, long-suffering friend Thistleberry and I were aching to do some heroic raiding and when our old group of friends splintered (it never really jelled in the first place), we decided to shop around. Finding space for a Protection Paladin and a Discipline Priest isn't easy, let me tell you.
But we lucked out and Nephilim of Hyjal was rebuilding their team and we happened to fit into their gap. Two weeks of rather intense catching-up to heroic-raiding later, we find ourselves ready to enter Orgrimmar with a new team.
I don't know how motivated I was to start writing again, until I found out last night that one of the new healers who joined about the same time we did was none other than Kare of Ysera's Daughter, and after a few whispers about blogging and bloggers (yes, we might have talked about you) mid-pull, I found the itch for the old Warcraft blogging community returning.
Raiding with Ophelie back at the start of the expansion was a lot of fun, and I liked that feeling of reading her posts and seeing the raid through her eyes, getting her impressions and chatting in vent (which we didn't get to do as much as I'd have liked!) And while I was raiding with Aliena, it was again, really fun to be part of her videos and contributing to the community in some way. It's a fun feedback loop, to raid with other members of the Warcraft creative community at large that motivates one to enter the fray again.
Thus, the title, blame Kare for motivating me to write again.
Tonight, we'll be going into the massive, the daunting, Siege of Orgrimmar for the first time, and while I'm quite excited to wreck Garrosh's house, I'm sorely disappointed that I won't get to do it under a blue banner, because Nephilim is a Horde guild. Alas, my beloved Lion of Stormwind won't be cresting my armor as we cleave through rows of Orcs but I suppose I have my warlock and flex raiding over on Proudmoore Alliance, and that will give me a chance to plunge my sword into that narcissistic bastard's throat.
Symbolically, of course.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
Looking For A Guild Made Me Happy
I know my last post was super-mega-ultra emo and sad, but I'm honestly not that broken up about it. While I miss my guildies dearly, I know I'm in the vast minority of players to have been in not one but two fantastic raiding guilds full of mature, awesome progression oriented people that killed Heroic bosses in current content. That's a victory if I've ever heard of one. And the fact that I still talk to people from both guilds off-line is just icing on the cake. I play this game to make friends apparently.
In addition, the last two weeks have been really intense. First, I was nervous when my posts on the recruitment forums got no replies. Then I was overwhelmed with replies, and spoke with a lot of awesome people and began to eye offers as they came rolling in. Frankly, I was astonished at the response and felt obligated to reply and at least speak with everyone who contacted me because, well, it doesn't happen very often.
And because it's nice to play the part of being the courted one instead of courting all the time. :-)
After a few fantastic offers, I took up with Warfare of Frostwolf (Horde side) and transferred in to raid with them. If you're in the market for a guild, I would look there - they have some amazing leadership at the head, and the crowd is amazingly progression oriented with very efficient raids that waste no time. I spent two nights with these guys, progressing on Heroic Tsulong and it was a lot of fun, even if the fight is hectic as all Hell on 25 Heroic. Then, the third night was used to knock out no less than 6 heroic bosses between Terrace and Heart of Fear, including first time kills of both Amber-Shaper and Lei-Shi for me. That speed clear was one of the best runs I've been involved in - fast, efficient, and clean; even if I did cause a wipe or two.
Unfortunately, they raid 3 nights back to back but don't stop till 1:30am my time - which was kicking my ass by the end of the first week. I wrote a very long and polite letter explaining why I needed to keep looking but wound up explaining it all over BattleNet anyway, as we caught up in game before the GM had read the letter.
During this time, I'd been talking with a couple of people from Methodical over game chat as well as e-mail and Twitter, and when I realized Warfare wasn't working out for me, they were the next guild on my list. Another transfer of faction and server later, I wound up running in to do a couple of bosses last night in the tail-end of raiding week. What should've been a quick and easy clean-up kill on Heroic Elegon wound up taking about a half-hour because I was so nervous from first-date jitters that I kept wiping the group. They were very polite to not t just swap me out.
So, here I sit, waiting for Tuesday to see how this goes.
But - and here's the thing - if that was all, it would've been awesome enough, but instead, I also had a couple of folks contact me outside of the recruitment thing just to chat and talk about various ideas, being old and raiding, finding the right guild, all from reading my last post. This is the first time that has happened, that people searched me out to talk about something I'd written. Thanks to those of you who reached out, both in-game, or over-email; it meant a lot to me.
Anyway. Tomorrow is the start of a new raid-week. My hopes of getting a second Feat of Strength are now all but vapor, since we have 2 weeks of raiding left to us, it seems, but so be it.
Tier 14 - you have been a bitch of an experience. Messy, needy, annoying, frustrating, tantalizing, teasing, infuriating and at times, downright cruel - but you know what? You're one of the top Tiers I've ever raided. I'll miss you.
In addition, the last two weeks have been really intense. First, I was nervous when my posts on the recruitment forums got no replies. Then I was overwhelmed with replies, and spoke with a lot of awesome people and began to eye offers as they came rolling in. Frankly, I was astonished at the response and felt obligated to reply and at least speak with everyone who contacted me because, well, it doesn't happen very often.
And because it's nice to play the part of being the courted one instead of courting all the time. :-)
After a few fantastic offers, I took up with Warfare of Frostwolf (Horde side) and transferred in to raid with them. If you're in the market for a guild, I would look there - they have some amazing leadership at the head, and the crowd is amazingly progression oriented with very efficient raids that waste no time. I spent two nights with these guys, progressing on Heroic Tsulong and it was a lot of fun, even if the fight is hectic as all Hell on 25 Heroic. Then, the third night was used to knock out no less than 6 heroic bosses between Terrace and Heart of Fear, including first time kills of both Amber-Shaper and Lei-Shi for me. That speed clear was one of the best runs I've been involved in - fast, efficient, and clean; even if I did cause a wipe or two.
Unfortunately, they raid 3 nights back to back but don't stop till 1:30am my time - which was kicking my ass by the end of the first week. I wrote a very long and polite letter explaining why I needed to keep looking but wound up explaining it all over BattleNet anyway, as we caught up in game before the GM had read the letter.
During this time, I'd been talking with a couple of people from Methodical over game chat as well as e-mail and Twitter, and when I realized Warfare wasn't working out for me, they were the next guild on my list. Another transfer of faction and server later, I wound up running in to do a couple of bosses last night in the tail-end of raiding week. What should've been a quick and easy clean-up kill on Heroic Elegon wound up taking about a half-hour because I was so nervous from first-date jitters that I kept wiping the group. They were very polite to not t just swap me out.
So, here I sit, waiting for Tuesday to see how this goes.
But - and here's the thing - if that was all, it would've been awesome enough, but instead, I also had a couple of folks contact me outside of the recruitment thing just to chat and talk about various ideas, being old and raiding, finding the right guild, all from reading my last post. This is the first time that has happened, that people searched me out to talk about something I'd written. Thanks to those of you who reached out, both in-game, or over-email; it meant a lot to me.
Anyway. Tomorrow is the start of a new raid-week. My hopes of getting a second Feat of Strength are now all but vapor, since we have 2 weeks of raiding left to us, it seems, but so be it.
Tier 14 - you have been a bitch of an experience. Messy, needy, annoying, frustrating, tantalizing, teasing, infuriating and at times, downright cruel - but you know what? You're one of the top Tiers I've ever raided. I'll miss you.
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.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Blogger Boggle & 20 Days Of... (Day 4)
Looks like the Blogger back-end took a crap yesterday and Google had to roll-back all the posts to Wednesday morning, which ate my last entry. I'm sure they'll restore it at some point, but it also ate one of my drafts which I was planning to post today...
This might be the first thing that makes me consider either self hosting or moving to Wordpress. But for now I'll stick with Blogger as I generally enjoy the Google tools quite a bit, and am a huge fan of GMail and Google Documents in particula
Anyway. Next week I'll start posting a few raid-guides I've been working on. For today, let's go continue along with the 20 Days Of... which I haven't updated since March. Oops.
DAY 4: Your Best WoW Memory
This might be the first thing that makes me consider either self hosting or moving to Wordpress. But for now I'll stick with Blogger as I generally enjoy the Google tools quite a bit, and am a huge fan of GMail and Google Documents in particula
Anyway. Next week I'll start posting a few raid-guides I've been working on. For today, let's go continue along with the 20 Days Of... which I haven't updated since March. Oops.
DAY 4: Your Best WoW Memory
Friday, February 18, 2011
Why do I blog? (Day 2)
Continuing on the track of 20 (non-consecutive) days of posting...
I talked about this earlier, but initially, I started writing in a blog mostly to catalog my raiding experiences so I could review them over time and see how I had been progressing. It's kind of funny to think that I've been blogging for nearly a year now about Warcraft, but have more-or-less completely stopped blogging on my old Livejournal. But that's a pretty boring answer. Let's see if I can dive a bit deeper and find some other, more meaningful reason...
February of last year was an odd time in my WoW career. After six months of hard-core raiding, I was getting a bit burned out on guild management as an officer, raid management and dealing with the stress of being part of a 50-plus member guild and managing two different raid groups on four different raid nights. I finally quit, moved Horde-side to play with the guild of an old friend and immediately found myself isolated.
I talked about this earlier, but initially, I started writing in a blog mostly to catalog my raiding experiences so I could review them over time and see how I had been progressing. It's kind of funny to think that I've been blogging for nearly a year now about Warcraft, but have more-or-less completely stopped blogging on my old Livejournal. But that's a pretty boring answer. Let's see if I can dive a bit deeper and find some other, more meaningful reason...
February of last year was an odd time in my WoW career. After six months of hard-core raiding, I was getting a bit burned out on guild management as an officer, raid management and dealing with the stress of being part of a 50-plus member guild and managing two different raid groups on four different raid nights. I finally quit, moved Horde-side to play with the guild of an old friend and immediately found myself isolated.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Introduce Myself (Day 1)
I didn't want this to just turn into me venting about guild/raid issues so I decided to follow up on Spellbound's writing challenge so I can write about Warcraft but also on things tangential to my normal vectors (I like math).
So - today I have to introduce myself. I hate talking about myself. But.
One of the reasons I started this blog was to give myself a regular writing outlet. I have been writing stories and essays as far back as I can remember, it has been the one true passion in my life. But I loose sight of it a lot. I went to a technical school and work as a programmer. I get diverted by music a lot and make some clumsy efforts at song writing. I minored in art because I wanted to be a draftsman and painter. But I believe at my core, what I do best, is write.
So - today I have to introduce myself. I hate talking about myself. But.
One of the reasons I started this blog was to give myself a regular writing outlet. I have been writing stories and essays as far back as I can remember, it has been the one true passion in my life. But I loose sight of it a lot. I went to a technical school and work as a programmer. I get diverted by music a lot and make some clumsy efforts at song writing. I minored in art because I wanted to be a draftsman and painter. But I believe at my core, what I do best, is write.
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