Category Archives: thoughts

blogs, screenshots, thoughts

Ours is a finite hobby.

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As I’m sure 99% of the blogosphere knows by now, Phaelia is closing the doors of Resto4Life. I don’t know if she is quitting the game entirely or just the blog, I couldn’t make it out from the entry, however, it’s definitely put a lot of thoughts into my head.

I remember a time when I figured I’d never quit Neopets. (shaddup, do you guys know how long it took me to get my Draik? =P) Of course here I am now having not touched it in months. I miss the friends I made there on the Neoboards sometimes, but other than that, there is very little that I do miss, and although I have tried a time or two, I haven’t been able to get back into it on the same scale that I was before. I have no regrets about the time I spent playing, and I made some accomplishments I’m quite proud of. But eventually I lost interest, and moved on.

World of Warcraft is like that. I think it’s something that we as a blogging community perhaps don’t like to think of sometimes. But it’s true. How many of us will still be playing this game ten or twenty years from now? Will it even be around? Even if it is in some incarnation, I imagine many of us will have moved on by that point. What that means for us as a community, is that these blogs we read and enjoy so very much will not be around forever, at least not in their current form. And it’s hard to deal with sometimes.

It’s perhaps ironic that it’s been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve reached a point where I sort of feel like I need to scale back the time I spend in game. I love this game dearly. Yeah, I try to deny it sometimes, but it’s true. I still have fun with the game. I am not quitting anytime soon, I don’t think (so please don’t think this post is about that!) But man cannot live on WoW alone. And there are days where I feel like I come home from work, I get onto my computer, aaand… I play WoW, I read about WoW, I write about WoW, I tweet about it on Twitter. And sometimes I wonder where that line is. You know what line I’m talking about. Where it becomes too much. Where it goes from being a hobby into being your only hobby. I often find myself wondering if I need a break or something.

And then my mind wanders to how I’ve lost interest in other obsessive hobbies I’ve had like this so fast. Sometimes seemingly overnight. It’s just a matter of time for this one, too.

In a way, it scares me, because when I think of all that, I inevitably end up thinking of this blog and this little community that has gathered here. What will happen when it comes to that point for me where I have to say goodbye? What would I do with this blog? How could I even bring myself to end something I enjoy so much? And more than that, I wonder if it all matters anyway. Will it matter decades from now when I look back on my life? Will it matter that I taught someone how to improve the way they played a class in some long-forgotten video game? Does it matter?

In the end though, I think it does. If for any reason, because of all the raw talent that is out there. Through this community I have met artists and writers and CSS masters and people whose blogs are packed with personality and humor and wit, and that’s only to name a few– I can only hope that Blizzard is at least marginally aware of this massive gathering of talent they have unwittingly drawn together, out of the passion for a video game, of all things. Positive influences from my guildies and in-game friends aside, I am extremely humbled to be a part of this community perhaps best known collectively as “Blog Azeroth“.

So, thank you, Phaelia. Thank you for being the person (well, alongside Bell) to really inspire me to make my own treedruid, who to this day is still the only thing in game that has really caught my interest anywhere close to what hunters do. And thanks for sharing your talent and enthusiasm with the internet.

And to everyone else, the specifics of what we blog about may not be important twenty or thirty years down the road. But positive influences only have to be very small, to be positive and meaningful. Thank you for being both, to me. I do not know how long our time together will ultimately pan out to be. But thank you for making the most of it every day.

thoughts

I Swear I Am Not Scrooge

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scroogemcduck-mickeysccarollr1I remember back when I first started playing WoW and holidays were basically my favorite part of the game. Children’s Week was the first ever holiday I participated in and I ran that kid all over the place, to places I’d never been before, so I could get the Speedy minipet (much to the horror of the significant other who couldn’t believe that I was passing up the option of a whole five gold!)

And all the holidays were like that, I went nuts over ’em. Got all the items, did all the little things you had to do. For the most part the only people who cared about the holidays were people like me who were dorks who were willing to fill up our bags with toys and candy and stuff, and that’s basically what I did. To this day my bags and bank are bursting from the seams– with holiday stuff. I could pull out that Valentines’ Picnic Basket while at the meeting stone for a raid or heroic and everybody would ooo and ahh over it cause nobody else had one. I could throw Jack O’ Lantern heads or snowballs at people in the middle of July. I was the crazy hunter with all the gadgets and minipets. And finally I was pretty content that I’d done all the holidays and could relax, and not have to worry about bagspace anymore.

So then this new thing comes out: Achievements.

Suddenly holidays are like THE BIGGEST THING EVER TO HIT WOW and suddenly I find myself in this odd position.

Do I follow the mass hype and fill my bags with even more holiday crap when it’s already rare enough as it is for me to have a precious *gasp* five empty bag slots? Do I do achievements for things that I already did, back before it really mattered?

The answer, for me, is no. I can’t bring myself to do it this time. I don’t exactly know why, I’m not trying to be elitist or a party pooper or anything of that sort. I guess you could say I’m like the stereotypical kid from the country who was used to quirky and personal Christmases and Thanksgivings on the farm who then goes to the big city to see that they’ve been all commercialized*. Doing it all for an achievement rather than for the heck of it feels hollow to me, especially because I already have most of the toys and stuff. Besides, it’s difficult for me to enjoy a holiday if I’m freaking out about meeting requirements for things. So, I’m not going to pressure myself into it. That’s all.

I will of course do the holiday achievements if they fall in my lap, or if they happen to coincide with something I wanted to do in that holiday anyway, or if they provide a nice bonus incentive (i.e.; rep for elder coins)… but I would’ve done that before the achievements. I guess I’m just not going to go out and “seek out” those achievements if I don’t want to. (Brewfest may prove to be an exception cause of a running joke that Tawyn is the guild drunk and thus needs the Brewmaster title, but we shall see.) In summary, I’m going to do the holidays for fun, and not have to worry about finding a particular somebody to /dance with in Dalaran or whatever.

So there you have it. That’s why I’m not going nuts over holiday achievements. Not because I dislike holidays or dislike other people doing the achievements. Not because I am Uncle Scrooge. But because for me, it’s all been doooooooone befoooooooore!

* I’m a country kid, I’m allowed to say this kind of thing >.> Oh, and I ride buffalo to work, and I don’t really have the internet, this is all just an illusion.

thoughts

Aspect of the Hunter

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With all the changes to our class lately, I’ve found myself having to stand back and think about what this blog is and what it represents. There are a lot of really good and informative hunter blogs out there and most of them have very different focuses, and it’s really visible with this patch. There are people busily hammering out the next max-DPS spec and there are others sticking to their favorite playstyle. There are Survivalists perhaps a bit baffled that their spec is suddenly the one in the sun. There are people reporting anywhere from DPS losses to DPS gains, depending on their gear and spec and what they do. And there are others who don’t do much PvE stuff and aren’t affected very much. Everyone has a different opinion and it’s really brought out to me how unique all these dozens of hunter blogs are from each other.

What about Aspect of the Hare then? Is this a hunter kindergarten blog, or a Beast Mastery blog, or a “casual”-raiding blog, or what? That’s what I had to ask myself today, sitting here at my computer with a hunter shirt on and a Tauren Hunter figurine beside my desk and my first character standing guard over everything. What about Pike?

I decided that while this blog covers a variety of topics, it is mostly about two things. The first is that it is about teaching new hunters about their class, and also sort of reviewing these things for long-time hunters. This comes in the form of the guides that I post, for example.

Secondly, and more importantly, this blog is about three little words: “Hunters are fun.”

This blog is for anyone who has ever enjoyed the hunter class. It doesn’t matter if you PvP or PvE or fall anywhere along that spectrum. It doesn’t matter if you are decked out in epics and have screenshots of doing over 6000 DPS on a boss fight, or if you have never set foot inside a raid. It doesn’t matter if you’re a hardcore theorycrafter or if you avoid math like the plague. It doesn’t matter what spec you are, and it doesn’t even matter what level you are– if you have ever felt a little thrill at sending your pet in to attack something and proceeding to start some semblance of a shot rotation, this blog is for you.

I just figured I would get that out there; it’s never a bad thing to define a blog’s focus. Rest assured that while there may be some frustrations and nervousness as we– myself included– try to sort out our collective reactions to the latest patch, I, for one, can still log into one of my hunters and still feel that thrill.

And really, that’s what it’s about.

thoughts, Uncategorized

We Can Raid If We Want To

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In my last post I touched a little on how I considered myself to be part of the “I-PuG-Raids-When-My-Schedule-Allows Crowd”. Lemme touch on that a little more…

I love raiding and heroics and the whole PvE game. I love it a lot. As much fun and addicting being on the winning side of an AV can be*, for me, in the end, it’s all about the dragon slaying. Why yes, I am a geek. There’s something very satisfying to me about being in a big group of people and having someone tossing out directions on Ventrilo and the whole tense atmosphere of hoping everyone can pull off their job as some lore character flings walls of fire around.

That said, I think I am a bit of a unique position myself. I am a raider and PvE gamer who doesn’t do the “traditional” PvE game that so many other people do. I’m not in a raiding guild. And I don’t have the luxury of having scheduled raid nights. Let me explain.

The Guild: I’ve been in a big raiding guild before. I was hunter class leader, in fact. I was also an officer and for a few months I was the one that did all the raid scheduling. That was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done. Everyone coming to you with their schedule and you trying your hardest to make everyone happy, even though you can’t. *shudders* Anyway, even though we certainly were not one of the top-level guilds on the server, we were still shuttling people into raid content every week. The main problem is that we were sort of trying to go too many places at once, and in the end maintaining a balance of “progression guild” and “family style guild” became too much for us to handle. It was all just kind of a dramafest waiting to happen, which it eventually did. Pop went the guild. A failed experiment, so to speak.

Everyone in the guild sort of went their separate ways although a few of us who had become particularly close friends chose to band together and we started a new guild. This guild has been strictly a hang-out guild where we would be able to go off and find our own outside groups to raid with, while having friends in guild chat and a reliable pool of people to do heroics with. In that manner, it’s been a success. But it’s not a raiding guild. I get the impression most of us wouldn’t mind if we tried making it a raiding guild someday, but I don’t think anyone’s in a major rush right now.

Leaving this guild isn’t an option for me because I love my friends in-game too dearly and I love being in a guild with them. It means I give up being in a big raiding guild with a raid schedule and having things like guild-progression-nights, which I do in fact miss, but I wouldn’t trade my current guild for it. If I want to raid, I have to look outside my guild. Which brings me to my second point…

My Schedule: I work in retail. On any given day I could be at work anytime between 6am and 10pm. Every day it’s different, my days off are different every week (though I managed to wrangle getting most Sundays off), and I never know what my schedule for the next week is until Thursday or Friday.

Normally, even in my current guild situation, it would be relatively simple for me to find another guild or group of people to fall in with and raid with, especially since I’m on Silver Hand, home of the infamous Leftovers Raiding, which is essentially a server-wide raid signup that has been very successful and garnered attention on WoWInsider and transfers from people on other servers who like the idea. The problem is that when many of my work shifts are evening shifts, it shuts me out of a lot of raiding, and by the time I even know what my schedule for the next week is, most of the raid slots have been filled up already. So for me, even that idea is largely out.

So what do I do?

I PuG.

I have PuG’d most of the raids in WotLK so far, on both 25man and 10man modes. Mostly LFG PuGs although I’ve made enough contacts that sometimes I get raid invites from people who need a slot filled.

Have some of these PuGs been atrociously bad? Yes they have. Have others been surprisingly good? Yes they have. Do I know what category one is going to be in advance? No, I don’t. It’s a risk I’ve gotta take if I want to see content. Oh, I can sorta make predictions based on who the raid leader is or other people I know in the group, but even then it’s not a guarantee. In any given raid I’m probably in there with both a bunch of people who have it “on farm” and a bunch of other people who have never been there before. They usually aren’t easy raids to be in.

But I do it because I love raiding. I do it because as frustrating as it can be sometimes to do it this way, it’s really all I’ve got. Because to me, it’s worth it.

I will probably never be in one of the best guilds on the server. And I may never even be part of a regular raiding group, at least not anytime soon. I’m not gonna be one of the first people on my server to be all decked out in the newest purples. I’m okay with that though. I’m seeing all the sights and I’m getting my raid on, and I’m slowly getting some gear, and most importantly, I feel like I’m working for it. And it’s hard to do, but it’s not impossible. And I guess that’s the point I’m trying to get at. If you love something enough, you can make it work.

Even in WoW.

* Read: Not Alliance on Bloodlust. *cough*

characters, rp, thoughts

Why I Still Find Old Content to Be Fresh

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If I had to pick a favorite part of World of Warcraft it wouldn’t be hunters. Nor would it be the social aspects of the game (though admittedly, that one is largely because most of my guildies are now effectively out-of-game-friends as well– we all hang out in AIM chats and stuff).

No, my favorite aspect of the game is character creation. And by that I don’t mean the whole choose your race/class/silly hairstyle part, although that is fun too.

I mean coming up with a story and personality for your character and stepping into their shoes for a few fleeting hours. That’s what I mean. That’s my favorite part of the game. That’s one of the things that first enthralled me when I started playing WoW. “Wait, you mean I can create my own video game hero/heroine?” Now don’t get me wrong, I love Mario and Link and Solid Snake and Locke Cole and Jim Raynor and Master Chief. I love them to bits, heck, don’t tell anyone, but I have a crush on Link that is like… thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis big.

zelda-link

Link. Om nom nom.

*cough* Sorry, sidetracked.

Anyways, yeah, there had been times before where I could sort of create a character, but not in the same way. Neverwinter Nights and KotoR were solid games but didn’t grab me on a “character” level. Pokémon didn’t let you create female characters (which I really wanted to do) until I’d already sort of drifted away from the series. Et cetera. Other games let you sort of make a character but thrust you into an already formed backstory anyway.

But with WoW, I discovered the game alongside my character. I learned things like how to play my class alongside my character. And for some reason, this was the first game where I not only experienced the story as I would personally, but thought about how my character would react to all the events unfolding around her, too. By the time I was max level, I cared for my character in a very deep and hard to explain way– she was sort of me, but sort of not me, and she was a good friend who I experienced this crazy world with. She has a real personality, one that is different than that of any of my other characters. In a way, she is real. She is something I created and can be proud of not just by topping a DPS meter or getting her all decked out in purples, but by being able to feel like I created a character in a story.

Mirshalak recently queried, “What are you addicted to?” What keeps you coming back to the game? Sure, my guildies do and my hunters do and my general enjoyment of the game does. But more than all that, for me, it’s the way Blizzard really succeeded in creating a world that just sucks you right in. It’s the way every time I do one of the opening quests that I’ve done a million times, it’s fresh and original because I’m seeing it through a completely different set of eyes. It is pure distilled roleplaying without actually going out and walking slowly around the Cathedral District and having some deep discussion about the state of Azerothian affairs. It’s something that I’ve yet to be able to experience anywhere else, with the exception of maybe Dungeons & Dragons, but for me this might even be more than that because it is so visual and hands-on and I’m a very visual and hands-on type of person.

That‘s what keeps me coming back. My friends are here– and this time, by friends, I mean characters.

Okay, gonna end this now that there is a big neon “GEEK” sign hanging over my head. =P My WoW account is now safely reactivated though I don’t anticipate too much activity for the next couple of weeks; I am moving into a new place and that will require most of my attention for a little while! Still, I’ll be here, yapping away, I’m sure.

P.S. Since I’ve already linked to one blog in this post, go read this. Trust me.

raiding, thoughts

Headscratching

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I somehow managed to squeeze myself into a couple of 25mans today, which is perhaps ironic because I haven’t done any WotLK 10mans yet. But hey, I’m not complaining.

The first was Vault of Archavon, the Wintergrasp Raid, which was basically just as easy as everyone said it would be. The main issue was that for some strange reason, my pet refused to attack the boss. Flat out refused. I told him to attack, he sat there. I moved closer to the boss and told him to attack again, he still sat there. He does that on the last boss of Drak’theron Keep, too, but though it’s annoying, I can live with it. A raid boss though? Ugh. Needless to say, with 50% of my damage essentially out of commission, my DPS on that fight was absolutely abysmal and embarassing. Just ugh.

The second raid was Obsidian Sanctum. I only managed to be there for the first half, but with Locke fortunately opting to cooperate this time, my performance was much more respectable. I managed to snag fourth place on the meters overall in my dungeon blues, even coming out a small hair ahead of a much better geared BW/Readiness hunter. (Far and away the overall DPS winner was a Volley-spec’d hunter who basically did nothing but spam Volley. Not even kidding.)

Really though, while it was nice to see those numbers and it was nice to see I had done so well, I still came away feeling like it was a bit of a hollow victory. Pre-WotLK, when I topped the DPS, I knew I had done so through hard work and relying on the clock in my head to time my shots. Now all I do is spam Steady and pop all my cooldowns, really only worrying about Serpent Sting if needed. I don’t get the same sense of satisfaction. And it doesn’t help when the top six or seven DPSers are all either hunters or Death Knights. I guess it is nice for getting into groups because people know you can easily deliver, but for me… it was always the feeling that I did a lot of hard work that I enjoyed the most. And I’m not getting that feeling this time.

And so I scratch my head and weigh the pros and cons and decide to stand out there on a limb and say that I’m… sort of looking forward to the nerfs. I strongly feel that with the incoming Steady Shot nerf and reduced mana cost of Arcane Shot, there will be some actual shot weaving going on again. I will be able to work hard for my spot on the DPS charts again.

And honestly, I’m looking forward to the challenge. There, I said it. If I wind up with my foot in my mouth later, I fully accept the responsibility =P

And with that said, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

thoughts

The Final Stretch

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You know the expansion is good when every new zone you head into is “ZOMG TEH BEST ZONE EVAR”. First it was Dragonblight. Then it was Zul’Drak. Now it’s Storm Peaks. Love love love.

A quarter of the way into 79 at the moment… pretty sure I’ll end up hitting 80 tomorrow. Then comes the task of bringing all my pets up to speed– even with the improved pet leveling, the fact that so many of the WotLK quests are “non-kill” quests means that just trying to level a mere two pets up at once has resulted in them all falling behind.

In all honesty, hitting the level cap again is a really weird thing to think about. Leveling and questing has always been my favorite part of the game. Oh I love the raiding and the instances too, no doubt. But there’s a reason why last time when Tawyn hit 70, I would basically log onto her only when it was raid time/heroics time. I was busy working on Lunapike (or other alts) all the rest of the time. These past few weeks have been the first time in a long time where I’ve really been able to revisit my “main” the way I did back when I was first leveling her…. and it has been really nice.

I figure once I do hit 80, I’ll keep questing and aim for the Loremaster of Northrend achievement– it will help level the pets, it’ll bring in the cash, and I love the quests up here so much. I’ll also start getting “geared up”, which is always a really fun process. I may look into moving talent points around– now that the hit cap has been about 99% confirmed by everyone to be 8% this time (rather than 9%), I keep finding myself rather over-hit-capped with 3/3 Focused Aim. On the one hand, that’s pretty acceptable for BM hunters because Focused Aim does not affect your pet’s hit, so being over-capped there will only help. (Remember: More pet hits = more Ferocious Inspiration.) On the other hand, is there a better place I could put those talents, and would I want to? Still gotta do some thinking on that. I do have some guides and the like that I want to write (yes, posts on glyphs and pet talent points are coming).

But you know what I think I’m most excited about? Getting started on Lunapike’s journey to 80 after Tawyn’s is over. So I can once again say I have two max-level hunters ^_^

thoughts

Confessions of a Slow Leveler

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Hi, I’m Pike. I was there at the midnight release of Wrath of the Lich King. I installed it when I got home. I took Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off of work. I have been Wrath’ing it up on Tawyn– my main– for a whole week now. Oh, occasionally I will stop to heal an instance or two on the tree, and I’ve messed around on the Death Knight for a few hours, and sometimes I even stop to eat, sleep, go to work, read or watch House with the boyfriend. But for the most part I have been logged into Tawyn pretty consistently every day.

I am level 72.

75% to level 73, though.

I see lots of people who I cannot imagine play too much more than I do who have already hit 80. I am not one of those people. See, I am a notoriously slow leveler. Always have been. I get lost a lot. I spend 45 minutes looking for quest mobs. I’m super inefficient when it comes to quests. A lot of other people can look at their quest log and glean how to stack the quests together and do them in a certain order for maximum efficiency; me, I do ’em one (maaaaaaaybe two) at a time ’cause I’m easily confused and because my bagspace tends to fill up after about 30 minutes so I have to head back to town all the time.

To compound said matters, I do not use Quest-related addons. I really have no interest in QuestHelper, especially because I’m trying to lesson my overall addon usage in these buggy days, and I will admit that I did use Lightheaded for a week or two a while back before realizing that all it was really saving me was the five seconds that it takes to alt+tab and go to my WoWHead search bar in Firefox. I guess all those five seconds add up, but ehhh. I disabled it and don’t really miss it, though it’s always an option to return to.

On top of that, my guild is pretty dang laid-back about this type of thing, so any potential “guild pressure” is, literally, zero. People have been playing alts, playing Death Knights, or casually instancing their way up to 71 or 72.

You know what though? Other than a slight annoyance at myself for being kinda sucky at the whole questing thing, I don’t mind. I’m fine with being slow. I’m fine with being able to savor all the new content nice and slowly. I am super fine with being in a “we will raid! …eventually!” guild. I mean seriously, you all are talking to someone who didn’t step foot into Karazhan until like… March or April of this year. Someone who spent about four months doing the Karazhan key quest line. I’m happy with how things worked out… I’ve got no regrets. I knew a lot of ways I could’ve gotten into heavier raiding that summer, but I chose not to. So it’s not like the doors were all shut on me cause I was slow. I just decided there were other things I’d rather be doing (like, ya know, leveling a second hunter to 70).

Well, I’m off to work now. I’d like to think I’ll hit level 73 tonight. If not, that’s okay. =P

thoughts, wrath of the lich king

Two Weeks Notice

9 Comments

It’s weird to think that in two weeks we’ll all be leveling up again.

For me, it raises a lot of questions, like the specifics of the spec I’m going to be using (still wavering on a lot of the talents), which characters I’m going to playing first, where I’m planning on heading to level first… I mean, Howling Fjord was so pretty in Beta, clearly prettier than Borean Tundra. But I worry that everybody agrees with that, and is gonna be headed there. =P We’ll see. In the long run I actually rather like some (though certainly not all) barren/desertish zones. I love Tanaris and Silithus. They remind me of Tatooine from Star Wars. >.>

As for who to give most of my initial attention to, it’s pretty obvious that Tawyn is my main and so I’ll be playing through the content Alliance-side first. Aside from Tawyn being my most-geared and favorite character, it also comes down to the social side of things. Lunapike has always been more of a solo/experimental character as opposed to Tawyn who did the heroics and the raiding. And now that she is in a guild of, well, Entelechy refugees for lack of a better term (Entelechy actually disbanded recently, from what I hear), there is some discussion about making a “comeback” guild in Wrath of the Lich King and at least tackling all the ten-mans. But, we’ll have to see.

Two more weeks!

thoughts

The Family that Plays Together…

9 Comments

Hearthstone and Cynra have both recently written excellent pieces on online friendships and their validity. This is a a subject that really hits home to me. You see, my boyfriend and I met online and we know very well what it’s like to have an “internet relationship” and the different reactions people can have to something like that.

“So, where did you guys meet? At school?”
“On an online video game forum.”
“…ohh.”

But while it would be really easy for me to play the “Well my boyfriend and I met online and whaddaya know, here we are four years later, end of discussion” card, I’m going to relate this to World of Warcraft because this is, after all, a World of Warcraft blog.

A couple days ago, a group of us what I like to call “Old-School Entelechy” folks all got together in an AIM chat. We’re the people who have been around the longest, who have been leveling and questing and instancing with each other since our pre-Outlands days. We’re the people who eventually left our guild and, in many ways, have sort of drifted away from what we used to be: we are the people who forged an unbreakable bond and an unforgettable little personal legacy before floating away to focus on characters on different servers (I will not deny that I am at least partially guilty of this), or drifting away from the game entirely.

Anyways, five of us all got in a chat. By sheer coincidence our AIM group makeup was very instance-worthy: myself, two warlocks, our holy pally and our much-loved main tank from back-in-the-day– the best prot warrior I have ever had the pleasure of DPSing for, and I’m not just saying that– who has since largely left the game in the admirable name of higher education.

Well what happens when you get five of us old-schoolers in one place, for the first time in a while? We work ourselves into a little frenzy, that’s what. We reminisced about crazy stories and tales from our WoW-playing past. We swapped screenshots. We commiserated with each other about how we never really did “finish” Karazhan, as our little group. So that springboarded into us talking about a possible Karazhan “dream-team”, plucking together old friends and allies and brainstorming up our ideal raid composition for a one last huzzah before WotLK shows up and changes things.

So there we were just talking and talking about the game and stuff we could do together in the game if we were really serious about it, and who else but our tanky leader to break in and say “Guys. Forget about the game for a minute. I don’t miss the game. I miss hanging out with you guys. I miss hanging out with my friends.”

And then there was a moment of silence as what he had said sunk in, and we all knew that he was right.

That dream Karazhan run? There is talk of us actually pulling it together. If we did, it would be absolutely incredible. It would consist of people we have worked with and done amazing things with for over a year. People whose strengths and weaknesses we know very intimately which makes for an extremely satisfying experience.

But ya know what? If the dream Karazhan run doesn’t come together, that’s okay. If more of my friends quit playing or play alts on other servers, it’s okay. Because we’re still friends. We still have crazy AIM chats. We still have Ventrilo. We still have my boyfriend’s forum. We still have a million things that we can talk about that aren’t WoW.

And if it does come together, and we finalize a date, I’m going to make sure to take time off of work for it– chuckle at me if you will, but for me, it’s not unusual. For me, it’s not “taking a weekend off for a video game”. Rather, it is “taking a weekend off for a family reunion“.

And that is really what it is about. It’s not about the purples. It’s about the people that you meet in game who become your comrades and then become your friends.

Don’t forget that.