Time off….from life

So I’ve been taking some time off from the WoW-world lately. I’ve started knitting again, and hopefully in a few months I’ll have a nice spring-like sweater to show for my efforts. I’ve been watching a lot of movies, as I’ve discovered that Best Buy has some rocking Tuesday sales. I’ve been watching the Olympics (no curling, as of yet, though I am still hopeful). I’ve basically just been relaxing, and going to bed early in addition.

So now I’m conflicted. I know that there will probably be a time in the future when I will come back to WoW, and come back with a vengeance. It has happened before. But do I stay in my guild and make them all wait for it? Should I leave and not have a place to come back to when I decide it’s time to play again?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been in-game a bit. I’ve been doing the various holiday things. But I have absolutely no desire to get into a raid. NONE. And when I do raid, all I can think about is what else I could be doing, or some excuse to leave the raid. I just don’t want to do it right now. So maybe I give in to that and see where it takes me. All I know is that my life has been a lot simpler, not to mention more productive, since I’ve stopped raiding.

Well this sucks

It’s official. I miss the guild. Moreso, the guildies. I even miss the ones who just a couple posts ago I claimed to dislike. It’s amazing what a little time away will do, huh.

I spent the weekend in Michigan, to attend the Michigan State-Penn State game, which was by the way FABULOUS. Great weather, not too crowded, had a nice little group of Penn Staters surrounding us, and yeah, we won. The ride home was horrid, 4 people in a small SUV (one of them with pretty severe arthritis, one of them with a nosebleed, and one of them complaining about just about everything) is never a good time. But all in all, a good weekend. But I had this little pit in my stomach the whole time, thinking about the guild that I left pretty hastily.

I probably should have taken some time to think about it, like I had every other time. Probably should have spoken to the officer I had made the deal with before I decided to leave. Probably shouldn’t have freaked out, although I did it fairly privately and with minimal drama. But I didn’t, I just left. And since I remember the convo from a couple months ago (with the same officer as the deal-talk, oddly enough), I know I can’t go back. Which sucks more than I can describe, because at this point going back in the only thing I want to do. I can only farm pets for so long before I start to lose my mind (I got the rat, btw, working on the Thanksgiving pet and the whelplings now). I can only grind so many reps up to exalted before I go even more bat shit insane than I was before. And to be quite honest, I miss healing. I got invited into a VoA 25 man pug last night, by Imposs’ raid leader, and I jumped at it. After it was over he said he was glad I was willing to come in and heal, because he knew how much I didn’t like healing. It’s true, I really don’t like healing. I do it, or did anyway, because it was the easiest way I could help the guild. Now I have no guild, and what good am I?

I got invited to 2 guilds yesterday, but I said no to both of them. One because I didn’t have the foggiest idea of who they were, and the other was a big “hell no” because there is someone there who I absolutely do not ever want to raid with again. I’m sure they were both good guilds, but the other problem is I’m just not interested in getting to know a whole new group of people. I have made a home for myself at Imposs, and I think of most of these people as family. Still do, probably always will. I don’t want a new family, I want my old family back. It’s been less than a week, but if I could go back and change what I did, I would in a heartbeat. /sigh.

It’s done

Well, I’ve left the guild. I thought I had a pretty good deal worked out with the officers that if I needed to leave at 11pm, I could, but if I felt like I could stay I could do that as well. It turns out that either I misunderstood, or the rest of the officers (sans the one who I originally made the agreement with) misunderstood my explanation of it, and I was going to be pressured either way. Instead of being pressured to stay in raid, I would now be pressured to leave. I was trying to reduce my overall stress level (pretty high right now), and decrease the amount of pressure on myself (both internally and externally), not change from one pressure to another. So I bounced. I regretted it almost immediately, but oh well, nothing I can do about that now. So, I’ve become a pet collector.

I have 47 so far, with 3 more coming before the night is over. I was wandering around this morning looking for the rare spawns, and killing whelps while I looked, and I found not one but TWO of the rares I was looking for. WOOT! And my hatchlings are so cute!! So I believe I have one rare left to kill, and then I’ll just have to kill massive amounts of mobs in order to get the other pets. Tonight though I’m going to work on the quest reward pets, and probably do a bit of fishing in between to get the giant sewer rat pet.

So yeah, my life has been reduced to this. Lol.

Should I stay or should I go

I have been thinking all weekend about quitting the guild. Well, part of my weekend was spent thinking about the cute guy who works downstairs, but the rest of it was spent contemplating my future in the guild community. I spent the weekend with little to no WoW time, which was nice, and refreshing, and it made me realize I really don’t like most of these people, or the person I become when I’m around them.

I read a bunch of guildies’ blogs, and the one thing that sticks out to me is that people (or person) think I should be forced to stay up late just because I’m in a raid. Um, no. Listen, I’ll say it as simply as I can. Me, myself, and my interests, all come before the guild. Call me selfish, self-centered, I don’t care. My health, wellbeing, career, family, friends, and life are all more important to me than a video game. Does that make me a bad person? In the eyes of my guildies’, it seems so. I’m going to go to sleep when I need to, and not a single moment later. If that means I have to go to bed at 11:03pm, 57 minutes before the raid is technically over, then that is when I will leave the raid. If my eyes won’t stay open another minute at 11:36pm, 24 minutes before the end of raid time, then I’m out. Sorry people, but until you can provide me a way to finish raids and still get enough sleep, I’m not stressing myself out about what you think about it.

So I will try to have this discussion with the guild leadership at some point in the next few days, and if we can work something out so I don’t have to feel like I’m being pressured to stay when I really should have been in bed half an hour ago, I’ll stick it out. If not, it’s bye bye Imposs.

Just for the record, I don’t have an issue with him blowing up my spot on the internet. Shit yeah, I was tired, and I had absolutely no good reason to stick around and bang my head against more bosses with the guild. So I left (after stating several times in guild chat that I was going to be leaving early). What I have a problem with is that he, and others, think that the game should be more important than my life. Sorry, it’s just not that way.

Still angry

The more I re-read my blog or read the guild forums the angrier I get. And I’m not even home, I’m at work! This is something that DEFINITELY should not be intruding into my work life, ffs!

There is a guy in the guild, a druid, who has received just about every single leatherworking pattern that has dropped. He rolls need on stuff for his off-spec (which as far as I knew was forbidden, but hey, I’ve been wrong before), and the excuse given is it’s his EP, he can spend it how he wants. He was made assistant raid leader a while back, and since then has acted like he is God’s Gift to all raids and has this snotty, stuck up attitude. He knows all, don’t dare question him unless you want him to bite your head off in response.

Well, it was really the first thing that was the problem, the patterns thing. It cause a bunch of friction with the other leatherworkers, who felt they should have the opportunity to roll on those patterns. I have to say I agree with him on that, but maybe it’s because I’ve grown to dislike this particular druid very much and don’t think he should get to act the way he does and still get all the stuff he does. Maybe it’s because I can see the same thing happening to me if something drops that I want. This guy (he’s a warrior) and I are a lot alike, in that we both speak our minds with regularity, so I feel a kind of kinship with him.

The warrior went out and bought all the patterns he wanted, spending massive amounts of gold to get what he should have had the opportunity to get through raiding. It’s awesome that he had enough gold to buy them, not so awesome that they were given to this one druid over everyone else in the guild so he felt he had no choice BUT to buy them.

Now, the guild wants his input on how to make the system better. WHAT?!? What they were basically saying to him is, fuck you warrior, this druid is way more important than you are so we are going to give him all the patterns, if you don’t like it, too damn bad. And now they want him to help them make it better? Are you kidding me? He said he doesn’t want any part of working it out, and I honestly can’t blame him at all.

Basically, this seems to be the new prevailing attitude in this guild. It seems that certain people get far and above the treatment that they deserve, and the rest of us are told “hey, that’s the way it is, deal with it or leave”. This is not the Imposs that I loved. This is not home.

I am so sick of this crap

WoW blogging ahead: beware of the irritated healer.

Listen, I understand that the healers are very important to the raid. I get that. Part of the reason my shammy is resto is because I wanted to contribute. But you know what? Even healers get to have lives. I’m not talking game lives, I’m talking REAL LIVES. I wake up early every morning and go to work. My job, my LIFE depends on my ability to be a normal, functioning human being who is capable of being at least a little pleasant to coworkers and customers. So if I need to go to bed at 10:30st instead of staying for the whole raid, RESPECT THAT! You want to sit on your ass all day, sleep until 4 in the afternoon, and spend the productive hours of your day playing a video game? Great, lovely for you, I can respect that decision. However, I DON’T want to do those things! I have a life, a job, people who depend on me, and quite honestly sometimes I would rather take care of the REAL part of my life rather than the voices that live in my computer.

My guild leader Ori, lovely if sometimes naive person that she is, posted something about pressure on the forums. Basically what I got from it was, respect other’s choices. Wait, what? I’m 28, so maybe one of the older members of the guild, but isn’t this something we were supposed to have learned in like, kindergarten?

The issue that spawned this was something that happened last night. I’m exhausted, between the hockey schedule, the world series, college football games, and WoW, I’m just bone tired. Add into that the fact that I got new contacts yesterday, and I’m not completely adjusted to them yet so any significant time spent in front of the computer gives me a headache, and I was downright miserable yesterday. So at the begining of the raid I made it clear that I was not going to make it to the end, which is 11 server time and midnight my time. The raid leader gave me a bit of shit, but it was good-natured ribbing and nothing more. So off we go, start the raid, and I continued throughout the night to remind people that my eyes were hurting me and I was getting tired. No one said anything. 10:30 server rolls around, we kill a boss, and since I can’t keep my eyes open anymore I decide that it’s time for me to go. That’s when the pressure to stay started.

One of our warlocks said that he had gotten up before noon and only gotten 4 hours of sleep. My response was, “yeah, your point”? I really didn’t understand what that had to do with me. He responds that his point is that rest is for the weary, and I can sleep when I’m dead. One of our shammys says that he has been awake since such-and-such server time. Ya know what I say to those people? I DON’T GIVE A SHIT! I NEED sleep to function, and it’s great if you people don’t, but I AM NOT YOU!! Nor do I have ANY DESIRE to be like you. I don’t want to waste my day sleeping, I want to be a productive member of society. That is my choice, as much as it is your choice to be a completely obnoxious waste of space if you want.

This was the SAME DAY that the post was made on our forums about respecting other’s choices. The night before that post was made, I was told by one of the officers that if I was getting tired, I should let her know an hour before I needed to leave. Well, that would require me knowing that I was going to be tired an hour before I was actually tired. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to know such a thing, unless I’m psychic, which I am definitely not. A couple nights before that I was told by the same officer that like it or not, I would have to raid Ony in order to help the guild out. Ok, fine, I’m all for helping the guild, but for real? I pay $15 a month to play this game. You people want to tell me what to do while I’m playing? Fine, give me your credit card number and I will be more than happy to use it to pay for my play-time. Then you can order me around like the little servant it seems you want. Until then, I will decide how I play. If it means I’m no longer in this guild, so fucking be it, because I have about had it with you people.

This guild is not in any way the one I joined. We lost our off-week, the last refuge I had in retaining my sanity. We seem to be actively recruiting the most obnoxious, immature children on the server. There is almost no focus on the goal of progression left. I have had /gquit typed into the chat window so many times in the last week, with my finger on the “enter” button, only to have that little voice in my head tell me to take a step back, go to bed, sleep it off, and start fresh the next day. Next time, that little voice can go to hell.

Some of my other issues:

“I need heals”
The only sure-fire way to make sure I don’t heal you. What, do you think I’m not paying attention? What else would I be doing? All I do during raids is watch little green health bars go up and down. I KNOW you need heals, you self-possesed prick. Did it ever enter your mind that I may actually be in the act of healing your demanding ass right then, but my heals have cast times? Reminding me how to do my job is a very, very easy way to make sure I am about as pissed off as I can be. And maybe, just maybe, the reason you need heals is because no one is healing you, because you are a fucking ass clown. Cut it out, and you will get heals.

The constant emotes
Emotes are fun. I will admit that. But they have their place and time, which is not while the raid is prepping for a boss fight. This pretty much only applies to the ever-growing younger set in our guild. I even got an add-on to block them, they are that fucking annoying.

Trivia
Get a goddamn trivia channel, you fucking child.

And from now on, I’m going to do what I want. Until you all show me that you can respect the fact that I have chosen to be a productive human being and not waste my entire life on WoW, I will continue doing what I want. Of course, I’ll probably still do the dreaded Ony. But other than that, I’m leaving raids when I’m tired, and I’m not raiding when I don’t feel like it. I’m also going to start putting people on ignore again. It’s a nifty little feature that makes sure I stay sane and don’t go completely postal on you all. I have been forbidden from using it by the same officer who seems to want me to be her little WoW-bitch, but fuck it. You want to take away my dedicated title because I put some obnoxious little 15 year old on ignore? Have at it, the title means nothing anymore anyway.

This used to be a good place for me, a place where I could hang out and be myself, and not have to deal with too much stress. It feels more like a dictatorship now, with only certain people being targeted. It is definitely not somewhere I feel comfortable, not even comfortable enough to speak my mind, which is something I usually have no trouble doing. Fuck it, I’ll speak my mind here. And if the people who I’m writing this about read it, KNOW THAT IF IT SOUNDS LIKE I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU, I AM.

Why I don’t WoW-blog

That’s a fairly interesting question. Years ago I started playing this game, almost instantly got hooked on it, and apart from slight breaks here and there have never looked back. Nor have I ever regretted the amount of time and energy that I’ve spent in-game, despite the fact that I’m almost 30 and, as my mother loves to point out, should grow up and quit playing video games. But the way I look at it is this; I am fairly socially awkward. I would much rather sit in my house by myself, or with a small group of people every now and then, than be out in public and be forced to interact. I don’t like people, although I do love watching them and studying their actions.

In WoW, I don’t have to socialize if I don’t want to. I can sit behind my computer, zone out on what I’m doing and be content with that. Or, I can hop on vent, chat with the people there, talk to the people in guild, and be social that way. But there is no pressure, because I’m never going to meet most of these people in person (apart from Mayo, Ryder and Shieke, who I have met).

Now that I think of it, I’m not sure why I don’t WoW blog more. Maybe I’m trying to distance my real life from my WoW life, give myself some balance if you will. I really do love both parts. I love my guildies for the most part, they are fantastic people, and I would do pretty much anything for them. I love my real life friends too, and my family, and my life in general. So this blog is an attempt to get the balance between life and WoW that I feel I need, I suppose. Some blogs are topical, mine is just random.

Various thoughts on the weekend

I can’t take weekends off (from blogging) anymore. Too much has happened that I want to blog about, and I can’t write in coherant sentences because my head is moving faster than my fingers. So here is an outline of things that I want to blog about before anything else happens.

*Yankees win Game 4 of the World Series to go up 3 to 1 on the Phillies. A-Rod is again the hero, and I am one win away from having to spend the next few months watching reruns and the Arizona Fall League.

*I am a cranky old person. I don’t like giving candy to adults or children who trick or treat in regular street clothes.

*I am also a cranky healer, but I’ve discovered that I’m not alone.

*Given the choice between grocery shopping and sitting around on my ass all weekend leveling my rogue, I will choose the rogue over food every time.

*College football is teh awesome. Except Iowa. They suck at life and can die in a fire at any time.

Obviously this list is in no particular order. I will try to get to everything so I can rid my brain of the massive amount of clutter (making it feel a lot like my back room looks at the moment), but no promises that it will happen today.

zomg I’ve been tagged!

It has been brought to my attention that I don’t WoW-blog much. It’s true, albeit kind of silly seeing as how much of my real life is spent in WoW. So ok, Ori, I’ll bite.

Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.

*What is the name, class and spec of your primary healer?
-I’m Myrah, resto spacegoat (erm Draenei)

*What is your primary group healing environment?
-mostly raids, 10 or 25, but occasionally 5 man heroics as well

*What is your favourite healing spell for your class and why?
-chain heal ftw!  It’s the most effective, efficient way to heal multiple people at once.

*What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
-lesser healing wave/healing wave.  They use so much mana and only heal one target, and CH heals for almost as much.

*What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
-the ability to heal multiple targets with one spell. 

*What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
-I wouldn’t make a very good MT healer, unless the raid group was very melee heavy.  Single targets are not my thing.

*In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel is, in general, the best healing assignment for you?
-raid heals, preferably on melee, so my chain heal is the most effective.  This is why I like fights like Auriaya and Ignis, because everyone just stays in one place and I can heal the whole raid.

*What healing class do you most enjoy healing with and why?
-hmm, I guess I would have to say druids.  They have a good amount of survivability, they have those wicked nice HoTs, and they have BR.  Nothing better than a well placed BR.

*What healing class do you least enjoy healing with and why?
-I hate to say this, but other shamans.  Totems have to be changed, my earth shield keeps getting removed, stuff like that.  I’m like a cat who cannot tolerate other cats, I suppose.

*What is your worst habit as a healer?
-not paying attention.  I get bored with healing very, very quickly, and sometimes I get distracted and someone dies.  Oops!

*What is your biggest pet peeve about healing while in a group environment?
-people not paying attention to where I’m standing, and/or expecting me to be able to move around when I’m healing to be able to reach them.  I’m sorry, if I move, that means I’m not healing.  I can toss out a riptide every once in a while, but it has a cooldown and it really isn’t super effective.  I wish the raid leader would put a mark on my head before every pull, so people could be a bit more conscious.

*Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
-I think, at least in a raid, we are pretty essential.  Again, chain heal is awesome.

*What tools do you use to evaluate your performance as a healer?
-Quite honestly, I don’t evaluate myself much.  I know what to do, and I do it.  I really should read more about how to be better, or pay attention to the meters a bit more, but like I said earlier, I get distracted easily.

*What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
-I don’t know, really.

*What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
-That shaman healing is really, really simple.  I know when I first started I was concerned because all I was doing was spamming chain heal.  I thought I was doing it wrong.  I wasn’t.

*If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
-I would think they would see a lot of overhealing (we are supposed to be relatively high on that meter) and a median placement on the healing meter.

*Haste or Crit and why?
-eh, I like a good mix of both.  Chain heal is really slow, so it would be nice if that were sped up a bit using haste, but sometimes a big, slow heal is nice too.

*What healing class do you feel you understand least?
-Priests!  I don’t get it.  I tried, I just don’t.

*What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
-I use healbot.  I like that I can color-code debuffs, and I can look once and see anyone that needs a heal, and how much they need.  Makes my life infinitely easier when I don’t have to rely on someone yelling out “I’m in the pot” or “I’m in the hand” over vent.

*Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
-I like to stay pretty balanced these days.  I was stacking mp5 for a loooong time, until I realized that I could ditch some of it and still rarely run out of mana.  So I’m looking at haste and crit now.

There!  Now the only problem is I don’t know any healers that Ori hasn’t tagged already!  Lol.

Congratulations! You have reached the end of the internet!

God I’m bored. The internet is just not as amusing to me today as it normally is. And I can’t justify playing Woobies at my desk all day, especially when my boss has pointed out on several occasions that he can see my computer from where he sits.

So last night, I logged onto WoW, did some quests with my level 73 rogue, and logged over to my healy shaman in time for raid at 9pm. The World Series was on, and I was pooped, so I just wasn’t feeling the whole raid thing anyway. To make matter worse, we didn’t have enough people to do the scheduled 25 man run. So the officers got together in their little vent channel and decided we would do two 10 man Ony runs. AEFG<@$rg{v ! I hate that place, with the heat of a thousand suns. No, that's not quite enough. There are no words in the english language to express how much I hate that place. Maybe there are in the various African languages, I don't know. I could call that African woman that I spoke with a bit ago back and ask her, but I think she hates me enough already. Anyway, I was one of three healers assigned to Ony group one, meaning there was absolutely no way in hell I was getting out of running through that place. I made a request over vent that if it were even an option that we go there, that I be told before hand so I could decline the raid invite. I thought that was pretty reasonable. The response was, it is always an option if we don’t have enough on for a full 25 man. Le sigh.

So what did I do after that? I declined for all the 25 man raids in the near future. I had accepted the invites to most of them, with the exception of days when I know I will be working late at games or off at a football game, but I clicked through and changed all of them to declined status. If it’s always an option, I will never be an option.

Maybe I overreacted a bit. That’s what pure, blind hatred will do to a person.

Ok, so a google search of “hate pics” comes up with the absolute strangest things. Like this…

Ok, what?

But anyway, so I hate Ony. And I’ve made it clear to everyone in the guild that I hate it, and do not under any circumstances (for emblems, for ep, for gear) want to step foot in that place ever, ever again. But I don’t think I ever told them why. So on the off-chance that someone from the guild is reading this (I know someone is, I can see where the clicks to my blog come from), I will give them/you an explanation.

I love this song, and I’m ashamed. Party in the USA is just so fucking catchy, I can’t help it.

So, years ago I started my WoW journey. I started because, as closely as I can recall, I had mentioned to my ex that I liked to play The Sims and got addicted to video games (and other things) easily. So he got me hooked, and I’ve never looked back. He also treated me like shit back then, as did the guild that I was in, so those early days of my WoW life were not especially pleasant, and I would like to forget those days as completely as is possible.

Well, so far so good, until the fucks over at Blizzard decided that it would be a good idea to turn old content into new content and give everyone a reason to run the old raids again. While everyone in my guild seems to like that they did this, I would rather gouge my eyes out with a dull toothpick than relive any of those old instances/memories. I didn’t enjoy them then, I certainly don’t enjoy them now.

Besides that, I pay $15 a month to play this game. I shouldn’t have to pay $15 a month to do things I despise. That is my view on it. And hey listen, I’ll still be around at 9pm on raid nights. If they need a healer, and they can absolutely, with 100% certainty, guarantee me that they won’t do Ony, I’ll be more than happy to raid. I love raiding, I love these people that I raid with, it’s just that one place.

But yeah, don’t hate frogs.