I can’t believe the answer was so simple. I was just staring me in the face on the Options panel. ‘Users must be logged in and registered to comment.” Enjoy. Sorry for the delay.
How much is too much?
Gitr has a pondering buzzing around his head: have any of his readers suffered personal or career consequences as a result of playing WoW? Do you know anyone who has? I read that EQ has overcome hundreds or thousands of people with significant damage to relationships or careers. Is this prevalent in WoW?
I have heard a few people say that they met their significant others through playing, or started playing together and that is all they do now. This concerns me a lot. For a few reasons.
How much about a person can you find out through the confines of the game? (Assuming that is how you met) Sure, you can experience giving, kindness, anger, leadership, and several other traits and emotions, but in the end, it is still a game. Is anger in a game real anger that would be displayed in person? You obviously can’t throw an ashtray or kick someone in the groin or get seriously hammered in the game. Is it really generosity if it’s fake money that doesn’t pay the rent?
If WoW is the central activity in your life, (i.e., you both work, come home, grab a quick bite before or while playing, and play until one or both of you pass out from exhaustion) what will happen when WoW is no longer as popular, supported, enjoyable, or whatever may come to pass? What was the glue to the relationship? If WoW is your gratification, what are the consequences?
Is this saying that if you play WoW with a significant other that the relationship suffers? No, certainly not, but I think there could be some interesting social studies about this phenomenon.
Gitr turns 47
Last night was pretty much an all-around good night. I logged in at Panera waiting for dinner and journeyed to Feathermoon in Feralas so I’d be where I wanted to grind when I got home.
Once home, I took Gitr to the Scar Yetis to the North and fought them for a little while and then Inebriate logged in and we got a group together to go to Zul’ Farrak. My first trip to the legendary ZF. We had a 49 Warlock, 45 priestess, 45 mage, 41 rogue, and Gitr at 46. It seemed a bit cumbersome for me because, for the first time ever, I was in a group with 3 male humans without a helmet. It was very hard for me to tell the difference from Gitr and Homerjay, and several times I was behind the mob facing the wrong way thinking that I was controlling the toon that I could see in front of the mob. This was largely due to the cape he was wearing looks exactly like the one that I wore for about 12 levels.
Aside from that, things progressed pretty smoothly and Gitr was taking over 60% of the damage. We did have a pretty sticky situation at one point where we drew a few adds when we were just trying to go around everyone to get on with the quests.
We got to an area with dozens of scarab beetles and one 46 elite troll doing laps around a stone block. It got ugly. About 10 of those beetles decided to attack when we assaulted the troll, who had a very wicked spear thrust. Being the tank and up in someone’s grill, I never really see the whole thing, but about a minute into the melee, Inebriate, Rani (priestess), and the rogue were all dead. It was only a matter of time before I dropped, and I did, about 20 seconds later. He was TOUGH at like-level, already at 30% health. I couldn’t break this last block of health to save my life, so I died. Rani resurrected me, then Homerjay (warlock), and as I saw her hands go up for the next one, I saw the troll round the corner. I tried putting on a runecloth bandage as fast as I could, and didn’t quite get up to full health. I aggroed him since I was with 2 squishies. I kept him busy and tried to let Homer do as much damage as he wanted, and Rani to heal me for the rest of the fight, but they were both out of mana within 15 seconds. Not good. I went down and watched them fight valiently. Homer finally downed him with a sliver of life left, but not until Rani dropped and we all had to run back.
Then we made it to the top of the temple thing and released a prisoner. That was the end of our playing well. We fought the fight too close to the stairs (probably because Inebriate was talking to me on TeamSpeak and we went to look down at all the mobs) and never moved them back to the platform. The first 5 elites were all ranged attackers, so I wasn’t able gain aggro without going down the stairs, which was expressly forbidden. We handled about 6 or 8 waves of single elites with three 46s. Then we all died. The instance reset, and we decided to call it off. Too bad I only needed one more Troll Temper for my quest.
‘Neb and I headed to the pirate cove to the East and get Stoley’s Shipment. I turned it in and had to pick up the screecher spirit quest again because I tossed the wand last week because I had all 3 spirits. Ooops.
It was time to mount up and ride to Feralas to pick up the elven gryph point. I flew the rest of the way to Feathermoon and headed to the Scar Yetis again. I realized after a couple of minutes that the amount of time it took to drop one was not a high enough xp reward to warrant the time. Gitr needed easier prey, so he took off to the Feral and Rage Yetis again. That is really becoming a favorite grinding spot. They are fast, skinnable, and repop fast enough for 2 to be in the cave at the same time. I even got an uber-drop about half-way through my remaining xp bar: [Sheepshear Mantle]. It ended up selling within 5 minutes for nearly 18g. That alone paid for all the expenses for the night, AND I finished with 18 stacks of heavy and thick leather to sell. Yes, it was a lot of grinding. The last hour was just loot and charge, loot and charge, bandage, loot and charge.
Exciting night in Maraudon
Gitr went all over Azeroth tonight, grinding, questing, PvPing, and into Maraudon for a 5-man.
I’ll process the screenshots tonight and post tomorrow morning. I have put up most of the posts since Miss Anti-guns, as it will be mentioned again in the morning. This time it’s just downright funny.
On a personal note, I have 3 interviews tomorrow for the computer department at work, starting at 10am. I hope to bring back good news of that before our week-long shut-down for the end of the year.
Up and running on WP
WordPress rocks!!!!
I can manage the numerous templates, I love the styles available, and the posting is easy. I uploaded all the previous pictures, so now I just need to put up the posts and re-link the pics. Not long now!
I am VERY happy with the look of the blog, but I need to “WoW-ize” it to my taste and add all the cool things that I spent hours upon hours tweaking and adding.
Blog hosting issues
I was really trying to get the blog going on a new domain this week, but the comments aren’t working correctly. It’s a MovableType host, and there are just too many templates and a very sluggish forum admin. I can’t even ask for help.
Sooo… when I get home, I’m going to install WordPress to see if I can get that running OK and start co-publishing the blog on both spots until I can get my cool stuff working. I’m not quite sure how to transfer all my tracking and BlogShares stuff over yet so I don’t lose traffic. As one tesimonial for WP said, “Outstanding work. Installation was extremely smooth and easy — and it actually works, compared to my bad experience with MovableType. Got me up and running in nearly 10 minutes.”
Looking forward to it with much anticipation.
It will take a while to get it to look the way I want, so I won’t be publishing the URL until it’s ready for the demands of the high-quality audience that I know you are.
Gitr will be doing a SM run tonight as main tank, so I should have lots of good screens and tales of heroism tomorrow.