Her World of Warcraft experiences and reflections..

Hey Everyone!

I’ve been really quiet and busy the last week with work, but fear not! I am back! .. for today, you know. Life. (On that note, i may not write a blog post everyday but I do use Twitter a lot. Find me there at @Kairri_ . In post advertising is so in fashion, all the cool kids are doing it.) I’ve been dead tired coming home, and just been doing whatever I wanted. I didn’t feel like writing a post, and frankly it’s not necessary for me to do so every week. (Not that I mean to say, screw you all, i win or anything.) If I make it a necessity it becomes “work” and not pleasure and I realized how this happened in game too.

So where the hell am I going with this? Lately I’ve been feeling like I’ve been missing out on Lich King kills. That King slayer title is popping up more and more and guilds are learning the mechanics and with the 20% buff. It’s just becoming more obtainable. I’ve been saying to myself, “I should be there already.” I’ll let you guys in on a little secret. I once led a guild, in fact we were in the top 10 on our server. When i first put the group together, it was fun. We were in having fun in Ulduar pretty much. The guild existed for a good 3 months and every week we raided twice a week. You know everyone would be in guild chat and say, “Okay guys, after school we down Agalon!” That was awesome, the excitement, the feeling. Was awesome. Sadly it turned out different after a while. I basically had to beg people to come and raid. They would finally come but not after me hearing there annoying garbage to be honest. “Aww, is it raid night today?” , “I’m only doing this cause of you.” To them raiding became a job. At that point you need to step back and find out what’s going wrong.

Your not having fun anymore. So I decided to vanish and start over.

The good thing about WoW for me is the anonymity of the game involved. I was able to step down as guild leader and wish them well. I rerolled multiple times, and I was just another noob walking around in greens and blues. My past was literally erased and I was able to focus on the present and having fun. I’ve rerolled multiple times now and am currently on Kairri. I’m having a lot of fun now. Leveling, learning about the lore, revisiting old instances. I even made a ton of friends along the way!

The best part of it all I think, is that I have no responsibilities. I have the ability to log on right now and truly do what the hell I want. I believe that’s a big misconception amongst most. That us gamers get to go to a world where we can do whatever and while that is true for many, about half the gamers find themselves having responsibilities in game that they must attend to first before they can do what they want. Now I’m not saying that having responsibilities suck. Life comes with them, but because of the internet anonymity, I was able to restart and select my responsibilities as they come and surround myself with people who can also handle having them.

This “reset” button can be a double edged sword sometimes though. I believe that what I did was right. I dropped the guild after explaining and handed guild over to the person I trust the most to lead them into success. I know that this doesn’t happen most of the time though. People will decide they had enough and just quit, re roll, stop playing, reset. Like walking away from a job/school. Except in real life there is no reset button. Just because we have that in game does not mean you can go drop people like dirt. Behind the avatar is a real person and everyone should realize that. When the time for me comes to tackle the Lich King I know now that the people I get in my core will need to be dedicated. Burn out is bound to happen, but that’s when we will rely on our other guild mates to help us out. After all, that’s what a good guild does.

After talking to all these people, from different servers, on blog, listening to podcasts, twitter I’ve learned that my game is not everyone else’s game. In fact it changes drastically from person to person. So, some people may agree with me on this rant. That raids can be turned into work if not paced/handled properly. Some will say I’m crazy and a game is a game, but oh well. This is only my opinion.

For now, I’ve hit the “poof” button and am living life one level at a time. See you around!