So this being the first post on this shiny new blog, I struggled for hours to come up with the "right" post. I went through introductions, I wrote subject posts... none seemed to fit quite right. And then I remembered an email I had submitted to another blog a few weeks ago.. and it clicked. This will set a good starting place for the subject, and perhaps draw in some interested people. Consider this an introduction to both myself, and one of my favorite vices... World of Warcraft.
I started playing WoW in 2005, not long after release. I've played on and off since then, in spurts of a few months either way, generally. I was playing alliance on Suramar server. I had friends and family who played as well.
On a good weekend day, you'd find myself (a good old holy/ret paladin), my brother in law (a full holy priest) and two good family friends (a frost mage and a protection warrior) doing dungeons with just the 4 of us, seeing what cool fights we could pull off without a 5th person. At the same time, you'd find my sister in law and my sister both hanging out around the AH playing dress up with their hunters and talking about which vanity pets went best with their hunter pets, the whole while letting the kids sit on their laps and point at the fun stuff. My uncle would show up online and sit at the AH trying to find good deals to buy and resell at a higher price, and jump into teamspeak with us to talk about his latest thoughts on being a warrior.
I call those the good old days, and I yearn for them now. Nowadays you'd call me a "hardcore raider." I run a 6300 GS Kingslayer Death Knight in a top end raiding guild, and spend hours running through theorycrafting, and discussing optimal raid composition for LK25 Heroic, and answering the random whispers I get from players who want to know where I got this item, and what high end raiding is like...
It's funny though, because being at the top... where so many players spend countless hours trying to get to... I realize that I've lost the part of the game I enjoyed the most. The simplicity.
I truly miss the days when I wasn't so completely absorbed in the math... and I could just take the drops as they came, and enjoy the game for what it was. I miss the times when people wouldn't get mad if I wasn't running the penultimate optimal spec for my level 22 priest, because in truth it wasn't so clear cut. I miss being able to just get on and do some quests, do a dungeon or two with my family... actually have to coordinate our skills, use crowd control, rather than just an all out nuclear war AoE style fight where the only hard part is making sure you are the one on top of the damage meter... all the things that made me fall in love with this game.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to love about end game raiding... I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it. It's a level of teamwork and dedication that most players will never understand, or experience. It's a lot of work, responsibility, and fun. But every now and then, when I log on in the early morning or afternoon, when the guild isn't on... when I decide to dust off and level that old alt I've been neglecting... when I go back to the zones I remember loving... it all seems somewhat corrupted by the fact that nowadays, I know exactly where all the time and effort is leading to, and I know the best spec/questing/playstyle path to get there, and anything else simply feels like a waste of time.
I see so many people playing nowadays, pushing the limits and fighting tooth and nail to be the best, and get there the fastest... buying thousands of gold on the black market... being just plain rude to people who try to play the game casually...
They want to whisper me for advice? My best advice is that WoW is not just a destination to shoot for as fast as you can... its a journey, and one which you should spend every minute of every level enjoying as much as you can.
