Thursday, July 16, 2009

July 16, 2009

Introspection -- Read At Your Own Risk
Sometimes I love sitting back and analyzing my own behavior to try to understand myself better. Now is one of those times. I just re-read my blog to recall all the things that have happened in the past several months. Put that together with my online playing decisions lately and I see an interesting path that I've taken.

When I started this blog I was playing my priest exclusively and was excited about the experience of raiding in Northrend. As time went by I experienced guild drama, resulting in the dissolution of two guilds. I also saw focus switching from my priest (which I still consider my "main") to my mage.

But lately I've veered away from the mage and have been almost exclusively focusing on my warlock. I hadn't realized how much I had been neglecting my main until I ran out of buff food for my warlock. At that point it dawned on me that my routine had changed so drastically that it had been weeks since the last time I had done dailies on my priest.

So what's behind this focus? Is it alt-oholism? Maybe there's a little of that there, and there's nothing at all wrong with that. I definitely enjoy playing alts.

But I don't think that's the real deep down reason I've been playing my warlock. I've been doing it to hide. I realized this last night when I launched WoW and my husband asked me, "Are you campaigning or hiding?" Over the last several weeks it has become our little joke. It started when the recent guild drama broke out. I had already been leveling my warlock, but I still had been spending a fair amount of time on my mage. Leveling my warlock has been my escape.

It's now to the point that escaping/hiding is my default. Granted, on Tuesday I did log onto my mage to do our weekly Naxx run. But, as soon as it was over, I logged onto my warlock to continue playing but to be hidden. It's not so much that I enjoy the warlock -- I really do enjoy it -- but, it's the only toon (other than my rogue - yuck!) that I can truly hide on.

Several weeks ago I made it clearly known that my goal was to raid raid raid. When I said that, I meant it. Or at least I thought I did. I was going to focus again on my priest and go forth and raid! But I didn't.

In fact, I've kept my priest in the last guild that dissolved. Why have I done that? Why haven't I found another guild to join to get that raiding experience in? I've been telling myself it's because of guild #2. I feel like I owe it to them to join, since I've spent so much time with them and they helped me gear up so much. But, I don't want to for various reasons. They have an odd set of rules. They are all guys (I prefer at least one other woman in a guild). They are small and would never be able to organize their own 25-man runs. They're really only interested in 10-man content. (Nothing's wrong with that -- but on my priest, I'd rather be in Ulduar or 25-man content.)

Oh and there's Ulduar. Why have I avoided it? I only went a few times, downing the first boss but dying horribly on the 2nd. Am I afraid of the rest? Or am I disinterested in the challenge? Would I be more interested in Ulduar if I joined a progression guild? Or am I just truly not interested?

The game is still fun to me, so I'm not trying to say it isn't. No matter which toon I'm on, I enjoy myself. So all this introspection isn't going anywhere. I'm not analyzing myself to try to determine if I'm still interested in the game.

I'll go back to Naxx tonight on my mage. I'll then switch to my warlock afterward. My priest will sit on a shelf until I'm motivated to play her again.

So why all this introspection? Because I love to analyze my actions. And I'm still fascinated that at this age I still don't understand myself and what's going on in my mind.

Warlock Leveling
My warlock reached 74 last night. I played until later than normal, determined to ding! before going to bed. It paid off. I ran two instances - AN and DTK. Both runs went well. I got no drops, but I got good xp and had a lot of fun -- I do love instances.

The Armory
The darned Armory has still not updated for my toons. I reported the problem to Blizzard the other day but got no response, which isn't all that surprising. But, it's so annoying to look at my toons' armory pages and to see they haven't been updated in almost a month. Grrr...how am I supposed to marvel at their progress??? :-)

No comments:

Post a Comment