It took ten hours, but the crisis has been at least temporarily averted.

Thank you everyone for welcoming EgoLock - I totally dumped the post request on him at the last minute, and I’m very grateful for his assistance.

And I promise to give him more notice next time, though I think he did a great job. =]

Incidentally, it’s been a great blog-week for the rest of the Warcraft blogging world.

Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick has not one but TWO awesome posts. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to put her on my blogroll, but I’ve no excuse and I’m remedying the problem immediately. She has the best stories (Death by Wolpertinger! Revenge of the Talbuk!), and has proven herself on the informational posts as well.

Her Deus ex Machina post is one of the few times I’ve been moved to actually cheer out loud at my machine, overjoyed at the news that someone didn’t get a drop. That’s right. Didn’t get a drop.

Today’s how to survive WoW in a marriage post ought to be required reading for gaming couples. It can be especially difficult not to twink or powerlevel your beloved’s character, but those growing pains are necessary to keep your loved one from being the n00b kid on the block. Love it.

Also, Apathy, Inc had a great post on How to Enjoy the Game

The premise is that you can’t allow yourself to care, but I’m going to modify that slightly. In general, I agree. If you are playing this game because you enjoy pvp, but you let every death reduce you to a seething mass of fury, shouting incoherently at the computer screen…that’s the bad kind of caring.

And if your raiding team is new to Kara and wiping on content, you shouldn’t get furious at the wipes. Those are expected wipes, my dear.

You should care, you just shouldn’t obsess. If your guild is wiping on Kara content that you’ve run a hundred times…then you should care. You should let your raid leader know that this isn’t the way raiding should go.

Yes, this is a game, but much like the levels of Egotism that you display should be carefully monitored to keep you from falling into the festering pits of jackassery, the levels of apathy you display should also be tailored to keep you from dragging down the people around you. Three people who are so apathetic about raiding that they may as well just be turning on autoattack can completely destroy a raid.

The way I read the post, it’s not telling you that nothing matters, it’s telling you not to flip out and reach the point where you don’t enjoy yourselves.

We had a guild kara pug raid this past weekend. Mostly filled with our regular raiders, but with a few bright and shiny newbie guildies who aren’t members of the raiding team as well. I completely wiped the raid on Nightbane. And by “completely”, I mean, I didn’t even cast a heal. I have no excuse, I didn’t even drop the ball, I stood there while someone threw me the ball and let it smack me in the face***.

Instead of getting angry, the entire raiding team laughed. We spent more time laughing over it in vent than we did preparing for the next attempt. Did I screw up? Yes, absolutely. I acknowledged my guilt and apologized, then it turned into good-natured flaming and ribbing.

That’s the kind of apathy that I recommend. If you’ve got someone who is willfully gimping the raid, either through bad gear (and no attempt to fix it), bad playing (and no attempt to fix it), and refusal to follow directions (seriously, don’t move on the flame wreath. Seriously. Not kidding. Don’t move. No sneezing) - that’s something where the raid leader should care, and step in to make a change. That kind of apathy is ruining the fun of everyone around you.

But you can’t care so much that it festers inside of you. That you pull it out every time other people log on and stroke it, feeding the flames and just dragging yourself deeper and deeper. If I played this game flawlessly, I’d probably be bored to tears. It’s overcoming adversity that makes it fun, and sometimes falling flat on your face can be fun too, if you’re in the right mindset.

Too much Egotism is bad, and too much Apathy is bad. But in the right amounts, they can make this game a joy to play.

I really recommend you go read the post, it’s good stuff.

_{*** Check below the cut for illustration.}

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 and is filed under Blogstuff, ~ Vonya. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.