Married IRL

Is it?

No no, not dead.

Just in a state of…. blarg?

Summer time funk? Check. Expansion blues? Check. Raid Burnout? Double Check. Bored and not sure what to do about it? Yea, that’s us.

It was bound to happen, I would think. I know last week, after our Canadian friends went to Georgia and then home, Jas and I looked and looked for something, anything, game wise to give us that spark of interest back.

The game store was BARREN. I swear, I’ve never come across such a crappy time for games. Everything that looks interesting is COMING SOON!

Well, why not be there now damn it?! There were a few things in WoW making me really not want to log in (get to that shortly), and as much as I love Mass Effect, I can only play it so much. But all the good stuff? Spore, Infinite Undiscovery, Spore… ok, so I’m really looking forward to Spore… but you get what I mean. The nifty games aren’t here.

Jason likes WoW, but he’s not a real MMO type of person. WoW has me hooked to the MMO environment, so I figured I’d experiment. I tried four or five different trials of other MMOs…

Out of all of them (Guild Wars is still HELLA BORING), EQ2 was the only one I might consider ever purchasing (Jas, and the internet apparently, refuses to let me try FFXI). So yea… not a bad experiment… I guess. But arg. Of the other types of games I’d like to play? Store didn’t have them. I miss EBgames. Game Stop sucks. /sulk

I’d love to try the Prequel God Of War, I love that series. It’s a ton of fun, and I definitely can’t wait for the third in the series. Crisis Core also looked awesome, but again, the store didn’t have it. I don’t have anything against my PSP, but sometimes, just playing on that tiny screen just… well, it’s TINY!

So, we bought Dynasty Warriors 6 for Jas (he’s in love with that series) and Gears of War.

I. Suck. At. Gears. Of. War. HARDCORE. I keep getting myself or Jas KILLED. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to tell which big beefy guy is my F’ing team mate and which one is the bad guy!

So yea, kinda trying to keep myself occupied… it’s hard. I’m very excited about some of the games coming SOON… and excited about the expansion for WoW… but blarg.

I deleted Leilu. Level 50 shaman with 350 JC’ing and 330 LWing… I’m cursed. NO MORE LEATHERWORKERS! They’ll just get deleted. I made a horde priest in her place. Cause I needed a priest there. I’m spending a lot of time on both sides now. Another Blood elf, though I’m kinda wishing I made her a troll, but she’s 21 and I don’t feel like starting over. So, all my hordies on Drenden be Blood elves. Yarrrr.

AC has pretty much given up on the raid scene till Wrath. Why? Well, between the stress, summer scheduling, our MT burning out and what not… it was just too much. Jas and I just said too much to re work. So it’s kinda sad, people have split off to keep seeing content. Which is fine by me. But the green has gotten kinda sparse and that’s kinda sad to see. But that’s life.  Edit:  Thought I put more… anywho, some will be back, others may stay where they are.  But either way, still have plenty of friend to chat and play with.  I’ll miss it, but I don’t miss the stress.

Our friend said we’re veteran raid officers now. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. ;P But it’s something!

I need to set aside some time to redo the layout of MIRL. It’s starting to get on my nerves…

Triple dots (…) seem to be very prevalent in this post. O.o Oh and I should probably update to WP 2.6.1… but it looks really difficult! I feel like I’m gonna fudge something up.

Oh, if you’ve made a comment to one of our posts for the first time and it’s never appeared… I’m sorry. I had to go through 100 spam comments like yesterday and … GAWD. How do people filter this stuff? I know there’s some sort of addon to WP (another thing I can’t seem to figure out) called Kismet? Er something, and it makes the spam go away… er something. Rarg. Any tips oh veterans of WP?

That’s all I can type for now. Time to go to work in like 40 mins so I should get some more Darkspear Troll rep grinding done.

Toodles!

Busy Week

This is what we’re doing this week:

Entertaining the Canadians!

<3

Demetria and Anarac have come to visit Rhode Island and so Jas and I are showing them around. Yayness!

Another Day

Thanks guys for all the awesome replies to my post yesterday.  I really do appreciate it. ^.^

Some thoughts:  Yea, I know, I should probably take a break.  I have one coming up.  We’ve got some visitors from out of town coming the first full week of August, and since Jason is working all week, it’s up to me to show them around the dull and drab… I mean, wonderful New England landscape.  Yea… that’s it. >.>

Probably won’t be raiding that Wednesday XD  As for the “Ug” factor that came from Monday, it’s been settled, and I think, guildwise, we’re forging ourselves into a more coehsive whole.  The guildie came back (YAYNESS) and had a good long chat with Jas and I.  Jas put up kinda this “State of the Raid Progression” thread on the forums, and Brig was also awesome for putting up this really cool thread about everyone coming together.  It made me all teary.  He really is a Positive Warrior. XD

Good positive responses to the SotRP thread too, so huzzah for that!  One hiccup, hopefully it can be solved.  But otherwise, not everything is as dire and dreary as it was the day before.

I think another contributing factor, at least on my end, was the end to Jas’s unemployment.  He’s got a job now (did I mention HUZ-FUCKING-ZAH?!) and I was so used to that stress in the background that it was weird not having to worry about it.

Ok, that might not make sense.  It does to me, so I guess that’s what matters. ^.^

I’m also getting more and more time at my job, which, makes me one of the happiest people ever.  I love this job.  Now if only I can get back to school to get that pesky Bachelors, then Masters in Library Sciences, then, THEN I’ll be feeling hella awesome.  That, however, is very long term.

Did… did I just say hella?  /headdesk

Oh!  Something else that was all interesting and makes me QQ like a little girl:  FIO GOT A BETA KEY AND I DIDN’TT.T

A guildie of ours got him a beta key last year, and he just got his invite last night.  I expect him to be farting around with that once he gets home, before BT tonight.  So far, I have to say, I hope they do something more with the Typhoon spell… it looks like a big teal blob O.o

For now, it’s off to farm some more Primal Shadows and maybe get lucky and get that Shadow to cloak enchant (/crosses fingers).  Btw, I FINALLY got Spell power to bracers.  Cleared out the area of Geomancers three login’s in a row!  /rawr!

/hugs

<3 Cay

What to do?

My weekend was most excellent.  Flinging hapless wild boars into the middle of a bunch of bored lupus was mucho fun ^.^

Playing a psychotic pit fighter NPC was also like, the highlight for my weekend.  ZOMG it rocked.  So much so that I might make a Kindred of the East and play it with Fio in his vampire game who has a similar make up to the psycho pit fighter.

MAYBE.  Still not sure, because I’m not much of a vampire person, but KoE is a different flavor of Vamp.  We shall see.

Anywho, this post started on Monday, it’s now Tuesday, and time for me to talk about what’s been on my mind lately.

I love playing WoW with my friends.  But I’m getting to a critical point.  I think I’m starting to burn out with all this raiding shit.  Yea, I know, you’re thinking, “WTF HOW?  You only raid 3 nights a week for like 3 hours!” and yea, I do.  But I’m an officer too.  So along with the raiding, I’m stratigizing with the other officers on how to approach the new/problem boss, working with a different make up of raiders each time, getting the healers in order and giving them their assignments each raid.  Doesn’t sound like a lot when you look at it, but add on top of the whole pile the stress of “What if X or Y has to cancel last second, what then?” and you’re forced to bring an alt in that’s not prepared, or X was a tank or healer or mage (we only have 1 raiding one T.T) or something important to the raid.

The stress piles up.  I hate the stress.  I thought back in SSC/TK things were bad.  It’s just gotten worse.  And on top of all that, there’s been some differences with some people on where to take the guild progression wise.  Everyone’s got their thoughts, has loot they don’t want to leave behind, etc.  Everyone has an opinion on everything.  And I have this thing where I want to try and keep as many people happy as possible.

But it’s costing me my happiness.  I’m burning out.  I don’t even feel like logging in now.  And it sucks.

I’m not saying people are horrible, no good, very bad, er whatever.  If that’s what you’re reading into this, then you’re dead wrong.  If you’re an officer or a guildleader, you probably know all about what I’m experiencing.  It’s not fun.  I was the troupe “leader” for a while in my werewolf LARP a few years back.  Being in charge SUCKS.

We downed Azgalor for the first time ever last night.  And when one of the officers made a boo boo after some Archimonde attempts, we lost a guildie from it.  Not sure if they’re coming back.  I hope so.  But it’s like, you know, we’re human.  We have human failings.  Not everything is going to be perfect every time.  But it’s like, we took out a boss that was giving us grief for the past three weeks… and we lost a guildie.  Bad event kinda over shadows the boss killing high.  : /

I don’t usually blog about this kind of thing.  It’s that negative gossip crap that just isn’t me.  But honestly, I’m looking for advice.  Because I’m tired.  I love playing with my friends, though there are some things we’ve had to sacrifice to get where we are and I’m not even sure it’s worth it any more.  I know I want our guild to hit Illidan right in the face before Arthas comes out to freeze our butts with level 80 stuff.  It’s very DOABLE too.

What do you do?

Nothing More

Freakin’ HACKERS! Not only did they get the awesome new holy priest and her hubby the BoomTree… but they got our other Ferlol Druid tank.

Srsly, I want to just find these people and destroy their fingers. The guy who hacked the Priest/Druid though, he was a total tool. Sitting there telling my guildies, “Give me a thousand gold and I WON’T delete this toon”?!??!?!?

WTF is that BS! Those authenticators can’t come fast enough.

Priest and Druid got their stuff back relatively quickly, I’m not sure about Kel though. Her hack-assmasterpieceofsh!tOMG THIS ISN’T SAFE FOR YOUR KIDDIES! RAAAAARG!

Ahem, anywho, her acct was hacked in the wee hours of the morning, so not sure wtf Blizz is doing there.

/headdesk

This just sucks. I hate seeing people getting hacked. Its a mental violation, all the work and time people put into these toons. Scares me sometimes. I’m not sure what I’d do if I got hacked. Other than get rip roaringly pissed off. Reformat the drive, that’s #1. After that… I dunno. I have so many toons, they’d have a freakin’ field day. Did we hit another Hacker Time? I mean, the Christmas season was rife with hacks, we had three of them in our guild alone and there were a bunch on our server. According to trade chat, others were hacked too. So WTF Blizz? If this is seasonal (hell, people are off catching some rays right?) then isn’t there a better way to handle every case that comes your way?

I’m not all that into giving constructive advice, I’m still way too ticked off.

Maybe tomorrow.

Guild Whoas and Woes

Today’s post is gonna be one of those weirdly impromptu ones, where I sneak in time between work to write a tid bit.

Yesterday’s scheduled post ended up not happening because I’ve been working all week and haven’t had a chance to unload in all my thoughts onto Fio, so he can come back and edit this one with his own two cents (HINT) later ^.^

For now, a little bit of Whoa:

A’lar! Dead! We did it on Monday and frankly, we would have done it last week but bugginess said noooooooooo and we were DENIED our first kill. Well, no more. That makes us 3/4 TK and 5/6 in SSC. Huzzah!

Guild Woe: We lost one of our core healers on Wednesday. Now I’m of mixed thoughts on the subject. On the one hand, I can understand the desire to do more raiding. We only raid three times a week, Monday/Wed/And Sunday for about 3 hours that time. We have a smattering of other raid type things going on during the week, Kara runs, now ZA runs and the PuG Gruuls or Maggys, but the srs content, the progression content was on those three days.

So, off this person goes to raid some more, which ok, I can understand… but it still kinda hurts. Because as much as they professed to loving the guild… we never ever hid the fact that we were a casual raiding guild. Ever. This raider started out raiding only once or twice a week, but slowly and steadily worked their way into our core. Dependable, always on time, repaired and fully reagented and repaired… they will be missed. But still… it’s gonna be tough to try and replace them, especially now that we’re working on Vashj and soon to be Kael. /shrug But we’ll manage I guess. It was just… not something that we expected, and with all our Real Life crap, I know I’m slightly off kilter to have this affect me more than it should.

Guild Whoa: We did a 5 clear of SSC in one night! HUZZAH! That means Vashj all night Sunday! Here’s hoping we can get her to Phase three! Now that the SSO badge vender is up, it’s HIGHLY doable! So far our biggest problem is the Strider, but this week we’re gonna have one warlock with us and a new shadow priest, so … MOAR DOTS!

Woe: Our awesome of awesome warlock Leo tank burned out. /pout And that just sucks butt. Because while I found his Hellfiring if there was a possible wipe ways annoying as hell, he is otherwise a fun guy and a great raider. He shall be missed T.T

Whoa: Mount Hyjal on Monday. You heard meh. When our Raid Leader of awesome said if we can clear A’lar and get to the 3/4 and 5/6 in both the T5 content, we’re gonna try our hand at the joke that is Rage Winterchill.

Color me UBER EXCITED! From what I’ve read and heard so far, MH is pretty much like a 25 man version of Black Morass…. UG. But still, looks interesting. I’m playing Warcraft 3 so I can understand all this LORE! I love the lore in this game, hence why I and a friend are trying our hands at this whole RP thing… though I’m a bit out of my comfort zone because we’re horde but hey! You can’t grow if you don’t challenge yourself! ^.^

Woe: Drama. Capital D. I hates it. Wish there was an easy way around it, but there never is. I’ve been gaming for 7 years now, and doesn’t matter what the medium, it’s always there. The common denominator is as people. Where there is people, there is drama. /sigh

Whoa: We got two new recruits on Thursday and Friday. A new Shadow Priest and a new Holy Priest! /dance Both are pretty awesome people, both know their stuff. We had an impromptu Maggie’s scheduled Thursday, just to see how bad he was nerfed since 2.4 and we brought both new recruits on to see how they’d do…

Omg… Oh. Em. Gee! They nerfed Maggie BIG TIME! Like, I swear we didn’t need the 25 people there! It was amazing. We had only downed Maggie once before the patch and it was rough… timing the clickers, making sure they all stayed alive, making sure Celli stayed alive… it was hard core. Now he’s a loot pinata. Srsly. He’s also lucrative enough to kill each week, with all the goodies he drops. So another thing to consider XD

So yea, my week in a nut shell. Mostly good, some bad, but there it is ^.^

Oh, and saying hi to Dammerung last night made my night! Eventually I’ll catch B quad!

PS: Picture courtesy of WoWhead… cause Cay got a Hatchling last night! /squee!

On History

So, since Steph has gone and spewed forth a great number of posts, I figure I should get at least a token one in before I end up sleeping on the couch.

That being said, let’s talk about where AC came from.

Continue reading On History…