by Copra
Dear diary. It's been a long time since I wrote to myself alone, let alone made a diary entry. I guess it's too long, as the blog has taken my writing as a hungry monster, craving for more and more. Now I make my way and take this time to slow down from feeding that insatiable beast and write for myself.
There have been a couple of issues I've been delving lately. Or should I say for sometime now, as the first traces of this seem to trickle back for over several months now. I guess the beginning was the fact that reaching of level cap with my main character, Laiskajaakko, proved to be more a shock than anything in WoW before that. Shock in the way that it was a very negative experience to feel lost by being 'liberated' from the ilk of questing. And that the stories and advancement quests offered while levelling were replaced by the senseless grinding of heroic instances and occasional raids if I was lucky enough.
In a way that shock might have been less severe, had I been more rude, selfish and extrovert by nature. Being the INTJ I am, I'm too much of an introvert and perfectionist to go on bragging on my skills and abilities, when I see my lack of either. As it happens, I also bear the stigmata of a social animal, that being the desire to belong and be recognized as someone. I think the first makes it hard to go through the gogogo grind of heroics, as I want to learn and perfect my skills. The latter makes it hard to give up the connections I have made to move on from the social surroundings I have carved my niche in.
Like I have written earlier, to advance in the PUGging, one should be selfish, rude and dishonest to get to the PUGs these days. First it would take a couple of addons to fake the Gearscore and achievements to be able to enter the PUG raids running in ToTC and ICC to gear up to the level where I would feel comfortable to apply for the guild raids: I know for sure I would be accepted in the gear grinded from the heroics in the form of badges, but I just cannot go in there so poorly prepared, really.
My integrity goes beyond the lying part. I would be lying to other players - whom I should think as being NPC's instead, like everyone else does - which isn't honourable in any social interaction. I rather suffer to a point, whine and grumble, until I've had enough. And then I lash out to someone or something from about something very irrelevant, pouring out everything that's bothering me about and around the issue at hand. The blog has helped me on this context quite a lot: it's been a way to vent out the frustrations, wonders and anger towards my own inability to cope with the game itself.
Which leads to the other issue I'm having: I cannot let go of WoW. If I really think of it, I haven't found too much positive things to write about WoW: I've enjoyed the game in silence, commented and raved over the issues that bother me. All based on feelings and emotional responses rather than facts and research. Some readers have found that offensive or bothering, but they have seen blogs as information channels or guideline discussions.
Why do I find it so hard to leave WoW, even though I have enjoyed immensely on the games I've tried and played over my worst WoW burnouts?
I'm a social slacker. Like I said before, I want to feel I belong. I want the social recognition which you get in a familiar group. I'm one of those who Gevlon would love to bash. But being a human doesn't mean you're stupid or a slacker in the game, I think.
I liked EQ2 a lot, and I had very much fun in the game back in the day. A lot came from the fact that there was a friendly group of people playing in the guild I joined. What really was the turn off was the fact that the time zones were against the love: playing a MMO alone is very, very stupid and frustrating thing to me. The stories are not compelling enough and the mere advancing through the content alone doesn't have any meaningful reason behind it. In a single player rpg there is a reason to it all, a compelling story arc or similar to go through.
I loved EVE Online a lot. The fact is that I lost it because I didn't connect with the people in the game: the corporation I joined was very active, and still is, but in the deeper sense I didn't get any connection to the people in it. It just didn't make any sense to login, see familiar nicknames on the chat, call for missions and do them alone in the dark.
In many ways, WoW seems to be the easiest solution to my problem. It has a lot of solo content, the game itself is stable and solid despite its several (some severe) problems and I have brothers logging in every now and then. Oh, and two of my oldest kids, too. I find it very hard to make the effort to reach out and find new social groups to connect with, be it within this or other games. That is the stigmata of the introvert nature, too, the inability to make oneself known, bolster about in your own magnifience (even when there is none) or brag about your feats (especially when there are none).
If I had to change something in the blog, I would probably drop all the speculations and make this yet another class related blog with all the bells and whistles of such: guides on talents, builds, gear, levelling and stories about playing one. Then again, that would be just one of so many similar out there, so what would be the value of such a blog these days? Tanks go to Tankspot or Tank Hard, Shadowpriests to Shadowpriest.com and so on. There is just so little room to a class (or spec specified later on) specified blog out there.
Yet there is room for each and every opinion anyone ever has.
Dear diary, thank you for listening to my rant this time. I surely hope this helps me understand myself a bit better and help my readers to cope with my - sometimes edgy and unreliable - posts in the future.
Yours
Copra
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