a small amount of gushing and more posts that made me go hmmmm

My interest in playing WoW has increased exponentially since discovering, and attempting to barge into, the WoW blogsphere.  I think it must be partially because when you’re playing WoW, if you don’t have an Awesome Guild of Awesome (and this is entirely my fault for not putting enough effort into finding one), it’s all too easy to feel like an alien from planet brain.  I loved running Magister’s HELP I HAVE NO ACROYNM Terrace (MHIHNAT?) with the L-Plate Pally and her Mage Mentor because, as well as being a stupid amount of fun anyway, but it created a mini-sense of community and shared enthusiasm for aspects of the game that might not necessarily tender up obviously quantifiable rewards.

I was burbling happily to a WoW friend about the whole MHIHNAT experience not long after it happened.  He wanted to know why it’d taken us til 2 in the morning, and I replied, rather sheepishly, that it had been all the dying that had slowed us down.  He did the virtual equivalent of Giving Me A Look, which I took (possibly unfairly) as implying a certain degree of “you’re that shit?”  So I got slightly defensive and explained that there were only 3 of us, 2 of us had never been there before, my healing probably wasn’t quite what it should have been and the pally had been a learner.  “Pffft,” he said, “noobs.”

This saddened me

(Of course, I expressed the deep inner well of my sadness by snapping that I’d rather instance with somebody fun and charming and willing to learn that an arrogant wanktard (i.e. you) … but mainly I was saddened)

By contrast, the wonderful thing about the blogsphere is that it’s full of intelligent, articulate, interesting and entertaining people playing the game their own way – whether they’re raiding regularly, collecting achievements, untangling guild politics, sharing what they’ve learned, attempting to navigate the twilight zone of WoW gender dynamics, or just slouching towards 80 with a big axe – and supporting others in doing the same.  It serves as an increasingly necessary antidote to every failPUG and every discussion that ends in “lol noob” or “lol faggot” or “I hope u get cancer and die.”  Although finding yourself playing World of Moroncraft can be entertaining in a “woah, I am so much better than you in every conceivable way and I can spell” kind of way, it mostly winds up being depressing and demoralising as, poor Temi can attest.

Since we’re now cruising along in meta-ville and I’ve just remembered it’s Friday, here’s my on-going (that’s twice I’ve done it, twice counts as on-going doesn’t it?) weekly round-up of posts I stumbled across and, for whatever whimsical reason, enjoyed.

There have been quite a few discussions of the ever painful hardcore v. casual issue – the most measured and thoughtful, and possibly definitive (in my humble opinion) being here, over at Falling Leaves and Wings.

I also went through a respeccing craze early in the week.  I don’t know what happened but it went from “one quick respec to prioritise meditation” to Expensive Dither Extreme.  I have no idea what came over me but I was like a woman at the hairdressers.  Over the course of 2 days, I went through about ten subtly, minutely different variations of holy.

Take One was basically “same as before but with extra zen”

Take Two was “oh wait, Northrend healing is aoe heavy, I’m going to create a build that really prioritises my group healing.”

Take Three was “crap, now it takes me five hours to cast greater heal”

Take Four was “hmm, now I’m moderately bad at everything”

And so on and so forth.

Holy God.  Seriously.  That respeccing.  Nobody told me it’s like crack.  You think you can do it once or twice with your mates and then stop, but you can’t.  The worst of it is you have spend more and more money to get the same hit than you did the first time.  It’s a slippery slope, I say, a slippery slope.  So when you’re talking to your trainer and he’s all “pssst, want to respec, only a gold” just say no, kids.

Of course, the truly ironic cherry on the compost heap was the very next day – the very next day I tell you – while I was sitting here at my computer, trembling and shaking and wondering how I was going to get through the day without a respec, World of Matticus published a typically fantastic and insightful guide on how to build a holy priest. Gah!  That’s it.

/footstomp

/flounce

I’m going shadow.

And, finally, here is a picture of an undead warrior with an enormous axe because … well … why not.  I like pictures of people doing their thang in Azeroth.  And I find undead warriors particularly amusing, I think because they’re very literally a skinny little guy.   Who could have your eye out with that.