The Chocolate Chip Country

I've canceled my World of Warcraft subscription. For now, at least. It runs out in three days. I'll log in and make sure all the mail drifting between characters gets taken care of, so nothing gets deleted while I'm not playing.

Guilds make the game, and lately, The Unbroken's "vanguard" group has become pretty much the only group doing anything. If your project conflicts with one of theirs, well, theirs is gonna happen. Not yours.

*sigh*

I can't get excited about the expansion. Okay, the quests and the lore would be interesting, but it'll still be there later.

This is not a post about the mechanics of raiding in World of Warcraft. This is a post about drama.

( You've been warned )

It was an unusual Kara run last night. Our priest had a family emergency, so our two healers were a druid and a shaman. Being missing a shackle made a lot of the trash mobs more exciting. Adding to the oddity was that we had a bear and pally tanking, three rogues, and no mages. Our sole cloth wearer for most of the run was a warlock. The unusual composition comes from the fact that we weren't sure we'd have enough people for the run (no tanks signed up), and ended up grabbing folks who logged on at the last minute.

We cleared Prince, Netherspite, and Aran. Prince took only one try, though we wiped a couple of times on the others. I got two upgrades, while anher got a total of four, so we were happy with the night's work. My big prize of the night was the Skulker's Greaves. I won these by having the most pathetic leggings out of the three rogues.

Our guild's policy on raiding is that the person who most needs an upgrade gets it. The exception is the tier 4 gear. If you already have one piece of the set, you get priority in order to get the bonus.

World of Warcraft stuff within:

So, our guild was trying to put together some premade* PvP groups for Alterac Valley**...( Read more... )

*Premade: A group assembled ahead of time to enter a battlefield all at once.
**Alterac Valley: one of the four battlefields for PvP.

anher and I are in a kickin' guild on Steamwheedle Cartel. It's large and helpful and friendly.

And it has an official 'noobsnight', where the higher level folks help out the lower level folks. Runs through instances, help with those tricky elite critters, whatever.

( cut for MMORPG drama )

Things like this contribute to guild drama. Even if everybody is nice about it, it wears and tears at the members.

As tired as I've been, I've been doing things that require little excess energy. Like playing WoW. anher and I sprang for the expansion pack, but instead of getting out our 60s, we're trying out the new races.

It's like playing in a whole new game. New quests, new people, new awful puns. New areas. I forgot I was on a server where I already had half a dozen Alliance characters (including the 60 pally). Soon, we will leave behind the draenei starting area and have to level through our twenties in one of the ordinary Alliance areas, and I suspect some of the magic will wear off, but for now, everything is new again.

anher rolled up a draenei shammy, and I'm doing a retadin, to see how it goes. We're literally indestructable. The one time one of us died (it was me), I just waited until he finished off our attackers and then rez'd me. I'm not even doing the unkillable protection paladin- it's just the combo of two classes that are flexible in combat and good at surviving.

On another note, the blood elf starting area is the nicest, happiest-looking place in the whole darn game. It's shiny and has magic brooms and bookcases and is pretty all over. I keep having to remind myself that blood elves are Hordies, that they're bloodthirsty magic addicts.

Seriously. It's brighter than anything the night elves have, and full of magic, elvish touches that the humans lack, and open and airy, unlike anything the dwarves or gnomes do. And those are all Alliance. Half the Horde start off in the Barrens, which is nice if you like yellow plains but otherwise bleak, and the undead lands really look like they belong to undead.

All of this means very little productive has been accomplished the last few days, but it was time that I would have otherwise spent sitting and playing minesweeper if I weren't playing WoW, so at least I got to play something pretty. With as tired as I've felt lately, it's been a nice recharge.