Fishing for dummies (and other junk)

I’m feeling a bit grousy today. It has poured rain all day; I had to work; and it’s a Monday. On top of that, I’m feeling kind of blah about WoW right now.

So last week we had the patch, which went pretty smoothly overall. Our scheduled raids for the week were canceled, and instead my guild made some impromptu 10 and 25 man Ulduar excursions. I didn’t go. I just didn’t feel like it.

I’ve been playing this game too long to feel much excitement about anything, anymore. Maybe that’s a sign that I need a break, I don’t know. What I did, instead of raiding, was fish. I do love the change to fishing.

You can fish anywhere in the game, now, and you won’t have any more misses, either. Instead, the mechanic has been changed so that until your fishing skill is high enough level for the zone, you catch junk that sells for a couple coppers. Occasionally, you may catch a zone appropriate fish, but mostly you catch junk–old, tattered fabric, knotted fishing line, a piece of drift wood, etc. But you still get a skill up.

What that means is I can skill up the fishing of my alt characters anywhere in the world. That’s huge for me, being someone who actually enjoys and appreciates fishing.

A week without raiding

This is going to be my first week this year during which I won’t be raiding. Strange to think about it in those terms, but I have raided at least one day per week since hitting 80.

Part of the issue is that due to forgetting my laptop power adapter in my part-time room in Washington, I was without my MacBook Pro from Thursday through Monday evening. I had internet access via my wife’s school-owned laptop, but I just never checked the guild website for raid signups. By the time I returned to Washington last night, this week’s raids were full.

I’m rather looking forward to the break. Last night I started the Frenzyheart/Oracle chain in Sholazar Basin, and I am now Honored with the Oracles. So I’ll probably keep progressing with that the next two nights. I’m rather ashamed to admit it, but when I started questing in the Basin last night, I had completed exactly one quest in the zone previously–the starter quest that has you parachute in from Dalaran.

It’s turning out I missed quite a bit–the Oracle quest chain is pretty fun, if only because of the funny little mannerisms of the Murloc cousins themselves.

I have to say, compared to the way Blizzard reinvented questing for Wrath, I’ve noticed a considerable drop off in quality of the raiding experience in Wrath. Part of that is feeling that Blizzard really didn’t care enough about players to give them a whole new entry level raid dungeon, but instead reused an old dungeon, Naxxramas, that probably wasn’t much fun to begin with back in classic WoW.

Before I get into my gripes about Wrath raiding, let me just mention some things I appreciate.

1. Short raids. I love Obsidian Sanctum, Eye of Eternity, and even Vault of Archavon. I like a raid that is over and done in less than an hour.
2. More gear drops, sometimes even two or more Tier tokens.

Unfortunately, that’s about it in the “like” column. My gripes after the break.

And so it begins

I signed up for my first raid this weekend, a combination Vault and Obsidian Sanctum raid, preceded by some guild PvP in Wintergrasp if we need to take control of it for the raid to proceed.

Next week, I signed up for Naxx on Weds. and Fri.

I have mixed feelings.  On the one hand, it was inevitable that this day would come.  Raiding is one of the things I enjoy the most about the game.  But there are also stressors that come with raiding.

For me, the biggest one is the time factor.  In order to raid on a weekend evening, I have to make sure it’s OK with my wife.  Even with her permission, I still feel guilty because of the time raiding takes away from her and my son.  And sometimes, even when she’s said it’s OK, I can sense her resentment from the other room—maybe our son is especially demanding that evening, or the cat pukes up a hairball on the bed (my wife will freak over that!).  In those cases, playing WoW seems like not just a luxury, but an actual avoidance of family responsibilities.

But I can’t just get up in the middle of a boss fight to go yell at my kid, or clean up a hairball mess (it’s always during a fight, never during a down time, when these things happen).  So I deal with guilt.

My wife and I have minimal time together during the week, some of which I also spend playing WoW.  The mature part of my brain, which certainly does not rule the rest of that organ (or any other organ for that matter), tells me that it’s wrong to allow a video game to consume four to five hours of prime family time on a Friday or Saturday night.

Another part of my brain says, “Yeah, but every person has their hobbies.  your hobby is not different than golf, except that you play golf late at night on a weekend.”

And yet, I have also enjoyed not raiding over the past couple months.  I can log on whenever I want, do whatever I want.  I’m on no one’s schedule but my own.  If I want to quit in the middle of something and go do something else, I can darn well do it.  I like the freedom of not raiding.

Another stressor is personal.  Am I willing to put myself out there and have my performance judged by others who are depending on me?  Raiding is the closest thing most of us will experience to a real military battle.  Just as in a platoon, every person is integral to the whole.  Am I willing to have my DPS analyzed?  The logs of my performance pored over by a raid leader, my missteps scrutinized and called to my attention?

Not that those kinds of things happen all that often in a casual, friendly guild…but the possibility is there.  After my second or third time in Kara, the raid leader messaged me in private to talk about my sub-par DPS performance.  He was kind in his criticism, but it still stings.

But you know what, next raid I didn’t use Drain Life anymore, instead casting Shadowbolt whenever I did not need to refresh a DoT, as the raid leader recommended.

Another factor in my mixed feelings: personal game goals.  My playtime is limited.  Would it be better spent looking for Everfrost shards to turn in for Sons of Hodir rep?  What about the Achievements I want for myself?  There are any number of things I could be doing on a Friday night, rather than raiding Naxx.

But I know that despite these doubts, there is really nothing else I could be doing on a Friday night.  This is the reason I play the game: to get together with friendly people on a weekend evening and kill some tough monsters for a chance at some nice gear. What more is there to the game than that?

Into the Temple

Time seems to be rushing towards some kind of end.  With only a month until the expansion, I am not sure what to feel about it.  I don’t feel excited about it, that’s for sure, perhaps because I’ve already had a preview, and after the initial enjoyment wore off I didn’t feel much of anything about the new content.

I think if there is one thing I am still looking forward to, however, it’s raiding at level 80.  I’ve really enjoyed the raiding I’ve done over the past nine or ten months, and I think the guild I am in will be set to raid at an earlier point than we did post-BC.

Tonight, we’re going into Black Temple for the first time, and that has me really excited.  Seeing Black Temple was one of my early goals, and in some ways because it has been there as a sort of end mark for so long, it means more to me than if we made it to Sunwell.

Honestly, raiding is about the only thing keeping me playing the game at this point.  Leveling an alt has become a real chore.  Doing dailies has ceased being fun and has become a chore I must do to make money to prepare for the expansion.  Raiding is still fun for me, though.  That’s probably a bit ironic, since people usually get burned out on raiding, if anything.

Honestly, though, I am still in doubt as to whether this expansion is going to hold my interest for another ten levels and beyond.  I just don’t know, at this point.  Doing the same old thing every time I log on, over and over, has worn a bit thin.  It’s too much like real life!

I will say, one bit of heartening news I read recently was that Blizzard is planning to reconsider how Battelgrounds work, maybe even allowing players to earn XP via PvP and level up with little PvE interaction.  I know that sounds odd, since I was just complaining about doing the same old thing over and over; BGs are the most unchangeing part of the entire game.

But I’ve often thought, if I were to level another alt it would be solely for PvP.  This would allow me to go that route without having to level up on the same old PvE content I’ve been experiencing for over two years now.  Frankly, I don’t see how earning XP in a BG could be implemented without the player having to do some leveling in PvE, though.  How would anyone level a level 10 to 15 character in a Battleground?  Talk about painful.

Voiding the Reaver

We downed Void Reaver last night. It was pretty obvious it was going to happen, right from the start, although it took us three three tries. The first two times, we got him down to 60%, then 44%, and finally on the third try we took him down.

It was a welcome victory, but somehow not as exciting as the first time we killed Gruul (back before he was nerfed; I always have to add that). For one thing, Void Reaver has a reputation as an easy boss kill, so I think we all felt a little embarrassment that he gave us problems for awhile. The difference between victory and defeat really came down to having the mod Bigwigs installed. That mod made it so easy to know when an arcane orb was coming for us or the person standing next to us.

So, what dropped? The Pally/Shaman token dropped–times three!–plus the Cowl of the Grand Engineer.  I rolled on the hood, but lost to our raid leader, another warlock. Hopefully there will be more opportunities for me to get either the cowl or the shoulder token. Since I already have the Mantle of the Elven Kings–equivalent to T5 mage shoulders–I’d most like to replace my Voidheart Crown especially. I need more base +hit.

Currently I am at 116 +hit, without my Scryers Bloodgem. I equip the Bloodgem in place of Timbal’s for boss fights, which brings my +hit up to about 150. Still I need more. I am capped for Affliction, but not for Shadow/Fire, and this is a source of embarrassment.

I’m going to be doing some Karathons over the next few weeks, so I am hoping for two pieces of gear that should put me close enough to the hit cap that with the Bloodgem, I’ll be capped on bosses. I want the wand that drops from Aran, and the cape that drops from Prince. Those two pieces alone should be enough.

The reason I raise the subject is that I got into a discussion with another warlock in the private guild warlock channel. It was one of those discussions that makes me feel like I’m a failure. Of course you cannot tell the tone of a person’s voice, or whether they are really being condescending, from typed text in a chat pane, but the gist of the conversation was “Well I’m hit capped for everything, so why aren’t you?”

I had to admit that I am not Exalted with the Sha’tar, so my head enchant is all wrong. Plus there are those two gaps in my gear–wand and cape.

Yes, it was frustrating at something like 148 +hit to see my Immolates being regularly resisted by VR. Yes I know every second lost recasting a spell that did not land is a second of DPS lost. Yes yes yes. I’m working on it, now get your damned epeen out of my face and go stroke it in private.

Truth is, I don’t know if I can get the Sha’tar Glyph of Power at this point, simply due to time constraints. At 1500 rep per Mechanar run, I’d have to run it about eight times to make it from Honored to Exalted. There might be other TK instances that yield better rep, but I’d still choose to run Mechanar because of the purple gem that drops on Heroic–it also gives +6 hit, and I could replace some Veiled Noble Topaz’s currently equipped.

Often I think WoW simply demands too much from players. Yes, I could stop raiding and PvP all day for purples, or I could just do dailies and level alts. There are a few people in my guild who do just that. That’s a difficult road for me to take, however. My internal drive is geared towards raiding, and that makes life difficult for me (and for my wife who has to put up with the hours spent with my face in a computer screen).

At other times, I think to myself “God, what were those designers thinking when they created this damned game?” I’ve never played a video game that required this kind of time commitment to achieve the highest level of goals in the game. Yeah, it’s fun. Yeah, if I were single I’d never have contact with the outside world again. But there is something messed up with that.

I, for one, am glad that the trajectory of Blizzard’s development seems to be more and more aimed at the older, casual gamer. I love the idea of 25 man dungeons in WotLK also being offered in a 10 man flavor. I’d like to see more ideas like that, though. For example, this whole business of having to grind Heroic Mech for Sha’tar rep…that’s just wrong. The game shouldn’t work like that. Repetition is death to fun.

I don’t know how else Blizzard could work things so that the game is less of a slog, though. Personally, I love the idea of rep gained via turn-ins. I don’t grind for faction items. I buy ‘em up off the AH. That’s how I got to Revered with Scryers. Sha’tar rep should be similarly easy to acquire. Others may differ–there is something to be said about playing a game with the difficulty level turned up way high–but for older folks, with a job and a life, there are some elements of the game that need to be left on easy mode.