from silence, an update

Happy Hump Day Everyone!

Bloggy Stuff

No news is good news, right? Okay, that's a terrible excuse for disappearing off the planet for a few weeks. My blog nagged at me, whispered to me to come back, but then I told myself I didn't have anything to write about, and with all the social media stuff I've been reading I felt like I didn't have anything to offer the community and Oh-dear-god I just talk about myself and how I'm frustrated with holy paladins alllll the time. (I'm not. It just sounds like it).

I have a knack for making things harder than they are.

Raiding Stuff

In recent news, we got Nef on 25 down last week. That was a really hard one for the guild. We've had some attendance problems of late--hasn't everyone?--but things are okay for now. We lost two of our tanks while learning Nef. Not from Nef, of course. Just while. So we had quite a few re-learning nights.

Can I say right now that I love tanks who love mitigation?

No, really. It's absolutely amazing the difference between correct gemming and reforging and not-so-correct. And worse, why it does it reflect on the healer when I can't keep up a tank who is still living like it's Icecrown?

Guild Stuff

A funny story, back from an old guild.

Several times while I was the healing officer of another guild, the GM called together a meeting of officers and asked if we thought we had room for another officer. All three times, I shot it down. We had enough, in my overly humble opinion, and I also had a few people whispering me telling me that they wanted the position. So when the GM asked, I thought I knew who he had in mind.

And quite frankly, if you take 40 minute AFKs to change desks because you raid at work, at least once a week, you should not be vying for a raid leadership position. Hell, you shouldn't even be upset when we bench you.

Also, if you've spent the last two days bitching about two-thirds of the guild and how you wish they weren't in the guild and you'd love to kick them. You're not getting my vote either.

So, a week or so after we left that guild, the GM decides to whisper me and tell me that all those times he was trying to get another officer into leadership, he was trying to get Luxinterior. But each time the officers shot him down so hard he never got a chance to name the name.

Fortunately, my boyfriend wasn't upset that I voted against him three separate times.

Fast forward. Our tanking officer in my current guild takes off for some real life stuff, and we go back and forth on whether we even need a tanking officer (the tanks we had at the time were real low-maintenance). So then, I voted, no, no tanking officer.

Then we lost our other low-maintenance tank, leaving only Lux, a guy who quit the game for four months and suddenly showed up wanting to tank, and a new guy who had only done 10s.

I felt a bit awkward changing my opinion, and even more awkward voting for my boyfriend, but everyone laughed about it because he was the natural choice. I was all "Well, he's doing the work so he's got the burden of leadership without the benefits..." and the GM was all "Geez, Enlynn, it took you long enough".

So, make that four times I voted no. But the fifth stuck, and Four Lights now has the Lux-and-Enlynn tanking/healing leadership team!

It's handy in a lot of ways. We talk about things before we put 'em in vent and raid chat, and I feel less like an idiot when I have to ask the same question for the third time in one night. Lux already knows I'm a little dense sometimes. :)

Writing Stuff

I'm well on my way to meeting my goal for writing this year, having completed my second book a few days ago. I'm floored about Camp Nanowrimo starting this July. I had an idea I was saving for November NaNo, but I also wanted to write it in the summer to fully appreciate the oppressive dog days of August in the midwest for the story. So that'll be neat.

The other project, that actually has something to do with WoW, is a story about a gamer girl and her raiding guild. I've had this idea rolling around in my head for a year, and I was afraid until now but it's time to stop being afraid and RAR! Gonna do it.

Reading Stuff

Like books about druids? I meant to plug Hounded by Kevin Hearne a few weeks ago when I read it AND FELL IN LOVE. An Iron Age druid living in modern day Arizona? Oh, yes! I heartily recommend this book.

binge drinker

Blog Azeroth Shared Title: Weird Gaming Habits

I have a confession. I'm a binge drinker.

Okay, IRL I can't hold liquor to save my life, but in WoW, it's different.

I like carrying several kinds of alcohol in Enlynn's bags. Sometimes I go quite a while without drinking them (the good thing about booze, it doesn't really expire), but then I'll go through a stack in one night, starting every pull that night with the screen fuzzy.

Hmm.... That makes Enlynn a binge drinker.

Weird. I'm to finish off that stack of Rhapsody Malt I just happened to have in my bags, to celebrate.

talkin to myself (my level 1 self!)

Hi Level 1-Enlynn!

Your name isn't Enlynn yet. It won't be for a long time, but don't be afraid. You've done MMO's before, you know what you're getting into in terms of time invested, commitment, and what-have-you. Don't worry that you aren't really a shaman; you're not. You'll come into your bad healadin self after about 200 levels of other things. And that's alright.

Just about everyone out there says "Don't level as holy/disc/resto!" and they ARE SO RIGHT. But you're going to do it anyways, because you are too stubborn.

But really. If you're not having fun doing something, then don't do it. It's a game, for cryin' out loud, and you don't have to do do every single thing out there just because it's out there. That goes for every abandoned character on all those random servers. You had fun, it wasn't a waste of time.

And for the love of Elune, stop killing shit you don't need for a quest. No such thing as posterity's sake in a video game. l2train!

If you ever gripe that gold is hard to come by, I swear I'll come back in a gnomish time machine and slap you silly.

You'll think you're awesome when you're level 45. And you will be SO WRONG. It's okay, I'll be here when you figure it out. Someday you'll be in a real raiding guild and have a neat mount and all that stuff. No hurry, my dear. No hurry.

(Inspired by Rants of a Priest, Muradinn's Musings, and Dwarven Battle Medic. Join in, this is fun!)

one of the games i play

Muradin's Musings has a great post today about being an adult trying to survive the real world with the WoW gaming stigma. I got several paragraphs into my response before I realized it was probably a bit much enthusiasm for a comment. So how do you deal with nerd stigma?

If I am going to talk about my hobbies or how I spend my free time, I make sure the less-nerdy ones get first treatment. I read. I bake. I write. I love fantasy. (Oh, and I play some video games.)

I hide my shame by lumping WoW in as "one of the games I play." People make assumptions, thinking I'm talking about the Wii or the Playstation, and I let them. And if they press me to talk about games, I talk about doing Yoga on the Wii Fit, or playing Mario Kart, or... you know. Anything but World of Warcraft.

And why should I be so ashamed? The average American household has a television on for 6 hours and 47 minutes every day. HowstuffWorks suggests that MMORPG players spend a lot less time watching television and about 20 hours a week logged in. Why is vegging out on the couch for hours on end better than raiding?

I have a coworker who spends about as much time playing facebook games as I do playing WoW. For some bizarre reason, it's acceptable for her to talk about needing to check to see how her pumpkins in Farmville are doing, but I can't wonder aloud if my gems sold yet. (Don't get me started on how much time people spend on facebook and twitter!)

Janyaa questions if hiding our passion for MMORPGs is reinforcing the negative stigma. I personally don't see any good coming from telling my boss or my dad I play WoW. Blizzard tried to get me to connect Enlynn to facebook, but I still think it's way too soon.

Check out this post by MMO Fallout on game stigma.

There is hope, though. A writer I follow, Janice Hardy at The Other Side of the Story, did a guest post for Grinding to Valhalla where she talks (with no shame!) about being a gamer and relating it to her career. I was delighted to read her article and find out that a successful professional I respect plays the same games I do! I think the gamers in creative industries will, slowly, open the doors for the rest of the world. Yes, writers are expected to be quirky, but I'll take all the positive MMO press I can get!

I think there will be a day, someday, where MMORPGs get the same treatment as television, Mafia Wars, and even the time-sink we call social media. I would love to come out of the (gaming) closet, but I'm not ready to yet, nor do I think the world is ready to embrace us.

Oh yeah, and cheers to women gamers over 30! I never want to lose my sense of play!

So, how do you handle you handle the nerd stigma?

Rock Paper Tiger: A Gamer's Review

Have you read Rock Paper Tiger by Lisa Brackmann? I snagged it as an impulse borrow from the library after seeing it mentioned a handful of times on book blogs. I was surprised to find that Brackmann uses an MMO-style universe as part of the story.

Without spoiling it for you, here are a handful of things I liked about the world inside the book: The Sword of Ill Repute, or, the Game.

1. The protagonist plays to connect, not escape. Her friends have a specific virtual space to meet. She doesn't define herself as a gamer; she just happens to play a video game, and she's got quite a bit of life going on outside of the game. And her dirty dishes have nothing to do with gaming.

2. No nerd stigma. That's right, no socially awkward teenagers in sight. No geek jokes. No mention of grandmother's basements. No pwning or 1337 speak. No obsessive player who loses his family/job/house to the keyboard.

3. The protagonist identifies herself with her avatar. She also ponders the avatars of people she has met in real life, coming to a better understanding of them through the way they choose to express themselves in the Game. Granted, in WoW we don't have quite the amount of customization as in the Game, but I appreciate the suggestion that characters can be valid creative expressions.

4. The Game is Chinese, and as such, uses Chinese mythology. The lore is elegant and portrayed thoughtfully, creating a mini-world with depth and culture of its own.

5. Brackmann takes us into the Game without overwhelming non-players. While the protagonist doesn't do anything 'hardcore' like raiding, we are exposed to MMO staples - cool weapons, fearsome monsters, fun items, and adventure. No math or heavy theory. The Game is accessible.

There's room for disagreement that every mention of the Game was positive, and a couple of things that happened around the Game are already controversy in the industry. (And yes, there were a few events that would make for less-than-stellar game mechanics. I'm talking portrayal, not playability here). Still, I was pleased with the treatment. It's downright refreshing to read about an MMO sans nerd stigma.

Rock Paper Tiger is not a book about a MMORPGs. It's a book about international crime and war that features an MMO to connect the characters. As such, it finds a much different audience: readers, not gamers.

How about you - have you read the book? How do you feel about The Sword of Ill Repute as a portrayal of MMOs outside of the gaming industry (or other showings of MMOs in the mainstream)? I've never set up commenting rules or anything like that, but I do ask that we keep this page spoiler-free for those who might still have Rock Paper Tiger on their reading list.

Do You Want To Date My Avatar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNyg1ftMIU

Felicia Day is delightful!