Monday, July 25, 2011

Quick Clawcon debrief

I'm supposed to be catching back up on work and all my emails, but I thought I'd do a quick Clawcon debrief from this weekend. This was effectively our third Clawcon since we kind of did two Clawcons last summer, one in Indianola, WA and one in Chicago. This time we were in Port Townsend. The view from the back deck of the house this year:

Most of us had done this before, so we were pretty comfortable with everything. Nkm, who did not attend a Clawcon last year remarked how closely we sounded like we did on vent. Imagine that! :) I have to give a lot of credit to Chanti, who came out despite knowing and playing with us for the least amount of time. I hope that our old friend and guildie Rap did not scare him away. We joked that he better not gquit when he got back Sunday night.

Anyways, we did a lot of eating. We joked that we probably ate better than those top raiding guilds would eat if they got together. You can have your world first Paragon or whoever is getting world firsts lately... I bet we eat and drink better than you when we get together! (I'm sure they're hurt).

Jess made breakfasts of blueberry pancakes one morning and french toast the next. Jess, Wut, and I made yummy dinners as well. (We are maxed in cooking IRL). There was a lot of fish and seafood feasts to be had given we were in the Pacific Northwest. We got some dungeness crab one night and I joked that we needed to put it in a pot and take a picture of it as our seafood feast (since we didn't have lobster). Unfortunately I forgot to take the pic... it would have been so cute!

Not to be out done by the eating, there was also a lot of drinking. Lots of dark microbrews from the region, very nice bottles of wine from Wut and Chanti (heck we even had rose champagne one night), and I think the boys were drinking fancy scotch or something Friday night.

So yes, the two pallys Wut and Chanti bonded over their shared love and knowledge of nice wines. I also made them pose together with a pillow that Rap brought:

OMG Carebear stare! At one point I was hugging the pillow hoping that the never endless pally mana would somehow rub off on me.

And yes, of course there were references to WoW as we were out and about. When we went to Fort Worden and were walking around there, we were walking up a narrow path. We had to step to the side to let this guy on a lawnmower through. Good thing Chanti called out, "Pat!" so we didn't grab aggro.

Also when we were walking around the abandoned artillery batteries there (which were so freakin creepy... I am convinced that place is haunted), Jess walked down into a pitch dark walkway. I did not want to follow him so I was kind of lingering at the top of the steps and waiting. But then Jess called out "Heals!". Gosh we're such dorks.

We also spent some time walking around up at Hurricane Ridge in Port Angeles. It was quite stunning up there.

I came across an interesting sign there:

Huh? Tree skirting? Chanti offered that perhaps its the tree version of t-bagging. Yeah! You better not mess with us trees... we'll tree skirt you!

So on Saturday night we were treated to a fancy dinner from Wut. There were two non WoW players at this dinner and at some point we did talk about the whole phenomenon about us getting together. This one guy said that he was just so surprised, or that it was just something that he couldn't imagine, that we would all gather together to share a house with people we didn't know.

I had to correct him though. You may not have never met or shaken hands with each other, but we KNOW each other. I would argue that many of us know each other probably better than some of the people we physically interact with daily, like at work for example.

If you really think about it though... it does take some level of comfort to be ok with sharing a house together. You're cooking together, you're seeing people sleeping, stepping out of the shower with towels wrapped around their head, etc etc. But I don't think anyone had any reservations about sharing a house together. It just seemed so obvious. There is no one in our guild that I would even second guess feeling comfortable about sharing a house with.

We also talked about how this is the kind of guild that we want to play or raid in. Its not just about the phat lewts. I would not trade a guild further progressed for the guild that I have. That's not what is important to me in the game. I am pretty sure that many of us would not be playing this game anymore if we weren't in this guild. It's the people and the relationships that have kept us in this long.

All in all it was a good time but I also think it helps people understand each other in game better. When someone does something in game, or says something, meeting and having spent time with them gives you a context for all of that. I hope some of the other guildies can make it out next year.

We did have a little bit of sad news on Saturday. Buns our gnome lock let Jess know that she was leaving the game. I was really sad to hear that. Besides Jess and I, Buns was our only other current raider who dates back to Kara with us. That's a long time. I'm also kind of sad that we're losing a female raider. I think back to some of our Kara runs when we were usually 50% or sometimes even 60% female. I miss that. We need more women!

Buns' name came up over the Clawcon weekend, as did all of our other guildies who were not there. When we had all these bottles of really nice red wines, we mused that Buns should be here. Buns has this wicked sense of humor and sarcasm that sneaks out from time to time. She's been a long standing member of the guild and I am really going to miss her.

8 comments:

  1. Sounds like a lot of fun :)

    (and ps, you bunch of weirdo's.. when I step out of the shower I wrap a towel round my body not just my head :P)

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  2. Glad to hear you had such a good time!

    I can by the way fully agree with the thing about whether you 'know' your guildies. While you have never physically seen, touched or interacted with eachother you do have an endless amount of history together. Weirdly enough the people you game with every day might even know more of you then nearly anyone does that you do interact with IRL.

    When we had our guild meeting about two months our Irish mage was seriously considering to come (which would involve a flight to foreign country where he wouldn't speak the language) however in the end he was unable to get time off work. :(

    Had he been able to make it though he would have been snoring (I guess :p) on my couch; after playing with him ever since Karazhan I would trust him inside my house. I do hope however that he would cover another part of his body with that towel then his head. :p

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  3. @Issy: Hahaha yeah. It was awkward when the guys were walking out with only a towel around their heads. :p

    @Wroshe: Yeah, its odd when my family or other friends say something like... "you're going to go meet people you don't know?". I have to try to explain to them that I do know them, really well. When you're talking to the people you game with nearly every day, you can't help but know them.

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  4. Well I had a great time at Clawcon III. I was also lucky enough to drag NKM to Port Angelos to hang out with Rapunzel and Greystreet. And it was a super bonus that Mcpornstache got back from being out at see on Sunday night so we could hang out by the fire and the next night play rockband until 3am.

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  5. We had our first guild meet last month... and I did think about your Clawcons! Ours wasn't even planned, exactly - I wanted to visit my friends (co-guild-founders) in Ireland and I was expecting to be just the 3 of us, since on my last visit we didn't meet anyone else from the guild. And then... two other guildies decided to travel to Ireland, the three guildies already living there decided we need to get together too... we almost got two more people, but they couldn't make it in the end.

    I didn't think it would be so great, but I had a blast. And we didn't even play WoW! All in all, the attendees came from Romania, Scotland, Wales and the locals in Ireland (even though none of them is actually Irish). We had a lot of nationalities covered: Romanian, Scottish, English, Lithuanian, South African and Norwegian. We almost got a Northren Ireland guy but he couldn't make it in the end. I spent 12 hours getting there and 14 coming back (buses and delayed planes) but I don't regret one second of it! Looking forward to next year's meet... though it might be tricky, since the friends I visited are expecting their baby any hour now.

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  6. @Jen: Sounds like you guys had an awesome time as well! I would have loved loved loved to have been there just to listen to all the accents. I am a sucker for accents!

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  7. Me too, so it was fun :D (Except the Scottish guy's accent, which is atrocius and I can only understand one in three words. In our raids, I told him that if he talks to me and I don't answer... please repeat slower.) Of course, all the nice accents made me feel very self-conscious... but I'm trying to deal with the idea that I'll never sound anything else except Romanian :P

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