We're real people... who screw up sometimes

Something happened in our raid last Thursday night and I couldn’t quite decide whether I should blog about it. But after thinking about it a bit, I decided I need to. Not only to give others some insight into how I see things or what I think, but also because writing it out always helps me to better understand what I think or feel about something.

So long story short, Jess and I screwed up… again. We had Part Two of Jess and K Fight on Vent (if you remember, Part One was during Cho’gall a couple months back). We then proceeded to wipe horribly on Rhyolith, a boss that we’ve killed before. I know that our fight affected the mood and thus the performance of the rest of the raid. And I know and readily admit that Jess and I did not handle things the best way and we need to find a way to change it.

But I will also say this in reference to Jess and I. And while I don’t pretend to speak on the behalf of every single GM and RL, I believe that what I have to say applies to them as well. We are human. We are real people. We thus react to things and situations, situations that affect us for the better or worse. We have our own issues and personality quirks that sometimes clash with each other. And sometimes (even often) we screw up. We aren’t stone statues who lead the guild and run raids in a vacuum without being affected by anything. Have I mentioned that we are real people?

Jess and I talked this weekend about what it means to run the guild and run our raids. Because we are real people, sometimes we can be in a particularly shitty or sensitive mood. And while you may be able to tell when a raider is in a shitty mood during the raid, it’s different when it comes to the RL or GM. When you’re running the raid, your behavior has a larger impact. As Jess said, our behavior is more on display, thus its different for us by virtue of being the leadership.

I’m not trying to excuse our behavior on Thursday night because clearly Jess and I need to work on communicating better and not taking things public. I need to try to be more clear (which is hard when I call most things by the wrong name or just add a “–y thing” to it, such as “freezy thing” or “marky thing” or “sparky thing”) and perhaps be more patient and not shut down (Jess says I should just be nicer to him). So while Jess and I recognize our issues and we have talked about how we could do things better, I guess I just wanted to highlight some other things I’ve thought about.

Ultimately though things did work out. The kids were worried that mom and dad might get divorced, but I explained to them that we went to counseling on Friday and that all was good. We also went in last night and proceeded to one shot Rhy. AND not only that but Rhy dropped the chest piece I was drooling over so now I am one drop closer to my pally arch nemesis Lorosia. And what could be better news than that?

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Why is it that...

1. ...achievement tracking keeps getting reset?

I always have a number of achievements tracked on my UI. For over a week now it keeps resetting every time I relog back in. WTF? Anyone know what is going on?

2. ...doing BGs seem less an event against the Horde and more against your fellow alliance?

This past weekend was Eye weekend. Ugh. If I have to say one more time that 3 towers>middle/flag... When you are down 3 towers to 1 and 75% of your team is still standing around in the middle (when its clear Horde are holding the flag), all I have to say is FFS. I ended up giving up on Eye yesterday and going back to my old stand by Arathi Basin.

3. ...we have such a limited sell back window?

I finally finished up Loremaster of Cataclysm this past weekend, finishing up all the Vashj quests 8 months after most people (heh). With all the quest rewards you get, plus all the random stuff you get off mobs, they really need to increase the number of sell back slots. Twelve slots is definitely not enough when you are hard core questing.

4. ...my arch nemesis keeps getting upgrades?

I've blogged plenty about my arch nemesis, he of the endless mana, our pally healer Lorosia. Can I just say that Lorosia has gotten like 4 drops from Firelands so far and I have gotten none! Zero! Zilch! Nada! It's just so so so wrong... grrrr. Freakin' pallys...

5. ...our guild has gotten screwed on RNG lately?

The Left Claw seems to have the worst luck with the RNG boss lately. Baradin Hold seems to only drop pvp gear or pve gear for classes not in our raids. And Chogall, the little f'er, will only drop the pally/priest/warlock shoulder tokens! I will now never forget the fact that pallys/priests/warlocks share the tokens because the number of times that we've said "Pally/priest/warlock again?!?!? FFS!"...

6. ...I haven't blogged in a bit?

There have been a number of RL decisions I've had to make lately. I mentioned a while back that I went to Seattle to interview for a job. Well, ultimately I got the job and I have made the decision to accept the offer. Yes, this means that I am moving to Seattle! Holy crap! I anticipate a bit of an erratic raiding and blogging schedule for the next 3 months as I not only deal with the stress of a new job, but with moving to Seattle as well.

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For the gnomes!

K was created in February of 2007 and not long after that, I created a human priest named Calexis. Well poor Cal has been sitting at level 60 something for pretty much forever. The funny thing is that in the over 4 years that I've had her, she's leveled with pretty much all of Jess' alts: his shammy, his druid, his hunter. As Jess' alts each hit max level, Cal just stays where she is.

I wondered that perhaps I didn't feel as strong a connection to her because she was just a simple human toon that was kinda meh to me. So after a couple of bgs on K where I remarked once again that it is so darned cute that there are gnome priests, I did it. I race changed my priest to a gnome and renamed her to a K name.

So I introduce to you Kakigori, my new gnome priest:

OMG the cuteness overwhelms me.

Kimchee is my spicy Korean lock. Kakigori is now my sweet Japanese priest. Kakigori is the name of a Japanese shaved ice dessert. This is my third gnome as I also have a gnome DK who is my inscriptionist. Yes, I love gnomes. Its true. They just make me happy when I play them because they are so darned cute.

Jess even said that he wondered whether I may race change K if gnomes could be druids. Especially if they could be small and cute when they shapeshifted. Can you even imagine a mini tree? A healing bush? Or a mini kitty or bear? Awww. They'd be the same size as companion pets! Though honestly if that were the case I probably wouldn't race change K, but would level a new gnome druid.

Anyways, so what have I been doing with Kakigori? Eventually I think I'll pick up a disc spec on her, but for now I've solely been doing bgs with her as shadow. And you know what? Shadow priests are way OP right now. For me to go into bgs pretty green on the toon and spec, and to be the top dpser, its insane! I was in one WSG where she was just totally kicking ass and had like 15 HKs. As I told the guild, respect bitches!

I was also in a number of ABs where I immediately took her to the lumber mill because mind controlling folks off the LM is just so evil, yet so fun. If MCing folks off the LM is wrong, I don't want to be right. I just kept doing it over and over and over again. :)

I also love the fact that this cute little bundle of evil energy can generally kill a Hordie one on one. I mean you see a big mean green orc DK or warrior or whatever, and Kakigori can just own them, all while giggling and chewing pink bubble gum. They're powerless. I love it.

The Horde seem to have a special dislike for gnomes. And for them, Kakigori says, "See you on the battlefield!"

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Needing dramamine to raid?

When the heck did it become August already? The summer is almost over! Anyways, some random updates.

We raided last night for the first time in two weeks since a week was taken off for Clawcon. On a personal front, I hadn't logged into the game since I was on for about an hour last Monday night. Before that, I hadn't been on for about 5 days. So basically I haven't played much in 10 days.

The amusing or not so amusing part for me was going back to dealing with the motion in the game. Every time I take some time away from the game, even if its just a week to 10 days, I come back to getting nauseous from the movement. The whole perspective of running and flying around just makes me queasy.

So yet again I log on midday yesterday for my first real extended play time in 10 days. I set about to go do my dailies (which I haven't done in 14 days... slacker!) and ugh, queasiness. I felt queasy the entire 2 hours or so that I was on and I really got worried that I would have to take dramamine to raid last night.

I did log on about 75 minutes before raid time to see if I still felt sick. I did a couple of BGs and a successful Tol Barad defense (heck yeah!) to test myself before the raid. And huzzah! No more queasiness! I have issues, I know.

Outside of the whole is K going to hurl on her laptop question last night, there were other ups and downs. Last night was our first raid without our old lock Buns. I really missed her. This also meant that last night was our first raid where I was the only female. Clearly this means our raid was thus lacking in maturity and general awesomeness. Sigh. I miss the days of running with 5 out of 10 raiders being female.

On that front, we could probably use another raider or two if anyone is interested or knows of anyone. A dps/healer or a tank/dps dual spec would be awesome. A female would be double the awesome so we can increase the average IQ of our raid. (I kid, I kid! Or not...)

Our raid last night also consisted of 3 pallys (1 tank and 2 healers) and three, yes THREE mages. Perhaps not the most ideal, but you know what? We make things work best they can. I would rather take people I like playing with and let those people bring their mains than create a more optimal raid composition. It also worked out because on any given wipe I could just blame a mage or pally. It was true! The numbers say so!

So just as I was bemoaning missing Buns last night, lo and behold our old holy pally Nico logged on after being deployed for a while! Huzzah! I'm excited to see him safe and sound back in the states, even if it means that he and Lorosia now tag team gang up on this poor little tree. Hopefully we can get Nico geared quickly and joining us in raids soon!

Finally I had a great time grabbing dinner with the lovely Beru last Friday night. I was back in her neck of the woods for the second time in less than a week for an interview. It boggles my mind that this game and the corresponding blog community has forged these sort of relationships. I knew that I'd be in Seattle for a couple of days so without question I shot Beru a note to say, lets meet up!

We talked about everything from work to real life to books/movies. And yes of course we also talked about the game, raiding, our guilds, the blogosphere, and specific bloggers. We specifically talked about you Rades! :) You never know how long you're going to play this game. But I find it pretty awesome that my time in the game and the blogsophere has forged these kind of friendships!

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