Balance

I've been playing the game for almost 3 years now and I've had my fair share of neglecting RL for the game, but I like to think that I've found a much happier balance in life at this point. The game use to be an issue of conflict between me and my spouse. I would play too often or when she needed help with the kids. She still reminds me how much she hated it when I would play all morning on Saturdays. More recently I've cut back my playing time and this has greatly decreased contentions concerning this game, and added more balance overall to my life.

In my opinion there are certain things that should always supercede playing WoW. If you have a family they should always come first, you probably shouldn't lose your job or fail a class because of the game. Your health and personal hygiene would be bad to neglect as well (lol - don't forget to eat & bathe).

The people who don't do this make the rest of us look bad. These idiots give gamers in general a bad name and are the reason people do studies that claim that WoW breaks up marriages, makes students drop out of school and increases the crime rate in the lower 48 states. Its pretty common sense if you think about it.

Yes, I understand WoW is more than a video game for those probably reading this blog. Most non-WoWers think of our game as something that should be easily set aside like a nintendo game. They don't realize that we consider this game more of a hobby. We all have hobbies, our just consists of killing demons and dragons and stuff with our guild on-line.

Now, I have kids, young kids. My oldest is 3 years old, and I have 2 others that are younger. I have come to the point where I try not to play when they are awake. So, I play in the morning before I go to work and intermittently after we've put the kiddos to bed. We got a second account so that my wife and I could play together. Now its together time instead of contention time (of course those times when our computers are being stupid we are still contentious, but not with each other). Now its much more balanced. Of course we aren't raiding (we're still level 78), but we'll get there. We'll never be hard core raiders. We'll never be doing the hardest raid. We're okay with that. We are much happier this way and we can always talk about WoW through out the day if we want.

Now, during holidays all of this balance stuff is kind of thrown out the windows for us. Its a good thing there aren't holidays all the time.

Arrrrthas

So, I was opening World of Warcraft the other day with my 3 year old daughter on my lap. She looked up and so the Lich King sitting on his icy throne (the loading screen). My daughter, looked at me and said, "A pirate, dad. A scary pirate." Well, I shared that with my twitter friends and Nightravyn decided to make Arthas the pirate a reality (with a little bit of photoshop). Here we have it. I'll have to see what my daughter says about this picture (probably just about the same, but he's a little less scary as a pirate in my opinion).

I've been Tagged

I've been tagged...

I got tagged by Brajana from Mend Pet where I get to answer questions from my main characters perspective.

So, here is goes.

What is your name and where did it come from?

My main character's name is Aoirselvar. Where did I come up with the name? Honestly I think I just used the random name button when rolling the toon. The name since then has given me quite a bit of grief from my guildies. My guild leader keeps telling me to get a name change, one guildie even said that he'd finance it. But I couldn't do it. Once I figured out a way to pronounce it that is.

("A"(as in the letter)-"Your"-"cell"-var(rhymes with car)).

I'd write it out in IPA (international Phonemic Alphabet), but I don't have access to all the symbols here. Most people find it easier to just call me bob though.

How old are you and what is your birthday?

Gosh, I've never thought about that. I don't know how old Dwarfs get. Technically he was born in August of 2006 when I rolled the toon (which means he's turning 3 this year). In terms of the game, well. He's in the equivalent of his late 20's (whatever that is in Dwarf years). And his birthday? Sad, I don't have a back story to my main (that's what happens on non-RP servers). Lets say his birthday is August 26th.

Are you in love and with whom?

This is easy, my toon fell in love with a human mage named Kydra (my wife's toon). Right now they are still dating (questing?). I guess dates in Azeroth consist of killing stuff together. So, we're currently killing stuff together.

What is your favorite mount and why?

I really like the engineering mounts, I have my flying machine and I like the gnome mechostriders (especially the yellow one). I'm currently working on making the Mechano-Hog but I still have to level my engineering, farm a million different mats, and get my rep up with Alliance Vanguard. That's still a ways off. But I also love my drakes, I have the nether drakes and the albino drake. Oh, the the red nether ray is pretty cool looking as well.

Do you prefer a certain type of Azerothian meal and where do you get it from?

Definately the ice cream from the the salt flats that you have to get your orphan during children's week. I'm a sucker for ice cream IRL as well.

You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be and why are they so huge?

Too much mositure I suppose. It happens in my front yard too (although their not quite so large).

If you saw the Lich King walking toward you, what would you do?

Depending on my mood? I would do one of two things, either run in with Mungula and go ape sh1t (and die really quickly) or play possom and leave my pet in a lurch (what a crappy pet owner - either way my pet dies, sad).


These people I'm tagging may have already been tagged, but oh well, I'm tagging them again if that's the case: Jezriyah, Faulsey, and Brigwyn. So, get to it already, lol.

Lost in WoW

I wanted to confirm that the Hatch on Lost is definitely in the Northrend. I read about this on OneAmongMany's blog when Will wrote a guest post there. This revelation answers so many questions in regards to where the stupid island is. No wonder no one can find it, the Lich King has control of it, and its stuck in an MMO on Northrend of all places.

But this also brings up some questions.

Like what time are we at in the game? Apparently the timeline for WotLK is before 2003 or so, but after the Darma Inititive landed on the island. So, Azeroth is somewhere inbetween 1970-1990 or so. You see the hatch hasn't imploded yet. Oceanic 815 hasn't crashed yet (well, maybe they have). But then we still might be able to see our friends Jack, Locke, Hurley, Kate, etc, etc, (if you watched the new episode this week).

Another question, what are our heros from Lost doing in Azeroth?

Now that gets me wondering about what class all of those characters from Lost are going to be (now that we have found out that the island is really Sholavar Basin).

Hmmm, Jack has to be a paladine. He's noble, crys a lot, and hmmm, probably would look good in plate. Oh and Jack should be able to heal, he is a doctor.

Sayid has to be a rogue with all of the assassin work that he does.

Locke, well, duh, Locke is a warlock, mostly just because of his name. I might also be a deathknight given certain events that have taken place this season.

Sawyer is a, I don't know, I want to say he's a warrior. I don't have any good reason for it. Maybe a hunter without a pet, because he's pretty good with a gun.

Faraday is some kind a mathmatical wizard, so he gets to be an Arcane Mage (what does arcane have to do with math, I don't know, go ask a mage).

Kate is a druid, a kitty druid. Doesn't she already seem like a cat? Cats like to run, Kate likes to run, right? And if you take the "e" off of her name than is spells Kat. So there you have it.

Well, what else would Juliet be? Of course she's a holy priest, because she's our healer who can't seem to get off that stupid island.

Okay, Miles will be our Deathknight, not because he's particularly scarey, but because he talks to dead people. I guess if we had a Necromancer class he would have been that.

Desmond is our awesome sorcerer or something, master of something or other. I'm going to say he's a fire mage, because hmm... he had a fire in his heart to get back with Penny. Okay, that was a stretch.

Jin has turn out to be one of my favorite characters. He has his fishing skills all the way up. What class is Jin? I'm going to say that he's our Shaman. Mostly because I see him doing Melee combat and hmmm... he...uh... well, I need one of them to be a shaman, right?

Oh, evil and coniving Ben. I wouldn't put it past him to be working right along side with Arthus himself. Ben I'd say is a warlock. He's evil, but often makes others do his work for him.

I've decided that Hurley is a hunter. Why? Well, no good reason other than that Hunters are awesome and Hurley is awesome. Dude.

Well, there are several characters that I'm missing, but I best get back to work. I obviously got a little too carried way with this post. Maybe not.

DHG - How not to Pick up Women in WoW

Here's another installment of Dave's Hunter Guide. How not to pick up women in WoW. I didn't realize how serious Dave might need this until I saw some recent comments in Facebook. So, here you go Dave...

First off, there are actually many females that play world of warcraft. You might not believe it by looking at our guild lately (besides my family members and a few others). But overall you'd be surprised. That being said, most girls that I know that play WoW (actually all of them, but maybe I'm wrong) don't play WoW to be hit on. Seriously, I don't really think they do (at least my wife doesn't). I'm guessing that hitting on someone randomly in the world of azeroth will get you on ignore lists very quickly.

But if you happen to be in Ironforge or Stormwind and you see a Night Elf or a Human female with next to nothing on dancing on top of the mailbox, if you see that then you must definately refrain. You see, those are not females playing, but rather 13 year old boys or 40 year old pervs. They might respond to you in a positive manner, but I don't think that's what you are looking for.

You might want to go hit on the female guards in StormWind though. They can't respond because their on duty, but maybe after they get off work...

Stupid Computers

Well, we haven't been able to play since last Wednesday when our internet connection started acting all funny. Finally got that working then the router started being stupid, got that working then the other computer was being dumb. aghghghghgh. Finally both computers are working, internet is working, router is working. What then? WoW won't work on the old computer because of the system restore. So, I got done reinstalling WoW on the older computer this morning, I'll have to work on getting all the updates this afternoon.

On top of that, I went from 40 fps (frames per second) down to 5-11 on my newer computer. I'm trying to run things like Malware bytes and Spybot Search and Destroy. I'll have to scan the computer with AVG tonight. We got a on that computer last week, but so far we haven't been keylogged. I think we've gotten rid of it, but I'm still having flucuating performance on WoW. :(

So, I haven't played as much as of late for the above reasons, but I did get my DK to level 69. Now I have lines from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure stuck in my head. /sigh.

Family of WoWers

So, pretty much my whole family plays this game. It started with my older brother who worked on us. I was in graduate school with dial-up internet at the time. But he let me play while I was at his house. How quickly addicted I was. I started playing on a friends account on my dial-up modem (which wasn't as bad as you might think). Later I upgraded to my neighbors fast speed internet (inevitably someone you live by will have an open wi-fi connection).

My other brothers started playing as well. My older brothers wife started playing because she thought the warlock fire horses were pretty. Later she sat down with my wife and rolled a cute human mage.

Kind of a snowball effect going on here. Now my brother-in-law plays, my brother's kids play (rolled a DK with one of them the other day). I have 3 cousins that play.

So, at family parties we frequently talk about wow. My poor mother usually is clueless and one of my sister-in-laws think we are clueless for playing (or at least very geeky, but she tried to play her self, got lost and frustrated and refuses to try again. Meh.)

So, should I work on my parents? Should we start having family raids instead of family parties? (family raids, lol, sounds like we are going to attack the next door neighbors house - they put an encryption on their Wi-fi - they must go down).

We have interacted more, but we don't always play together. Its really fun when we go do an instance together, but that doesn't happen very often. sad I know

Does your family play? Has your family given into the modern day epidemic called World of Warcraft?