Gitr Knows WoW

What would my life without WoW be like? I asked myself this when considering uninstalling WoW last week. I was making my budget, and my girlfriend found out that WoW costs $15/month. She was like, “You’ve paid over $120 to play that game?” “Yeah.”

At the time, she was thinking that I could do better things with my money, like get an edge on my cell phone bill or buy nearly a week’s worth of gas. Two days later, I suggested uninstalling the game and cancelling my account. She had changed her mind and said that it IS the only form of paid entertainment I have. When I’m not spending time with her, I’m not going to the movies or golfing or anything that costs money, aside from the occassional action flick that she wouldn’t want to go to :). If I want to spend the same amount per month that we spend on a lunch break at Boston Market or Quiznos, then that is fine by her now.

But really. What would I do with that time? Grimr has about 12 days, Gitr has about 19, and all my others probably total 4 or 5 days. That’s a month and a half sitting in front of my computer, not spending time with family or friends. Granted… how much of that time WOULD have been spent with them? When my girlfriend is working? No, but I might have been hanging out with my best bud. Or going to a movie with my parents (or even that funeral I skipped because playing WoW sounded sooooo much better).

I don’t think that I would chalk it up as a complete waste of time. I played Warcraft 3 a long time, as with Warcraft 2, the Doom, Quake, and Unreal series. I have been playing games as long as I can remember. I used to play this came that was called something like “something of the Beast” about this guy that turns in to a wolf or something and was a great looking side-scroller of the day. It took 30 minutes to load off a cassette tape for the Commodore 64 or 128. Then there was Batman and Boulderdash and the Commander Keen series on IBM PC.

What makes WoW different? There is no end. Never. You can’t “beat” it. No one is ever going to get ALL the best gear for every slot for every situation. IF, and that is a big IF, they did, you can just start a new toon.

If I stopped playing, the one thing that would make me sad is not having a topic to blog on. Obviously I have a niche of readers here. How many of you would have come to my blog to read what I have to say and to give a rip about the few instances I wrote about my life if my blog’s topic wasn’t WoW? That is what draws most people here. Google searches, other WoW blogs, WoW blog lists. They all generate traffic here. I don’t want to give that up. This is fun. It’s a place to be heard outside of the game, even if it is about a game. I like to use it as a resource for playing a warrior, and a place to discuss the human condition made visible in a virtual world. I wouldn’t be sad about not playing, but not blogging.

I’d want to come up with a blog about my ideas, my beliefs, and my observations of life and crazy people at work. I’ve almost got enough stuff to keep up with Scott Adams by working here. The test would be if I could keep the topics coming? Would I get traffic and where would it come from? Without those things figured out, I’m not sure I’d want to quit, so WoW is here to stay.

I went on an UBRS run on Saturday. Mind you, it was the UBRS run from hell, but I went anyway. I know I’ve gone off on PuGs a lot before, but this one was of another nature. It was actually a good group.

To say I didn’t have any warning as to the nature of the group would be a lie. Krace, a fellow FoA member, also needs to finish his tier 0.5 set, so whenever he gets in a group, he tries to get me in. I just don’t have the patience any more to wait around while people try to get a group of 5, let alone 10, together. His warning to me while I was still in IF was, “the leader seems… a bit dim.” THAT’S not a good sign, but it can be overcome.

We went in there and had good speed all the way to Gyph. We dropped him and his handler in good form. So far, no one has died. I had just complemented the priest in my group for good healing. We got to the room before The Beast and wiped 6 times. I’m not kidding. On the stairs, in the room, all over. We took down The Beast with 9 guys, but it took forever to get to him and never really got past him.

After three pulls on the bridge, we wiped for the last time because EVERYTHING had repopped. We fought our way back to the hall above the eggs when half of my armor and both of my axes turned red at the same time. I said that was it for me because I didn’t get a single good drop because I was holding out for the Valor piece at the end. I passed by 2 upgrades and left with a 4g repair bill and had popped 7 major health potions.

Well, that just sucks.

My Sen’Jin toons are now officially upper-class. Before buying more inventory on Saturday, all the toons had a combined income of 75g. I really like playing the AH since I started putting a hold on my leveling. My biggest sale was for 33g for something that I paid 20g for. I generally try to go for things that will go for 100% mark-up, and then give it a price break. You can’t always do that for big-ticket items, so just do your homework and get something in demand.

Saturday was a bit of a let down. We only had 4 people show for our guild run, which ended up being a non-run. So we hit WSG for some PvP action. We played one round and kept our group of 4. We fought and healed as a cohesive unit. The horde won because we weren’t a part of the raid, but we gave them quite a fight in the middle of the plain that kept them busy at all times. I think I only died twice in 20 minutes. Priestr finished with 22 more HK to his name.

The re-install worked like a charm. I downloaded the full patch to save time and potential file corruption issues. I’ve got most of the add-ons working the way I want, so it’s time to play again.

I haven’t been playing much because my computer has been completely locking up when I play. I can’t Alt-Tab or anything. At first, it was only with Gunr, but it has spread to occassionaly bite Priestr.

I got a complete set of add-ons from a Bloggers guildie, so I’m trying it out and this morning before server shut-down, I was able to negotiate the AH and SW with only one error and no crashes. At the first crash, I’m totally re-installing the game from CDs from version 1.05.

Now that the patch is out, Gitr REALLY wants to get an upgrade. His armor is a mish-mash of good pieces that best suit his needs, but none of it is truely “nice.” I’ll apologize for the image quality ahead of time. This is PaintShop Pro work, instead of using the proper tool in the evening.

Gitr will enjoy Baron runs until the leggings drop because he earned “Honored” status with Argent Dawn some time back and forgot to announce it. It was on a zerg run that we were trying to do it in 40 minutes. I know that’s not Core-geared time, but it was darn fast for how we were equipped.

So, for now, it’s Strat, Scholo, UBRS, and LBRS until I get them all. I think one or more of those may be done, so I’d better check what drops where before I waste any precious time in an unnecessary run.