The following is kind of a follow up to my last blog post. It also is something I just now first posted on our guild forums. Unlike some though, I’m not at all adverse in “pugging” or running outside my own guild so long as its a well thought out, mature group. Perhaps you’re a small guild occasionally short a healer or something. Obviously, for this to be relevant at all, you’d have to play Alliance, Farstriders (US) server. But if you do, and need someone, feel free to contact me:

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to make my in game time more productive. Seems like I spend way too much time trying to put runs together on the fly or simply waiting for one to come together. I doubt I’m the only one in this boat.

So here is what I’m thinking to try within this message thread and for myself, this message in particular which I’ll edit to keep current. I suggest we post our general availability and a brief goal statement for each toon we’re *actively* playing at the moment. Then also an *out of game* means of contact that has near constant accessibility. For many people this would mean a phone/text number. For some like myself, it could be an email/im address. For those with phone only but uncomfortable giving out there real number, google offers a phone number forwarding option called gvoice I think. So somebody contacting me could hit me up with something like:

Can Sayas heal an Onyxia run Thursday at 10am server?

To which I could either commit or decline. But with acceptance, I’d know how to schedule my time. So here is my current information which could be used as a template:

GENERAL AVAILABILITY: (server times)
Monday-Tuesday: 9:30pm – 11pm
Wednesday: 9:30pm – ???
Thursday-Saturday – Any time
Sunday: Before 11pm (finish time!)

TOON/GOAL/INTERESTS:
Sayas, lvl80, priest: Healing role, discipline primary spec, looking to learn a holy heal off spec, interested in badge (heroic) runs, particularly heroic daily for triumph badges, H ToC for gear drops, Onyxia for the experience, VoA, Ulduar, ToC10

Dhume, lvl75, death knight, blood tanking, unholy dps, looking to learn tanking, group dps, leveling

Whispera, lvl22, druid, feral tanking & dps, healing off spec, learning tanking, learning druid healing, of course leveling

CONTACT:
gmail/gchat: staretssayas@gmail.com

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First of course is the time commitment. Now we’re not talking quantity of time primarily. I spend plenty of that. I’d guess 10-20 hours a week typically. It seems like most raiders devote at least two nights a week to raiding and then many guilds seem to spend one night a week beyond that on “progression.” So, we’re talking three nights, three hours a night… so nine hours. Luckily, my guild really only expects two nights reducing that number to six hours.

But my deal is more about the expectation of nights of the week set aside for raiding. While I spend plenty of time in game, almost all of my time is on an ad hoc basis. I fit my time in between other commitments. Raiding turns that upside down to an extent and says you must to some extent fit those other commitments in around raiding. Still, I want to raid and anything you want doing takes a degree of prioritizing. So what if I committed just one night a week? Would that be good enough? I’m not sure because I know sometimes each raid is a progression in itself. In other words, night two is a continuation of night one. Obviously its an inconvenience at the very least to the others if I participate on night one and not on night two. Then again, what if the day of designated were to fall on day two of our raiding schedules? The chance that I’d be called upon to fill in for someone that started on day one would certainly be diminished from having started the raid in the first place.

I could look at pugging raids instead. I actually do a fair amount of that with 5 mans. But part of my motivation here is guild participation, not just raiding for raiding’s sake so that doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory solution. Also, I could look at raiding with a guild that consistently raids at a more convenient time for me. If I could raid mornings instead, that would far easier for me to commit to. But that would involve me changing guilds and perhaps servers as well. So that kind of would defeat the purpose as well. I don’t even know, is it possibly to transfer to servers in other areas of the world so that my morning might be their evening? Hmm…

So, there you have my thinking on the time issue. Next time, I’ll look at another concern.

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I just had an eye opening and thought provoking experience: I often look myself up at http://be.imba.hu to see what I should be working on gear wise and what content I should be running. Its a great site for doing that. But today I took it a step further and looked up all the priests in my guild. Here is what I discovered:

First, our guild “only” has 19 level 80 priests. That surprised me. I’ve always thought of Ex Cinis Cineris as priest heavy and would have guessed us to have maybe half again that number at very least. But what really shocked me is that I am roughly tied for 4th best in terms of gearing with two others. Looking at it another way, if this data is to be believed, I’m no worse than the 6th best geared priest in our guild. There is some room for error as some folks may have logged off in pvp gear or geared for an alt spec, but still.

What this means is that I’m harboring some delusions as to my status. I’d always proclaimed quite loudly that I was at best 2nd tier and quite possibly 3rd tier in terms of ECC priests. However, assuming 4 tiers of 5 each, I’m right at the cusp of 1st and 2nd tier.

Yet I’ve hardly ever run a 10 man (3 to be exact as of this writing.) and never have run a 25 man instance. At this point I could veer off to talk about problems in the WoW reward mechanics. Clearly I’m over geared for the content I’ve run. But I’ll leave that for others to do. (TotalBiscuit of the Blu Plz! podcast does a fine job running that topic into the ground.) Where I want to go with it is that I am once more catching myself caught up in the position of underachiever. (Wherever I go, there I am again it seems.)

Actually, this revelation of my gearing status within our guild impacts me at least 4 different ways at the same time: 1) I’m proud that my efforts of the last few weeks have resulted in such a gearing improvement. Clearly, upgrading doesn’t take as much as I’d assumed. 2) I’m shocked to discover I’m so deluded. I thought of myself as more prone to honest assessment. 3) I’m disappointed I’ve let myself off the hook so easily. My excuse for not attempting harder content was that I wasn’t properly geared to do so. 4) I’m sheepish that I’ve been letting my guild down even in the slightest. ECC is by no means a hardcore raiding guild. But we are large (500+ toons) and I suspect there are more than a few that would like challenge themselves. Why not? Isn’t that part of the fun? I still think we are probably priest heavy, but I’m also sure I’m one of our few discipline healers.

I’ve been thinking of myself as a charity case in need of help when instead I’m at a point where I really should be helping others. I don’t mean just those newly arriving at level 80 but maybe all but the the very top levels in my guild. Maybe even those top players could use my help if only to fill in spots on a 25 man roster from time to time.

I’ll continue this next time talking about what this revelation means to me in terms of gameplay. I know I still want to limit my gameplay time. But maybe its time to reevaluate how that time is being spent.

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At this point I get a little indignant because I know I haven’t had the G5 that long. Sure enough, I look it up on Amazon and it turns out I’ve had it for less than 11 months. A call to Logitech confirms that I’m well within their warranty period of 3 years and that they’ll willingly send me a replacement to their newer G500. Great! Soon I’ll have a brand new Logitech gaming mouse.

But what to do in the mean time? The only recourse it to try to make do with the intermittent Razer Copperhead, so off I go to the Razer website hoping against hope that a driver update might help. Time will tell.

But what do I find on the Razer site but the new Razer Naga specifically designed for MMO game play. Need I say more than that I’m in gadget and button lust.

As I say, I’m broke right now so a new mouse purchase will have to wait for better days. But I think I see a Razer Naga in my future. Probably more near future than distant if I were to guess.

I had an interesting in game conversation with a guildmate the other evening while waiting for Wintergrasp to pop. It was a conversation I’ve had before but haven’t had for a very long time. The old, “So what spec are you anyway?” conversation.

Turns out this guildie was leveling a priest and wondering if there was an alternative to shadow as a dps spec while convinced that holy was the only spec she could consider as a raiding/healing spec.

I honestly don’t have an answer to her actual question. I don’t have a dps spec that I like nor do I have a gear set for pve dps. Using what I have at the moment, I pump out a paltry 1.2k dps which I know from watching my recount numbers is nothing.

But here’s where I lead the conversation: I bristle at the persistent perception that holy is the only viable raid healing spec. Not that I’m geared well enough to really know, but from what little experience I have, discipline is a perfectly viable raid “healing” spec. I put healing in quotations because much of the discipline priest’s healing utility actually comes in the form of damage mitigation. Bottom line though is, I keep people alive.

Discipline as an alternative to holy for inclusion in a raid? That I don’t know either. But I would think a discipline priest to be a nice addition to a holy priest in a two healer 10 man raid at the very least. I do know from first hand experience that I do just fine in healing 5 man heroics so that isn’t an issue of debate for me.

Further, discipline is a fun spec to solo with which holy never was for me. Holy put me in the perpetual position of looking for a partner if only to quest with even.

Now that I’m getting into pvp more, I’m seeing discipline as a perfectly viable and fun spec for that too. In fact, I may just give up on using my alternative spec for dps and see if I can fine tune a discipline based spec just for pvp purposes. That would make some sense since I’ve started to amass an armor set specifically for pvp.

Coming full circle, I’m frustrated that so many misconceptions about the discipline priest remain in World of Warcraft. I’m annoyed to find it still lingering in my own guild but am not surprised by that since we’re holy priests are very well represented in Ex Cinis Cineris.

I fully intend to keep soldiering on as a discipline priest. I like it. It makes the game fun for me and that’s what its all about.

There seem to be changes in my guild (Ex Cinis Cineris on Farstriders US.) I think I’ve made mention that I felt hopelessly behind my guildmates. Now, while I’m still behind, it seems like I came back much more able to participate. I’ve been running heroics enough that I’ve been able to skip right over Naxx and get into our baby ten man Ulduar raid team. (ECC fields three ten man teams at the moment.) I do want to go back and experience Naxx but don’t have a driving gear need to do so. Presently I’m one trinket short of being in all two hundred plus epic gear.

How am I doing with the addictive aspect of World of Warcraft? Not too bad I think. I have put in several long play days but I’ve also been able to set it aside when appropriate or limit my play time on occasions.

So yeah, I’m back and actually a viable baby raider. It feels good to be participating in the “endgame” if only on a limited basis.

When you get over World of Warcraft addiction, you don’t play nearly as often. Makes sense, right? But one of the side effects of not playing as often is that disorientation when you do sit down to play again. What the heck was I doing last time I played? Where was that quest giver? Or maybe where were those pesky Timbermaw anyway?

First thing to get over is beating yourself up for not remembering. At least it is for me. When I’m living, eating, breathing World of Warcraft ie, addicted, I know everything. (Or at least think I do.) Now I sometimes feel like I know nothing.

Back in the addicted phase, I almost considered it cheating to have to resort to sites like thottbot.com and wowhead.com. Now they are my first line of reference. I don’t have time to wander around aimlessly. Tell me where it is and what I need to do. Thottbot and wowhead do that. (To be fair, there are other sites that fulfill the same role. Those are just the two I use.)

Even better though, I’ve discovered a couple great addons. Questhelper and Carbonite Quest. Both do almost the same thing, so choose between them. Don’t run them at the same time.

What they do is keep track of your quests and try to show you the most efficient route to completing them. If you are in a group, (and all group members are using the addon) they also consolidate the list of quests and coordinate you through the groups quests as efficiently as possible.

Neither tool is perfect. But both are right enough of the time to make them immensely worth installing. (Note: Carbonite Quest becomes even better with the Cartographer addon installed as well. Questhelper stands alone.)

Lately I’ve been using Carbonite instead of Questhelper for one reason. Carbonite shows you a path of where you’ve recently been. As someone who is constantly getting lost in dungeons, I find this feature a great benefit.

Questhelper is a totally free addon. Carbonite comes in two flavors. One free and one paid for. I admit I did pay for Carbonite and find the added features worthwhile. But it is a useful tool even in its free version.

Evidently there are addons that take the concept one step further. They not only guide you through the quests you have, but help you decide which quests and quest paths are worth following. I can see the value in that but since I’m one of those that enjoys the trip as much as the destination, I’ve never explored them further.

Do you know of other time saving addons? Let me know. You can either write them up yourself for me to post at myworldofwarcraftaddiction.com (giving you credit of course) or alert me to them and I’ll write something up. I’ve already thought of a couple more addons that I’ll be writing up in the near future.

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You all know I haven’t been playing hardly at all the last few weeks. I’ve been far too busy getting this and a couple other websites going to play World of Warcraft. To be honest with you, once I got over the lost of routine and the guilt factor for abandoning my friends, I haven’t really missed playing that much. Could it be the addiction is receding? I don’t really think so. More that it was time for one of my periodic breaks from World of Warcraft.

Which leads me into today’s topic. Today I want to talk a little about the flip side of World of Warcraft addiction. In my mind, that would be World of Warcraft burn out. Yes, World of Warcraft burn out happens just as much as World of Warcraft addiction.

Playing with the next Expansion in mind. « Kinless Chronicles

I’ve got tons left to keep me busy without being 80, and the Expansion will only open up another grand playground for me and the wife. I don’t plan to, or need to, fast track to the end-game and burn out.

Kinless really has it spot on in the above quote. Why do we flog ourselves if its only just a game? We burn out because we’re addicted and playing too much. We vacillate, going back and forth between addiction and burn out, addiction and burn out sometimes barely noticing the brief stopover at enjoyment in between the two.

Instead, why not relax and enjoy the game for what it is… a game! One of the beauties of this particular game is that its open ended. So do what you want in game, when you want. Right now I’m doing one of the very few “mandatory” tasks which is checking the mail every thirty days so you don’t lose items in transit. That’s all you have to do: Check in once a month to make sure you aren’t losing mail. How easy is that?

If you play, you’ve recognized it in some of your friends, guild mates and other acquaintances. Frequent complaints of being bored, general surliness, inability to focus on any one task, these are all signs of burnout. Maybe you’ve seen it in the form of erratic behavior; suddenly quitting a long time guild relationship, dropping out in the middle of an instance run, not being around when they said they would be.

Perhaps one of the tricks to beating both World of Warcraft addiction and World of Warcraft burnout is one and the same. Maybe we just need to slow down. You know, actually read the quests instead of just rushing through the objectives. Following the story lines rather than running about willy nilly to level in the fastest manner possible. I know what I’m saying here is heresy for my leveling guide friends, but so be it!

I don’t know what it is for you, but whatever it is, take time away from task orientation and do what you enjoy with friends. If that means fishing while chatting with guild mates, do that. If it means crafting, do that. If it means shopping for risque outfits or beautiful robes, do that!

If you do what you want, you derail the compulsion aspect of the game. Also, you will enjoy your time more and thus avoid the World of Warcraft burn out factor.

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I logged into World of Warcraft for all of a couple hours this weekend. I was busy but I also made other choices with some of my time. Now here’s the thing: What did I do with my in game time? I spent my abbreviated playing time running between auction house and mail box in Ironforge taking care of my auction routine. What I want to talk about is whether that was a smart decision.

I sit here Monday afternoon thinking heck no that wasn’t a smart decision. When I spend the better part of a weekend playing, its no big deal to spend a couple hours on auctions. Its important that I do because I like doing the auction house thing better than I do farming to to make my gold. But if I’m only going to log on for a couple hours total, why do I need to worry about gold whatsoever. Yeah, you do have to empty the mailbox every 30 days or you lose what you had in there, but I was 3 weeks away from that happening at the very least.

I think what I should have been doing is playing. I should have been out there questing which is what I enjoy the most. Maybe with my mage Undorf who hasn’t seen the light of day in forever. I could work on getting him up to the high 60s so then I could join in battlegrounds effectively again. I love being a frost mage in battlegrounds!

Here’s the thing: When you stop being addicted and start just logging on now and then for fun, for a break from whatever else you have going on or an escape, then do whatever makes you happy in game. All the parameters have changed. Face it, at a couple hours a week I’m not going to get anywhere on the reputation ladders with various factions. Its unlikely I’ll be invited into any sort of intense group situation let alone a raid. I for sure don’t need to continue bringing a thousand in gold every week because there really isn’t anything to fund. I don’t have to spend time leveling crafts (unless that is what you enjoy) because you’ll likely not be crafting much anyway. Change up your thinking from whatever the routine was when you were in game constantly and just have fun. Isn’t that why you started playing World of Warcraft in the first place?