It’s been a long week. Very little sleep. Very little gaming. My druid was out of commission anyways, so I wasn’t feeling bad when I let the patch drop pass me by. Good news is I think, as of today, she’s back in working order with her levels, lewt, and holiday achievements in tact. Only my macros were lost. They always go for the macros. They must know how long it’ll take to retype all of them. It probably shouldn’t have taken so long, but Billing said to ask the GMs, the GMs said to ask Billing, and Billing sent an email to the GMs telling them that it really is their job in a buck-passing equivalent to a volleyball spike or a nailgun to the head. Which ever floats your boat and sinks your pink.
But I haven’t really bothered taking the time to remacro Calhi and get her back into action, because I’ve been on my shaman, PUGing until my eyes bleed. I missed my shaman from Moonrunner, and so far she’s been the only character I’ve taken the effort to recreate from scratch on Ner’zhul. I keep singing my praises of the new Dungeon Finder, but amidst my circle of friends, all 80 and guilded as they are, none are really all that excited. It isn’t perfect. The deserter-style debuff that keeps you from dropping in and out of groups has a few issues in concept. I also really wish that when a new character came in to replace one you lost, they didn’t start at the beginning of the instance. Half of the time, there are patrols or respawns about, and your only hope is to have the group come back for you, slowing down the whole process immensely.
Still, flaws aside, I’m in heaven. In two evenings, I’ve done 7 Gnomeregan runs, 3 Stockades, and something like a dozen Scarlet Monastery Graveyards (which was painful to heal at first due to all the small corners, but quickly became lightning fast runs I could’ve just as easily have phoned in.) I can’t stop filling green bars. There is a thrill to this beyond explanation. I have to remind you, I have never been at level cap. I’ve never had the luxury of PUGing the daily off Trade chat. 95% of my instance experience is being run through by someone who is level-capped. I’ve never been able to make a talent build and not ask the question, “yes, but can it solo?”
And like my attitude to PvP, it’s not even about accomplishment or progress or success (though I’m gaining levels and gear in buckets), but just that I’m doing it. Last night, I healed a Gnomeregan run tanked by a bear with only 900 HP. Not, like, 900 base. 900 while in bear form with a few buffs. I think the mage actually had more. And to make matters worse, she bark over the lack of heals when she would gather up half a room of enemies then repeatedly break line of sight in perfect unison with my caster bar. And I thought it was funny. And fun. I remember what it was like to have zero battlefield awareness. The tunnel vision. It’s still not my forté, as a few boneheaded stunts of my own proved. You ever been standing there, popping heals, when you notice your mana is a little low? Not OOM, just “I hope the fight doesn’t go too long” low. At which point your brain wets the bed and you remember only that your task is to fill bars, and you become so obsessed with the state of your blue bar that you forget entirely about the green ones and two people drop dead. Never happened to you? Er… um… me neither.
Anyham, late. Tired. You people rule. Come pug with me sometime.
If you’ve been eyeing my Armory widget to the side (I’m being hypothetical, since you don’t actually have any reason to), you’ll notice I’ve descended from level 74 to 73. What you can’t see is my complete and total heartbreak.
The act of transferring from Moonrunner to Ner’zhul has been an eventful one. My payment did not go through, though they were somehow not aware of this until several days later, at which time they put a lock on poor Calhi and sent me an e-mail.
I’ve moved about seven times over the last few years, and try as my bank and I might to keep on the same page with my billing address, it’s usually a shot in the dark over whether I’ll ever put down the same one they have on file when making card payments. Get it wrong, and I get shot down, but it’s usually pretty instant feedback, and I then take the extra effort to look up the info and get it right on the second try. For whatever reason, it took a few days for Blizzard to become aware of the fact that they never actually got their $25.
So, I called, and after 50 minutes in a lunchtime phone support queue listening to various (mostly WoW) Blizzard game tunes and an unusually peppy automated voice, the nicest human being on the face of this planet picked up to help me. For all I fault Blizzard with in my assorted ramblings, I have to thank them for the simple fact that their phone support and I speak the same language. My linguist and audio comprehension skills are fail. Try as I might to study a variety of languages and accents, it will simply never be. So, I do not fault Bob in India for his position, but the simple fact is I will never understand what he is saying and our conversations will always end with him yelling angrily at me for that.
Anyham, with my payment sorted out, I let the system do its thing and came back that evening to continue where I left off. I was about to go to the King of Stormwind and embark on my first time into that chaotic Undercity instance I’m always hearing about… aaaaaaand, no. I’d lost about a level and a half. My inventory seemed off. My macros were not in mouse-wheel-attack fashion. It slowly sank in. Calhi was in the exact condition in which she had left Moonrunner. Gone were the hours of Dragonblight questing. Gone were my Turkey Lurkey and Pilgrim’s Peril achievements from Pilgrim’s Bounty (I only needed Terokkar Turkey Time to get the title, and I had the clothes at the ready). Gone were the PvP achievements. Gone were the recipe drops and daily cooking awards. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d accomplished in those few days, fueled by the newness of the whole deal, until I sat down to assess the soul crushing damage.
I sent in a GM ticket, and hopefully I’ll have word over whether those hours will survive the encounter. Do or don’t, the whole thing has given everything a fragile feeling. I used to run a persistent world RPG roleplay type game server some ways back, and existing behind the veil where all the files and numbers were crunched, I didn’t play the actual game all that often. Progression and accomplishment lost its soul when you could see the guts of it, all numbery as they were. Now I find myself looking at Calhi as a block of numbers, and not as a creature with the soul that I’d given her, and the deja vu of it is a bit unsettling.
But, hey, if for whatever reason that time is truly lost, that means I’ll do that Dragonblight quest where I time travel back to help myself all over again, and it’ll make a strange bit of sense in my situation…
It’s been bugging me for a while that my comments section has been linear. I really like replying to comments, but there’s some mysterious power behind that linear wall that makes me feel if I respond to a comment, it has to be meaningful or insightful. But comments don’t have to be soul-altering paradigm busters. It is perfectly okay to say “I agree with you agreeing with me” just for the sake and joy of replying to someone who took the time out to both read and say something about your creation. On a small blog like this, a comment is probably the greatest praise you can get, and a reply is the biggest gratitude you can offer to thank someone for that warm feeling they just gave you.
All of this I know to be true. But, gut intuition rules all that I do, and my comment section was kicking me sharply in the lower intestines.
It turns out, WordPress has had threaded comments available by default and has had it for a while now.
Who woulda guessed? I probably should’ve. But now I know, and knowing is half the battle. The other half is violence.
At any rate, you may now return to your regularly scheduled program. Today’s motto: If you comment now, I will probably tell you I love you in a creepy stalker sort of way.
It may have been a short and meaningless post, but you still get a fortune cookie:
You can take the man out of the forest, but you can’t take the forest out of the man. Don’t worry though. His high fiber diet will ensure it passes quickly.
