The question has been answered

So, a few months ago I posed the question: Who is hotter, Kari Byron or Kat von D? Last night,Bumwaller and I finally answered. The answer to the question, "Who is hotter, Kari Byron or Kat von D?" is: Wankergirl.

That is all.

Balancing WoW and RL

Another post idea from Blog Azeroth.

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WARNING: I'm going to get into some personal stuff here, so if that bores you (not that anything here will be that interesting to anyone else but me), just stop reading. Also, if you're going to be an asshat, well, I'll give you a preemptive "STFU" and "FOAD".

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Three years ago I was diagnosed with dysthymia with protracted periods of clinical depression. What this basically means is this: take a graph of a "normal" person's mood and then shift it all down into the "sad" part of their graph (this is the dysthymia), so basically my highs are about where a normal person feels depressed; add a bout of "regular" depression and I enter into what is known as "double depression".

Yeah, I'm the life of the party, let me tell you.

So, my life consists of going to work at a job I despise but it pays the bills, Warcraft and hanging out with my friends once or twice a week (though in the last month I've actually started dating a couple people here and there). But, because this post is about balancing WoW and Real Life, how do I balance them if, in fact, I really do?

According to my shrink, I should play WoW as much as I want or feel I need to as long as I don't sacrifice my RL relationships. When I expressed to her that I was concerned that my weekends were becoming hours-long grinding sessions, she replied, "Well, you got out of bed, right?" Point taken.

As a very depressed person, one of the major things I try to overcome is the sense that nothing I want can be accomplished, that every goal is always out of my reach, that anything I plan for is in vain because life, people, god, whatever will come along and stomp over my plans. My life is a constant struggle against fighting the nameless void that I feel sucking at me all the time.

Enter Warcraft.

I first started playing Warcraft after a major breakup with a woman I had been with for five years. This breakup sent me into a spiral that threatened my sanity. I don't say that lightly. I was going crazy. I would spend days at my friend's house just sitting on his couch, eating shitty food and drinking about a case of coke a day (I also smoked two packs a day, which is why I didn't gain any weight and I'm actually still underweight).

He suggested that we play an online game together for something to do other than argue who is hotter: Kari Byron or Kat Von D (Kat is by far hotter, but Kari is someone you'd want to meet your mother, by the way). I was open to anything at the time, just to give me something to think about other than my trainwreck of a life. And, since the only computer I had at the time was an iBook, it had to be Warcraft.

Warcraft worked for me. This is a game where I have almost absolute control over my toon (well, until I rolled on a PvP server... which I think might have been a mistake in the long run). The goals are easily achievable if you put in the time (I mean, c'mon, who doesn't feel like you accomplished something when you ding?) and with all of the resources out there, it is easy to plan where and what you want to do.

Leveling Amantara to 60 (the level cap at the time) was a therapy that affected me almost as much as the talk therapy. The shrink would monitor how much I was playing and would make sure that I wasn't missing plans with family or friends to play the game. When this did happen, our session would almost all be about why I ditched out on plans to play the game and a few times she showed me how that was unhealthy and how it really set back my mood (and one time, I had a dangerous set-back when I realized that the date I ditched to raid MC wasn't just going out with my because she pitied me, but because she liked me... insecurities suck).

Getting back to balancing real life and Warcraft. Real life can be such a horrible and huge black wave threatening to drown me that I need to indulge more in something that can balance my moods. At work, I know that if I just get through the day I'll be able to hop on Claz for a couple hours and farm gold or run something or just BG. When my life seems to be completely out of focus, this game can focus me and not just when I'm playing. It has helped me see that I can plan stuff out and achieve those plans. I know that I can do something new and not have to be perfect the first time I do it (my first hunter has +strength axes...) but if I apply myself and learn and be patient and keep my perspective, I improve.

I think this post explains some of the low-key hysteria that underlies many of my other posts. You now know why I'm constantly making lists of gear, why I'm constantly worried about raiding progression, and why I hate BGs and PvP (loss of control in this very controlled environment drives me crazy).

Leveling as an obsession

I power-leveled Claz to 60 in about seven days played. No, I don't have a life, girlfriend or any other responsibilities other than paying rent and bills. Shut up.

Now, seven days played to 60 is not a record but I'm pretty damn proud of it, especially when it probably took me 40 days played to get Amantara to 60. How did I do it? I'll explain after a bit of a disclaimer.

DISCLAIMER

Don't powerlevel if you're new to the game. I recommend this for a couple reasons. First, you will totally miss out on a lot of what makes this game fun (well, for me. More power to all you "twinks", PvP Gods and gankmasters, but that just isn't my cuppa). You'll miss out on a lot of the storylines that were put into the game. You'll find yourself running Scarlet Monastery and not know how these religious fanatics fit into the world, you'll find yourself wondering why Thrall is sending you on a quest to root out some evil warlocks (as opposed to the "good" warlocks?). I really feel that this turns the game into a more expensive-in-the-long-run Neverwinter Nights (and I like that game). You'll just be going through the motions and it will be easy to fall into becoming one of those outraged number-crunching bastards that no one likes but will run with because they can one-shot Ony.

Second, you won't learn your class correctly. This is an issue that I'm having with Claz and crowd controlling. I leveled this hunter so fast and mostly solo that I don't really have the nuances of traps down and it was an issue. You're going to learn how to work with a group only by working with a group. I think that PVPers don't have this problem to the extent that Raiders have it. In PVP, you need to know your class and be familiar enough wih the other classes so you know how to team up and how to take down. With raiding you need to know the player as much as you know the class.

Third, powerleveling is painful, at least for me. I wanted Claz to be level 60 so bad that I spent a lot of time working on him, doing quests that are annoying, ignoring the tradeskills and not chatting with the many cool people that play this game. It was a lonely, frustrating and exhausting experience. And god help me, I'm going to do it with a priest...
END DISCLAIMER

So, you've decided to powerlevel, how are you going to do it? If you dare to utter the words "pay", "Chinese levelers", or "I don't need to do it, I'll just buy a toon", kindly go away and please delete my blog from your links. Ok, don't. But just don't mention those words within my range of hearing. Here's what I recommend.

1. Find a leveling guide. I used Jame's guide. It is free, very coherent and he breaks things up in bite-size pieces that are completely solo-able and efficient. Live and breath this guide while you're working your character and follow to a "T" his suggestions on add-ons, gearing up, when to group and what quests are worth doing and which aren't. There are other leveling guides out there, but this one really clicked with me and it was free. I don't know about the pay guides and I really wasn't interested in finding pirated guides (and neither should you!). That is the mechanical side of things.

2. Because you're going to be spending a lot of time on things that aren't going to take your full concentration (I mean, how much attention do you need to pay when you're grinding those earth elementals in the badlands, amIright?) I recommend that you have the game's sound turned off. You're not going to need to listen to anything in the game at this point, so don't get burned out on the repetitious sound of that blunderbuss or your wolf howling every 10 minutes. You will have plenty of time to get burned out on those when you're raiding and having to split your attention between many things. Instead, have your favorite media player playing your favorite music (or podcasts. If you're over 18 Kevin Smith's SModcast is a source of much entertainment while you're grinding. Or, play a lot of DvDs. Notice I didn't say watch a lot of DvDs. You're going to be so braindead from running all over Azeroth that you need to feed your mind. I recommend getting DvDs of TV shows you like (House, Deadwood and Battlestar Galactica for me).

3. Get a comfortable chair! You will be wearing a butt-print into the bottom of your chair with all the sitting and shifting. I have a bad back and if I had an uncomfortable chair I would still be bed-ridden.

4. Tell the people in your life that you will be doing this. I am blessed with many people that love me and worry about me if they don't hear from me for a few days. Learn from my mistake- you don't want your friends and loved ones wondering why you fell off the face of the Earth or them showing up at your door with that worried/pissed off look on their face. You're friends know you play Warcraft, don't they?

5. Take a day off for every three days you're power leveling. No, not a day off from work, you need to make a paycheck to pay for internet and the monthly fees, don't you? Level for three days, then on the fourth go to a movie, take a walk with a friend, read a freaking book. Do something other than Warcraft. You don't want to have a spanking-brand-new level 60 that you can't stand to log into because this painful experience is still seared into your neurons.

6. If you have a boy/girlfriend, pay attention to them if they interrupt you. Always maintain your relationships outside of warcraft. Those 3,419 murlocs you need to kill to get the drop will be there in 20 minutes, your girlfriend may not after considering the priority you're placing her into. And give her a good night smooch when she leaves you for your night of powerleveling agony. Sure, this is a bit funny, but you've heard the stories of people getting divorced over one of the spouse's Warcraft habits, haven't you?

7. Remember this is a game! Yes, you're not having fun from 1 - 60, but you're setting yourself a goal and the fun will start when you get off from the leveling train and you stop to smell the felweed. If you're getting frustrated and annoyed, take a longer vacation from the game. Like I said, those 14,761,991 murlocs are still going to be there when you get back.

There, that is Claz's guide to powerleveling and managing the agony of playing a game in a way that isn't fun for the moment. But when you get to that first raid, you're going to see how it paid off.