Meet Miriamerle, my brand new priest!
With the off-season happening while we await the release of Mists of Pandaria, I’ve been levelling Miriamerle. My desire to learn more about priests and their styles of healing is why I decided to roll one! It’s been so much fun just logging in for a couple of hours once in a while and heal dungeons. I’m really liking playing the Discipline spec, because I can also DPS when I am able, and it’s so interesting seeing how the damage I cause can heal my party. It’s definitely different than what I’m used to on my holy paladin and druid, when I compare them to my priest.
I’m unsure about Holy, because I can’t exactly DPS as much as I can when I’m Disc, but it’s certainly easier on my mana. Holy seems to be more about true healing- the spec is closer to a holy paladin’s healing set up, it seems. I haven’t exactly read up much on priests themselves, because I’ve been having a blast figuring things out as I go. I have no idea what will happen with my priest if I do eventually max her out. If anything, she’d probably end up on the shelf along my other maxed classes that I rolled specifically to learn more about these classes when I’m done, ha ha.
About off-season raiding:
Yarrrghh!
Vidyala’s post over at Manalicious inspired me to write my own reflections about raiding.
Raiding has been slow but steady, and we got to 5/8 heroic on 10 mans last tuesday after we killed Zon’ozz after a few tries for the first time. I’m content that we could do it, even though we aren’t the most cutting edge guild, I’ve been having fun raiding on a leisurely pace. I give mad props to the hard core raiders who compete for server and world firsts, but that’s the extent for me when it comes to raiding now.
When Eternal Destiny, my guild, decided to scale back from three nights to two a week, I was sad with the decision at first. It turned out having an extra day off to do what I wanted were a blessing in disguise. I thought more about how I was feeling about raiding in general and nitpicked over it while I went on to do things I enjoy, like making oil paintings and writing. It’s been very cathartic for me, and I can’t get enough of it.
Phoenix – Oil Painting (I’m not sure if I’m done!)
I tell other people on a regular basis using my facebook’s status about what I’m working on, and will occasionally post pictures of works in progress. The feedback I’ve gotten have been really great, and it was exactly what I needed to hear as a new artist. I applied at a college and am anticipating whether I’ll get accepted or not. I’m not sure what my next step would be if my application got declined, but I definitely won’t be giving up 
I’m proud that we could get to 5/8 heroic in Dragon Soul on Tuesday. We only raid twice a week now, and that’s still not something to sneeze at, in my (humble!) opinion. We were having problems keeping a full roster after losing some players, and that put a good amount of stress on everyone when we were raiding three times a week. People were starting to prioritize other obligations- people choosing to spend time with their family or getting engaged, and on school. I absolutely have no problem with this, because this is what I want to do as well. So far, nobody has complained about the changes and we’re actually still progressing.
Having a third night were a bit overkill, now that I think about it. When we started doing heroic mode bosses, we found that we were clearing bosses on normal mode quicker when we weren’t working on a heroic boss. We can do a full clear on normal in one night and we often ended up with extra time with the third night left completely open. We’d try doing older dungeons and the like, just because it was still a raid night but that made it an obligation for people, even though they were only there to raid Dragon Soul in the first place. I get the impression that people would rather do other things with the free time, so it made sense to scale back to only twice a week.
I feel like all the stress has dissipated, and my life is closer to being as normal of a life could get without the chaos of raiding three nights a week. I love raiding and not caring how quickly we kill bosses. My team has been nothing but a group of fanastic people who like to get together to raid. The best thing is that we have fun doing it, and that’s the important part. I can’t speak for the other players on my team how they feel about the changes, but I feel good about it.
I’m happy to hear that other people around the WoW community who have made similiar decisions are doing well too. They’ve written that they feel so much better, having that extra time to level a favorite alt, or to cook, walk the dog and spending more time with their loved ones. That is what life is all about, and Vidyala summed it up nicely in her post that it’s okay to say no to make the time for things you want to do.
It’s okay to say no to alt raids, running dungeons and doing things outside the time you’ve set aside for life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that. I can definitely relate to the feeling of wanting to help other people, but you have to put yourself first. If you are like me, you are one hundred percent commited to the time you’ve set aside for some WoW time, like raiding, barring emergencies that do occasionally crop up. This is what keeps my team together, we all show up every raid night, and we manage to get replacements or change raid nights if emergencies come up. People have been pretty good at letting our raid leader know if they can’t make it in advance, so it’s been a smooth ride so far. We know we can count on each other showing up and having fun together raiding.
We just make the best of what time we have left during that week if a raid does get cancelled. Taking the laid back approach to raiding while I stay on top of my own personal performance when I raid is definitely working for me.
What about Mists of Pandaria?
WoW: Mists of Pandaria
I think this will continue into the next expansion, and that’s something else that’s interesting. My attitude toward raiding now has radically changed from how I felt about raiding in the beginning in Wrath when I was trying to compete in raids. I always wanted to kill bosses, even if they were on farm, and in alt raids, just to add one more notch on my raiding belt. I said yes to everything, from helping friends farm heroic dungeons in Wrath and going to every raid possible, I was literally the most faithful raider there was. I felt guilty if I said no, especially if I just didn’t want to, because I wanted to be the best player possible. I lived for it, and unfortunately, I put WoW first over other things in life. This was totally unhealthy, and I’m sure I’m not alone in battling our demons when it comes to WoW. I definitely recognize this as a form of addiction, because I spent more time in it than I should have, put it first before anything else, and turned this game into a version of reality, an alternate life that I was living.
I wasn’t just good at raiding, I was also very good at auctioning and this just made the game even more addictive. I’ve always had an interest in trading, and it was through the Auction House that I attempted creating a trading business for the first time with a friend. I eventually hired other people to farm mats for me, because I absolutely hated farming, but I loved to make money, and it was a very successful venture. People who farmed for me were paid a fair price for their mats relative to what they were selling for on the AH, or they could ask me to buy them a BoE or supplies, anything they needed. I was always very generous with my money and recognized that they were part of the business. I used to tell them what I was doing with all the mats, what I was crafting and what I was trying to sell on the AH, as an effort to make them feel part of something great.
It was a very fun venture that I’m glad I got to try out- I did this for probably a year or so, starting with a level one mage on Cenarion Circle. I eventually changed to my paladin because I felt that some people were undercutting me delibrately especially on the JC market with cut gems and they were watching my every move. I’ll admit that I’ve added them to my friends list and their alts that I suspected that belonged to them. I know this isn’t unheard of amongst the competitive gold makers, but I wasn’t a serious gold maker. I didn’t log on every day to trade, since I didn’t farm, I only would log on a few times to process mats for crafting and then put thing up for sale. I made a tally of all the alts I’ve used to make gold on my old server, Cenarion Circle and now on Lightbringer. I’ve hit 1 million gold and long past that, and that’s not counting my actual characters who I played and they’d be my hunter, rogue and druid! All that money came from from crafting and sitting at the AH on only two alts when I needed to put things up for sale then logging out. I think that’s pretty good for a novice gold maker 
I don’t do this anymore, because my repairs are covered by my guild, and I don’t feel the need to make that much gold. Money I make from vendoring trash, and raiding has been more than sufficient for me since I have all the professions if I needed to make something for myself like my own enchants and flasks. Besides, this would just require more time to play WoW than I really want to put in. This is what I mean about my attitude being different now being less active compared to how active I was, because now I say, “No, I want to do this instead of playing WoW.”
I’m curious about MoP, and would definitely enjoy levelling, but I won’t be racing to get any server-firsts. I’m not going to go, “Omigosh! MoP is here, I have to get to level 90 and start raiding ASAP, like in the next 24 hours!” It’s not a big deal for me anymore, and I’m happy that there are new content coming out- I’ll get to level 90 on a even pace with other guildies who are probably going to do the same because they’re busy too. Hell, I want to enjoy it, and that’s what it’s supposed to mean playing this game when you’re levelling. It makes no difference whether your toon is starting from level 85 to 90 or from 1 to 85. I’ll continue blogging, because I love to write and talk about different projects, general aspects of WoW and anything else that comes to mind, really.
In the mean time..
Mass Effect 3
While I wait for the expansion to come out, I’ll be playing Mass Effect 3! It’s seriously an awesome game that caters to all types of players from the role-player to the hardcore FPS players. I’m very tempted to go back and buy the first two parts of the game, 1 and 2 because of the wonderful storyline in the third game. While Bioware might have screwed up in SW:TOR, they did an excellent job with the subtitles in Mass Effect 3. I wish they did the same thing for SW:TOR, I hated that the cinematics didn’t have subtitles and that was part of the reason why I stopped playing SW:TOR. It just doesn’t interest me as a game overall, and it doesn’t help that my computer has a heart attack whenever I try to play and overloads with terrible lag. It’s almost impossible for me to play flashpoints, which is disappointing to see. I contribute this lag to the additional effects that’s still left over, like atomspheric effects (renders of shadows bouncing off lights indoors, little extras like that) even after I’ve put everything on the lowest settings.
Yes, my computer sucks, but it’s still able to run Mass Effect 3 just fine, and every other game I’ve played, including EvE and Rift. So it’s something with SW:TOR where they’ve tailored the game to run specifically on higher end computers that are able to handle the game at the lowest settings. Compared to other games I’ve played, SW:TOR had the least amount of options for graphic settings when I played it. There has been ongoing discussion about this like in this thread, so it’s obviously an issue because there are a good number of people who want to be able to play the game on lower end computers. It seems that even people with high end computers experience lower quality in live spots in SW:TOR than any other MMO they’ve played, so something is off.
I’m not sure if Bioware is really going to do anything, because I can see how difficult it could be to fix it now that SW:TOR’s live. It would be because they didn’t implement additional options to turn off more things or make sure lag wouldn’t happen with all settings, either solo or in a group, in the open world or in instances before releasing it live. This is another major sticking point for me why I stopped playing SW:TOR, I can play just any other damn game, just not SW:TOR! Bioware and EA would be wise to listen, and do something quickly if they want to keep people playing.
Ah well. *shrugs* I’ve been having a ton of fun playing multiplayer with friends or playing single-player in ME3 when I’m not playing my priest alt or raiding in WoW. Drop me a line if you have the game too, and want to go shoot stuff- I’m always up for shooting and blowing aliens up! Or, my priest is only level 43, so if you have a lowbie alt that you’re levelling, hit me up if you want to, I’m also always up for dungeoning if I happen to be on. It’d be nice to meet some Horde players too!
