No I am not co staring in a new cop TV series, nor have I final mastered the shade removal and fantastic one liner phrase.

All that said I do feel like I ought to have been told not to leave town, because i’m in trouble. Not because I’ve done something particularly bad, maybe because of the lack of doing something good.

I am of course talking primarily about (what my girlfriend refers to as ”Joe’s geekyness dramas”) my wow guild.

Lately there have been stirrings after our annual christmas break from gaming, that some of our cool cats are not happy. I’m not hanging out the dirty laundry of the guild here, merely venting that things have boiled up a little, and it was high time we all addressed getting back on the waggon, then stop drinking so damn much and play some games.

What has come from this has two parts. One where everything is shiny, and the other where not even my “filled” pants could compete with.

Lets start with the sunny side up part, which is something I’m very happy with. In the past, I’ve played online with a number of people, so much so that I got into the competitive side of online gaming, even managed a few leagues and competitions myself with some big European websites. All very fun for a geek like myself. Sadly being on the “admin” side of things you often saw the same old thing, where friends, groups, guilds, and clans, all did very well until they got to a point where holidays kicked in like christmas and caused the usual breaking of their “routine” of gaming with said comrades.

This happens everywhere in all multi player games, I often think that if a group can survive that backlash of interruption, they will go on for years, if they can’t they crash, burn, run out of rum, and eventually go their separate ways.

Definitely not what I want to happen with the friends I’ve made with my guild. The good news is, with a prompt kick up the arse we are back to raiding, with a nice start to sign ups and organising ourselves again. This in turn should get some people back into happy places, and back into the ever so fun groove we all have when playing with people we can have a beer with, and a he occasional giggle fit. Don’t forget the cake as well.

So on this note, it looks like things may very well go..well. Which is great, I’m happy and that’s as important to me as it is to those that I play with.

Now for the second part, which in all honesty makes me feel all “bleh” and “meh”. Before christmas, maybe even quite a while before christmas, the guild had a lack of healers, so I dug up my original nelf, and proposed filling the ranks with my option, and also getting myself a change from the norm of pointblank redshirtedness with the old rogue. This was all gravy and I learnt how much one needs to depend on having spare clean pants whilst healing.

Healing was fun, but I don’t think I was ever at the point where I was sure I could run a raid, being comfortable in the fact all would be ok, it was certainly a case of running around by the thread of ones pants. We got a fair few healers doing the same, all with very sweet healing rotations, I say sweet, because mine just sucked in comparison.

I’d be a big fat liar if i said this was ok, because I, in most cases, had comparable gear but just wasn’t hitting the numbers. Not that this was an issue for my awesome guild, practise makes perfect, and fun is the ultimate goal. Which made it much easier, and allowed me to convince myself that what I was doing was ok, and will improve over time.

The perfect alibi.

Since Christmas and the new patch, I’ve been excited about the new rogue legendary daggers, and over christmas was crawling up the walls because I hadn’t gotten to loot the damn pocket thing from boss 4 in dragon soul. Pretty much since I got the opportunity on one of the first raids I could attend after chrimbo, I looted the dang thing, and called it a night, ready to go and play rogue sneaky style to complete the first major part of the legendary quest chain, and get the daggers.

This is where my alibi starts faltering.

Whilst as a priest, my guild was supportive, and as a rogue, they are supportive and put up with some god awful mistakes on my part. I struggled something awful at getting the boss down for the daggers, plenty and I mean plenty of attempts later, I finally did it, and it felt good.

It was good because at the back of my mind I had a few things rolling around, the first being “why do i suck so much”, the second “how come my fellow enthusiast rogue nailed it with little issues” and finally, “if i can’t do this solo, doesn’t that mean i don’t really know how to play this class”. But i did manage it in the end.

That last thought has stuck a bit recently. I’ve gotten to the point where I had convinced myself I was doing ok, doing things at my speed, but certainly not maxing out my DPS etc, but it was ok, because I contributed towards the guild as and when I could during raids with all that I could muster to make life easier for them.

After this shake down of the guild to get its mojo back into gear and organise ourselves a bit more and wake up from chrimbo slow down, I’ve felt more and more useless whist playing my rogue, and second guessing my overall usefulness when DPS’ing bosses down. My guildies are awesome, and have never complained about my DPS, but I can’t help shaking the feeling, some are just not that impressed with it, including myself.

So the second part really is that I don’t feel like i’m doing well enough. The most recent raid, it was amazing, my first DS run with the guild past boss three, all the way to the second to last boss, in one night. Compared to Wotlk, this was quick work imo. That said,  I’m not happy with my contribution, because after the boss fight for the daggers, I’d done SO much research into improving my single target DPS, and honestly thought I had improved, but looking at my sucky recount add on, I was just, and only just, above the lowest dps in the list.

I’m annoyed at this, because as a rogue, I should be cranking out silly dps, and more annoyingly so, a rogue in our guild with much much worse gear than me is easily out dps’ing me. That’s quite possibly the crux of the matter, and it proves to me I’m not achieving for myself or my guild the best result I should be able to. This makes me feel like I should be in trouble. Because I know the rest of my guildies are producing outstanding results in DPS and healing, and i’m just not even close.

I’ve read all the guides, tips, watched all the videos, and follow all the good blogs. What I just can’t seem to do, or understand why, I’m not hitting the numbers I ought to be.

So first part yay, second part boo.

I’m happy that all will hopefully be cool and the guild running super sexy, annoyingly I’m moving house this week, so I can’t raid until I get new Internet, and make sure everyone knows I’m trying to make that effort.

I just hope when I can raid, the effort reflects the results, unlike they are currently, which I’m hoping isn’t making playing the game with friends, any less enjoyable for them.

/beertime

Stereotypes and Imbeciles

We’ve all seen it, its out there, and it will eat our brains if we let it.

That’s right, the moron is still breeding and playing games with the rest of us.

I am going to have a looong rant about some pet hates I have for media misinformation and some fail parental roles. First off I guess I should explain why I’m so pee’d off and specifically what its all about.

Where to start. I was playing on WoW, minding my own business when some random player asked me “hey rouge, plz pix ma loxs 4 meh, or ur gayz”. I kid you not, in case you can’t understand this “leet” speak (formally known as retard speak), I will explain it. What the young chap was asking me was, since I was a Rogue, could I please pick his lock boxes for him, otherwise I was in his mind, a homosexual.

My fist instinct was to ignore the little git, in the hope that he would get bored of calling me a rouge and find someone else to ignore. After about 10 mins of this constant whisper I replied, asking him to first learn English, and when he could ask me using it, I will see what I can do. This was probably a tact the young lad had experienced before, since his reply involved his age, how hard he was, and how I shouldn’t mock his ability to speak English. I laughed, ignored, and when on with my business. Most people may have hit the ignore button a lot earlier, because we are all getting these kids harassing us in game, probably since the games inception.

Which leads me into my rant. I can’t understand how in all the games I play, most of which are for over 18 year olds can i easily find half the player base I’m up against or interacting with are between the ages of 12 and 18. We have all been privy to the ridicule that gamers are subjected to, and how playing games raises kids to become mass murdering nut jobs. I honestly think that are two halves to the issue that gamers are slated, underage and retarded.

The first half I can simply sum up to moronic slap dash thinking. How the association between playing a game and becoming a nut case/murderer/whatever else you think is wrong with the world can be made is just grasping at straws. For all those people that say a game manipulates people into being violent are clearly wrong. And for a few good reasons.

Reason One: Games that are violent, are for adults, who are subject to all kinds of influences such as violent movies, the real violence in the world. A game in a make believe world does not infuse anyone with a sane background to leap up and gun people down in real life.

Reason Two: For an adult to take what they see in a game and relate it to real life, and correct me if i’m wrong, but that means they are a little unhinged. Sure, anyone who plays games can see similarities, that’s why some gaming mechanics are so easy to slip into and relate to. You have to be properly nuts in the first place to think shooting people etc is justifiably the same in game and out.

Reason Three: For those that are already making this association, I would bet my next beer that they have never played a game properly, been involved in a community of gamers and shared great fun experiences, and are reading statistics from some pointless stats company in America, because we all know that those stats are irrefutable facts, much like if you eat chocolate you’ll get cancer, you eat lettuce you’ll get cancer, if you breathe air, you will definitely get cancer facts say so at at least a 88% chance.

This is obviously a bit of a slap dash way of summing things up, but at the same time, there is maybe a little bit of truth to the issues, which brings me to the second part of the problem.

Kids, underage, immature, none guided…. kids.

As I mentioned before, we have all seen them playing, especially games they aren’t of the legal age to play. Which in my mind is a problem. I don’t care how mature they really are, if they are of the appropriate age to play, they shouldn’t be. It’s damaging for everyone else who plays, because we all get roped into the same grouping as the annoying illiterates.

Obviously there is a basic reason for this half of the problem, and that sadly can only lie in one place. Parents. Parents these days seem to lets there kids do whatever they like, play what they like, and watch what they like. Turning them into the mindless zombies they are today. Obviously there are still parents out there that are doing it right, don’t get me wrong, or parents that are at least guiding kids, and monitoring their behaviour. Sadly though, we hardly see these kids/parents, because they are doing it right. No, we get to see the 12 year old kids, who’s parents are letting play 18+ games. This is where the problem starts, and is where the easy fuel for berating gamers in general is coming from. I label these types of parents as moron breeders. You know the type. They wake up in the morning, they don’t give two flying shits about their kids education and upbringing, and worry about how they will pay the next bill, usually the answer is to have more kids and claim benefits – I guess.

There are a lot of ash hats out there, quite a few play games.

90% of them are between the ages of 12 and 16. Fact.

/rant