Brutal Honesty

Is it possible to love something too much? Perhaps. I’ll tell you my story…

I have this tendency to crash and burn on things, and WoW is no exception. I pretty much hit rock bottom the other day. See, I love raiding with my guild. A loooot. But because I wanted to be able to contribute, I probably went way overboard. Suddenly, my days were concerned with stuffing them full of heroics on both my hunter and druid so I could get badges for gear. Suddenly I was doing tons of dailies every day on two characters, to be able to fund flasks, repairs, new gems and enchants and the like. Suddenly I was an unwilling slave to Recount, not because of outside pressures so much as because of my own impossibly high standards for myself.

And suddenly I snapped.

I logged on to grudgingly do dailies the other day and was invited to Onyxia 10. My DPS was absolutely atrocious. Later I found out it was because my pet’s special attacks all decided to turn themselves off, but it took me a while to realize that, and I felt useless.

I had this growing desire to just shut the game off and not worry about it anymore, but I was scared to accept this, because I’m a blogger right? And I love hunters right? It terrified me to think that I wasn’t having fun anymore.

In desperation I threw a bunch of gold at the hunter trainers in the Dwarven District for a respec. Contrary to popular belief, I actually like all the hunter specs (not just Beast Mastery), and I have this secret dream to become really good at all of them. So, hoping a change of pace would fix things, I spec’d Survival, went to the training dummies, and discovered that I still stink at it. It just feels relentlessly clunky and there’s no rhythm to it. Frustrated that there is some aspect of hunters that I am not good at, since I am a perfectionist, I switched over to Marksmanship, which is as fun as ever, but even that couldn’t salvage anything. I spec’d back to Beast Mastery and then logged off as fast as I could, terrified by that feeling growing inside of me…

“This isn’t fun.”

I went and read a book for a while. Then I played Nintendo DS. Then I played Megaman 2. Comfort food. I didn’t let myself think about WoW. I was scared of what it might mean.

Then I went out to buy some ice cream. See, I am basically to ice cream what a foodie is to cuisine. Unfortunately my freezer doesn’t work very well at the moment, which is torture and means that I cannot keep my own ice cream unless I want it to turn into a soggy melted mess. But I really needed some ice cream, so I went out and bought some. The plan was to watch a movie while I ate when I got back.

But something was calling me…

See, a couple weeks back, I randomly made this gnome warlock. I’m not sure why. I’d made warlocks in the past and always quit when I discovered that they weren’t anything like hunters. I’d find out my imp was a failure tank, and so I’d quit. But something had me making a warlock, and I lavished her with gifts like the heirloom shoulders my druid had used for so long, plus an heirloom trinket and an heirloom staff enchanted with +30 spellpower.

And once I’d realized and accepted from the start that Warlock does not equal Hunter, running her around Elwynn Forest and Westfall had been… the most refreshingly fun thing I’d done in WoW in a really long time.

So I thought about it a little.

Then logged into her.

TawbreeAndFriends

Suddenly, I didn’t have to worry about Recount anymore. Suddenly I didn’t have to worry about dailies. Suddenly I didn’t have to worry about badges. I didn’t have to worry about being a perfectionist with talents and rotation, since I had no idea what I was doing, and that was okay. All I had to worry about was how long I could /dance before Curse of Agony, Immolate, Corruption, and my voidwalker destroyed all the Defias in Moonbrook. This was followed by /giggles, because the gnome giggle is adorable. It was really fun. It was me and my blueberry vs. the world, discovering things at our own pace, the same way it had been with Tawyn and Tux two and a half years ago.

You’re wondering why I’m posting this, perhaps. It’s probably more for my sake than for yours. For a while, I was denying that I could even have fun playing anything else other than my hunter(s) and then my tree druid(s). But mostly, I think I wouldn’t let myself. Well… screw that.

I’m Pike, and I’m a gnome warlock. So there.

To those of you wondering if this is the End of the Blog as We Know It… no, I don’t think it is. I still have huntery stuff in Drafts, and I still plan on raiding on my hunter (though I think a break is in store, shortly), and writing about that, although I no longer want it to consume my WoW life, simply because “I’m a hunter blogger”.

So we’ll see how things go…

56 thoughts on “Brutal Honesty”

  1. <3 for you. And <3 for gnome warlock!

    I have to do the same, sometimes. Go play with an alt, or lately go help my GM level his alt (which for me is easily as fun as leveling my own alt).

  2. Oh, yes, felt and done exactly the same thing. In my case I rolled a dwarf hunter on a RP server. (main is Orc Hunter on a normal)
    Very nice not to have to worry about recount, dailies etc..
    Since this the only char on the server it was really back to basics! No lvl 80 main that can shower heirlooms, gold, etc..
    And to kill Hogger.. Something I hadn’t done in many years! 🙂

  3. If certain things in WoW become dull and mundane, and certain other things don’t, whether it affects your blog or not, do the things that don’t. For me I love my hunter, I love blogging, I love collecting achievements *hide* and sometimes I just like to try a new class, keeps the game fresh after all ^^

    And on “not being good at other specs”, just read a little guide on another spec, practise a little, when raid buffed and you get your rotation right (sorry, priority) it’s fairly easy to be hitting 4.5k – 5k DPS regularly with another spec you can learn to love :p And at least you can keep your raptor ^^

  4. I’ve several alts on SwC, and a few more completely off server. Every month or two, one or two of them see a few days playing time. It keeps the game, and my hunter, fresh, and reminds me that raiding is only one part of WoW.

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