Category Archives: blogs

blogs, links

Shout, Shout, Let it All Out

11 Comments

Just a couple of quick shout-outs in this post:

I figure most people know about Brajana’s “Needs More Stable Slots” charity drive by now but if not, you’d better check it out quick because there are only a few days left to help out fuzzy animals!

Mania, the editor of Petopia, is looking for info on how to improve Cunning Pets so we can deliver it to Ghostcrawler in one neat tidy package and he can stop saying he’s looked everywhere on the intarwebs and failed to find it. =P

Lastly, everyone should read this post by Rilgon about account security. It is very informative and easy-to-read, and even if you think you already know the ropes of account security, it’s worth a look as a refresher course. At the very least, you can go read one of the reasonings behind why yours truly flat-out refuses to use the terms “hack” or “hacker” when it comes to this sort of thing (the other reason being, hey, I come from a free software/open source background where it’s a positive word! =P Why yes, I am stubborn/elitist/an open source zealot/[insert your adjective here])

COMING UP NEXT: Either “My life with crabs” *cough* or rants about professions. I’m still undecided on which to write about next…

blogs, screenshots, thoughts

Ours is a finite hobby.

19 Comments

As I’m sure 99% of the blogosphere knows by now, Phaelia is closing the doors of Resto4Life. I don’t know if she is quitting the game entirely or just the blog, I couldn’t make it out from the entry, however, it’s definitely put a lot of thoughts into my head.

I remember a time when I figured I’d never quit Neopets. (shaddup, do you guys know how long it took me to get my Draik? =P) Of course here I am now having not touched it in months. I miss the friends I made there on the Neoboards sometimes, but other than that, there is very little that I do miss, and although I have tried a time or two, I haven’t been able to get back into it on the same scale that I was before. I have no regrets about the time I spent playing, and I made some accomplishments I’m quite proud of. But eventually I lost interest, and moved on.

World of Warcraft is like that. I think it’s something that we as a blogging community perhaps don’t like to think of sometimes. But it’s true. How many of us will still be playing this game ten or twenty years from now? Will it even be around? Even if it is in some incarnation, I imagine many of us will have moved on by that point. What that means for us as a community, is that these blogs we read and enjoy so very much will not be around forever, at least not in their current form. And it’s hard to deal with sometimes.

It’s perhaps ironic that it’s been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve reached a point where I sort of feel like I need to scale back the time I spend in game. I love this game dearly. Yeah, I try to deny it sometimes, but it’s true. I still have fun with the game. I am not quitting anytime soon, I don’t think (so please don’t think this post is about that!) But man cannot live on WoW alone. And there are days where I feel like I come home from work, I get onto my computer, aaand… I play WoW, I read about WoW, I write about WoW, I tweet about it on Twitter. And sometimes I wonder where that line is. You know what line I’m talking about. Where it becomes too much. Where it goes from being a hobby into being your only hobby. I often find myself wondering if I need a break or something.

And then my mind wanders to how I’ve lost interest in other obsessive hobbies I’ve had like this so fast. Sometimes seemingly overnight. It’s just a matter of time for this one, too.

In a way, it scares me, because when I think of all that, I inevitably end up thinking of this blog and this little community that has gathered here. What will happen when it comes to that point for me where I have to say goodbye? What would I do with this blog? How could I even bring myself to end something I enjoy so much? And more than that, I wonder if it all matters anyway. Will it matter decades from now when I look back on my life? Will it matter that I taught someone how to improve the way they played a class in some long-forgotten video game? Does it matter?

In the end though, I think it does. If for any reason, because of all the raw talent that is out there. Through this community I have met artists and writers and CSS masters and people whose blogs are packed with personality and humor and wit, and that’s only to name a few– I can only hope that Blizzard is at least marginally aware of this massive gathering of talent they have unwittingly drawn together, out of the passion for a video game, of all things. Positive influences from my guildies and in-game friends aside, I am extremely humbled to be a part of this community perhaps best known collectively as “Blog Azeroth“.

So, thank you, Phaelia. Thank you for being the person (well, alongside Bell) to really inspire me to make my own treedruid, who to this day is still the only thing in game that has really caught my interest anywhere close to what hunters do. And thanks for sharing your talent and enthusiasm with the internet.

And to everyone else, the specifics of what we blog about may not be important twenty or thirty years down the road. But positive influences only have to be very small, to be positive and meaningful. Thank you for being both, to me. I do not know how long our time together will ultimately pan out to be. But thank you for making the most of it every day.

blogs, memes

Who's On First

15 Comments

“Go back to your first few posts. Who was the first person to EVER comment on your blog? Call them out, link that post and thank them! Then tag a few folks to see who they call out.” – Cait at One Among Many

I still remember the day I started this blog. I’d been lurking around at BigRedKitty and The Hunter’s Mark and a few others for a while, soaking everything in and commenting on the rare occasion. A couple times, I thought about making a blog of my own, but that idea quickly evaporated, for it was a silly idea.

But I was playing more and more of the game and starting to get more opinions about it and I wanted a place to voice those opinions that was not my LiveJournal. Since most of my LJ friends wouldn’t have a clue about what I was talking about.

The solution, I decided, was to make someplace entirely new. Someplace where I could jot down all my thoughts on the game and feel satisfied that it was “out there”, but nobody would ever have to read it.

And so Aspect of the Hare was born. It was made knowing that nobody would ever see it and that nobody would ever read it and that I would lose motivation for it and jump ship a few months into it, the same way I did with a Linux help blog I’d started previously. I accepted this fate. I made my blog and made a couple of posts to go along with it. I didn’t advertise it. I didn’t put a blogroll on it because heaven forbid somebody I idolized such as Lass or BRK stumble across this laughable little upstart blog who was linking to them. (I’m just a little bit shy.)

Somehow though, presumably through my Blogger profile and the way I would comment occasionally at BRK, a couple people wound up here. And the award for First Aspect of the Hare Commenter Ever goes to…

Kestrel. Who commented on my second post.

“Heheh…interesting story. Would like to see characters like that on my server!

Glad I follow links from other blogs, else I might not have ended up here. I’m sure I’ll be back. :)”

Yes Kestrel, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it is all your fault.

(Special runner-up award goes to Matticus for being one of the first people ever to link to me in an article he wrote. Waaay back in the day.)

I tag… whoever wants to participate. =P

P.S. Hi, WoWInsider. Welcome to my blog that I didn’t think anybody was ever going to read. Make yourselves at home?

blogs

Just a Quickie

3 Comments

The Twisted Nether Podcast, hosted by the two bloggers Breana and Fim, is going to have me on the show next week. What they’re going to be asking me and what I’m going to have to talk about I’ve no idea, though it seems to involve my pets (who are all considerably more well-spoken than I), so it can’t be all that bad, right?

Anyways, if you have any burning questions you want to hear me address (such as “How is Tawyn pronounced anyway?” or “Do VanCleef and Mr. Smite really merge into NegaVanSmiteMon* in Heroic Deadmines?”) then be sure to toss the fine folks an e-mail and let ’em know!

* I maintain that the third season of Digimon was one of the best things I’ve ever seen on TV. And I have no qualms about saying so.

blogs, screenshots, steady shot, stories

Two Subjects, One Post

6 Comments

I remember when I was about to hit 70 on Tawyn. I remember frantically running around Netherstorm, doing quests and killing random things, slooooowly watching my experience bar inch towards the end of the row, knowing it wouldn’t be long before that experience bar disappeared and my game experience would all change.

I had a similar feeling today with Lunapike. Except that it wasn’t for level 70. No… it was for level 62.

I had been waiting for this moment for a while and I’d actually prepared for it in advance; knowing halfway through level 61 that my [Ironstar Repeater] would be far too fast of a weapon to have so I found another quest that I did specifically for a bow that was sort of a side-grade but had a beautiful 2.80 speed.

The second I dinged I flew to Shattrath, hopped into the portal to Thunder Bluff (Because Thunder Bluff is clearly superior to Orgrimmar) paid a visit to my old friend the Hunter Trainer, hearthstoned back to Outlands, found the first random mob that I could, and unleashed a barrage of bona-fide Shot Rotation.

It was marvelous. Marvelous. Granted, it all feels sort of vanilla right now without Kill Commands to spice things up. But Steady Shot, oh Steady Shot, how I’ve missed ya. Welcome back, buddy.

And now for something completely different…

The other day I asked several fellow WoW-bloggers via Twitter if they told a lot of people about their blog. I got a few different responses, some people didn’t tell anyone whereas some people told friends and guildies. I myself didn’t come “out of the closet” to my friends and guildies until recently for various reasons, but the reaction has been rather positive so I’m pretty happy with that.

I wonder sometimes, though, if there’s a way to “plug” your blog on WoW without it sounding showy. Perhaps I’ve just yet to hit on it. But there’s a reason why when people ask me for hunter advice, I typically do not link them to my blog. Because I sort of fear that it will come off as sounding like I’m showing off or something.

Yesterday when I was playing Lunapike, I was approached by an Orc Shamaness who was extremely well-spoken (which always garners my immediate positive attention) and told me that I should look into investing in a Ravager for maximum DPS over my other two pets on that character– a cat and a windserpent. She said she had a level 70 hunter, to which I responded that I had one too (followed by the inevitable “Yes, I know this is my second hunter.”) We had a brief discussion about pets and it didn’t take long to realize that this shaman was very knowledgeable about hunters and especially pets. I was impressed and sort of wanted to bring up my blog because she seemed like a really neat person but I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. Then she brought up Mania and Petopia and asked if I knew about them, to which I responded that yes I did, and in fact, if you look at Mania’s blogroll you’ll find my own hunter blog!

And that’s about when the conversation fizzled out and the shaman had to go and used Astral Recall to get to Shatt.

It’s sort of unfortunate that the conversation ended when it did, because I didn’t mean to come off as bragging about being on somebody’s blogroll, rather I was hoping it would enable me to sort of bring up my own blog, it just didn’t happen. Anyways, Orc Shaman on The Venture Co. who knows a lot about hunters, if you happen to be out there reading, I appreciate the fact that you offered to give me advice, even if it happened to be advice that I already “knew”. =P We need more people like you who are willing to give good advice to newer hunters in a friendly and very intelligent fashion.

Next time on Pike-TV: The Official Intro-to-Steady-Shot Post, Stats for Hunters Part 2, The Initiation of a new Character Spotlight Feature, and Oh-My-Gosh-Does-Pike-Actually-Have-A-Level-29-Resto-Druid.

Same Pike-time, same Pike-channel.

amusing anecdotes, blogs

Geek is the New Black

12 Comments

Now I’m not one to hide my nerdiness and all-out geek pride.

But on the other hand, it’s not something I bring up with a whole lot of people. Largely I think it’s just because I assume that not very many people can relate to me if all I ever do is talk about Linux and video games. In order to get to know people, I sort of subconsciously stay on their level of interests, which I’m pretty sure in most cases is not mine.

But I sort of got tired of it today. Tired of beating around the bush. Tired of going “Um, er, ah…” when people ask me what my hobbies are or what I do in my spare time and I wonder what sort of blank stares I’d get if I told the whole truth.

Somebody asked me today what I’m doing tomorrow. I said “Raiding Karazhan with my guildies in World of Warcraft.” “Oh… okay,” was the semi-stunned response. It was all slightly awkward but I felt good. I’d unabashedly outed myself and it was nice.

In the breakroom at work today somebody came in and sat down across the table from me. We sat there munching on donuts and he asked me what I did last night. I said “I played video games.” “Ooh, what games?” “World of Warcraft.” “Ah yes,” he said. He’d never played it but he knew a lot about it. We talked about XBox 360 games and Starcraft 2 for a while before he finished his donut and made his exit.

Not long after he left, two other people came in. One was a departmental manager and the other guy was someone who started working there not long after I did. They had McDonalds and they came in and sat down at the table and set up their food. Then the manager turned to the other guy and said simply: “I’m telling ya, mining, herbalism, and an epic flying mount, and you’ll be set for life.”

The other guy replied, “Well, I’ve just got mining to supplement my engineering. I finally learned how to make the +10 damage scope for myself yesterday!”

The engineer, as it turns out, began playing five months ago or so and is a level 65 hunter.

I told him if he made Goblin Jumper Cables, people would love him if he feigned death in an instance and could then rez the healer. He was pretty impressed with this idea.

He said he was trying to work on gaining rep with a lot of factions so he would have kind of a headstart when he got to level 70. I told him to start working on his Cenarion Expedition rep so he could nab Glyph of Ferocity.

Then my break was over.

I foresee some more fun chats between the two of us in the future.

Apparently I was underestimating the world’s geek level. And I’m glad to say so.

On a completely different note, my boyfriend, Mr. Pike (though he prefers to be called “LS”), the infamous warlock who little level six Tawyn trekked across the world to find, started his own blog a little while ago and now feels he has enough content to warrant some visits. So go on, head over to Wearing Black in the Back and read what he has to say about roleplaying (both in and out of WoW), warlockery, and a variety of other goodies.

*pushes you over*

art, blogs

Special Announcement!

13 Comments

This is post number 100 in Aspect of the Hare.

This blog began in August of last year, when I had only been playing for a few months and was just level 48 or 50 or so. I realized that I was spamming my Livejournal with WoW rambles and decided I needed a new place to put them. So I started this blog and began posting my WoW rambles here, convinced that nobody would ever read them or even want to read them. In fact, now that I think about it, it probably would have turned into another one of my unfinished projects: I’d write for a while and then quit, and nobody would notice.

And yet here I am; six months later and level 70, and I’ve made 100 posts and Feedburner tells me I have no less than 149 subscribers. I have no idea if that’s accurate or not but regardless, I’m here to thank you all. Thank you to everyone who has ever linked to me or read my posts or commented on my posts or came here from Google searching for hunter advice or WoW-On-Linux advice. I have read every single one of your comments. I don’t always respond to them, but I read them all thoroughly and I cherish every compliment and take to heart every bit of advice.

I have no idea why you guys find my ramblings so interesting or entertaining, but thank you.

Here I would also like to throw out a special shout-out to Kestrel for being the first person to ever comment here. Kestrel, I’m not sure how you found me– I’m gonna guess through my Blogger profile link in a comment at BRK, or something– but really, look what you did! All of a sudden I seem to be popular! =P Thank you for showing me that I was in fact a not-too-terrible blogger and inspiring me to branch out and really start to participate in the WoW-blog-community.

The other day my boyfriend and I were talking a little bit about some of the awkwardness that comes with the transition between a “casual-hanging out” guild and a “casual-raiding” guild; my main’s guild is going through that transition right now and I won’t deny it’s been a little awkward to have to go from being “the guild’s main hunter” to “one of several good hunters in the guild”. I’ve been spoiled, I think, and I have to keep reminding myself that I am no longer one of the few people around that can do my job, and that it’s not a bad thing.

But lemme paraphrase what I told him last night. I said: “In the end, I don’t have to be the best hunter on the server, or even the best hunter in the guild. I just want to be the girl who loved her class the most and made the most of it. If I can do that, then I will have succeeded.”

And I mean every word of that. And my blog is like that too. This isn’t here to be the most informative blog or the funniest blog or the most popular blog. This is here so passers-by can stop by for a bit, take a deep breath, and re-experience a little of that joy and magic that I feel so often in this game. There are a lot of little things in this game that make me happy. And I want to share that happiness with you. Because too often we get caught up in drama or problems or making the game less fun than it’s supposed to be. And if one of my posts has reminded somebody for just a split second, “Hey, this game can actually be pretty fun!” …well, then I’ve done my job.

I sat down with a pencil and paper for the first time in a while today:

It’s sketchy and unfinished, but I kinda like it that way. Tawyn, Tux, and Locke all say “Thank you”.

Now, on to the next 100 posts!

*tosses confetti*

arena, battlegrounds, blogs, pvp

My First Ever Arena…

7 Comments

…was a 2v2, me (BM hunter) and a warlock vs. a warrior and a priest.

I really didn’t know a lot about what I was doing because I’d never even been inside an arena before. Somebody told me I should “run up the ramp” so I did. The warrior started pounding on the warlock first which gave me ample time to pop Beast Within, Abacus of Violent Odds, and Rapid Fire, and start devouring the warrior.

I actually got his health down quite a ways, but, ya know… he had a priest. So it was all to no avail. (In retrospect we probably should’ve attacked the priest first, but I didn’t see him for a while.) I eventually died, which I expected– I am so geared for PvE right now that it’s not even funny how gimped my stamina and resilience are– but to be honest I did better than I thought I’d do. I guess having 7000+ lifetime honor kills gives me a wee bit of an advantage despite my lack of gear.

I also played ten Arathi Basin games yesterday; I figured “why not” because it was still the holiday weekend for it and also because I had this sudden idea to record the results of the ten games, just for some fun statistics to look at.

Of the ten games I played, all PuGs, seven were against premades and were thus losses. (Though funnily enough, only two of those premades wound up actually five-capping us, the other five were all long grueling battles that lasted just as long as if it hadn’t been a premade anyway. One comes to mind where we constantly had two nodes capped and the premade only managed to keep three… they kept trying to take our other nodes, and they kept failing.)

So only three of the games were good ol’ fashioned PuG vs. PuG matchups. Of those three games, Alliance won two and Horde won once. For the first Alliance win, the Horde seemed to be off the ball right from the start, Alliance was ahead the entire way and won about 2000-1200. The second Alliance win was actually a very very close race for about 75% of the game, at which point Alliance somehow pulled off some crazy epic 5-cap maneuever and clinched us the victory. The one Horde victory was a pretty resounding Horde victory, they were ahead basically the entire game and it culminated in a 5-cap for them.

All and all I was satisfied; it showed me that despite all the premades you still get the occasional really fun matchups. I’ve been taking a break from PvP for a while but yesterday may have given me “the bug” again. I need to get some gear, afterall, if I’m going to be doing arena!

And now for something completely different: more and more WoW blogs are being hosted on WordPress, and that’s fine and all except that for some reason, blogs hosted on WordPress seem to have a lot of issues loading for me. I think it has something to do with “Google Analytics” because that’s always what shows up at the bottom of my browser, by the loading bar: “Waiting for Google Analytics”. Seriously though, I had a WordPress blog open in a Firefox tab just now and it took no less than ten minutes to load. They’re all like that for me. And it takes me forever to leave a comment at those blogs, for the same reason. =/ Does anybody happen to know what’s going on? So many good blogs are hosted on WordPress and I’d like to make them easier to access.

blog spotlight, blogs

Spotlight on… you guys!

1 Comment

If you are one of those people who comes and visits my actual blog as opposed to reading it through a reader, then you may have noticed that the two very long blogrolls on my sidebar are no longer there. They had a noble life though, and as much as I would like to keep them there they were simply getting to be far too unwieldy and as such they have been retired. …or, at least, moved. I now have a completely separate page for my blogrolls:

Pike’s Blogroll

And that is what will appear on the sidebar. I contemplated leaving a few “Best of the Best” blogs on the front page but it’s just too hard for me to pick favorites when there are so many good ones. So everyone from the most popular bloggers to the very-newest-bloggers all reside on the same page.

Why are my blogrolls so big? Because I maintain that a lot of my skill as a player comes through posts made in WoW blogs, and as such I want to help to promote blogs and articles that continue to educate (and entertain) me. See, look, here’s just a brief sampler of some of the neat stuff that’s been posted in the past week alone:

Mirshalak tells us how he solo’s Scholomance as a Survival Hunter and shares his views on how, on some situations, the cookie cutter talents builds might not be quite as effective as the more unusual ones.

Pelides has a very informative post about Feign Death and when and how to use it.

Trackhoof tells us about meta gems for hunters in various situations.

Drotara has a super-informative post about shot rotations, it’s really one of the most nicely-summarized articles I’ve seen on the topic and it’s definitely worth a look.

Over at Great Green Hunter we have a post about the pros and cons of using various popular pets in arena.

Siha at Banana Shoulders made a super-useful jewelcrafting reference sheet.

Critical QQ has some handy tips regarding that urge to go spend time in battlegrounds mid-leveling.

And Trollin’ spills the beans and tells us just how he made that awesome click-able blogroll of his that everybody has been drooling over for a while now. …at least, I know I have.

See what I mean about learning from other bloggers? That’s why my blogroll is so gigantic. So go take a look if you haven’t already, and maybe you’ll learn something new! =D

blogs, thoughts

Why I'm Still Here

4 Comments

So firstly I just want to say that I am probably more amused than I should be at the fact that Google Reader is recommending me to myself:

Anyways, on to the meat of this post.

First we had Someone and now just today Laser Chicken, two great WoW bloggers who have decided it’s time to quit playing the game and move on with their lives . While it’s sad to see them go, I’m also glad that they’re doing what makes them happiest, and on top of that… it’s really just the nature of our hobby. As I’ve said in a few different comments now… I’m going to quit playing someday too. It’s not so much a matter of “if”, it’s a matter of “when”. All the games I have ever been really obsessed with, I have eventually stopped playing (or slowed down enough that it can be considered “over”; with WoW you get more finality than with other games because you actually have to cancel your account and then you can’t play again until you re-subscribe.)

Lemme tell you a little story. Before I played WoW I played Neopets. A browser-based cross between virtual pets and an MMO. Now despite this game’s reputation as being just another kiddie site, let me assure you this is a very deep site with legions of adult fans. It has an economy the intricacies of which I’m sure are more in-depth than WoW’s. It has an astonishing amount of stuff to do and an astonishing number of goals to accomplish, goals which can often take months– or more– to reach.

I played this game every day throughout the day (being a browser-based game, you could multitask and play it and do other things at the same time, which was nice) for probably about a year and a half or two years or so. What really got me hooked was the money-making aspect. There are a few different ways to earn Neopoints and I earned mine through restocking; refreshing a shop page every few minutes, buying up all the items and then reselling them for more in my shop. I got good at this. I could tell you what the best deals were to resell. I could tell you what the rare ones were that you could nab. The economy was changing constantly and I had to deal with that and I loved the challenge.

This was all really fun at first. I had one goal I was working towards: I wanted the rarest most expensive Neopet in the game. It would cost about 2.5million Neopoints.

It took me a year.

One year of restocking. One year of playing games. One year of scrounging up every last Neopoint I could get my hands on. And then I did it: I got him. The rare dragon-like Draik. It was an immense accomplishment for me. And yes I know it sounds super-dorky. But I was really proud of myself.

I kept playing for about a year after that, because after I’d accomplished my main goal I’d sort of gotten greedy and there were dozens of other goals that I wanted. I wanted to collect all the avatars I could. I wanted to collect all the special sidebars that I could. I wanted to get as many trophies as I could on my user lookup. I wanted more Neopoints so I could buy the second most-expensive Neopet, and so I could paint all my Neopets rare fancy colors.

And as time went on… it quit being a game.

It became a job.

I would log on in the morning and do my dailies and maybe half-heartedly play throughout the day to get my allocated 10,000NP (my minimum amount of money I’d allow myself to make in one day) and then I would just be glad when I was all finished for the day. I was no longer having fun. I was merely playing for two reasons: a.) to maintain my status as a successful Neopets player, and b.) because I’d made some friends who I would chat with on the chat boards.

Finally this past May I started playing WoW. I continued to sort of play Neopets after that… less and less… recently my Premium Neopets subscription expired (you can play the game for free, but Premium nets you a bunch of benefits). I chose not to re-subscribe and I haven’t played since.

I look back on it and at first glance I see a couple years spent playing an online game, making online currency, so I could make some pixels on a screen look nicer than they do by default.

…but ya know what? I still feel some of those accomplishments I made in an online game were legitimate accomplishments. I set a goal. I worked for that goal. I achieved that goal. Yes the goal was merely fantasy, pixels that aren’t tangible. But the process of working hard and achieving something is very real. That feeling of accomplishment has stuck with me. I don’t regret the time I spent playing Neopets. I learned more about supply and demand than I ever did in school, I made new friends, and I learned that if you can put your mind to something you can accomplish even the most far-off-sounding goal.

When I started WoW I determined that I was not going to let it become a job. I was going to take it one day at a time, enjoy exploring the world and playing it how I want to play it, and then when I got tired I would quit. And that’s how I’ve played it. I’ve met lots of amazing new people and made new friends. I’ve found something that I can take pride in (playing my hunter). I’ve learned a lot about teamwork and group work… more than ever before I feel like I know what it means to work as a team, simply because of what I’ve learned from when I do an instance. And this will sound strange but because of WoW I feel like I have a new way to connect to my siblings (all of whom were WoW players long before I was) and my boyfriend and I also have a multitude of new things to talk about. If I do start to feel overwhelmed, I take a break. Usually the feeling passes pretty quickly.

“But Pike, it’s not real. It’s just a game.” Yes. But without launching into a whole ‘nother essay about why video games have helped me become a better person, I’ll just say that I read somewhere that it’s not that playing video games or enjoying other hobbies is a bad thing. It’s the time that you pour into something that you could be evenly distributing with other things. I play WoW a lot. I read/write about WoW a lot. Yes. But I also have a job that I enjoy, family and a boyfriend that I hang out with, and even the occasional forays into the outside “social world” (I have never been a social person, so honestly, it’s not like WoW has gobbled up my “social time” because I rarely had any “social time” to begin with. =P) However, I will say I’m glad I waited to play WoW until after I graduated university. (Quite glad!)

Anyways, the key is in variety and if you can maintain that variety and that balance then you’re doing good.

Will I quit playing WoW someday the same way I quit playing Neopets? Yep. I’m going to try my hardest not to let it burn me out the way Neopets did though. And I can tell you that all the benefits I’ve reaped from WoW and other video games are benefits that are going to stay with me. The game world is not real, but the people you meet are and the things you learn and the feelings you have are. So try your best to make your experience a positive one. It’s a game– have fun. =D