Tough love.

Mat dreams...of killing Ozruck one day...

Mat is still cocooned in a warm bed in Dalaran during this patchy morning. She needs the sleep: after a few hours of a 'tough love' kind of talk, she is a bit emotionally drained. 

We don't know what she's dreaming about now, but her human imagines she's sitting in her fifth-grade class, about to give her oral history report on Prophet Velen and she realizes she forgot to wear pants (and who among us hasn't been there, right?). 

The crux of the issue was, in essence: Mat hasn't quite understood or learned the tough lessons of just being quiet. If you've been following this blog, you will notice this emergent theme. In her defense (and yes, it's a bit defensive), Mat's real life world is full of encouraging collaboration, questions, and pursuit of engaging creativity. If her timing is off, which it certainly was last night, please understand that it is counter-intuitive to her nature not to ask questions. There was a cost-benefit analysis to her asking of questions: the cost was she was embarrassed, but the benefit was she got an answer in 'real game time,' meaning - she didn't want to ask what happened later -- she needed to know now. When she could see it. Learn from it. 

And yes -- Ozruk again. 

She got her answer, and another response: "80% of melee wipe on this boss -- don't worry about it." 

Yet, she did worry, and others did, too.

Now: this beautiful Draenei could charm the crown off of King Wrynn. I'm a bit surprised she hasn't tried to bake Ozruk a delicious chocolate cake and soften his geo-evil heart. She is proud of her ambassadorian accomplishments: who else could go into a PUG where everyone spoke Spanish and still get the achievement, Prince of Tides? Mat makes friends easily and loyally. We know she's kind-hearted and perhaps a bit sensitive. If she stepped out of bounds with her size-13 hooves, well, maybe she'll just hit the Spirit Grace spell and try to diplomatically dodge out of it. 

As Mat mentioned in another post, she sees somewhat of a Pygmalion response among players: this is where we seek to change others to create our own idea of perfection. She doesn't believe her friends want her to be perfect; however, she does understand that it takes a lot of courage to have a hard conversation with somebody who's making dumb mistakes. (In other words, perhaps edging toward perfection would be warranted.) But, if at the end of the discussion, if both friends come out wiser and better for it, then it benefits all. 


The desire to play with friends who understand us, and whose personalities match our own level of integrity, humor, and skill, is profound. Any one of you who has spent time in a job knows that it's better to work with people you like than those you don't. You can grow skills, but you really can't change people. If you're planning on doing something as challenging and collaborative as raiding in Cata, then you'd damn well better be with people who love you. Or at least tolerate you.

These dungeons and raids are challenging: One of Mat's favorite blogs writes about this very topic in a much more direct and damn funny way: http://forthebubbles.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/bot-ascendant-council/.  (Mat will continue to do her homework.)

But for the time being, she's going to back home to Azuremyst for some homemade Timberstrider stew and some daydreaming in the fields. She'll be doing some heroics for her valor points, but other than that, she needs to find her pants before her next report.


Theme song: "Walk This Way" - Aerosmith