Protect Yourself

This was originally going to be one of those mopey, reflective posts, a psychological analysis about "process addictions" with a small dose irony. And I still have some things to say, but then I saw this, and it all dissipated:

Classify this under "no hyperbole advertising"

Here is what WoW is about:

1. Gear
2. Relationships
3. RP: Getting pretend gear in pretend relationships
That's it.

We are either getting gear with other players and dependent on them, or not getting gear and frustrated by them. Either way we are surrounded by our golf clubs strewn all over the yard and a rake to the groin.

"Matty, what's this about 'process addictions, and what does it have to do with testicular-impact objects?"

Well...

Exhibit A: Want.

A little over a year ago, something happened which, every time it came up in conversation, inevitably I would start to cry. This told me I needed to work through it. There were many other things too, but this one thing was waving a big, fat red flag at me to seek some guidance, so I did. I am just starting to work this all out, but immediately my Azerothian life has been a topic of  reflection, and I was introduced to the term 'process addiction.' I am not skeptical, dubious, or resistant, but I am thinking about it. Is my time in Azeroth merely a process addiction? Am I the sum of my dopemine levels, or greater than the parts? I am not sure. But part of the thinking has been to track my play hours this past week. I started off great - not only writing down the times I was playing, but what I was doing. Today's notes included Momokawa's hours getting some charms, because "she" really wants these cool looking shoulders she saw on another player (Exhibit A) Addicted to Love' staring Matthew Broderick, Meg Ryan, Kelly Preston, etc. At one point the Sam character watches his former girlfriend and charts her smiles in response to her new lover's stories and jokes:
and went to LFRs most of the day afterward, wiped many times with laughing groups, and at one point they kicked the highest-healing shaman simply because they didn't like his name. How do I put that on a tracking sheet? It reminds me of this scene in one of my favorite movies, coincidentally '

I would say Addicted to Love is in my top twenty movies. There. Now you should go watch it too.

Anyway, how does one track hours spent in Azeroth? Now with my 8GB of multi-tab awesomesauce, I notice it is now almost 4:30 PM and I'm still in my jammies, and haven't accomplished much. Or did I?

So--yeah--relationships.

But then, layered with all that silliness, I got to check in with three of my favorite people: Señor, Kaylyne, and CD Rogue talked to me in real life, and we got some things squared away. In fact, I had grand conversations with all of them, really good ones, that made me laugh, and feel good about what's going on with all of them. I can't chart those moments -- but I deeply care about my Azerothian friends, and of course CD Rogue, well, he gets me too. His take on all this was he has seen over the past three years how much more I've written, inspired, and that my Azerothian friends are very real and important to me.

When I was looking up process addictions yesterday, I found this website:

I was intently reading it, and then saw the side ad. Are you kidding me!? Sweet baby murlocs, would you put a pipe advertisement next to a story about crack? Well, maybe. Blizzard has no problem with it. 

Tracking the /played in Azeroth is greater than the sum of the days, hours, and minutes. But not all minutes are created equal in Azeroth. I go bat-shit crazy when I experience quest cool downs, those minutiae of time that add up like dripping water to an ocean: when Dornaa is poisoning orcs (she is not comfortable with this, but the goblin told her to), and she sees the tiny second timer on the drumstick before she can poison another round of unsuspecting, hungry laborers, she is not only incensed she has to kill the lowest of the low, who's only crime was to be born peons, but that Blizzard is intentionally, willingly, stealing my ime. Sure, it's a "take a penny-give a penny" thing, and no one is holding me at knife point to 'play' - but -my encounters with the Beancounters truly get my Draenei goat. I do think "they" are getting it more right with the legendary quests, but even long time players feel too far behind and overwhelmed.  

So, protect yourselves, my friends: nurture your real lives, and your play lives. Things can get out of hand very quickly, and chaos abounds. And that is hard to track, even with smiles. Now I'm feeling fairly balanced and back on solid ground. Much more fun to chart the exalted rep percentage gains when finding Netherwing dragon eggs, let me tell you.