1000: This one goes out to the ones I love...

Once upon a time, I used to be a fairly decent party planner. I would work tirelessly to make sure the food and booze plentiful, the toilets were scrubbed, the guest towels fresh, and toilet paper hanging waterfall-over, not under by the wall. But these days, my Martha-Stewart-Mojo has gone by the wayside, and I'm lucky if I remember to even buy toilet paper, much less OCD-worry about its position on the spindle. (Cocktails on hand, however, still apply.) Point being, I saw this 1000th post coming up, and have been drafting it in my head for a bit; however, not sure it's going to be as spectacularrlllll as I would have wanted. Whatever I write cannot possible capture what I feel.

But I'll give it a shot.

This blog become a way of sending messages in bottles to friends in game, and to myself. They were messages and correspondence to the characters, make-believe, and the characters of friends I have made along the way.

Kay: You are amazing. You are a strong young woman, you are brave, and true. From the moment we became friends over the Thanksgiving achievements, you've stayed a true friend.

Guarf: I miss you.

Turk: your mentorship on shaman healing and anything game-wise is amazing, and never--and this is a biggy--patronizing. You have always treated me like a great friend, which I consider you, too!

Ran: When I was really trying to figure things out, you were always quietly there. I think you got a kick out of compulsive alt-leveling. Your tried and true focus on two difficult classes however, is admirable; however, your kind friendship supersedes Azeroth.

Xak: Mr. Smartypants Esq. -- I look forward to our conversations. Even if I do cheat and write crib notes.

Con: You are so damn funny. And thanks for thinking I am one of the "good guys." I am. And you are, too.

Tome, Navi, Bear, and Erinys: In no way am I "lumping" you together. Your insights have motivated, inspired, delighted, and amazed me more than I can say. If I write another word, it's because I know you're out there reading. You have no idea how much this means to me.

To my lost paladin friend: thanks for your patience and inspiration, too.

JD: thanks for sharing your family, time, and friendship. Cymre, thanks for keeping me on my toes and showing us the beauty and grace of Azeroth.

Señor: To the best friend I will never know: See that fan with Zep? To the world in Azeroth, every one else would just see an inscription off-hand weapon. What they don't see is one of the most generous, funny, and loyal friends a person could have. The world could take a lesson from you, my dear friend.

Just play - it's a fun game.

Theme Song:

PS  I will never think of Hello Kitty the same way again. Thanks, Navi.

Free fallin'

In my little corner of the real world, thunderstorms are cracking and deluging the humans and weasels alike. The weather patterns contrast greatly from the great plains of the States, for in the Pacific Northwest, buffeted by various mountain ranges and oceans, rain is common, but the necessary heat to produce thunderstorms is not. Large cumulonimbus castles of clouds are not part of the tropospheric architecture. And while thunderstorms cause many anxiety; dogs, cats, and humans alike, I enjoy them. I woke up this morning with a lot of other kinds of anxiety, and those little demons I'm trying to wrangle. They are harshing my mellow, for sure. I should clarify the harshing is coming from thedemons, not the thunderstorms. Nothing big, and completely selfish, but the Cersei of my world won an important strategic manuveur, and I'm trying to rally my mental troops to defend my keep. Hey, nothing like mixed metaphors before 9am!

When I do my internal T-chart of plusses and minuses, a huge boon are my in-game friends. This is the bowling league, the chess club, the D&D club, the "meet you at the pub for a pint" group I wanted.

Here is one small example:

He will write his own post, so I'll leave him to it. This in one tiny bit:

Ceniza went to Firelands last night. Being a mage in there is extremely different from an enhancment shaman or priest healer. And a fail mage at that. (Still working on her--but think I may have found a solution, or at least some help.) But I remember back with Running With Scissor, the tricksy mage who was in charge of "setting off the traps" and I was always so intrigued by this. What did this mean? And I knew our RL told her to use her slow fall. Slow fall!! I have that!! Can I use it? Huh? Huh?

Yes, indeed:

The first time I tried it I admit got over-excited and forget to target myself and went splat. Have no fear, would not make that mistake again! Run to hot lava pools, get blown up to the ceiling, target, hit slow fall, and gently float down all the while hitting my fire spells on the fly--literally! Grand fun, folks! I know Ceniza is difficult to see in that sea of red , but there she is, just above the +3950 health she gave herself from her herbalism and Draenei gift heals.

But what you do not see in this picture is I was with some of the nicest, calmest, mature, and just genuinely friendly players as I have ever known. I wish I could have bought them all a round or a latte or fudgsicle, because they were very sweet.

And if I ever doubt my sanity over alts again, I should remind myself of this post. The view was quite different from up here, above the clouds.

Just what I needed...

In my character development, (boy, that's a loaded word, "development," - sounds like I actually had a plan or something), ...

In my character development of Mataoka, there has been something missing. In the role playing conversations, many have left her, and she found herself in that place that all adults do at one point, where since coming of age, her friends, family, and acquaintances splintered off on their own journeys. As the writer, or rather just an observer of this character, and her faithful scribe, I often felt some melancholy for her. It's a difficult adjustment into maturity to simply like being in one's own head, and enjoy one's own company. This Maslow's hierarchy of self-actualization is a boon for most of us, and Mataoka's story holds no exception.

In other words -- she is alone.

Cyrme posed the question after a terrible vandalizing incident in her virtual world what things would you "take" or be most upset about losing. I have thought about this for many days, and always kept circling back to the same answer, that the intangibles would be the most devastating to replace. Perhaps this is why we fear aging so much, losing our physical and mental acuity. We don't want to miss what we're missing.

The tangible objects are just those, what can be held:

There is a letter.

There is a ring.

And there is a dress.

They all have a story, and if they went up in smoke tomorrow, it would only create energy.

But these things I cannot replace:

Around Mataoka's neck, she wears a silver key, and a tiny charm, a phial, with a few of her own tears inside. These tears were collected from surprise happiness, never sorrow. 


If you want to know why she cried, read this, please: The Shaman's Horse

Thank you Tome and Navi. With all my heart. You make it bigger, and make me better every day.

Happy Haanta.

Gracias, Señor. As always, astonished by the gift of your friendship.

Irked.

I am sitting here, getting teary, and wondering why. I guess it is, things that I thought, and things that I held true, change in such a volatile way when the group dynamic changes. One addition or personality, or big characters, change the tone and direction of guild chat or the entertainment/social side of the game so much for me, and I don't know why. Cross-dressing rogue friend said to me, "You are very capable of avoiding that situation in real life, you never put up with that--why do you do so in this guild? "They've" been doing that to you all summer?" Well, he has a point. For the most part, many of my guildmates are wonderful people. In fact, I am certain all of them are wonderful people, and don't kick puppies, punch nuns, or leave the toilet paper roll empty. But there are some big personalities, those who suck the oxygen out of the room and everyone dies laughing. A lot of one-upmanship and blarney chokes the flow of chat. Tonight, I felt myself shrinking smaller and smaller. I had such a fun morning, too: great group that achieved so much, and it just clicked, faster than a summoning stone.

But, I find myself feeling this way from time to time, that sense of not belonging, or not even wanting to, like some inside joke everyone else gets but I am just kind of baffled. In a few days/weeks it won't matter. Real life encroaches. And my recreational goals need to change, too. By tonight, after dinner, my little beautiful angel priest healer will be level 80. Tank girl is almost done with  the Molten Front dailies, or will be tomorrow. Shaman-chica has known successful top-ranked dps scores.

I am hoping that my new circle of friends in the guild are not shallow--I don't believe them to be, not at all. I have entrusted them with my most precious commodity, my time, as they have trusted me, too.

Ah, the power of "ignore." They have all learned this long ago.

The best.

Congratulations to my friend, Kaylyne the Skillful, who also completed her Long Strange Trip. We are fortunate not only to have received our beautiful drakes, a string of titles and creeds, and a full closet of beautiful clothes, but we achieved the best boon of all: friendship.

We met in November during the Pilgrim quest chain, and our ability to coordinate knowledge, game mechanics, insights, tips and tricks are, to me, the most enjoyable part of playing. We all could wish that our colleagues at work were so collaborative. She has graciously given me her time and knowledge, and been a respectful listener when I had something to offer, too. Rare gifts indeed. 

Theme song: Matchbox 20/3AM (One of Kay's favorite bands)

Alt-ernatives

Lupe is no longer feeling like she can't find busfare. In fact, the royal coach took her wherever she needed to go. And there was no pumpkin surprise at the end.

Got clued in to some guild perks, PvP vendors in Dal, dungeons, dragons, and even got a few kills and achievements in battlegrounds.

And again, while there are some awkward shuffles about asking if Mat can just stay in her box for awhile, (more like, "Hey, Matty, is your sister home?") Haanta and Luperci both were asked to join the world. Wish I could clone my human self sometimes and have played both, but alas, can only inhabit one virtual world at a time.

Zep got her chance to strut her stuff last night with a silly PUG: finished Blackrock and decided to play house and musical chairs. Very funny and nice group. It can happen. Didn't want to leave, which is the sign of a great party.

Who's been sitting in my chair? Who's been eating my porridge? Druid is baby bear, of course. I play the eternal Goldilocks. Breaking and entering? Got a rap sheet a mile long.

Have a wedding to go to tomorrow: nice to get out of these jeans and T-shirts and put on something more girly-girl. And I am wearing my big-girl shoes. Gotta represent the draenei posture/height as best I can. And my friend: I'll work on getting Lupe into a few more purples and her big-girl shoes, too. As with your tank, you are a world-class healer. Made it possible for me to actually see what it's like to kill Horde in a battleground without dying immediately. And as you could tell from how many hornets' nests I like to step in, that is saying something.



Theme songs:
By the Way/RHCP

Humans.

Just found this interesting, and thought you all might, too:

It’s Love at First Kill (Click Link to read the entire article)

Bonny Makarewicz for The New York Times

Pete and Hannah Romero began their courtship as avatars on World of Warcraft, then met up and are now married.

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

Published: April 22, 2011

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THIS is a love story. It began on a hot summer night in Santa Barbara, Calif., when Tamara Langman helped kill the yellow-eyed demon known as Prince Malchezaar. She was logged into World of Warcraft, the multiplayer fantasy game, and her avatar — Arixi Fizzlebolt, a busty gnome with three blond pigtails — had also managed to pique the interest of John Bentley, a k a Weulfgar McDoal.

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Jennifer Silverberg for The New York Times

Tamara Langman and her boyfriend met as avatars.

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A note to the uninitiated: World of Warcraft is a vast online game where monsters are meant to be vanquished, but it is also a social networking experience. When players aren’t battling monsters, their avatars are exploring fantastical landscapes (lush jungles, snowy forests, misty beaches), where they can meet and gab via the game’s instant message feature, or through voice communication software.

And so Ms. Langman and Mr. Bentley found a quiet spot for their avatars to sit. Hours evaporated as they discussed everything from their families to their futures. Sometime before dawn, Ms. Langman realized that while she was in the fictional world of Azeroth, she was also on a date.

For the next two months, Ms. Langman, 27, and Mr. Bentley, 24, rendezvoused in Azeroth, until one day they decided to meet in Santa Barbara instead. When Mr. Bentley stepped onto the tarmac at the Santa Barbara airport on a bright October afternoon in 2008, Ms. Langman ran to him. Mr. Bentley scooped her up into his arms and spun her around.

He had planned to stay for a couple of weeks before returning to Atlanta. But two weeks became two years, and Mr. Bentley and Ms. Langman are still together.

Who knew a World of Warcraft subscription could deliver more romance than Match.com?

Ms. Langman and Mr. Bentley are hardly the only couple to have forged an avatar love connection. Gaming forums are rife with anecdotes from players who are dating and marrying. Some couples have even had their avatars marry. (You can watch videos of the ceremonies on YouTube.)

And while it may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, more people are likely to meet this way as the genre (known as massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs) continues to grow. With more than 12 million subscribers, World of Warcraft is one of the most popular games of its kind in the world (others includeEverQuest, Aion, Guild Wars). That’s a sizable dating pool. Match.com, by way of comparison, has fewer than 2 million subscribers.

“It’s giving people something that they’re missing in the real world,” said Ramona Pringle, an interactive media producer and a professor of new media at the Ryerson School of Image Arts in Toronto. “It is a really primal experience. It’s about survival. It’s about needing someone.”

Ms. Pringle, 29, first observed gamer love connections while working as an interactive producer for the PBS “Frontline” project called “Digital Nation.” At BlizzCon 2009, a gaming convention in California, she was stunned by the number of die-hard gamers holding hands and pushing baby carriages.

She thought about her friends: successful, striking and yet struggling to find love. She herself — willowy with wide green eyes — had just had a breakup with a boyfriend. “What’s going on that these people we consider the fringe, these gamers, are finding love?” she said, nursing a beer at a bar in Austin, Tex., last month during the South by SouthwestInteractive conference. She wanted to see what gaming might teach her about love.

So instead of turning to religion or therapy to mend her heart, Ms. Pringle said, she turned to World of Warcraft.

More than 40 percent of online gamers are women, and adult women are among the industry’s fastest growing demographics, representing 33 percent of the game-playing population — a larger portion than boys 17 and younger, who make up 20 percent, according to the Entertainment Software Association, an industry group.

To help her navigate World of Warcraft, Ms. Pringle enlisted Brent George, the animation director for James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game, to be her guide. They began playing last summer — she from Toronto, he from Montreal — as many as six hours a night.

As Ms. Pringle tumbled down the rabbit hole, she found herself directing her avatar — Tristanova, a graceful blue-skinned night elf priest — to run excitedly up to Mr. George’s avatar, Caethis, a heroic-looking warrior. “It’s remarkable to me that you can have a crush on someone’s avatar,” Ms. Pringle said.

But she did. The two have never been romantically involved, yet when Mr. George told her that he would be her knight in shining armor, “I have to admit, my heart skipped a beat,” she said, “even though we hadn’t met in person.”

Multiplayer games encourage such alliances. The beginner’s guide to World of Warcraft notes that you can go it alone, “but by going it alone, you won’t be able to master some of the game’s tougher challenges, you will likely take longer to reach the endgame, and you won’t have access to the game’s most powerful magical treasures.” Ms. Pringle thinks that is analogous to love.

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A version of this article appeared in print on April 24, 2011, on page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: It’s Love at First Kill.

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Heartbroken.

Mat cries by the mailbox, broken hearted

Sometimes Mat gets a bad feeling. Maybe it comes from listening to what's not said more than to what is. There is a skip, a missed beat, in a conversation, things that are revealed later that feel...well, just not right. The feeling started last evening, with one of those "Can I tell you something?" types of conversations. Unraveling and over analyzing gets Mat no where, so she just chalked it up to just honest communication. (Postscript: That's exactly what it turned out to be -all is fine, in fact, great.)

However, lately she's been feeling that messages in bottles have come back broken. Flares have fizzled. Trying desperately not to need reassurance or be perceived as needy, she shrugged off the feeling all day. The normal Tuesday patch was something to look forward to, although it meant she wouldn't see her long-time friend in the morning. Running to the mailbox in the afternoon, she was heartbroken to find a Dear Mat letter. Well, it wasn't really a "let's just be friends" letter, but more of a "I'll be in the real world for awhile, and hope you take care..." sort of thing. Now, Mat's human understands the real world. Very much so. The human has a pretty big project to stare down the month of March, as well as attend to personal and professional projects. It was going to take some discipline and planning to include Mataoka in the plans, but big plans they are indeed. Mat wants to get into raiding, sharpen her skills, and gain respect of the Alliance of Whisperwind.

Coincidentally, while Mat's human was trying to sort out some writing questions, this article popped up:
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/02/27/all-the-worlds-a-stage-whats-my-motivation/

Mat was in a bit of a slump there, and lack of confidence is NOT attractive. So she reflected: what is her motivation? What does she want? And the answer came to her clearly: there is no time worth spending in this world without friendship, laughter, sharing success and failures.

Mat wants to tell her friend: She will deeply, profoundly miss you while you live more in the RW than Azeroth. Her one little level 85 self was honored to know one great player who was a mage, priest, rogue, druid and the rest. Who's going to make her laugh by turning into a plant, or port her to Dal with the fastest ports ever? Who's going to give her a leap of faith when she feels hopeless? Who's going to get overly excited and toss knives like the rogue whenever he saw her? No one else. You all brought fun, gifts, talents, advice and friendship that is rarely matched in the real world. All the healing rain in the world isn't going to wash this away for awhile. Please come back when you can, and know you are in Mat's thoughts and healing wishes in realm and real time.

Series: How I met your Hunter

Do not underestimate the power and persistence of Achievement Seekers.*

The kindred spirits of achievement seekers have a preternatural sense of who we are: we are the holiday participants, and we want that mount. We find each other in the gathering spots, trying to decipher just what exactly it is this NPC wants us to do...

This is how Mat met her best achievement seeking buddy, and kick-butt DPS hunter, Kaylyne. The holiday quests are not like any other; you will need to eat food a certain way, click differently, and navigate through hostile territories. You will be killed by an elite NPC on the other side, for certain. If you're seeking with a friend, it makes the wounds heal much more quickly. Someone to walk back from the graveyard with. True achievement seekers/friends always share tips, websites, locations, facts, and strategies. There is no competition in this area - it is all for the shared glory, title, and yes, there will be enough mounts to go around, not like ninja'd rolls in dungeons or raids. You give a little bit to the team, and are guaranteed a reward.

If it takes us all year, which it will, we will seek any elder, barf up any Hallowed candy, or kiss any Orc if that is what it takes.

Kay and I have become more than achievement seeking friends: we help each other in so many ways. Good friends just 'get' each other - we know when we need a hug, a confidence booster, and a drag through a dungeon without some macho tank yelling some profanity at us. We do have something to prove: female players do have to be 'better,' or will endure the scoffs, smirks, and sarcasm of some (not all) of our male counterparts. If this sounds a bit defensive and "girl power," well, just look at Kay's DPS score in a dungeon and shut your pie hole. Which, by the way, you will get if you're nice to us, we'll bake you a pumpkin pie.

Kay and me flirting with the guard...who was eavesdropping

*Some have other, more unsavory, epitaphs for "seeker." Watch your language, please.

Series: How I met your Paladin

A soloist, straddling, balancing on a poorly crafted leather saddle, the Draenei shaman sighs with reverberating restlessness. It is in her nature, her soul, to know what others are feeling, to take up axe or mace to fight and defend, and protect her own self interests. She can do this well, all on her own. Her wolves are fleeting, ectoplasmic allies. No feathered fellow shadow casts  upon her mount. No connection or link at this hour. Thinking her own thoughts and keeping her own counsel. She finds trust...challenging.

On the ground, a young naive paladin is in over his head. These elites may prove to best him. No guildmates answer his call; they can't be bothered with this initiate, this amateur. Let him pay his dues, even if it means paying with his life, several times over. He puts the call out...not a  yell, not a shout, but a request...simple and humble. Anyone out there...can help....kill elite?

She did hesitate. Just for a moment. But quickly remembered how difficult it was to find aid, assistance -- in a most dire hour. She answers his call, and is rewarded...with a friend and a champion...