Err... so Holidays! and Motivation

The promised PP strat hasn't come because I randomly ended up going to FEEEJEEE for a much needed holiday away from the Cold of South East Australia and off to the warmer climes of the South(ish) Pacific!  I just returned last weekend and, you know when you go away from work how other people are supposed to cover the slack of the time you take away because you are a team and ... well ... I got back to a massive pile of work.

I really must dust off that HM PP strat from my files and start writing it again.  But motivation is at rock bottom.

Motivation issue?  You NER? What's going on??
Yeah, me.  ICC has been out for about 8 months now, Cata isn't looking like release till at least the end of the year.  Frustation with raiding is at an all time high.  I don't know about you guys, but I am seeing people retire for cataclysm left right and centre.  What does that mean for guilds?  I means that possibly more and more guilds are moving backwards.  They are having to recruit people who are not necessarily the best fit in order to keep raiding.  This will annoy and upset the longer term members who are watching what they consider their hard earned gear leave the guild.  For example, we have had 2 Shadowmournes vanish almost as soon as they were acquired - one quit (then came back, then quit again) and the other converted to tanking to cover off a loss of MTs.  The guild's only earned Valan'yr is gone, Mine is still there, however it was earned with my original guild.

I feel that this slump is worse than the TBC slump.  This is because of incredibly poor planning of WotLK.  8 months of the same instance (Ruby Sanctum was barely a blip on the raiding surface) with the "challenge" being do the same fights but harder.  There is only so much repetition people will stand for, and I think those limits are being tested right now.

This lack of motivation is expressed in multiple ways: retiring as mentioned, emoing, and rage quitting to name a few.

Retiring I can understand, people stop wanting to play and that's fine. You let us all know, we wish you well and you are welcome back when you feel the need to raid come up again in your life. We all know we can always use good players, and especially ones that we have already trialed and said "youse gud enuff dude". Good luck to everyone that has done this recently - I hope we see you again in Cata!!


But this brings me to the negatively expressed versions of tension and frustration. Namely "emoing" (inc emo quitting). Now, emoing comes in several flavours, but the one that is most destructive is yelling at each other.  I just can't see how screaming at someone that they are shit, or that they are wasting your time is at all constructive.

Last night, we had 2 emo rage quits in one night.  TWO.  One came back, the other didn't.  But the one who came back complained that he was sick of idiots wasting his time.  Um, huh?  Honestly, if you are worried about having your time wasted, then why on earth are you playing a computer game? That IS kind of the point... to waste your time... or have I got this whole thing completely arse about?

Yelling at each other just makes the rest of us not want to play which exacerbates an issue we are already struggling with; Numbers and Dogging (Dogging is a term which I don't know how wide spread it could be.  Within our guild jargon it means simply not showing up to something because you can't be bothered or have a last minute commitment) . When what we have going for us at the moment is "fun" why would people want to turn up to raids if everyone is depressed, negative and at each others' throats for dumb things?

So, why are you still raiding, NER?
I raid with people, it is the people that bring me back, it is the people that make me laugh, it is the people that create my raiding fun.  I have 2 main purposes in playing WoW and raiding - smooshing pixels into the ground and having a laugh with my friends.  The latter is far more important to me than the former.  If I am enjoying myself, I can put up with a lot of dumb stuff happening in raids, I can deal with nuffers standing in fires - Explaining and creating strategies for those nuffers is where this blog came from!! Creating explanations that everyone could understand using terms that were amusing and simple and not complicating things with technical details of the mechanics of the fight.

Recently, everyone that I am having fun with is leaving the guild I am in; retiring or simply changing their game faces and not being the people they used to be.  This is very sad.  I am not one for transient friendships, I collect people and I keep them.  When people I consider "collected" drift away, that makes me really sad.  This has happened to me with a couple of people in the last 6 months.  So why am I still raiding? I very much doubt I will be for much longer in the form it currently takes.


My Cataclysm guild is looking more attractive as an early start than ever.  And you know what? That is both wonderful and depressing.