A gaming life

First mention is an aside. Summer 2010 will be known as the Summer of the Great Cake Famine. That was broken in style today with our Snow Queen bringing in a banquet of home made nomnoms. I join the rest of the project in restarting my diet tomorrow.

Quote "That strawberry cake was da bomb! Lush :)" A very happy birthday my dear Snow Queen :-)

I tend to go in cycles with my gaming. I'll go for one game and play it to death. This time, I'm back in the slippery slope of World of Warcraft ...

It's a recurring theme from the first phase of my blog, although the circumstances have changed considerably since then. When I started up this blog, I'd just had a relationship break up and reacted by throwing myself completely and utterly into the game.The stuff in game replaced relationships outside. Before, I'd been doing things with my partner, now I was filling the gap by doing stuff online with the guild and with Guildlink.

The in game stuff had completely taken over from the real life stuff. I learned later that this was rather unhealthy. I'd been keeping a guild together and negotiating our participation with the Guildlink alliance of guilds. Gamers tend to be quite headstrong and being disconnected from the face to face by being on the internet really doesn't help there. A lot of silliness is created in the text only medium that doesn't happen face to face.

I also ended up expecting a little too much from a few people involved in the game, which led to the unhealthy stuff I mentioned earlier. Blog Part 1 is a rollercoaster tale of ups and downs, where I ended up bouncing in and out of the game as it got too much.

I'm hoping for a bit different this time around, having been in for about a month now. The situation is very different. I'm away from some real aggro that built up on my previous server, having jumped to a different one to join some rather fantastic people called Violence Reborn. I knew one or two of them from the old server but hadn't really been involved in what they get up to. I've had that privilege now a few times and I'm really enjoying coming back in.

But ... and there's always a but ...

Moderation is always the key. Too much of a good thing will sour the experience. I can only take so much of the more intense gameplay style in WoW before my shoulder/collarbone muscles try to strangle me. I'm also enjoying having no responsibility this time around. There's plenty of respect coming my way (I think some expectations I'm having trouble living up to as well) but no responsibility. Except perhaps to be worthy of that respect. Being a guild leader was a rush for a while but I'm quite happy to avoid anything like that in the future.

It's kind of a "Do Once" thing. Happy being just a player now, it's easier to arrange your life around that.

There's one difference between the WoW experience and the Eve experience : respect. I've never felt I've had that much respect from the Eve crew, outside of the few I know from face to face. Respect for each other is the key to good relations. It's earned too, which is probably why I don't have it from the Eve people. I've simply not been in game enough.

So there we have it. Summer's come to an end and with it the cricket season. Gaming is filling the gap and it's pretty good at the moment. The cycle has me using Mass Effect for an unthinking blast, Settlers IV for brainless R+R and Warcraft for enjoying chatting and playing with other people. And the shoulder keeps it in healthy moderation.

You can lose yourself in these games, be that through emotional stuff or going to bed at 3.30am to get up at 7.30am. Too much of no sleep and you'll get fired. Not good. The emotional stuff gets heavy too but I'll hopefully avoid that as long as I avoid responsibility.

I think I ended up doing Wall Of Text again. Reckon I'll be saving Numbers 20 to 11 for a later date but ... if anyone else has been seeing iTunes 10.0.1.22 problems with Airplay network speakers after the last patch : uninstall iTunes and reinstall. That should sort the network connectivity issues caused by some shoddy patching.

Really enjoying the gaming. WoW's been dumbed down a little more but I think what they've done is tidied it up a bit. Achievements add more purpose to the game. My third Iceangel just earned her first title : it's now Brewmaster Iceangel. Not a Merc any more but I'll not be changing my url :-)