Cross realm zones, and why I’d rather do laundry.

So there I was, wide awake stupidly early on my day off. The house was quiet as my wife was already at work and the kids were hours from getting up for school.

Sounds like an awesome time to get my WoW on, which i proceeded to do.

Everything was going reasonably well, I’m having an awesome time leveling my new Monk.

I spent hours  having an awesome time, cruising from quest hub to quest hub, enjoying the stories of Stranglethorn Vale. The something happened that snapped me straight back to the real world.

Cross Realm Zoning.

My awesome morning jarred to a sudden halt at one of those points where you have to complete a given quest to open up the rest of the area. In this case I found that I needed one of the kill X number of baddies of type X to continue.

A nice quiet quest I could go burn thru in a few minutes.

Too bad the guys I needed also played into the rep grind for “The Insane”.

Myself and three other mid 30’s level characters sat around trying to complete our quest while a level 90 was flattening the area. I found myself getting one baddie per respawn cycle, same as the other three that actually belonged there.

Standing around waiting for one particular pirate to respawn so I could kill it over and over just was about as far from fun as anything I could think about in game.

I decided I’d rather do something more fun with my time, so I logged out and started laundry.

Such is life I suppose.

Fuggit

For those that follow here looking for WoW related stuff, might as well quit reading now.

This one has nothing to do with Wow, or my characters, or the fun I’m having questing my way up on my Monk.

Earlier today I was puttering about on Twitter, as I am fond of doing, and I saw a number of folks that I follow participating in something called AskFM. It seemed simple enough, you open yourself up to questions from your Twitter followers and answer those that come as best you can.

It actually sounded like lots of fun, so I posted one of my own.

Slowly over the next half hour or so it hit me.

If you aren’t one of the popular kids no one is really interested.

Apparently I’m not one of the popular kids.

A long time ago, in a High School far far away that was just as true as it was today.

Ironically, in High School I was a captain of the football team. As a jock, and a star player on the team, I fit in… sort of.

Had I not been an athlete I would have been a total outcast. As it was, I got by. As I get older and think back though, I think people more tolerated me because of what I could do on the field and less of actually thinking I was an interesting person.

Fast forward to today.

I opened up a question session and sat there. As I watched the others on my timeline get and respond to dozens of questions from interested folks, including a few from me, I watched myself get no interest at all.

To be fair I am not exactly the most social person, but that kinda stung a bit.

In just a few minutes I went from the mid 40’s successful guy that I am, back to the awkward teenager that was the only football player at the homecoming dance without a date.

You know what, apparently those wounds are a lot fresher than they should be this many years down the road.

I’m a maintenance tech, both electrical and mechanical. A cliche’ is “If Brad can’t fix it. it’s not broken.”

Now I find myself looking at the people I hang out with and wondering how many of them only tolerate me because of what I can do. Whether they like me for me, or just put up with me.

It kinda sucks. I thought I was long over this, but I suppose I’m not.

Edit:

After a bit of thought, I should never have published this one. It was cathartic to write, and should have stayed as a draft.

As a friend pointed out, my worth is not determined by a 30 min experiment on a social media site.

I’ve simply been having a crappy day and ended up getting down on myself. It happens, but it didn’t need to happen here.

Have an awesome day folks, I plan to.

Just casually Monking about

For the few long term readers that stuck around, or simply forgot to delete the dusty old blog from their feed readers, the fact that I have forsaken all of my ranged DPS classes and all my healers to level a Monk is probably a bit of a surprise.

Melee DPS even, the one thing I was never able to get in to.

Well, there are quit a few good reasons. First and foremost is that the class simply plays very smoothly for me. This may be because I am a martial artist myself, I don’t know for sure. I just know its very intuitive for me.

Secondly, for someone such as myself who has limited playtime they level very quickly because of the Enlightenment buff. An extra 50% bonus to experience on top of the 45% for heirlooms and 100% for being rested has me leveling crazily fast when I am actually able to get some playtime.

A side note about Enlightenment buff, it stacks quite high. Each time you do the daily it adds an hour to whatever you have already. If you only get one or two good play sessions a week you can still get seven hours of buff.

I assume it caps out at some point, but I don’t know where yet. I have an alliance side Monk that I got to level twenty to open the quest and I’m simply running the daily to stack up the buff while leveling my forsaken Monk. She is already sitting at about 17 hours and counting.

Let’s just say that the class lends itself to casual leveling.

How does it play at level 90? Not a clue.

How do I heal or tank with him? Once again, no clue.

What I can say is that for just casually questing away and beating random baddies up for their lunch money the Monk is an awesome class.

Truth be told I think it will be a long time before you see me playing any other.

Hello Again

Hello again, its been a while.

I stopped writing because I saw my tone becoming more and more jaded. I had started to hate the game I once loved.

Actually, scratch that. I didn’t hate the game, I hated all the changes.

Decado, the Troll Hunter that saw me thru from the day Gnomerragan server was born up to the gates of the Black Temple changed to the point that I no longer enjoyed playing him.

Dechion, a Human Priest and this blogs namesake saw me thru from the Black Temple to the end of Wrath. I’m not really a fan of how he has changed either.

Dilburt, the Goblin Shaman, was my Main from the Cataclysm until I let my account expire with the Mists of Pandaria expansion.

For months I quit playing.

I even deleted the client from my computer in and effort to make World of Tanks run a bit faster. (That failed)

Well, all that changed a few weeks ago when my daughter decided to give me a few character slots on her fully upgraded account.

First off I rolled a pair of Pandaren, just to experience the starting zone from the perspective of a character leaving for each faction. (SPOILER ALERT…. don’t waste your time, its pretty much the same, minus some text with your leader in your new capital city.)

Then, just to kill some time, I rolled the only class I had yet to try.

The Monk.

specifically, this Monk.

Dech, the Forsaken Monk who refuses to have anything to do with Sylvanas and her cronies. (He has forsaken the Forsaken…)

He is now 61 and having a blast in Zangermarsh. Hell, I even had fun in Hellfire. I haven’t said that since TBC was shiny and new.

I can’t say exactly how often I’ll be posting, or exactly what my focus will be, but I’m back.

I feel the love for the game again, and the urge to write about it.

I just figured I would let anyone that still had my dusty old blog on their feed reader that I was back.

For better or for worse.

Hello Again.