Rebuilding is Hard

It's interesting, I've sat down and started to write a dozen times and published nothing. It's hard to know what to talk about when my go-to topic isn't something I can talk about anymore. This may be evident, but I'll reiterate - I'm not coming back for Warlords. While it's true that I sometimes miss WoW, I've learned that what I really miss isn't something that I can get back. Vanilla WoW is gone, and with it left my friends and guildmates. They're not coming back either and it would be silly for me to sit around in Stormwind or some other capital city, pretending to have fun and wishing they would just sign on.

I sometimes wonder if re-naming or putting up a new template would make it easier. Maybe deleting all of my content or simply moving domains and setting up shop in a brand new, spiffy blog that doesn't carry all of the memories from before. I don't want to walk away from this blog, and I'm not sure that I can commit to frequent postings with my job and real life taking up most of my time. I do; however, want to start doing this again. I still play video games and I'll be talking about whatever I'm playing when I play it.

What I've been playing recently:
Dragon Age Inquisition
Farcry 4
The Walking Dead.

While I really want to start talking about Dragon Age, I do think it's a little bit to early to start spouting spoilers but, once I start my play through Nightmare mode next week, I will be spoiling and cursing. So, I just want to get that warning out there.

Also, I'm looking for a new mouse and keyboard and would really appreciate some suggestions.

Happy to be back,

Malk

Reimagining/Rebranding

Hello all,

After much deliberation, I've decided to reposition this site. Unfortunately, one cannot be a WoW blogger who does not play WoW. Having canceled my subscription more than a year ago, I think it's safe to say that I am not returning to WoW. Obviously, the phrase "Never say Never" applies, but at least for the foreseeable future, I will not be among the denizens of Azeroth.

This is not to say that I'm done with games. I am absolutely still gaming, and I'd like to focus more on what I am doing now, than what I was doing in the past. My time in Warcraft is something that I will look back on and remember fondly and as such my original content and links will remain intact, the main difference will be what I'm posting about. I want to talk about the games that interest me and that I play now.

This alteration will likely come with a new look, and maybe a new name, all to be finalized within a few weeks.

Multi-player is not my enemy

It's taken me a long time to come to this conclusion.

When I first left WoW, it was because I couldn't stand to immerse myself in a world that reminded me of Cy. In the beginning it was because I couldn't bring myself to see him online on my real-id, not because he would talk to me - he wouldn't we were stuck in our lease and I was too stubborn to move out so if he wanted to talk to me all he had to do was approach me in the living room, but more because I couldn't yet bring myself to purge him from my life and therefore my list. In the following weeks I continued to stay offline because I could no longer force myself to play with other people. His endless criticism of my caliber as a player had become a nagging voice in my head, telling me that I wasn't good enough to play with other people.

The mere thought of entering dungeons or playing with other players caused me a great deal of anxiety. So, I simply avoided it.

I became a staunchly single player gamer.

I played the crap out of Assassin's creed 4, but did not platinum because I couldn't bring myself to play one round of multi-player, much less play enough to earn trophies.

I even played Payday 2 offline, because it was more fun for me to get mad at the AI than it was to potentially screw up someones heist.

So, when I started playing Diablo 3 again, I was firmly set on playing alone.

Let me just interject here and say that when J told me about the new patch several months ago, I was less than stocked. "How can they make a game that was brutally so un-fun, fun?" I asked. He doesn't play Blizzard games, so he couldn't tell me whether the patch had fixed the anti-fun that was Diablo 3. "Just try it" he said. Now, something like 2 or 3 months later, I finally did and I'm glad I gave it another chance.

I love the dynamic difficulty of the monsters. It's a way better system than tying the monster level to the difficulty setting and the quest you're on.

  

So, I downloaded the patch and logged on to my Demon Hunter, who was at the time level 55. I played on Normal for a little while, and eventually made my way up to Master difficulty after the former three difficulties proved to be too easy. Eventually, I thought for a lark just to try a public game.

It's been great. Everyone that I've partied with have been nice to me - or at least very quiet. Unlike WoW, Diablo was made to faceroll so I haven't had to deal with any co-ordination which was half of my problem (I was very much volentold to do a lot of mechanics and fill roles that I was absolutely not comfortable doing) but I'm finding it to be a positive, and frankly fun experience.

I've noticed the drops are a lot better. I've gotten a ton of legendaries, my favourite being "Pig Sticker" due to the random squeal noises that it makes.

In short, I'm rediscovering multi-player as a fun, and positive alternative to single player.

So... it's been a year.

It's been nearly a year since I signed in here and honestly, pretty much that long since I canceled my WoW subscription too. In retrospect, I wish I had posted a farewell or provided some notice that I would no longer be updating frequently, or as it turned out, at all.

I can't say that I've missed WoW all that much, the game as I knew it has been over for a long time and none of the friends that I played with originally still play save one, my father. That's not to say that the new friends I made along the way were lesser than the originals though they were fewer in number. Eventually, I went from playing with guildies\friends every night to being more of a loner and you don't get very far in MMO's as a loner. My home realm population dwindled and with the introduction of guild levels the small family guilds with tight knit raid teams that I loved became a thing of the past.

Over the years I've been in a number of raiding guilds with varied success - to me it was more about enjoying the people I played with rather than the internet points and imaginary prestige. At some point, I lost sight of that goal and got into some hardcore raiding with a boy I was seeing in real life.

Ultimately, it was the dissolution of that relationship that also ended my love affair with WoW. He sucked the fun out of my game and broke me down from a confident young woman who loved playing the game with other people and turned me into an anxious girl who didn't want to queue for raid finder out of fear of screwing things up.

It's been nearly a year since he broke me, and while my real life bounced back quickly, with the help of some of the best friends I have ever had, one of whom introduced me to a man who builds me up and has made me the happiest I have ever been, my online presence has never bounced back. I'm not really sure why that is, I suspect it has something to do with deeply my ex permeated my online life, but lately I've been missing this blog and while I'm not sure I'll ever go back to WoW I miss the friends I made here and on other blogs.

I make no promises, I don't know what I want this blog to be about if not solely about WoW. I still game just generally not online. Mostly, I wanted to put this out there - I've missed you and I'm thinking about getting back into this, whatever it is.

In the meantime I would like to try Hearthstone, so we'll see where that takes me.