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Friday, August 27, 2021

The Blind Leading the Blind

(When I posted this, a half an hour later Blizz posted that Phase 2 will launch on September 15th. And they confirmed that there will be new Fresh WoW Classic servers. I'd have preferred the end of September, but I'll live with mid-September.)

 

When TBC Classic launched, I found it anything but fun.

I and the other leveling Shamans were kicked to the curb, as if we didn't exist, while everybody else rushed in. We were expected to get leveled and then attuned to Karazhan pretty much on our own, even though everybody else was working together. I had the (slightly) easier job of having my Gruul/Mags raids start at the end of July, but some of the other leveling Shamans had a much harder job of getting leveled, attuned, and geared in time for the first week of July, and I did not envy the work ahead for them. It was only at the very end of the journey did people suddenly become interested in our progress, because they quickly discovered that a lack of Shamans and Healers were a huge problem for raid teams.

All of this is old news to anybody who has read the blog over that time. 

But now, looking back on the two months from pre-patch up through mid-July, I don't think anybody --myself included-- knew just how dark of a place I found myself in. 

Well, my oldest noticed. 

She'd battled depression before, and from about early June onward she started checking in on me daily to make sure I was doing okay. While I assured her I was going to be fine, and I was just grumpy about the whole thing, she wasn't buying it at all. It's kind of strange, now that I look back on it, that I can tell when she was satisfied that I'd pulled through because she stopped checking in on me so much about mid-July.

Even then, I chalked my feeling down more to something akin to a mid-life crisis than anything else.

***

When I was mired in the middle of this, the only thing that kept me going was the sense of duty toward the commitment I'd made. The days were a blur: wake up, get into work, work for a bit, level a bit during lunch, work some more, then after work it was a 2-3 hour nap + dinner, then leveling until I reached my 3 levels per day (to get to L60). After I reached Outland, it was questing and leveling until I couldn't keep my eyes open. Each day, I probably got only 3-4 hours a sleep, including the nap. That amount of sleep was a blessing, because my dreams were filled with shadowy, nameless people berating me for being so slow and being such a detriment to the team, whether it was work or WoW or whatever else I found myself doing in dreamland. 

It didn't help that I was being slammed at work, and I could easily have worked 10 extra hours per week if I chose to just to maintain what my workload was at the time.*

***

If I knew what was good for me, I should have just quit.

Some people did; they simply just stopped logging in and vanished without a trace.** And you know what pissed me off even more? Two of them were 2/3 of the Mages slotted for our Monday raid. Not the Core Four Mages from Naxx, but the other two that rounded our team to six.

You know, the ones I gave up my spot as Cardwyn for so they could have a spot in raid

If you thought that made me a bit angry, you underestimated my fury. By a factor of 10.

At the same time, I knew I wasn't going back to Cardwyn. That their vanishing without a trace in a weird sort of way stiffened my resolve to NOT bring Card to Outland, weeks before I thought of trying to level her in the Old World.*** I wasn't going to quit on Briganaa, not after having gone through everything to get her there. And I sure as hell wasn't going to level another toon to L70 just because I wanted my favorite Alliance Mage in raid.

But what their quitting did do was break me out of my depression. 

***

Much to my surprise, it wasn't the Karazhan raids or even when we finally went to take on Gruul and Mags that got me started on a way out, but that others quit instead of me. Here were these people who had everything they wanted: a toon already at L60, a guaranteed spot in a raid, and they even got to raid on the toon they wanted. And they couldn't do it. 

Was it a perverse sort of satisfaction that got me moving again? Maaaybe? But I think it was, even more than that, the recognition from leadership that there were problems with how things went down, given the number of people who quit. And when people ask me about it, I am not shy about saying that I wouldn't wish that leveling experience on anybody. 

***

Why talk about this now? Why not just keep quiet about it, or wait until much later?

Part of it is because Kaylriene wrote this post in which I saw myself.

But even more than that, because I've logged into the Myz Discord recently and see people --invariably from the top guilds-- bitching that Phase 2 isn't out yet.

Or this snapshot, taken from
the WoW forums.
Courtesy of the Myz Discord.

 

That "everybody already has all their gear from the raids".

That they're all ready to go, and Blizz is taking too long to get problems with the raids in the Test Realm fixed. 

Basically, it's "I'm bored!" but posted in a Discord server.

For that attitude, I have two words:

FUCK YOU

No, not everybody has "all the gear from their raids".

No, not everybody who has been "trying at all" hasn't been nearly full BiS for a month.

No, not everybody is attuned to Phase 2 raids.

No, not everybody has been clearing all the raids since Week 2.

No, not everybody plays 6+ hours of WoW a night. 

I look at this attitude and see the seeds of the attitude that saw me sink into that FOMO led depression, that empty feeling that tells you that "you'll never escape from my clutches and amount to anything, so why try?"

It's not my effing problem that you rushed ahead, finished so damn early, and are now stuck twiddling your thumbs wondering what to do. You chose this. Nobody told you that you had to rush ahead and do all the things as if your ass was on fire. For every person whining that Blizz isn't releasing things on the schedule that you want, there's guilds out there, slogging away, just trying to progress in Karazhan or Gruul/Mags. 

Every week that Blizz works on bugs and doesn't drop Phase 2 means that there's an extra week for everybody that had felt so far behind. That people who can't afford the time investment to farm and do stuff 4+ hours a night every night won't feel even farther behind. Blizz put all those rep grinds and attunements there for a reason, and forcing yourself through them early is just setting yourself up to not have much to do for the next year and a half.

And for pete's sake, if you're whining about the release of Phase 2 and in the next breath you're complaining that the Political Correctness Police are after Blizzard, then you obviously don't know what "personal responsibility" means, do you? You can't seriously be talking about personal responsibility when Blizz changes McCree's name in Overwatch and then demand that Blizz release Phase 2 because you're bored since you rushed ahead and did all the things over a month ago, right?

***

Sigh.

That was a load off my chest.

So in the end... Yes, Shintar, you were right to worry about me, and it was probably worse than you thought it was. I just couldn't see it. But thanks for caring.

 

 

*Narrator: "He didn't."

**And in at least two cases, replacements vanished as well. I was flabbergasted at that, as one of them had actually server transferred to join our raid team, and the first thing they did when they got here was... to join a Karazhan pug from another guild, forgetting about our own Kara raids a few days later. I will say that none of the leveling Shamans quit, however. If anybody could have not been blamed for dropping out, it was The Leftovers, but we all made it through the gauntlet.

***Yeah, the old "and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart" routine. In case anyone ever questions whether that sort of reaction in the face of obvious misfortune is possible, I'm here to say "Yeah, it's realistic."

EtA: Fixed grammar in the first couple of sentences. And a missing half sentence; not sure where it went.

11 comments:

  1. I find most of the commentary I read about guild drama quite worrying, to be honest. I count the times I spent in guilds back in the mid-noughts as some of the most conflicted I've ever had. There were some great moments but the drama was appalling. I don't regret the move to playing mostly solo at all - I think I gained a lot more than I lost, in peace of mind if nothing else. It doesn't surprise me to learn you were having even worse a time of it than came over in the posts.

    Happy to hear you're feeling more sanguine about it now although I'm sure Blizzard will manage to make things harder for everyone again soon enough. They're clearly on a mission to win back subs if not hearts and minds and that never goes well.

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    1. One thing that I have done --and will continue to do going forward-- is to simply not login all the time. Last week I wasn't able to login for three days in a row, and... The world didn't fall apart. My standing as a raid lead wasn't called into question. And 50 million other little worries that I had in the back of my head evaporated. So I just kind of said "screw it" this week and learned to just step back and not go absolutely nuts about stuff. Like I was doing before I ended up joining a progression raid team.

      All of those "relax, we'll be fine" whispers I'd send to people who felt like they had to be perfect all the time should have also been directed at me, I suppose. And it only took a journey into mental darkness to figure this shit out. But I guess that also means that if I've been there once, I can slide into that again, so I have to be on alert for it, too.

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  2. Well, I'm glad you're in a better place now. And no indeed, I hadn't realised it got that dark. I'm glad your family did though and checked in on you.

    The whole "everyone's BiS" thing is funny to me, because we have quite a number of people in my guild getting frustrated with bad drop RNG and that they still haven't seen their desired drops after nearly three months in Kara. I'm in the same boat too; despite of running Kara every week I'm the only hunter who still hasn't got the bow from Prince - in other groups it gets sharded but it never drops when I'm there. Good thing I'm not that hung up about needing to keep up with gearing anymore or I would be frustrated for sure. :)

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    1. Yeah, I hadn't realized it was that dark either. I'm so glad that my oldest just kind of took it on herself to keep an eye on me.

      But the BiS is totally bullshit, as you so obviously pointed out. With a week long wait between runs, you'd have to be incredibly lucky to have gotten everything you wanted out of both Kara or Gruul/Mags. Sure, Kara is a 10 person raid, but come on. All we ever see is Malchazeen or The Decapitator off Prince. And if you're a healer, you're golden. Everything else? Not so much....

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  3. I'm sorry, I knew you weren't happy but that's awful. I don't know how you do it anyway. I started WoW the end of vanilla and gave up on guilds midway through Wrath. I'm glad things are turning around for you.

    Anymore I just tell myself this is supposed to be fun, don't do anything that isn't. If I want to be depressed I can do that very well on my own, thanks. So that leaves me flying around doing pet battles and looking for rares that drop mounts pretty much which is fine by me. TotA

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    1. Well, I wasn't planning on being in a guild any more than I needed to so that I could fend off constant pings about joining other people's guilds; my original Classic guild was very small, which suited me to no end. As for my current guild, I held them off for what felt like was forever; it was only when the opportunity arose to help the rest of the Mage Crew find a landing spot in TBC Classic raids that I finally relented.

      Yeah, I agree with your assessment, Ancient. But I do miss seeing you around in game, and I hesitate whenever I see you in Retail, because you could be in the middle of something and I could just be blundering on in with a "hey!"

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    2. You can hey me anytime. I pretty much either pet battling or looking for mounts. The great thing about Feral Druid I can melt into the shadows in the middle of a fight!

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  4. I read that palpable frustration, but, to echo everyone else, didn't know it was so bad. I'm glad you are in a better place now and even moreso that you have people attuned to you who care about you. Be sure to give that kid a hug ^_-

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    1. I have given her a lot of hugs, she just doesn't know the reasons behind it.

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  5. Hey Red;

    Good on you for bringing these things to light. Both your mental health and the 'Rush to BiS'. Your daughter rocks for both recognizing it and staying on top of her dad's status. Extra hugs for that.

    The guild I'm in is a bunch of 30 somethings who have played together for many, many years. Teenagers when they started WoW, they've got some wisdom and experience behind them, which is a couple of great qualities. I joined after befriending one of their members, an old fart like me in his 50's.

    These guys know how to play the game, and play it very similar to my style, old school. No hesitation on using CC or LoS Pulls to adapt to BC's amped up difficulty.

    All that being said, there's a distinctive push for BiS. It colours their conversations most of the time. That's all fine and good, great to have goals in the game, until it comes time for how they perceive me. An altoholic, I could care less about BiS gear. It's cool and all when it drops, but it's never, ever the reason I do things. Good gear doesn't make bad players good. It just doesn't. Skills, wisdom, experience...they're the important things. Sure, extra dps makes kills happen, but what the hell's the difference if it takes you 4:30 to drop a boss or 4:15? Or wipes that happen due to mechanics; good gear won't let you survive standing in fire or not getting out of the limits of Prince's enfeeble-shadow nova combination.

    Happily, most of the guildies know that about me, and there's very little pressure. Past couple of days, my co-warlock in the Kara raids started pushing me to get into this Heroic or that Normal, for a specific piece of gear. I rib him good naturedly, pointing out that for all his awesome gear, he should be doing 3x or 4x my damage, due to the gear disparities he envisions. He asked me just last night 'don't I care about my character?'. It was the question I was well prepared for. I responded as I always do. I get enough to get the job done, play well, and enjoy when stuff drops. The repeated runs of something ad naseum just isn’t fun. Plus, it’s RNG. You’ll beat your head against a wall and then get disappointed every time it doesn’t drop. Not my style, not my game. I make sure that any toon I bring to any run is appropriately geared, never a burden to other players. After that, it’s come what may. I don’t get frustrated about ‘what didn’t drop for me’, but rather revel in what drops for the group. Perhaps altruistic, but I’ve never quit wow in frustration.

    Last night my co-warlock stated ‘two more pieces and this guy’s full BiS’. I asked him what that meant, in terms of what he was going to do next. His answer was to play Baldur’s Gate 3. I guess that makes sense. You race ahead, to get bored, then play something new and shiny.

    Bill

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