Still Alive!

Yo blog! What’s up! I’ve been so wrapped up in drama elsewhere and other things that I’ve failed to really put much into trying to post here. Not to mention trying to establish a real sleeping habit! … but that of course failed. Hah. As it is, I’ve been up since yesterday and its noon now. And if I seem a bit ADD it is likely because of the sever lack of sleep recently.

First off, I am no longer the guild master in the guild I’d been leading for the last two years in World of Warcraft. It was probably one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to decide and actually do. I take things so serious all the time and the game really had become a full time job and an environment where I spent more time as Kaae the Paladin and less time as Dara the Office Peon.

So how this came about… Back in September, shortly after Pax Prime, I talked to my two officers and asked one of them if they’d be willing to be the new GM if I stepped down in a month. I offered to stick around and help out where I could and explained that I wanted to be sure he would have a smooth transition should he accept the roll – something I felt the guild and I hadn’t had when the GMs before me left.

He agreed and I made an official announcement to the guild. And when November came, we officially made the change. There were of course hiccups but they eventually worked out. Only once did I really come out swinging at some folks who were being critical of the new leadership. But I realized that I couldn’t keep doing that because they had to get themselves established. And even now I still struggle with not throwing out my voice to give out some sort of command or two or posting huge ‘walls of text’ that the guild still teases me about – when I think I’m sensing disturbances in the guild force.

But overall, the new leadership is doing what I trusted they would be able to do. And they picked some very excellent additionally officers as well. And all of them have been incredibly nice when I’ve stepped out of line a bit and been a bit of a momma bird.

The only thing still troubling me is that I continue to raid with them. Mostly because I really want to be sure they can raid with more guild members. Fortunately, they’re still attracting people and I have faith that soon they won’t need my holy paladin to heal their raids anymore. And then I can truly be just a social member in the game who can come online and have some fun without worrying about too many ‘responsibilities.’

Oh, and might I add that even with raiding, the stress in my ‘wow life’ has dropped almost completely. I still fuss a bit when folks challenge the leadership decisions and offer lots of ‘perhaps they are thinking this way…” discussions – but I am not going to bed at night wondering if something is going to happen that week that I’m going to have to deal with for the sake of guild peace.

As for other plans… I’ve successfully pulled a ton of time away from wow and put it towards other things. Work of course has picked up more of my time. Though I am still a peon for the office. Photocopying bliss, stuffing a couple hundred envelopes and licking the nasty glue seal closed, and other fun tasks that take many hours to do but cannot always get done by the secretary. It has given me a lot of time to listen to Pandora internet radio or consider the other games I play now in addition to wow.

Minecraft, Chime, DC Universe Online, a little Rift Beta, and a ton of other indie games that I picked up off of steam during their Christmas sales.

Minecraft is probably my favorite right now. I’ve heard it described as a giant sandbox game. It’s like this awesome building block game were you can really create anything out of squares. If you ever go to youtube, just look it up and you’ll see some crazy things folks have made! However, not only do you have this absolutely amazing creative game, but then you have survival modes that mix it up a bit. And you’ll face down spiders, arrow shooting skeletons, zombies, and the most feared mobs: creepers. I may sit down one night and put together a heavier review on this – but as it stands, even in beta – the game sucks away the hours of the day and is fun!

Chime is an indie game that is shared on a few gaming platforms. And to me is this Tetris like, puzzle game. And I kid you not; I can sit there for hours playing it. Basically you are given a ‘map’ that you have to fill with pieces given to you at random. They are different shapes. And you want to put those pieces together in neat big shapes called “quads” for tons of points. Meanwhile you have music playing and pulsing and you will get additionally points depending on how many quads in a run you make. To ‘win’ a round you want to fill up every inch of the ‘map’ – which can be done by creating quads. Then when the music finishes its pass, the solid quad becomes translucent/transparent and you can use the old space to either make a new quad or use the space to complete other quads. GAH I should make a video and post it so you can see it blog!

Next is DC Universe, which I actually picked up on a whim after watching an internet blogger RPing a bit while he played the game. I played City of Heroes/Villains for a few months back in the day and I always enjoyed being a super powered being and this just added the bonus of possibly working along side heroes I recognized and grew up with. Being original, I went with the name “kaae” and created a hero. She’s got plant powers like Poison Ivy and uses some badass dual weapons like Nightwing. The game really reminds me of something like a console game with how you kinda play it. And the way your abilities are set off with the weapons reminds me a lot of the patterned button mashing you did with the old Mortal Combat arcade machines where you’d push like, red button 4 times and then the red button once. However, in this case those buttons are your mouse buttons and you’re clicking them like mad.

The DC stories are also pretty fun to live through as well and if you follow the quests a bit, its surprising how much ‘lore’ they’ve put into the game. More than once I’ve stopped to look at the wiki pages on various archs to see what the comics were like. DC isn’t a game I play a whole ton but it is a fun ‘vacation’ sort of game and being a hero once in a while with a mentor like Wonder Woman is fun. =p

And finally in these last few weeks I’ve gotten involved in the Beta that has been running for Rift. Only the ones for the stress testing they’ve been doing though. I feel I really appreciate this beta actually, compared to what I was seeing with some others not too long ago. The game feels a lot more fleshed out then I was expected after the last one I was in and there seems to be a good balance between those who like and don’t like the game. And of course, the pvp crowds are looking at it and wondering if its something that can turn into an esport.

The game SEEMS a lot like World of Warcaft in many ways. They take a lot of the terminology made familiar by WoW and apply it to pretty much the same things in their own game. But Rift is very fancy looking graphically speaking and they’ve got the RIFT system which still needs some tweaks, but has folks pretty excited as well. I don’t know that I will try to get in with the next beta batch or hold off. Because this is a game I’d be very tempted to simply ‘play’ during beta rather than look for bugs. My impression is definitely positive and I think that while the game likely won’t replace a very established WoW for its millions of players – I think that it could easily take a lot of folks away from the game who really wanted something new and felt they didn’t get that with Cataclysm.

I think perhaps I’ll write some more in depth things further down the road on these games and maybe get some slight movies going to show what they look like. But there you have it blog! Have a good one and let’s keep our fingers crossed that another four months or so don’t pass before I write on you again.