Virtual Girl

I've come to realize some things in the last 3 months.

There are good friends I've only interacted in WoW for over a year.

Some people are busy its true but if I live in the same town as you and you still only interact with me via WoW what does that say?

When did face to face contact matter so little?

Drop a few unhealthy cliques and suddenly I'm a shut in. I don't get it. Are people just too busy to hang out over a coke once a week? It makes me wonder if this virtual world is all its cracked up to be. I mean I have no desire to BE my characters at all yet some people hide behind the game rather than hang out with me in person.

It disturbs me greatly that people that used to call me over the phone don't any more because they're busy or whatever leveling their 5th toon to 70.

Is it me? I don't think so. I think the game offers a lot but I think some people need to unplug and rest a while. After all living in a virtual world means that you never know WHO you are really talking to unless you know them in person.

$15 bucks a month....

Last night I was puttering around WoW and I was on one of the quieter guild channels minding my own business as I am prone to do. Our guild is made up of 20 and 30 year olds and while that can be fun, sometimes I just need some down time. People can reach me if they need to, but I'm not honor bound to chime in every 3 minutes with some quick witty comeback.

One of the guildies chimes in that if I ever have an issue or a problem that I should come to him if I'm not comfortable with something going on. I restate my position and the guildie states:

"The guild hire ups like you, Satharn. You don't complain so if you have a problem let me or them know. We really respect and admire that you are mature."

Clearly they don't know this blog exists.

I'm an abuse surviver. I was physically, mentally, and sexually abused before the age of seven. My birth father is an alchoholic and my mother did her best but this was back before kids went to therapists. So yeah I've got issues. I'm mentally broken in more ways than one.

One of the things I have struggled with in the last 2 years is removing the abusive people from my life. I had a roomate who used to throw me into walls and grab me so hard she left bruises and scars. I sat and took it for 14 years because I'd ALWAYS been abused by someone in my life. I figured I deserved it because I was worthless.

I decided I needed therapy. So I went. It took a long long time for it to sink in because the abuse was so hardwired into my psyche I just couldn't see the manipulitive crap people would do to me. I was one of these people that felt that I had to sit and take it so people would like me.

Removing the negative people started slowly and I made mistakes. I lashed out at the wrong people sometimes and it took a long time to find medication that would work because my doctors weren't listening very well to what I was saying. Ihad some health issues as well. I hurt people and for that I will forever be sorry. I lost tons of people I considered friends because they couldn't handle the drama that erupted when I fumbled in an attempt to change my life for the better.

It wasn't all my fault of course. Some people were manipulative asshats that needed to be removed from my life. Like the spotlight whore who made it her mission to publically ride my ass and stalk me over IM specificly to dump on me for not following her agenda for her fan fic, her SCA career or her characters in our RPGs. There was the SOB who verbally beat down his girlfriend and called her on the phone to harrass her when she was out having fun with my friends and I.

I listened to people make excuses for this behavior and my response was this, "Watching someone get emotionally mauled and doing nothing is cowardice. Just because its not your soul they are slowly rending to bits doesn't mean you should ignore it happening to others. Stand up and DO something."

Wrong thing to say. I got booted out so fast and so brutally I ended up getting an extra dose of meds just to keep me mellow for the next 3 months.

Abusers hate it when you call them on their shit. I did that too. I then turned around and had it out with the roomate. Again with the verbal abuse only this time the therapy kicked in. I finally went for broke. I tossed out every abusive shitty person I had in my life. The clingy people that thrived on the drama, the people that pointed at me and told people I made them look sane, all of them. I moved, I didn't pass on my address and I changed my phone number. I've sworn people to NEVER tell these people where I live and NEVER to devulge anything about me. Its not their business.

So yeah when someone says "We like and admire you, Satharn and want to know if you're having problems." I get really suspecious. Trust doesn't come easily for me and before anyone thinks its odd that I'm blogging my life in such an open way the fact is that I just don't care what people think. My life my views are my own and they shape my WoW experience in a unique way.

I don't want to get emotionally invested with these people. I've been down that road and removed the knives from my back once too often to want to do it again. I'll be nice and polite and state my opinions quietly but I will never EVER let anyone in a guild get that close to me.

I'll do my own thing and if the guild becomes distasteful I'll leave. You can't change the world and most people just don't give a crap what others think. I've said it before, its my 15 bucks too.

And if I want a therapist I've got one. She reads my blog. The state pays her a lot more than 15 bucks a month too.

Gossip mill

It never ceases to amaze me how fast the gossip train travels in a guild. Evidently someone found out I was mildly unhappy about some things. The difference? They accused someone I never talked to as being the problem. Not only that, they took my dislike of character drama as me taking it as a personal attack.

I pointed out that if they were going to do something about it they needed to get their facts straight. I've had my characters mauled in game in RPGs and I've learned how to deal with it since my disasterous reaction to it the first time it happened. I've lived and learned and I don't react nearly as badly as I have in the past. I cut things like this off before it gets to the screaming mad angry stage.

I stated my points and I have no idea what they will do about it. The only other annoying thing was that the guild has been trying to form up a raid group. They complained about not having a healer. I went out of my way to get them into contact with her and the raid leader never even bothered to read his mail to see her information.

Now I'm not a raider but its the raid leaders job to get off his bum and get the thing set up. If he doesn't he's a slacker. I told my friend to go do her own thing. I'm not going to waste my time with assisting the guild to raid if they are going to blow my friends off who offer assistance.

So I'm annoyed and not too happy, but we shall see how it goes. I've seen guilds do this many times and if it goes the way I've seen in the past I may just find other places to be.

In the meantime I'm going to be leveling my huntress.

The Ups and Downs of Guilds

It will be no surprise to anyone that I belong to a guild on WoW. Most people do. Guilds are quite prevalent on RP servers. The truth is that I belong to 2 guilds currently and have bounced between guilds many many times.

I've noticed a lot of negative things out of one of my current guilds lately and I feel honor bound to point something out.

Do you know what the guild assholes are doing to the guild? I mean it. Tonight as I was watching SM get ground to a pulp I saw a conversation that went something like this:

(guildie 1)Damn, that's the 3rd guild quiery I've answered tonight. Why the hell are they bothering me?
(guildie 2)Yeah, I've gotten 3 tonight myself. These people are lame!
(Asshat) I had someone ask me about the guild. I told them to fuck off.
(guildie 1 & 2) lawls

Now maybe this was all said jokingly. I wasn't on the vent channel so I don't know if this was tongue and cheek or not. But if it wasn't then think about how much our guild looked like a bunch of wankers thanks to those total asshats shooting off their mouths.

Let me be honest and say that I don't give a crap about some malcontent in a game whose sole joy is being a total dick in WoW. He's probably going to die from a stroke at 27 because he got a blood clot in his leg and it it dislodged and killed him while he was AFK getting a soda or surfing the web for the hundreth time during a BG.

But the fact is that while he is crapping all over someone, he's doing it with my guild's name over his head, and thus he respresents the guild when he's being a total wanketeer. Word fame sticks and if it is bad word fame its nearly impossible to get rid of it. I've seen guilds fall apart because of high school politics like this and I have a simple view on this:

Take the guild back from the wankers!

When I was in grade school I got beat up for my lunch money a lot. Did this make me hand them my lunch money? HELL NO!!! I fought back. I was a total underhanded mean little witch when it came to playground fights over my stuff. I learned to stand up for myself and tell the bullies to stuff it.

So why do people let the asshats win? Guys like this probably will never leave Mom's basement, have a girlfriend or get laid. The frustration at their pathetic lives is probably WHY they're such jerks.

Me? I'm going to quietly talk to someone in charge and point out what I saw. I'll mention that it may have been tongue in cheek and that I may be reading too much into it but that I am concerned.

Yeah I rat out asshats. I've been told I'm boring and stodgy and you know what?

I don't care. Its my game too and I'm not letting them ruin it for me. The guild name you wander around with over your head is part of who you are. Do you really want to be known as the Asshat guild or one of those jerks that mouths off to people?

I sure as heck don't.

Dawn of a new blog.

Well it took me a bit to decide to what to put here. I thought maybe something cute or witty would pop into my head but alas, nothing comes to mind. What I can tell you is the basics, I play WoW what you may not know is that I have cerebral palsy which limits my ability to control the keys on my keyboard as readily. I'm also visually impaired which makes seeing the game difficult when it decides to rain or snow or whatever. I'm also cheaky as hell so take what I say with a big joking grin because that is how I'm meaning it. Sarcasm runs deep in my family and I just wouldn't be me if I couldn't make fun of some things in game.

I'm also not that good with strategy guides. Usually they confuse me. They are never set up how I would want them to be and they never have information where I expect it to be.

In spite of all this I have several characters on WoW. My main is a level 44 tauren hunter on Moon Guard. I wish I could say I kick ass on her but to be honest there are so many damn buttons and abilities I usually end up totally confused. Most WoW speak loses me. It took me forever to remember that DPS meant damage per second and that it mattered in the game. You get someone talking about Crits, DPS and DOTs and you have me going "Huh???"

Oh yeah, I get lost too. Totally and completely. Until I had cartographer I could get lost completely without even trying. Now I have a handy arrow that leads me where I need to and it obscures my vision too! Mobs can't see the arrow all they know is you look killable. Me? I'm the moron trying to kill the mob and disable the arrow at the same time. If you saw a dead mage in Dustwallow Marsh it was probably me on one of my alts.

You see, I have tried nearly every class. I've got a mage, warlock, and paladin I also play regularly because I'm looking for that perfect class where everything will click for me. I don't know if I've found it yet but I'm having fun.

Speaking of fun, the new patch is full of awsomeness and win. No longer do I have to run from things only to be dragged down to a miserable death. Now I can run in style with my hawkstrider or kodo depending on the toon. No more having to deal with grey mobs whose sole purpose is to get in your way (Though they are great for raising weapon and profession skills so don't totally discount them). Have I skipped potential mobs while following my little arrow of doom? Not really. The ones that can get me XP, can usually knock me off my mount with one hit, thus forcing me to kill them to get to where I need to.

I'm also on an RP server. This means I get to have fun rollplaying my characters, which I do quite often. My toons are laid back and calm most of the time. I refuse to play a "spotlight whore" as some people call them. You know, the ones who claim they beat up, and stole lunch money from Arthas when he was a kid, thus making him the bad ass Litch King everyone fears today? If you're on an RP server people like this are part of the territory just like murlocks. They gurgle and wave their arms and demand attention. My view on this is simple. Yes you have the right to RP, everyone does, but no one made you RP an asshole. No one makes you pick on other players or piss in the ocean where they are swimming. We all pay to play and if you want to play an ass then expect to lead a lonely life because people will leave you standing there looking stupid while they go kill Argul for shits and giggles.

/ignore is the best command for ignoring asshats in the game. Use it as needed. It makes life peaceful.

Best advice is to have fun and ignore the jerks. Life is too short to worry about in game drama.