Day Six: Dwarven Battle Desk

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.


DAY SIX: THE DWARVEN BATTLE DESK

My office space is exceptional, and is my oasis from the hectic world.  I raid in the private luxury of my own computer room that is a good size, with a magnificent, winged desk that takes up a whopping thirty-six square feet.  I have two large bookshelves behind me that keeps my library of books and CDs within easy reach.  My chair is huge and incredibly comfortable, with both heaters and massage functions.  This room is my own personal version of a security blanket.

Or rather, that's how my office used to be.  Before the Dwarfling.

Along with virtually every other aspect of my life, my computer arrangement needed to change to accommodate a baby.  My office became the Dwarfling's room, and I had to give up my office nirvana shortly before the she arrived.  In it's place I got a new desk, new chair, and a new location in the house.  I honestly think that the change of my office space has been the hardest adjustment that I've had to deal with since the Dwarfling was born.

My new desk space is actually quite good, and I customized the IKEA bought unit a fair bit to suit my needs. It's nice, but it's not the same.  I had my old desk for about fifteen years, and as you can imagine I got pretty used to it.  It felt absolutely perfect - custom moulded like a really great ass-grove in a nicely broken-in couch.  It was comfortable and familiar.

This is my new setup.  As I said, it's nice, but not nirvana.  I custom built the monitor shelf with spare parts from the desk, which came with an upper hutch that was beyond useless.  My wife has a matching desk in the opposite corner, and both corner desks are connected by a long, skinny, straight desk with drawers.  The desk is located in our family room, which is where our TV is and where we spend the majority of our time while at home, so there is very little privacy.  I use headphones when I play now so I don't disturb my wife or the baby.

The Dwarven Battle Desk:  Click to Embiggen!

1.  My Logitech G15 keyboard.  The keys glow orange, which is just cool since it goes with the colour scheme on my blog.  Also, the six extra keys on the left side are very useful for keybinding cooldowns.

2.  A coffee mug from work.  It's not my desk if there isn't a coffee mug on it.

3.  A stack of unused CDRs.  I don't even know why these are on my desk any more, let alone why I have three stacks.  Who uses blank CDs any more?  Do I even have burning software installed?

4.  A stack of games that I'm not really playing any more but can't bring myself to actually put away.

5.  A baseball signed by the 1999 Montreal Expos.

6.  Altec Lansing 4.1 Surround Sound speakers. They sound gorgeous, but with the baby and the wife in the room most of the time they seldom get used anymore.

7.  Dwarven Battle Mouse.  I'm looking to get a new one and considering either the WoW Gaming Mouse or the Naga Razer 17 button one.  I'm having a tough time deciding which, but it's irrelevant since I can't afford either of them at the moment anyway.

8.  A baseball signed by the 2000 Montreal Expos.  I used to be a huge Expos fan, and was devastated when the team moved to Washington.  Since then I have lost my passion for baseball, but I still display these as a reminder of a long lost love.

9.  My wallet and cell phone.  I desperately need a new phone.  I have a Samsung Blackjack phone that works perfectly well, but I have a festering case of iPhone envy.  I would really love the extra capability that the iPhone would provide, especially the better internet experience.  Reading the web on a Windows Smartphone is brutal, to say the least.

10.  This is the monitor stand that I fashioned for my new desk.  I'm actually really quite proud of it.  Which is kind of sad considering it represents the most elaborate thing I've ever built.  Still, it's sturdy as hell.

11.  Atramedes killing me.

12.  The Dwarfling and both of my beagles doing something so incredibly, epicly cute that words simply fail to describe it.  I can't believe how lucky I was to capture this adorable - and completely indescribable - moment in this shot.  It makes me tear up just thinking about it.  It is... just wow... look at the photo, because I can't begin to do justice with words how precious this is.

13.  My second monitor.  It's an 18" LCD monitor that is insanely old.  It's refresh rate is slow enough that it's impractical to play games or watch movies on it.  I use it while I'm gaming to have boss fight strategies visible while I'm playing.  I also keep Ventrilo, Twitter and my website stats up at all times while gaming.  I love multitasking.

14.  My blog stats page.  I am so bloody addicted to watching my stats that I almost never turn them off.  They got washed out in this photo, sadly.

15.  My main monitor.  It's a 24 inch Acer monitor with a 2ms response time.  It's sexy and fairly new and I love it.  Previously I had a Viewsonic 19" CRT monitor that was as big and heavy as a barrel full of really heavy things.  This one is much better, and I love the widescreen format, but the colour reproduction of the old Viewsonic was better.

16.  Rottingham.  My only WoW figurine of any kind, and the one thing that lets people know that this is desk belongs to a hardcore geek.

17.  A Hasselblad 500 C/M circa the 1960s.  I bought this camera secondhand about 15 years ago.  It was my primary camera when I was running my Photography Studio.  It no longer works, sadly; it seized up after a photo shoot that was done on a wet, rainy evening.  I really miss shooting in a square format - the rectangular format of my Digital SLR just doesn't really get my creative juices bubbling quite the same.  I loved the simplicity of that camera; in fact this new-fangled Digital SLR is the first camera that I've ever owned that actually needed a battery.  All the buttons and blinky things just make me nervous.

18.  A picture of my beagle, Milo.  As of right now it's the only framed photo on my desk, but once I get around to printing up some Dwarfling photos, I'm certain that will change.  I really adore that photo of Milo, though.  It really shows off his sad, sweet eyes.

19.  A stack of crap, on top of which is my notebook that I carry with me where ever I go.  I use it to jot down blog ideas and post outlines when I'm at work.  It's so full of scraps of paper with ideas on them that I need to hold it together with an elastic band.

20.  A drawer full of crap.  Really, I need to clean that out.  It's got a lot of junk in there that doesn't need to be in there.

21.  All my important papers.  Note the complete lack of a filing system.

22.  My Metz flash.  I hate on-camera flashes, and so I use that bulky thing when I need to photograph the Dwarfling at night.  It's a pain in the neck to use, but is much more flexible than the flash built into my camera - I can easily bounce it off the ceiling for much softer light.  The only bad thing about it is that I haven't used the batteries in a number of years and they don't really hold a charge very well anymore.

23.  A chess set that my wife bought in Europe.  I love chess, although I'm not very good at it.  I have six or seven different chess sets in the house.  This particular one is notable because it's made of a beautiful green and white stone, and is completely impossible to play with because, aside from the Knight, all the pieces look virtually identical.  The only think that distinguishes the pawn, rook, bishop, queen and king is either height or a small, hard to notice detail.  It's like looking at a room full of Blood Elves and trying to decide which one is using a different hair gel than the rest of them.

24.  My computer. It's an Alienware system.  I won't bore you with the specs, but this is the first computer system that I bought prebuilt since high-school.  I've always built my computers myself, but this time I just said the hell with it and picked this one up refurbished.  It's been weird not having a personally built system, but the insides of this thing are spotless as hell - not the jumbled mess of wires and cables that I normally leave when I build my own.

25.  Way, way too many pens.  Really.  I have two pen holders that are absolutely jammed with pens.  Why do I need so many?  I type everything!

26.  My subwoofer.  Also makes a great footrest!

27.  A mess of cables that really look hideously ugly in a photo, don't they?


Yesterday, DAY FIVE:  FAVOURITE ITEMS
Tomorrow, DAY SEVEN:  THE REASONING BEHIND DWARVEN BATTLE MEDIC
  
  
  

Day Five: Favourite Items

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.


DAY FIVE:  FAVOURITE ITEMS

"There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book." - Marcel Proust

I always find these posts the hardest to write.  I've already written at length about my love affair with Shields, which could certainly qualify as my favourite items in the game.  If I just wanted to phone-in this 20 Days challenge I could simply link to that post and be done with it.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

But no, that isn't really keeping with the spirit of the challenge.  Battle Medics never do things the easy way, or else I'd still be playing my hunter.

"Books, young man, books. Thousands of them. If time wasn't so important, I'd show you something -- my library. Thousands of books." - Samuel T. Cogley, Attorney-at-law, self-professed crackpot and fictional Star Trek character

I think my favourite items and objects in WoW are all the books.  I've always thought that the strongest and most compelling thing about World of Warcraft - and what sets it apart from other MMOs - is the story. The lore of Azeroth is incredibly rich, deep and varied.

Dwarven bookshelf designers
are incredibly sadistic.

One of the most clever things that Blizzard did was scattering books all around the game world that tell little snippets of the story - in particular parts of the overall story that happened behind the scenes or in the previous Warcraft RTS games.  As well, occasionally as part of a quest the player will receive a book that goes into more depth about the story that the quest is telling, such as The Story of Morgan Ladimore or The Legend of Stalvan.

I've always really enjoyed these books, and made it a point to read them all.  The achievement Well Read was the very first "nothing" achievement that I put real effort into accomplishing.  I remember hitting level 60 on my warrior and entering Scholomance by myself in order to get the last couple of books that I needed; finally getting them by jumping over the balcony and getting swarmed and overwhelmed by a horde of ghouls several times.

The little tidbits and stories that are expanded on in these books are completely useless in game terms, but absolutely wonderful in giving the world depth and flavour.

Probably the single most brilliant and evil books in the game are the ones that randomly spawn in Dalaran for the achievement Higher Learning.  The books required for the achievement give details of the different magical schools practised on Azeroth, and are informative in themselves, but the real joy of this achievement comes from the "dummy" books that randomly spawn in place of the achievement books.  Such intriguing titles as Portals are NOT Garbage Bins, several issues of the Kirin Tor Monthly, three parts of the biography of Archmage Antoniadas and the long and interesting Old Wizard's Almanac that details quite a number of the races of World of Warcraft.  There is a lot of great lore information in these books, as well as a lot of colour, humour and charm - and they're well worth the hell that is needed in order to see all the books and get the achievement.

From a gameplay standpoint, there was absolutely no reason to put these books in the game.  They serve absolutely no useful purpose and they don't help anyone get shiny, purple slot-fillers, but they help bring Azeroth to life in a way that loot dropping off of a boss could never do, which is why I enjoy them so much.

Yesterday, DAY FOUR:  THE FONDEST MEMORY
Tomorrow, DAY SIX:  THE BATTLE MEDIC'S BATTLE DESK

Day Four: The Fondest Memory

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.


DAY FOUR:  THE FONDEST MEMORY

"Every man's memory is his private literature." - Aldous Huxley

Three years of playing WoW has produced a lot of great memories for me.  I've met a lot of great people in the various guilds I've been in throughout the years and done a lot of cool things, so there are a lot of potential candidates when I start thinking about my greatest World of Warcraft memory.  I wrote yesterday about how my first steps into Azeroth were some of my fondest memories and today I'd like to share some others.

One of the best memories that I can recall is of my original guild back on my original server, Shandris shortly after I started playing.  I was in the guild Gondor Army, which was the first real social contact that I had in the game.  I admit, I was a complete noob at the time.  I think it was a levelling guild - I don't think there were any level capped players in it - but since I didn't know the difference at the time I can only speculate now.

The particular memory that came to mind regarding this guild was a guild meeting that was called.  They didn't hold it in Ventrilo (I don't think they had a server), or in guild chat; no, they had everybody bring their characters to a building in Stormwind on the Canal Side of the Dwarven District.  We all took a seat and started chatting.  We really didn't need to be present with our characters, but it added a homey, personal feel to the gathering, and gave me the chance to entertain myself by trying to take screenshots of our Draenei guild leader's butt.  I remember the conversation was very light-hearted and fun, and it was a great time.

The first time I stepped foot into a raid was also very memorable.  I hit level 80 as Trial of the Crusader was winding down, just before patch 3.3 hit.  The first raid that I was into Naxxramas for the weekly raid quest to kill Anub'Rekhan.  I admit, I had no clue what was going on; I merely stood in the back and healed my little tooshie off.  It really wasn't needed.  The group overpowered the boss so much that we utterly laid waste to him and the fight was over in under a minute.  Still, it was exhilarating.  It was at that point that I knew I was hooked on raiding, and so tearfully quit my levelling guild and joined my raiding guild, Shadowgarde.

"Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember."  - Seneca

"BETRAAAAAAYS YOU!"  It still haunts
 my dreams to this day.

It was with Shadowgarde that my fondest and most treasured memory happened. Downing Sindragosa for the first time is the moment that I feel that I became a real raider. It represented the end of my adolescence in WoW, and the instant where I transformed (at least in my own mind) from a bewildered, slightly wide-eyed nubcake to a seasoned, veteran WoW player.

Sindragosa was the first progression raid encounter that I participated in. My guild had not downed her yet, and - perhaps because no one in my guild knew quite how noobly I was at the time - I was asked to heal on Fannon, my priest.

We spent several weeks working on Sindragosa, with more wipes than I could possibly count.  For the first time in my experience playing World of Warcraft I felt like I was truly part of a team trying to accomplish something.  I invested myself fully into that fight, and I knew it down to the last detail.  I was thrilled when we finally got the first phase down perfectly and started consistently getting to phase 2.  I was excited when we inched ever closer to our goal as we began to understand how to maneuver and place the ice tombs in the second phase.

And I remember how much fun it was to scream "Betrays you!" along with the boss on Ventrilo.

The night that we got her down for the first time was exhilarating.  I remember screaming into the microphone on vent.  The elation I felt seeing her die was something I had never felt before in this game, and not something that I think could ever be felt again in quite the same way.  Some of my innocence died with her.  I could no longer think that I didn't or couldn't know what I was doing in this game.  And as I and my raid team stood in front of the Lich King for the first time about to be slaughtered like kittens in an Orcish restaurant, I knew that this game and that particular moment was something special.

Dragon of pale bone,

buffets frost, screams betrayal.

Shadowgarde got you.

Yesterday, DAY THREE:  FIRST STEPS INTO A VIRTUAL WORLD

Tomorrow, DAY FIVE:  MY FAVOURITE ITEMS IN THE WORLD (...OF WARCRAFT)

Day Three: First Steps into a Virtual World

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.


DAY THREE:  FIRST STEPS INTO A VIRTUAL WORLD

"You've taken your first step into a larger world." - Obi Wan Kenobi

I remember the first steps that I took in Azeroth very well.

It was a warm, June afternoon almost three years ago when I first installed World of Warcraft.  At the time I was between games; a few months earlier I had just disbanded my Counter-Strike clan and quit that game for good.  Of course, I was playing some single players games such as Civilization IV and Star Wars: Empire at War, but what I was really looking for was a game that would capture my imagination and energy the same way that Counter-Strike had, or Subspace had before that.

I was also in between jobs at that time as well.  I was taking a new position as a Wine Sales Rep and I had just quit my previous job as a car salesman which ended up providing me with a lovely two week period where I was on the payroll of my new job, but the job hadn’t actually started yet.  It was a wonderful little vacation.

The only trouble was that my wife wasn’t on vacation with me, so we couldn’t go anywhere.  I was stuck in the house and really quite bored. 

WoW had been on my radar for quite some time, but I had been fiercely resisting trying it out.  I had never played a MMORPG before, and the idea of a monthly subscription to play a game just seemed incredibly wrong.

However, the terrific South Park episode Make Love, Not Warcraft had caught my imagination, and since I had some time, I figured "Why not try a 10 day trial?"  At that exact moment, in Irvine, California, a man smoking a cigar and sitting in a high-backed, leather chair started laughing maniacally.  I didn't know it yet, but Blizzard had captured one more player.

Dwarf + gun = win

It took me about an hour to create my first character.  I played a lot with customizing the different races to see what was possible.  I didn't give Horde a thought, really, I was always intending to play Alliance.  Even in the Warcraft RTS games I only played the Humans.  In the end, I chose a Dwarf Hunter, because the idea of a Dwarf with a gun felt like the coolest thing ever.

Stepping into Coldridge Valley for the first time was awe inspiring.  Even though the game was already 4 years old at the time, I was amazed at the graphics and the sheer scope of the world.  Even the relatively small confines of the Dwarven starting area felt gigantic.  The fact that I could go anywhere or do anything that I wanted felt so liberating after so many years of trying to defuse the same damn bomb over and over again in Counter-Strike.  As well, seeing other people running around doing there own thing was fascinating and really gave me the impression that I was experiencing a world rather than a map.

I remember having a lot of problems with the Trolls in the cave in Coldridge.  Grik'nir the Cold was a bastard, and killed me more than once, as did the other trolls in that bloody cave.  Going through the tunnel to Dun Morogh proper was intimidating, even though the troggs in the cave proved to be nothing to worry about.  I had no clue how to level efficiently, and would collect and complete one quest at a time, and so ended up running the length of the zone far more than was necessary.  The second time I did Coldridge Valley (with Krupel, my gnome warrior) it went by a lot faster and was a lot easier.

I made so many mistakes those first few days.

That first day spent exploring Coldridge Valley is one my fondest memories of WoW.  I did everything very slow and deliberately so I could absorb every single detail and explore every single nook and cranny of the zone.  I spent a lot more time in that zone than I probably should have, and by the end of my ten day trial I was only level 14 or so, but I was thoroughly hooked.  I went out and bought the game on about day six of the trial, but didn't install it until the very last moment so as not to waste any of the free play time.

Yesterday, DAY TWO:  CREATING BATTLE MEDIC
Tomorrow, DAY FOUR:  THE FONDEST MEMORY

Day Two: Creating Battle Medic

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.


DAY TWO:  CREATING BATTLE MEDIC
(or How to Treat a Case of Chronic Festering Blog Envy)

When I started playing WoW I didn't read any blogs at all.  I read WoW Insider, of course, and I would consult Thottbot for help when I was stuck on a quest or place to go, but I did absolutely no research through blogs.  In fact, I didn't even realize that they existed; I was too busy levelling my characters and having fun with the game, completely unaware of an entire world of new information and opinion that was out there.

I discovered the WoW blogosphere after I had already levelled two characters to 80 and was starting on my Paladin.  I realized - at level 19 - that the reason that he had been sitting at that level for so long is that I had no clue how to play a Paladin properly, and so went searching for help.  The result could be described as being similar to giving raging, slavering alcoholic the keys to a distillery.

I devoured the Paladin blogs that I found.  I spent days (that should have been occupied by other, more important things) reading every blog that I could find on Paladins.  Blessing of Kings was the most influential, and I went back to day one and read that blog from the beginning.*  I Like Bubbles was also hugely influential - and back then it actually was a Paladin blog - and I admit that I shamelessly "borrorwed" Amber's crazy tag idea, although I don't take it quite to the same extreme that she does.  There were many, many others as well.

The blog that made me think about starting my own, however, was Kurn's Corner.  Kurn has an excellent writing style; successfully blending hard, detailed information with personality and wit.  As I started writing comments on her blog that got progressively longer and more confident the seed of creating my own space to write was planted.  I also really enjoyed the interaction (Kurn is really good at replying to all her comments, a lesson that I need to learn), and I would refresh her site repeatedly during the day to see who had responded to my comments.  I am probably responsible for a lot of pageviews on her blog during that time.

At the same time I discovered that I could access my guild forums from work (via a devilishly sneaky work-around).  I began posting a lot on our forums, and even began posting weekly discussion threads that were miniature blog posts in themselves.  Each post that I would write would be signed with a unique and specially written little 'disclaimer' like this:

Shadowgarde: Sindragosa is Our Bitch! *
* Well, actually, our relationship with Sindragosa is a little like that relationship that you had back in University. You remember, that one that was going fine for the first couple of weeks, with each date ending in a wipe, but getting you tantalizingly closer to your goal (Sex… let’s be honest here). Then one magical night the stars align and in a flash of fireworks you finally do the deed. After that, probably out of future performance anxiety you never call her again. Yah… our relationship with Sindragosa is just like that.

By doing all this, I started to remember how much I really enjoyed writing and I began looking for more blogs to comment on and other ways to release this pent up creativity.  The creative release of writing was exhilarating, and started the idea of creating my own blog to begin festering.  It bubbled and fermented in my head for a few months before I finally did something about it.  It was finding the perfect name that finally pushed me over the edge to finally create the blog (I'll talk more about the blog name on Day 7).

In retrospect, I am amazed at how tentative I was when I started this.  I went to Blogspot with the intention of just seeing what was involved in creating a blog and to play around with the design to see if I could make something that looked good.  In the past I had considered myself something of a web and graphic designer and the appearance of a site is very important to me.  In the space of a couple of hours I had my blog looking very much like it does now and the idea that I was actually going to create a blog finally became concrete in my mind.  I clicked on the Apply button and there was Dwarven Battle Medic, ready to receive visitors.

When I was a kid I used to write all the time:  short stories, poems, fictional bios for my roleplaying characters, AD&D campaigns.  I even started a novel once that I felt was promising, but tragically got chewed up by a cranky hard drive in it's last fit of pique as it died.  I've always loved writing.  I fondly remember when a great, lifelong friend and I sat down and wrote the beginning of a story in the style of Douglas Adams together (it involved a long, hilarious section describing Gastropod Art:  Slime trails on canvasses two-and-a-half miles long, and the trials of the tour group trying to view the museum that was displaying them).

I never really let anyone other than a very select few actually read anything I wrote, however.  The fear of putting writing out into the open for anyone to pick apart was probably the biggest reason I resisted creating a blog for so long.  That my posts seem to be appealing (or at least not offending) to people is a gigantic relief.

Writing is so much fun and so incredibly cathartic, and I can't believe that it took me this long to rediscover it.  Writing Battle Medic is a thrill, and seeing the response that I have received since I started has been utterly gobsmacking, to be frank.  When I clicked on the Create Blog button, I did not expect to be on anybody's blogroll, or in anyone's feedreader, much less getting linked by and commented on by the very bloggers that inspired me to create this blog in the first place.

I love being a blogger, and I'm so thankful that I started this project.  I love being known as the Battle Medic.  And I'm very glad that you're here and reading this!

* As an aside, reading BoK from the beginning was truly awesome.  It gave me a lot of insight to this game as it was in Vanilla (which I didn't get to experience).  I have no idea how anyone played it back then... it sounds way too complicated. 


Yesterday, DAY ONE: INTRODUCING THE BATTLE MEDIC
Tomorrow, DAY THREE: THE FIRST STEPS INTO AZEROTH (or How Many Noob Mistakes is it Possible to Make on a Ten Day Trial) 


 

Day One: Introducing the Battle Medic

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.


DAY ONE: INTRODUCING THE BATTLE MEDIC

My name is Fannon, a Dwarven battle medic hailing from the great realm of Sargeras.  I’m a raid healer and a new dad trying to find a balance between the two.  So far, the baby is winning.

That much you already know, assuming you’re aware of which blog you're on and didn't navigate here by mistake.

This blogging challenge that Saga has put out there is interesting in that the twenty questions are more personal and less about the game that this blog covers, so hopefully by the end of this series of posts you’ll know a great deal more about me than you do now.  Whether or not that is of any interest to you is another matter entirely.

I am really looking forward to participating in this blogging challenge.  Aside from participating in the occasional Blog Azeroth Shared Topics, I have never been involved in any blogging community activities and I’m excited to be doing this one.

I plan to do one post a day throughout April. This is going to be a serious challenge for me as I have never had to keep to a posting schedule before, and I'm hoping that I can provide an interesting challenge post for you everyday and still write the other articles that I have planned. I hope you enjoy the ride (and likely inevitable failure).

Tomorrow,  DAY TWO:  WHY I DECIDED TO START BATTLE MEDIC (or The Clinical Treatment of Obsessive Blog Envy).

The Death of WoW and the Circle of Life

It is safe to say that World of Warcraft is going through something of a transition these days. The change to Cataclysm's new style of play has not been easy for a lot of people – particularly people who have been playing this game for a long time.

Evidence of this is all around us. Every time someone gives up healing or tanking because it's too hard, there it is. Whenever we hear that a long time WoW player has dropped his subscription we're reminded of it. Every time that a player drops WoW for Rift and starts spamming Twitter with an incessant stream of achievement spam, we can't help but notice. Whenever a beloved, long-time WoW blogger closes up shop, a flagrantly obvious fact is right there in your face like a village full of murlocs:

WoW isn't the same game that you fell in love with six years ago.

Over the past couple of months, many notable WoW bloggers have decided to retire their blogs. Tam at Righteous Orbs, for instance, and most recently Larisa at Pink Pigtail Inn has called it a day. Many others have quietly faded into oblivion without so much as a 'farewell' post - their blogs going dark, leaving their readership to wonder. There is no question that the WoW blogging community is smaller and less brilliant because of their loss of these voices that we were so accustomed to hearing, but as Vidalya at Manalicious so elegantly put it, "other's endings are not my endings".

Being plugged into Twitter and the Blogosphere means that it's impossible to not hear grumbling and griping about all sorts of things and very rarely do we hear someone mentioning how great something is. We bloggers are, if nothing else, champion complainers - and it's not a hard stretch to imagine that hearing all the doom and gloom would affect our opinion of our game and our community to the point where we would begin to believe that it's dying.

I'm curious how a WoW player who isn't active in the community feels about this game and it's health. Do they look at their guild and the competition for a raid spot and feel that the game is hemorrhaging people? Do they think that losing a long time guild member means that there is something wrong with the game? Or do they look at it as the natural way of these things?


IT'S NATURAL

With any game that sticks around for a long time, it's natural for people to come and go as their level of interest waivers. I'm not sure how anyone could play the same game for five or six years - or any length of time for that matter - without losing interest or feeling burnout at some point.

Before I started playing WoW, my game of choice was Counter-strike, and I played it for a long time. I ran my own large clan of players, operated my own public server, a private server and Ventrilo server and even competed in organized league play. I was as involved in that game as it was possible to be. Over time, the game became much less fun and the only thing keeping me coming back was the relationships I had with my clanmates. Eventually I quit, disbanded the clan and moved on. It was a very tough decision.

I see the same thing happening with WoW. I know that when I left Counter-strike the game continued on just fine without me, and the same is true when someone from the WoW community leaves. This game is bigger than any of us and will soldier on as we leave.


CHA-CHA-CHA-CHA-CHANGES

For better or for worse is still a point of great debate, but there is no question that World of Warcraft has changed a lot in the past six years.  And whenever change happens there are going to be people who don't agree with or like the changes. There is no way to please twelve million people, and as I mentioned in my 2010 Peevie Awards, it's the definition of insanity to try.

The people who are most likely to be left out in the cold when change happens are the people who have been around the longest. These are your raid leaders, guild officers and respected, pillars-of-the-community types. And in the blogosphere, they are the ones that have become institutions.  "Oh, [Popular Blogger] could never leave, he's been here forever and he's too good to ever quit." Of course, it doesn't work that way. Quite the opposite; they are the most likely to drift away to something else.

Losing one of these bloggers or guild members is hard, but it says nothing about the game or the community or your guild as a whole. The health of any community is determined by the strength of the people involved, and as someone leaves for other things inevitably someone else will come forward to take their place. New raid leaders will step up, a guild will pick a new leader with new ideas, and new bloggers will begin writing to fill the void.


THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

In the past few months since Cataclysm several high profile blogs have shut down, but even more new bloggers have taken up the blogging challenge. These blogs aren't high profile yet, and they don't have the readership numbers of the blogs that have quit, but they are providing fresh new voices for the community to listen to. Different styles, new opinions and formats are being injected into the community everyday.

That's what tells me that our game and our community are doing just fine. This community and game are far from stagnant, as the new and vibrant voices are showing in every corner of the blogosphere.

The circle of life continues.


NEW VOICES

Vidalya issued a challenge in her post: Introduce and link to a new blogger.  I love this idea, and even as a new, post-cataclysm writer myself, here is a list of recent blog starts that have caught my attention. All of these blogs were started around the time that Cataclysm launched, although I'm using this criteria fairly loosely.

Muradin Musings by Janyaa

Unleashed Rage by Bloody Gneisha.

Ask a Salty by SaltySlainte

Mortigan the Lock by Mortigan

Zwingli's Blog by Zwingli (An older blog that has recently returned from the ether.)

Beer Bacon Brawling by Beerbelly.

Healer Aggro by Ttrinity

The Casual Raider by Jack

Rants of a Priest by Morituri

Elfi's World by Elfindale

Cleansing Waters by Mylindara

Specced for Drama by Ama (Who turns out to have been around longer than I thought... her blogspot blog has only been around since November, tho!)

Stand in the Blue Circle by Alacran

Word of Glory by Lynesta

Heavy Wool Bandage by Glorwynn

Healbot by Gina

And more!  I'm quite certain I've missed a bunch of people, and I'm sorry for forgetting you! If you have a newish blog and would like it listed here, leave me a comment and I'll include it.