January Rain

I’ve always envied people who were content living a simple life, or even more, who could bear to be unemployed. It’s not only the having so little obligations that gets to me (although I’m envious of that too), it’s the mere being able to stand doing so little.

It took me a little over a week and a half of Christmas vacation before I was convinced I was losing my mind.

Anyway, if I’m behind on answering comments and emails (I’ll get around to it, I promise!) it’s because I dragged my insane, sobbing, loser self to Montreal for a few days to escape the turmoil factory that is the internet.

© Le BéDénaute http://www.actuabd.com/spip.php?page=imprimir_articulo&id_article=9828

I had forgotten how terribly ugly, yet extremely delicious and convenient downtown Montreal is! From All-You-Can-Eat Sushi to an entire chicken in a bowl of soup (both within a couple of hours of each other), I nommed my way around the city for four days. I remembered why I live on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean: if I lived near any place where good food was easily accessible, I’d have to waste money on a gym membership to avoid becoming the Chubby Pally and the Overused (Ice Cream) Spoon.

In between restaurants, I got to see Tron and Black Swan (I have such a huge girl crush on Mila Kunis now), aaaand I got to meetup with some awesome people.

Meeting Kurn

And by awesome people, I mean (among others) Kurn, my fellow holy pally and fellow sort-of-Anglo Québecoise. I was really nervous and not too sure what to expect… She’s always been a very strong and forceful writer, but writing styles can be deceiving. I’ve seen myself described as a comedy writer. I hope those describers never have to meet me and my serious, slow wits in person. Anyway, meeting Kurn was lovely, like meeting a long lost sister. I poured my heart out about my in-game struggles, we compared our guilds, discussed blogging and our blogging guildies, brainstormed about the future of holy paladinning and shared tales of growing up Anglo in the midst of the Québec language wars. By the time I looked at my watch, 4 hours had gone by!

Catching up with my fellow geek gamer girlfriends from high school

I also got to catch up with a few old friends I hadn’t seen in a few years. Two in particular have been characters in this blog as my dear fellow geeky gamer girls from high school.

Last time I saw A, who’d gotten me into Final Fantasy, was 4 years ago. At the time, she was super busy juggling jobs, living it up in the city and, well, not gaming. So I was surprised when we stumbled into this conversation:

A: I was playing *whispers* Starcraft 2 and-
Me: You play Starcraft 2?
A’s Husband: *grumbling* She always plays Starcraft 2. She plays for hours!
A: Yeah, I didn’t want to tell you, but when you called me the other night was in the middle of a cooperative…
Me: You could have told me! I totally understand! I get phone calls in the middle of coorperatives too!

Actually, I was sort of lying, I don’t do coorperatives, but I was trying to earn myself a Starcraft 2 buddy. Then we played Civilization V on her PS3 for 4 hours, and her husband teased me about how I went all the way to Montreal to do nothing but watch movies and play video games (but I’m still trying to figure out how going to Montreal to watch movies and play video games is a bad thing).

Later that day, I caught up with V, with whom I spend my last year of high school talking about Might and Magic. When I was 16, I idolized Val. She was gorgeous, brilliant and funny. She was also a free thinker, a natural one. One of those people who don’t give in to peer pressure because it just doesn’t occur to them that they’re being pressured to do or be anything.

I hadn’t seen her for 8 years. I was surprised she remembered me. Even more surprised she’d want to see me. I was anxious. Would she be the same person I looked up to 10 years ago?

Well, one of our first conversations went like this:

V: My favorite game has always been Sonic the Hedgehog. I loved Sonic! But I have this hole phobia so I won’t go near holes. …I never got very far in Sonic.

I told her I played WoW. She answered she loved WoW: she doesn’t play but it keeps her boyfriend out of her hair and lets her have the PS3 to herself. I hear Mr. V is quite the Blizzard fanboy. Maybe we’ll be seeing them at Blizzcon next year.

When the topic of Blizzcon came up, I told her about the cinematic panel I attended. About how they used to use dots to make water and now they use squares. Whatever that means. She then said something about polygons. Polygons? Yep. Turns out she attended video game college. Apparently it’s the best way to learn about 3D modeling. Whatever that is.

For those who didn’t read my initial post about V, it ended like this:

One day I’ll get in touch with that old friend, we’ll joke and laugh about old times. We’ll play the games again and relive those crazy days of high school.

We didn’t get a chance to game together: we were, after all, downtown getting kicked out of coffee shops. But we did those other things.

For both friends (actually, for the few other friends I caught up with too), nothing had changed in the many years since we’d seen each other, except for that we’d become calmer, more experienced and, in their case, even better versions of the people we were 10 years ago.

All that to say that I know I’m totally slacking on the blog, but if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got this overwhelming urge to play Civilization V.

Off to a Cataclysmic Start

There is a Shared Topic at Blog Azeroth about Cataclysm first impressions that I’ll leave stickied for an extra few days for those of you who want to share your first impressions about the expansion after Sunday.

I’m not going to talk about my impressions of the quests, dungeons and so on because, around this time, after WoW binging like crazy over the past few days, I don’t really care. I’ll probably care again in a few weeks so I’ll write about it then.

If I could sum up my first week of Cataclysm in three words, I’d say: disappointing and frustrating.

I’m not disappointed about the game, but rather my experience. I feel like a hamster in a wheel, running and running and not getting anywhere. I got to 85 as quickly as I could. It took me about 30 hours of played time, which is almost twice what it took the rest of my guildies. I wanted to see what a 24 hour WoW binge was like. I’ll write about it in the future, making a silly story out of it, but for now I’ll stick with the short story: it sucked, don’t do it. Curiosity got the best of me, but if I were to do it again, I’d stick with my original plan of play-sleepy-play-study-play-sleep. Combine sleep deprivation with mindless questing and the stress of 4 finals to cram for and you get pretty messy results.

And frustrating. I’m paranoid about being left behind. I’m always paranoid about being left behind in anything I do (comes from being repeatedly and traumatically left behind on school trips throughout my childhood), but when added to a situation where the chances of being left behind are pretty big, my anxiety goes through the roof.

I remember when Wrath dropped, I was pretty nervous and clinged tightly to the people I wanted to play with. I remember the delight I felt whenever we’d run an instance together and the devastation any time I’d miss a run. This is more or less the same, but with missing runs outweighing the doing them. I missed out on every single guild heroic first. I’ll have completely forgotten about it in a month, but for the time being, it’s heartbreaking.

Finding guild groups for instances is near impossible as a healer anyway- we only have two or three tanks and they’ll only run with the same two healers. I have been lucky with PuGs and I really enjoyed running Heroic Deadmines despite not knowing anyone in the group. But it’s not the same. The thrill I get from WoW comes from learning and wiping with people I know. PuGs give me gear and rep, but they give me very little fun. And I have seen very little fun so far this expansion.

Honestly, since Cataclysm dropped, I’ve rarely felt anything but stressed. Between trying to keep up with my guild and not compromising my GPA, I’ve worn myself thin. I’m not sure how else I could have done it- being present for guild firsts means a lot to me and is something I’m ready to fight for, but I’m starting to wonder at what cost. During high raiding times, I love being in an efficient guild that kills bosses. But at times like these, I miss being able to step away from the computer and not being panic stricken over what I’m going to miss.

Anyway, I do have a lot to write about pally healing and dungeon strategies, as well as some funny stories of my odd brain dead behaviour, but it’ll be a few days yet before finals and WoW lightened up enough to let me blog.

It’s a Cata Party!

I was going to take a nap before the expansion goes live at 4:30 am (there are advantages to living in a weird timezone!), but I’m too excited to sleep.

My original plan was just to download the digital version and have an easy night. But then I discovered that a bunch of my classmates were getting together for a midnight release party. Oooooh yeah!

It was so much fun! Us Newfoundland gamers don’t have many opportunities to get together. Plus, our “island in the middle of the Atlantic” status makes it difficult to attend conventions or other large scale gaming events. So it felt like a mini Blizzcon in the mall, with about 150-200 of us chilling on the floor, listening to each others’ epic kills, guild drama and pet collecting habits.

I don’t think EB Games was quite expecting such a huge crowd. After all, it was the smallest store out of the 4 in the area that were having midnight releases (I actually had no idea WoW was so popular here, St. John’s is a very small city and way more artsy than geeky). But I suppose the fact that we were in the mall (Newfoundland this time of year is snowy/rainy/coldy and waiting outside is near impossible) added to the fact that we don’t get the chance to congregate often convinced us all to step out into the night. Even though I was 30ish or so in line and near the front, I still didn’t get my copy until well after 1 am.

But it was worth it, so totally worth it. I love hanging out with other WoW fans, strangers or no. And there’s nothing like bonding with classmates over tales of geekness.

I’m already looking forward to the next expansion!

The Chronicles of Ophelie the Wussy Pally

I want to thank everyone for your words of encouragement, it really helped keep morale up over the past few days. In the grand scheme of things, two weeks of being a bit sore with less mobility really isn’t a big deal, but I’m a huge wuss and my arse was thoroughly kicked. It took me a few tries, but this post was written lightheartedly and is meant to be read in the same tone. As my friends always tell me: “If you’re not worth a few laughs, you’re not worth much.” (I know, I have really nice friends.)

They say that when really bad things happen, you sort of change your view on stuff. I guess that’s kind of true. For example, I now view 5pm as a perfectly acceptable bedtime. And I view 16 hours as a reasonable, good night of sleep.

Mostly, though, its everyone else who changes. People talk louder, have more off key voices, smack their gum more, have more loud colds, make more noise when they turn book pages, have this annoying habit of existing… At the hospital, they ask about suicidal ideation but, really, its homicidal ideation they should worry about.

There’s always an ambiguous feeling when you’re sick. Part of you is all “NO! I WANT TO DO THIS MYSELF! I CANT ACCEPT RIDES TO CLASS OR ANYTHING I HAVE TO DO IT MYSELF ME ME ME!“. The rest of you is overwhelmed with despair at the thought of having to wipe your own arse at the toilet (not that I have that problem right now, bowels were among the first functions to shut down) or to chew your own food. Chewing is srz bzn, I assure you.

I’ve always criticized other MS patients I meet in the hospital about their whining, but now I kind of relate. I’ve been providing anyone within shouting distance of my progress: “Well, today I can flex my legs a bit more and my left foot is slightly less tingly, but my hands are still very tingly and my back feels sprained from about the fourth vertebrae down, and it hurts when I lean slightly to the left and- Hey!
why are you walking so fast! I can’t keep up! Stop running away from meeeeeeee!“

Even More Computerless than Usual

Yeah, I still have no computer. At this rate, I doubt I’ll even be able to find a guild I can pay for that last drake achievement.

I’ve also been quite ill, ill as in unable to walk long distances and ill as in landed myself in Emerg twice in the past four days, and our public transportation is still on strike, so I haven’t been able to make it to the computer lab for some time. I know that by tonight I’ll regret today’s 2 hour trek to the library (normally it takes me 20 minutes to walk to the library) but I AM A GOOD, DETERMINED STUDENT.

I’m sure I’ll eventually get around to telling the tales of my hilarious adventures of the past week or so, and there’ve been many, but I have a lot of work to catch up on and I can only sit upright for so many minutes at a time. I’ll say this though: I will never, ever complain that my abs aren’t strong enough. Seriously. I’m actually terrified that they’ll snap my ribcage. Who knew abs were that powerful?

I’ll answer emails, facebook messages and twitter but I don’t know when I’ll have regular internet access so please be patient. Also, while I can receive twitter DMs on my phone (and only twitter DMs, no email, no facebook), I can’t answer, so if you want a response, include a phone number. I’m bored out of my mind, so it will be my immense pleasure to reply with a lovely, elaborate text message.

ps. I can’t do any kind of graphic editing on this library computer (actually I probably can, but my hands hurt like hell), so use your imagination to picture an ICC drake with something like RIP written on it. Yeah, I’m pissed off that I can’t walk, or sit upright and that my abs muscles are trying to kill me, but I’m still more pissed off at being one achievement short of a drake. Rest assured that my priorities are still in the right places.

What I Did When I Got Tossed Out Into the Real World

A couple of nights ago, I was at the library, talking to a friend I ran into there. I was smiling calmly, holding my eternal blue mug, filled with herbal tea. In a zen tone, borrowed from a number of my yoga teachers and very unfitting of me, I gently said: “I feel so less stressed now that I don’t have the internet.”

Ok, I didn’t feel like that the first night. I barely slept. What little sleep I had was interrupted by constant gasping for air. Whether or not it was anxiety or just this annoying cough that’s been plaguing me for the past week coming on, I don’t know. I’ve had trouble breathing on and off my entire life. After being screened for every breathing disorder under the sun, I was eventually referred to a support group for people with mood (and anxiety) disorders. (I’ll say, though, that I met many of my dearest friends via mood group so I’m actually grateful to have been told “it’s all in your head“.)

It’s ok, you can laugh at me. I’m too dependent on one machine. I don’t have a smartphone, or even a semi decent phone. I don’t watch any TV. All my planning, my communication, my entertainment is dependent on a single collection of electric circuits. I had the rug completely pulled out from beneath me.

But it didn’t take me too long to adapt. Here’s what I’ve been doing out here in the tangible world.

1) I started using an agenda! I always use my agendas for, like, the first 2 weeks of a semester. Then I give up on it: I can just rely on classmates and checking my email at the last moment. But then I couldn’t do that anymore. So I went to the lab, pulled up my emails and transcribed everything into my agenda. And OMG! I can’t believe how much easier it is to have all this information neatly sorted in front of me, on paper. As a result, I’ve attended more stuff over the past week than I have in the past 2 months.

2) I watched some TV. Ok, I only know of two channels: TLC and Slice. And those channels play nothing but wedding and baby shows. But! If anyone needs a wedding planned or an emergency delivery, I’m totally your girl. Actually, it did come in handy the other day. I had my class on pregnancy care and the prof asked if any of us knew was eclampsia was. I raised my hand Hermione-Granger-style: I knew exactly what eclampsia was! One of the girls featured on I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant suffered from eclampsia and had a seizure while driving. Who says sensationalist shows aren’t educational?

3) I traded one form of escapism for a slightly more useful one. I did something that completely shocked me. I wrote two exams last week: toxicology and cardiology. Tox is a 1-credit course so there’s no pressure, but cardiology is like getting run over by a train of a giant trucks. Having both of them around the same time was brutal. The exam writing wasn’t shocking, but feeling confident while writing them was very much a new feeling. I never feel confident writing exams. But the thing is this. WoW is my escapism, how I unwind. Without a computer, I didn’t have WoW. I looked around for a different escapism and all I could find was studying. I’m now completely addicted to studying. I bring my notes with me everywhere and I constantly fight the urge to read them. I’m so far ahead in all my classes, you wouldn’t believe it. I expect this to come in handy when Cataclysm drops itself smack in the first week of finals. I’m hoping to have all four of my finals prepared before then.

4) I’ve developed a feeling of deep solidarity with the other inhabitants of the general library’s fourth floor. And no, I don’t mean inhabitants like the issues of the past 50 years of the Sedimentology journal (which are, I’m sure, very friendly). I get my own health science library at the hospital, but its constantly overrun by too-chatty medical and nursing students. The fourth floor of the general library is a world apart from the rest. And I have this feeling of quiet understand with Guy-with-noisy-cold, Girl-who-wears-shorts-in-this-weather, Guy-with-MacBook and Girl-with-scarves. I don’t know any of their names or what their majors are (I’m guessing Math, Kinesiology, English and Liberal Arts respectively because I totally don’t stereotype or anything like that), but after spending night after night in each others vicinity, in that cold, dark wing of the library, we’ve become intimately acquainted. To the point where we smile and say hi to each on campus. I’m positive they call me either “Girl-who-can’t-breathe” or “Girl-who-gets-angry-at-paper“.

5) I finally became acquainted with Freya Stark. I first heard about Freya Stark when I was reading Alice Steinbach’s European traveling records. I just had to find out more about this extraordinary woman who traveled alone throughout the Middle East, at a time where it practically unheard of for a woman to travel alone, especially to such exotic locations. (Although, so far, so she’s met other British women all over Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan so it probably wasn’t as unheard of as we think.) I picked up The Freya Stark Story from the school library (I couldn’t find a link to it on Amazon): her personal account of her early life and first few travels to the Middle East. And wow. Just wow. It’s hard to remember that this was written by a woman who was born in 1893. She’s hard to follow at times: she jumps from one topic to another without transitioning and she often says “we” without letting the reader know who “we” consists of. But otherwise, she’s amazing to read. She uses a lot of imagery (I suppose they don’t call her the poet of travel guide writing for nothing) and she has a strong but subtle sense of humour that I just adore. Sometimes it feels like she’s in my head, writing my thoughts. And her “I’m going to do what I want, and I’m going to do it while looking fabulous” attitude is so perfect. I would have loved to meet her.

6) I hung out with myself. I spend a lot of time alone, but between studying and doing WoW related stuff, I haven’t really spend time with myself since coming home from out West. I did some touristy stuff by walking around St. John’s and taking pictures (which I’ll probably publish somewhere once I get my computer back), then climbed Signal Hill. Can you believe that I’ve lived in St. John’s for 5 years yet have never climbed Signal Hill? I visited the GeoCentre while I was there and was amused by how their geological history exhibit have fantastic “planet”, “local” and “human” history sections while the “future” section of the exhibit was closed due to being under construction. Then I came home and watched the cat sleep on my bed. The hard part is getting my brain to shut up. It thinks of every potentially embarrassing thing I’ve said in my life or social faux pas I’ve ever made and repeats it over and over and over again until all I can think of is “I screwed up my every opportunity at ever getting a job, my profs must all think I’m an inconsiderate, unprofessional idiot, I should stop burdening my classmates by talking to them.” Took me a few hours, but I eventually got it under control and could think more pleasant thoughts. I can see why so many people have trouble spending time with themselves, though. It takes a lot of patience to come to terms with one’s unresolvable distance from perfection.

And that was my little-over-a-week of no computer. It’s not so bad, I’m getting a lot of work done, I’ve been more sleep than I thought my body was capable of and I’m enjoying the break from internet stress. I do, however, miss my guildies so much that it’s kind of embarrassing and I’m very annoyed that they always pick the weeks I’m not there do to All You Can Eat which is STILL the only achievement standing between me and my drake $^&$%$#$@.

I wonder if I could pay a random guild off the realm forums to carry me to it…

How do you react when good things happen to good people?

In my computerless state, I’ve been missing a lot of the community news, only discovering trickles of it as I desperately try to read as much of my feedreader as possible. There is one bit of story, however, I caught, at first through Larisa’s blog, then Blacksen‘s, about the famed Red Shirt Guy.

The story is very sweet and gave me the warm fuzzies: guy awkwardly points out a Cataclysm lore oversight, guy gets made fun of on YouTube, guy stands up for himself by making his own video, Blizzard honours him with an NPC, Imperative’s, a top world guild, leadership hears about him and decides to give him the raid experience of a lifetime, complete with fabulous mount Invincible.

It wasn’t the story, however, that interested me the most, it was the negative reaction of a number of people.

Is he a great hero worthy of worship? Of course not. He pointed out an in-game mistake (I know of a couple of people who would kill for that chance) and he stood up for himself. No lives were saved in the making of this e-hero.

But is he worthy of the nod given to him by Blizzard and the guys of Imperative? Absolutely.

Why is it so hard to feel happy when good things happen to good people?

As I was reading the negative comments, I got a mental image of the stereotypical old maid, at the announcement of her friends’ engagements/marriages/childbirths, can’t hide her jealous, bitterness and contempt.

This individual made a good gesture. Not so much by calling out Blizzard, in my opinion, but by standing up for himself. A reproach I often make to the gaming community is our general attitude of defeatism and victimization.

“I struggle at life because I was bullied at school.”
“I got teased because I was a gamer.”
“I get treated badly in games because I’m a woman.”

I don’t mean to take away the seriousness of these realities. Injustice hurts everyone and us geeky, occasionally socially awkward people all know Lady Injustice only too well. But why do we let ourselves suffer and keep suffering, because other people are wrong/cruel/dumbasses? It doesn’t make any sense!

Red Shirt Guy (does he have a name? I don’t like calling him Red Shirt Guy) did that thing our parents told us to do when we were kids and got bullied: he stood up for himself. Did it rid the world of jerks? No. But it caught the eye of many people who’ve been treated badly in their lives and wished they had used their voice.

What Blizzard and Imperative did then, was show what happens to people who stand up for themselves: people who stand up for themselves win respect. The respect of those who matter, Blizzard matters to a die hard WoW player, and the respect of those who have the power to do some pretty awesome things.

How can it be anything but heart warming when good things happen to good people?

To Red Shirt Guy, and to everyone who encouraged Red Shirt Guy in his stance, to the members of Imperative who contributed to what was surely a memorable night, in the name of nerds and geeks everywhere, from the bottom of this little crusader’s heart, thank you.

And that’s when my computer gave me the finger

*sad face*

Thursday night I ran home from the coffee shop, grabbed my computer to raid and was greeted by the Grey Screen.

My first thought was, of course, “there goes my chance of getting an ICC drake”.

The only achievement I’m missing is All You Can Eat 25 so I’m kinda bummed. The guy at Staples said 5-10 business days, though, so I might have chance…if my guild is nice to me… which is questionable since I’ve barely been gone a few hours and they’re already pushing hardcore to recruit a new holy pally. Like srsly, what is this I don’t even. (ps. Apply here)

So while my computer’s sitting at Stables next to the grocery list of problems I made for it (while getting the screen connection fixed, I might as well get the power supply, the CD reader and whatever it is that smells like burning plastic fixed), I’ve been catching up on sleep (6pm last night to 10:30am today, awww yeah), following new people on twitter (the best time to follow new people is when you don’t have a computer, no?) and trying, oh really trying, to get some schoolwork done.

And speaking of schoolwork, I have a Toxicology midterm on Monday and a Cardiology midterm on Wednesday, so I better run.

Blizzcon Casulties, part 2

You didn’t expect all my adventures to fit in a single post, did you?

The Guildies

The best part of Blizzcon, of course, is the people. Initially, it was the only reason I wanted to go anyway. Just to put faces and bodies to the names and voices I’ve spent so many happy evenings with.

Borrowed the picture from Matt since I didn't get one with everybody on it. Nevermind how terrible I look. IT WAS LATE AT NIGHT.

I’ve met guildies before, but this was the largest meetup I’ve attended. If I counted it right, a total of 14 guildies from past and present made an appearance. Murmurs of WoW Insider and the official forums fame stayed with us as well and became an honorary guildie (even if we didn’t see him much, popular guy that he is. PS. he’s super cute).

To those who’ve never met guildies, I wish I could explain what it’s like. The closest I can come is by saying that it’s exactly like being on vent together, except that we can see each other’s faces. The conversations we had were just like those we have online, but we could still understand each other if more than one person spoke at once (unlike vent).

I had been really worried about being the only girl from the gang, but it was a non-issue. It felt just like hanging out with my brothers. They even tried to make me feel like one of the gang by trying to pair me up with random guys at the WoW Insider meetup. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling so hot (less than 3 hours of sleep and more than 12 hours of travelling in the past 36 hours), so it was pretty disastrous:

Guildie (to random guy): Hey, have you met Tina?
(They had this system where all the guys were nicknamed Ted and I was Tina)
Random guy (to me): Hey Tina.
Me: Hey, how’s it going?
*awkward silence*
Random guy: *points to my drink* What am I drinking?
Me: *thinking he’s asking about my drink* Um…*trying to remember what my drink was* Jack and Coke.
Random guy: Nope, I’m not drinking anything. See? My hands are empty. You’re wrong.
Me:….

I rudely waved him away and turned around. By then the room was spinning and I felt like I was about to throw up (and no, I wasn’t drunk, the Jack and Coke was almost full), so I finished up my drink, ran back to my hotel and burst into tears.

So, guy in this story, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry! I’m not usually that rude, I just really, really don’t travel well!

I didn’t get iced, although I told them I’d be up for it. I was partly grateful, partly disappointed. I’d like to see if I could do it and feel like part of the team. At the same time, my stomach was bothering me the entire trip and I was desperately trying to avoid being sick. There’s no way I could have kept a sweet drink down!

On a side note, I have to wonder about those people on TLC shows who eat almost exclusively junk food. I only had a couple of junk food meals and yet felt quite horribly ill from all the fat and salt.

My guildies also came up with what ended up being somewhat of a rally call. Whenever Matt was around, Bruherd, especially, kept yelling, WE’VE GOT THEE MATTICUS! FROM WORLD OF MATTICUS DOT COM! WE’RE RECRUTING FOR CATACLYSM!

Most of the time I wanted to crawl under the sidewalk, but it did come in handy. Whenever I had trouble finding my group, I’d just stop and listen for the THEE MATTICUS call. And it was apparently contagious: even Ghostcrawler exclaimed “It’s THEE MATTICUS!” at one point.

Meeting Non Guildies

The magical thing about Blizzcon is that you’re surrounded by all sorts of people. Grandparents, small children, prom-queen types, individuals who haven’t left their bedroom since Blizzcon last year… All sorts of people. Yet, not matter how different we are, we all have that one thing in common: we love gaming enough to be here.

I met so many people last week, old friends and new friends. It was amazing. There’s no way I can tell all the stories, or do justice to all those who crossed my path, so here are some select (mostly embarrassing) highlights.

One of the events I was most looking forward to was the TNB meetup. TNB played a huge role in getting me to start blogging in the first place, so I’d been counting down the days until the meetup.

I spend some time with the lovely ladies Beruthiel (whom I wasn’t expecting to see at all! Such a pleasant suprise!) and Anafielle. I have to say, it was wonderful to hear about other topics than booze and sex! I completely fell in love with both of them and the evening was just too short!

I also got a picture with the Righteous Defense duo Rhidach and Anafielle. Back when I was tanking full time, I studied Righteous Defense religiously. When I saw both of their names on the TNB list, I was thrilled! I was even more thrilled when I saw that they both made it to the meetup. Rhidach was pretty quiet and only came out for a few minutes, but I was so fangirly and giddy that it was probably a good thing. Wouldn’t want to embarrass myself any more!

Speaking of being fangirly and giddy, there was one point where I was right next to Turpster. Right next to him. And I was so shy and intimidated that I couldn’t say anything. I ended up mumbling something like “take my raffle ticket”. Without making eye contact, I clumsily shoved my raffle ticket at him and ran off. I’m really smooth like that…

I hope he at least won something with it.

Exploring the Area

One Friday, I had the day to myself as my guildies were all at the convention. I love walking and exploring, so I leisurely strolled down Katella Ave. Then I leisurely strolled down Main St. About two hours later, my legs sort of hurt and I found myself in downtown Santa Ana.

It was like stepping into a different world. I turned off my iPod, but kept the earphones on. I didn’t want strangers pointing out the giant “TOURIST!” sign hanging above my head. I listened to the conversations around me. My Spanish is decent, considering my last Spanish lesson was over 10 years ago, but I couldn’t understand everything that was being said. I also didn’t want to take the risk of pulling out my camera.

I drifted by all the discount jewellery and bridal shops. I went to the grocery store and practiced my Spanish a little. Olà! Gracias! Ok, maybe I didn’t practice it very much.

I walked a little further and found the Artists Village. I stopped for lunch at a gorgeous place called The Gypsy Den. I then made my way back up Main to the Bowers Museum. I’m a huge nerd who loves museums, especially cultural anthropology museums, so I was served. I floated from exhibit to exhibit, learning about arts and craftsmanship in Oceania and China.

By the time they kicked me out so they could close up, I was exhausted so I decided to take part in the joyous experience of Orange County public transit. (As a general note, to those who want to become backpackers, I highly encourage sampling public transit wherever you go. Nothing will give you a feel and a taste of a place the way sitting on a crowded, or deserted, city bus will.)

My guildies were supposed to meet me at the hotel at 6 for supper. Well, 6 came and went. 6:30 came and went. No sign of guildies. My phone doesn’t work in the US, so I had no idea how long they planned on making me wait. I also wanted to be at the TNB meetup at 9, so I was furious. Furious. The jerks.

(Matt, who was doing his big-shot blogging stuff that afternoon and wasn’t supposed to meet up with us until later at night, ended up saving the day by making an appearance and texting the guys for me.)

Saturday night, I skipped on the Hilton party to get a feel of the reputed LA nightlife. Unfortunately, by then I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. A guildie and I ended up going to a small place nearby in Fullerton. In the end, it was a great idea. The music was fantastic and the crowd was friendly and unpretentious. I danced for hours.

My poor foot (the same one as the huge blister!) got stabbed by a stiletto. I think I made a very high pitched sound and the stiletto wearer found herself flying into the crowd. We kind of stared at each other for a moment. Neither of us apologized, but I guess it wasn’t necessary. We were even: her stiletto was very sharp and I don’t know my own strength.

I had another adventure on Sunday. Most of the gang had gone home, but our raid leader, Evan, had stuck around to drive Matt and I to LAX. Matt wanted to be at the airport early and I wanted to go to Hollywood. By then, my brain-mouth filter had broken down and for those few hours I was quite possibly the most annoying person on the planet. Kudos to Evan for humouring me. I actually lost my voice from talking so much.

No one had a map, so after dropping off Matt, Evan and I randomly drove around until we found Hollywood and the walk of fame.

We did eventually make it. And we probably would have made it earlier had I not been wrong with every guess of direction I made. On the bright side, the drive was very educational: we unintentially toured a ghetto where all the houses had barred windows, a red light district and a number of freeways.

On the way back, we stopped off for food and in my exhaustion, I forgot how to act in a restaurant. I talked really loud (why Evan didn’t shut me up, I don’t know). Then I couldn’t figure out how to put the tip on my receipt. I forgot that I hadn’t paid yet and that I would get a paper with a tip line after my credit card was returned. After paying, I just sat there, forgetting that I could leave now.

I didn’t drink much during Blizzcon. I don’t have to drink to be stupid.

And now I’m home

My flight to Toronto was packed with Blizzcon enthusiasts, but I was so tired that I just sat on the ground (there aren’t enough seats at LAX) and stared blankly at them. The stares they gave me in return were just as blank. No social mana left at all. Shame. The three semi-passed out across from me were hawt.

I did get some exercise in the Toronto airport. 15 minutes to go through customs and security… Yeah, I didn’t make my connection. Well, I did, but only because they held the flight for me. My carry-on only challenge paid off: the only reason I made the flight was because I had no checked luggage.

I made it to my 1pm class on Monday. My flight landed at 11:30am, so I even had time to go home and take a shower!
I still haven’t completely recovered, but my voice is slowly coming back, the sore throat is almost gone and I’ve been awake for at least 4 consecutive hours.

Now to catch up on all the schoolwork I missed…

Blizzcon Casualties, part 1

A little late, I know, but I’m finally recovered enough from Blizzcon to write about it. No, no, I wasn’t the guy who scrapped his leg dancing on stage. I do, however have a sexy blister on my toe (warning! gross picture!) from walking to Santa Ana from my hotel in new shoes. The sucker’s almost bigger than my toe itself! And a combination of not handling sleep deprivation well and school not giving me two minutes to myself makes for a very cranky pally.

Don’t let my whining mislead you, though. I had a blast at Blizzcon.

Blizzcon Itself

I see a lot of complaining about Blizzcon. Mainly from people who were watching it on livestream. Understandably: they got all the boring parts of Blizzcon with none of the perks.

The Blizzcon LFD DPS Queue

I wasn’t expecting to make it to any of the panels since I didn’t bother buying a ticket, so when my guildie had to go home in a hurry, I was thankful that he gave me his pass. As a result, I got to attend all of Saturday’s events.

I don’t care about news or fancy announcements, so I wasn’t looking for anything exciting. I loved the cinematics presentation. I was on the edge of my seat, squealing the whole time. I don’t know much about graphics and game design, so most of the theoretical stuff was over my head. I didn’t care: it looked super cool so I loved it. When I got home, I described it to my friends like this:

“So I went to this gaming company convention and they showed us the cinematics of this new game they have coming out and there was a dragon destroying the world and they showed us how he’s tearing up cities and making fire in the sky and causing huge waves. Before, in games, they used particles to design water, but the effects in this game were too big so they needed too many particles so they had to do it differently so they showed us how they did it and they used tons of layers and OMG it was so cool.”

I’ve been receiving a lot of “that’s nice, dear” looks.

Class Q&A didn’t really teach me anything. Some of the questions were either too obscure for my pally-only mind, for the others, the developers gave vague, generic answers that didn’t bring anything new to the table. I get the impression that Q&A sessions are only held to give players the illusion that they, as individuals, are being listened to.

That said, I would have loved to ask about the fate of paladin utility spells (our Hand abilities mostly) and why they’re not being spotlighted as much as they could be. I thought of it too late, though, and besides, I’m probably the only paladin crazy about utility spells, so I would have probably been booed away.

Oh, and the girl who went on about how dps should never take damage in a raid gave me a good laugh. Has she raided ICC? Sindragosa? Blood Queen? Clearly, she must be one of those dps who don’t ever look at their health bar. And it’s exactly dps like her who need damage reduction talents. (Her original question was concerning the need to pick pvp talents when moving down a tree.)

The Diablo Q&A needed better question screening. Will there be separate PVE and PVP specs? Oh, gee, I dunno, the developers only said no THREE TIMES.

My experience with Diablo is limited to having played for 15 minutes in the “old game demo” section of Blizzcon, so I was a little lost during the Q&A, but I’m excited to see how their non-competitive approach to the game will turn out.

I ended the day by watching most of the Starcraft II finals. I was curious as to what a pro game of Starcraft looks like. The speed and precision of those guys are incredible. How they manage to control 9 groups of units while using all of their buildings to make new units and expanding their bases to other mineral locations, I’ll never understand. In the time it takes me to build a couple of SCVs, they’ve each already established Command Centers at three different mineral fields and unleashed their army on the enemy. Twice.

I wonder if those kinds of skills translate to other aspects of life.

My favourite part of my day at Blizzcon though?

Riding in the Starcraft II flippy-thingy.

Oh yeah.

Notice how I’m there with a stranger. Two of my guildies, big tough guys, were with me, but chose purse-holding duties over riding in the flippy-thingy. Seriously!

Now onto part 2!