First off, gah! This month's LJ header image is horrible. These images are such a crapshoot, seems like easily 50% of them are eye-blindingly bad. Anyone know if there's a way to turn them off?

On to the post! Sometimes I have to laugh at myself. For how long have I been bitching about not enough RP, now I'm annoyed I have too much! Ha ha, there's just no making me happy. :P I'm so silly! I don't have the RP stamina I used to, so when scenes go on for hours and hours, I get tired. My new guild rocks so much, they have RP events all the time (Thursday, Friday, AND Saturday of this week!), plus tons of random RP, I'm wearing myself out.

In non-funny stuff, didn't the news used to warn before showing gory pictures? I didn't exercise this morning (bad me), so I had the news on. I glanced over at word of a bombing, only to be greeted with images of pools of blood in the street. No bodies or body parts thankfully, but seriously, I had ZERO desire to see all that blood. Real blood, not movie blood, blood from someone who likely died in pain. Before 7 AM. Ugh.

It's for similar reasons that I boggle at people wanting to see photos of Bin Laden after he was shot in the head. Seriously? You want to see that? Blood, gore, likely brain matter? Just the idea of seeing such a thing makes me sick to my stomach.

I'm hours late on eating my breakfast, and yet I still don't feel like eating it.

Edit: Eeeeee! Have some flower kittens!

Know how some sports for children don't actually keep score and at the end of the game it's announced that both teams have won? That's WoW for you. Tomorrow's patch has a change I knew was coming. Archaeology getting seriously nerfed. I can't even muster up any anger about this change. I knew it was coming. Heck, I posted here that I should have waited to finish once they made it easier.

I wish there were some way that titles were marked. "Professor Keen, Became Professor When It Was Actually A Challenge". Kinda long, but at least people would know I did it when it was hard.

Sigh. Like I said, this doesn't make me angry. It makes me tired, frustrated, depressed, and drained. But WoW nerfs everything because in the end both teams need to win and every child is a special snowflake.

In other depressing WoW news, by the end of today I should have 400K gold. Why's that depressing? A thread on a gold making forum explained it well: The topic was 'What will you do (or did you do) when you hit a million gold'. Most answers were exactly the same as mine: One million now becomes your new "zero", your gold may never fall below that as you chase after the second million. It's never ending, it's never enough. When I hit 100K, I wanted to hit 200K. When I hit 200K I wanted to hit 300K... and so on. The gold doesn't even have any value anymore, I look at the total amount on the top of my screen and I honestly and seriously cannot tell if it's a lot or a little anymore.

At one point I was having fun making money, but it's become a chore. It goes back to how different servers are. As a RP server, we have a crapton of crafters (RPers are generally more mature and understand that professions are Good Things), but as a RP server we have fewer raiders. This means the gem market is horrible.

...I had typed out all the math as to why it was so bad here, but it would likely put most people on my flist to sleep, so I deleted it. Let's just say if I didn't get the raw rare gem for basically free, I'd be better off vendoring cut rare gems. And, on many cuts, I'm nearly at the point of vendoring them now.

I really need to get out of the money making end of the game. I have over 2,000 more rare gems to move though, sigh. I need to RP more, stand in front of the AH less.

Edit: In positive news, my worgen druid hit 48 yesterday. For the first time, I did that 'punch Deathwing in the face' questline. I have to say, I enjoyed it quite a bit! I especially liked having the macho orc biker pick the male belf to save. :D I wish they'd release stats on which of the three got saved most!

Years back, I got a gift card to Borders. Even back then it wasn't a great gift for me; though I was still reading the dead tree version of books at the time, I was buying them all through Amazon. As I didn't much care about the card, I didn't keep track of where it was, and eventually lost it.

Fast-forward to a few months ago and news that Borders was going out of business. Well, I supposed I better find that card! Eventually I did. So, with it in hand, I stepped foot in a bookstore for the first time in ages.

Thankfully the store had non-book items, but nothing I wanted. There was a nice backpack, but I already have one I like and I rarely need to use it. I could get something as a gift, but I do all my gift shopping online so I don't have to deal with shipping. I considered some manga (there was a big section of it), but after I read it once I'd be stuck with the physical object.

I spent a good deal of time in the toy section, but even there was nothing I wanted. I was getting grumpy and annoyed, I just wanted to go. I tried to figure out if maybe I could just donate the card, but I had no way to get online and check (the one time I wanted a smart phone!). I almost gave it to a mother with three young boys, but I was afraid it would make me look like some kind of child predator or something.

Eventually I picked out a Lego toy (this one) because it came with a spiffy undead horse thingie (Edit: Which looks nothing like it does on the box. D: ). I ended up having to pay $2.30 in tax, which was really more than I would have paid for the set if I had thought about it, but I just wanted to be rid of the darned gift card.

I should clear off a spot on my desk so I can check the set out.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If I had anyplace better to go for RP, I'd be gone from WoW. Tonight for a new reason (new as in not posted before, not new as newly happening, it's been going on for a while).

In my experience, MMOs are played for the people, not for the game itself. And know what? I'm sick of being alone on WoW. I mean alone, fully alone. A bunch of social channels, and only one single one with people on it. And that one channel with people? No one has said a single thing over it in weeks.

I was so lonely and bored I actually leveled Thistle the worgen hunter tonight.

Doesn't help that usually I could spend my time making money, but there's a tiny handful of mats on the AH all for six or seven times my buying price, so... I just stand there at the AH, waiting.

I went to SMC to troll for random RP and everyone either logged, idled out, or ran off when I posted at them. (Plus the city seemed lacking in people, felt more like middle of the day than evening.)

Bah. I've tried tossing alts into guilds. I've looked for more social channels. I'm not used to struggling to make friends online. It's usually easier there!

Stupid game. I just want people to chat with and RP with. Is that asking too much?

So Cata releases "tomorrow" (tonight at midnight). I really can't stay up to play at midnight, I have to work the next day. I get up really early, I need to be fast asleep at midnight. (Hear that, brain? Let's not repeat last night, okay?)

Usually I log on before work, but A) there will likely be the usual Tuesday downtime, and B) there will be a queue to log on. My pre-work playtime is very limited, so a queue will eat it.

Usually I log on at lunchtime, but A) there will likely be a longer than usual Tuesday downtime, and B) there will be a queue to log on. My lunchtime playtime is very limited, so a queue will eat it.

That means I'll have to wait until after work to play, when everyone else would have had nearly a whole day (depending on downtime) to play.

I tell myself it doesn't matter. I'm not going for a server First in anything. I have no need to rush to 85 or do anything else that Cata is bringing, yet still, it's the old issue that bothers me. "It's not fair."

I'll always remember that I was one of the first players to set foot in Al Zahbi when ToAU dropped in FFXI. I was on the second boat, the first boat had just a couple people on it, I was the first person off the boat. But with Cata it doesn't matter, it's not the same. In a week, a month, some short time in the future I'll likely be back to standing in Dal staring at the AH all day. So it does not matter if I have to wait hours and hours after everyone else... except it feels like it does.

It bothers me that this bothers me. I should be happy I have a job, not annoyed that it's keeping me from a game that I barely care about to begin with.

Ah well. On the positive side, I RPed yesterday! For the first time in a while! And not only that, with a new person! Lots and lots of fun, though it makes me sad that long scenes (4-5 hours in this case) wear me out and are almost too much. It wasn't so long ago that I used to RP from the moment I crawled out of bed to the seconds before I went to sleep for the night! I'm not sure if it's a change in me or just that I've become used to shorter, quicker scenes.

Ramble, ramble.

Oh WoW, I was so in love with you for giving out so many more details than FFXI ever did... then I learned the pain of all the stuff you don't tell your players. Listing only some of the changes a patch brings seems almost worse than saying nothing at all.

This morning I read the patch notes. Had no big reaction (there was one 'too late fix' listed, but it was no biggie). Then I logged onto the game.

XP in AV (PvP BG) has been cut by 60%.

FFXI would have at least said "XP has been adjusted", which everyone would know would mean a nerf. Why did WoW say nothing? Why did I have to learn from word of mouth?

Yeah, I can agree there needed to be an adjustment, last night on guild I said it would be nerfed soon, but 60% reduction? Look up "draconian" in the dictionary and you'll find this nerf.

Too late fix #1: PvP dailies. Now the NPC will only offer you quests you can accept. So from 11-20 you'll only be offered WSG. 21-50 only WSG or AB. Why couldn't this have been done, say, back when I was those levels and kicking the NPC because nine times out of ten I couldn't accept the daily?

Too late fix #2: This one actually hurts me, not just annoys me like #1. AV levels have been adjusted. Now a bracket is 50-59, 60-69, etc like the other BGs. Not only did I have to wait a level longer than others now will, but this is going to kill, totally kill, my effort to get 100K HKs. How? Once I hit 80, I'll be BGing only against other 80s. Matches will be less frequent, and there will be a hell of a lot fewer kills. Blah.

All in all, this is just so amazingly frustrating. Happily I was not in a rush to get to 80, but I wasn't enjoying my time in AV so I didn't exactly want to be forced to do it more for the same XP... It's really the next-to-impossibility of getting to 100 HKs that's making me sad.

Stupid WoW.

QQ