Extended Hiatus.

This is one of the hardest posts i have had to write. I stopped playing WOW not long after I posted last. It wasn't the game driving me away. I found that while playing the game I was losing my family. I decided it was time for a real change in my habits.

I was pretty much as close as you could come to losing my wife, no scratch that, she was leaving. No joke. I believed her, and still do. I know it’s not only possible for her to leave but real, where there would be no going back. I decided after I was given the news that she was leaving that I would not give up with out a fight. She did not set any conditions for staying. She was leaving. I took the initiative on my own to prove that I was not just a lump, that I could in fact maintain a relationship with her. I was under no impressions that what I was doing would win her back; I did it because it was the right thing to do. I made a promise to myself that I would be a better husband and father. She would have none of the husband part. She liked the better father part but basicly told me to leave her out of it. Focus on the kids was all she wanted from me. So I did.

It was rough the first few weeks, knowing that she was leaving and nothing I could do would stop it. I was miserable all the time. Amazing how much you miss something when you know it’s going to be taken away from you. I lost a ton of weight since I couldn't eat and felt like shit. Part of it was prolly the loss of anything worthwhile to take my mind off my troubles. I canceled my account and deleted all WOW files off my computer just to make it harder to restart playing. I wouldn’t even watch the damn game if someone else was playing.
Another side effect of no WOW, I actually left my computer room and played with my kids. Weird, I didn't know what I was missing. Now I do. I felt an feel that I can’t really return to WOW fully, or as fully as I can with my new life schedule, until I can regulate myself properly as befitting a logical and responsible parent/husband. I am working toward that. I still want to play WoW, it’s a damn fine game and nothing I have found in 8 months measures up to the satisfaction and emersion and pure entertainment of WoW. To bad for the other guys. I would have returned to console games if there had been anything to spark my interest.

I have managed to reconnect with my kids. I spend more time with them now then I have in a long time. I have learned and will keep learning how to be a better father. I have taken steps to make sure that perhaps my kids wont be as big into video games as I have always been. We have never liked them watching TV or playing on the computers all that much before and now its been even more pressed upon them to get out an play in the yard or down the street with the neighbor kids. Anything to get them active and outside. With the wife working mostly nighttime shifts it has been me who has been fixing dinner and putting the kids to bed. I have gotten used to no leisure activities for me until after 8pm or so. Usually I will stay up till midnight just for some time to myself.


I did not foresee what else would come from my being away from WoW would do, and what being a better father and man would bring me. By not trying to do anything to force a mind change on my wife an just being what I should have been all along, I managed to catch my wife's affections once again, mostly by being here and stepping up to the responsibilities that are part of being a Father and Husband. I listen and actually hear her when she tells me about her day. I don’t give her sarcasm at every turn if she complains about something. I am genuinely interested in how her day was.

In the beginning it was for show, I admit. I was to far into my own depression to really worry about anyone else. My selfishness was quite paramount in my worldview, meaning there was really no one else but me in my little torment world. Gradually I came to accept that she was leaving and that it was in fact my fault for not living up to what I had promised. Once I was sure it was over and nothing I could do would stop it, I started doing what I should have done before, i.e. the listening and hearing and being a friend. Doing the little things that sometimes get dropped from long-term friendships and associations. Hugs and touches, smiles and kind words. Doing things just to be nice or to make someone feel happy just to do it. I started doing all the things that had attracted my wife to me in the first place. It was hard continuing it since every time I did do something that sparked her interest in me, she would reiterate that she was leaving. This hurt alot, not that I figured a few good days would reverse all the pain and anger, but it wasn’t understood by her that I was not doing all this stuff in order to change her mind. It didn't help any that she couldn't keep her hands off me. I would go all day with just a small touch or brush of her fingers on my arm. Pathetic I know, but a really do love my wife an I felt the distance keenly. No amount of telling could convince her that I was doing what I was doing because she deserved it from me. Plain and simple. I dropped the ball and no one else was to blame.
I continued with what I set out to do, being a better father and husband, even though one would stop and the other would be a once every few week’s deal. I maintained what relationships I had with my kids and tried to salvage a friendship I didn’t want to lose.

Somewhere alone the way my wife fell back in love with me. She tells me its different this time and I believe her. I feel different too; I don’t feel like the person I was before. I still spend the majority of my days with my kids, but now my nights are more taken up with spending time with my wife as we rebuild our marriage. It is still a marriage. We do things together, we have time just for us without the kids or our work or games or any thing that could interrupt us just being together. She has shown me that she trusts me again, even letting me play a little toon on her account; btw she rarely plays anymore either. Mostly cuz she’s spending so much time with me. I think its great. We still have some wounds to heal, but that are doing that. Healing. I love my wife an kids. I love WoW, but not as much as I used to. Maybe in that I will one day be able to crank up my old account and wreak havoc on the legions of the enemy.

I have jumped online to talk to guildies a few times and all keep asking when I will return, those that knew of our marital problems ask after that. I tell them all the same thing, yeah I will return to WoW, but not anytime soon. I have set myself a date perhaps two months after WotLK goes live. Maybe.

I'd have to go dig out my copies of the game or fork over forty to sixty buck for a new copy. Meh, digging through all my storage junk is not very appealing so I will prolly fork over the cash.

Before I left the game I had gone ahead with a respec. I may write up another entry about my adventures as a Prot pally at some point before comming back. Yeah I went prot on Gawds and got geared enough to tank Rage in Hyjal....for the last 20 secs of the fight. Yeah bitches. Gawds rocks ass. We shall see what the future holds for a Prot pally named Gawdsicon and a Gnome rouge named Mindkiller, perhaps a long overdue entry concerning a lost hunter named Jolygreen and his bear Coat.

Ret is dead, soon at least.

I haven’t been enjoying my Ret Pally all that much recently. The sigma of not being a tank or a healer is getting to me. Working on itemization has shown me that to make a ret pally perform will take an inordinate amount of time and effort. I have also been told that some decent gear is to be had from the Season 1 arena gear.

PVP, I cast my spite at thee.

So I have been giving serious consideration to respeccing protection. No healing for me. I like the tank role. On my warrior I so enjoy taking the hits and dishing out the aggro. Only problem now is I have to completely revamp my armor and weapon itemization. I am hoping that some of the stuff that Darstar can make with Blacksmithing will work as a temporary fix till I can get some real gear. I will not be getting rid of any of the gear I have just in case that doesn’t work out. Hell I’ll be able to use most of it to help in grinding if needed. Sure as hell not gonna get rid of my HOD. I still would like to get the hammer of naruu, and it will be a bit before I actually respect, need to have the gear ready to go for the change.

I got Darstar up to 50 this weekend and with it I respecced full prot sos I could spec down to devastate. Oh what an evil skill that is. Sunder armor and damage based on how many sunders are up. SO it increases in damage the more you use it till sunders are stacked 5 times. Very fricking cool. I topped the damage meter in a few ZF runs after I got this thing rollin. Poor enchantment shammy couldn’t figure out what had changed. I had run with him a few time before I had devastate and he kept pulling aggro. Not any more.

More good news from ZF. I had gotten Jang’Thraze to drop off the chief on Friday last week. Now I was stoked. It's decent main hand, it has a nice shield proc that will take maybe 1 hit from an attacker, plus it looks bad ass. (I need to get the thing enchanted.)

Now I have run ZF over 300 times, really I’m not kidding. 4 characters over 42 all went to ZF from 42-50 or so. MANY TIMES RUN’ED THERE IN. So I can pretty much fight through there in my sleep…and have done so…a few times. In the beginning it was just for the exp and a few quests…nothing in there really sparked my fancy, till I saw Sul’Thraze. This was my obsession. Yeah was. I have falling off of it a few times. Usually when the character I was trying for it on leveled past 50. I figured it would be the same on Darstar, until Friday when Jang dropped and every one passed on it.

I have JANG” I wsp to all the people who knew I was questing and had been questing for it. I equipped that bad boy and proceed to kick even more ass cuz NOW imamtankwithJANG. Yeah I was frickin happy. I gladly went on back there a few times with a guildy willing to run to the basilisk boss and try for Sang. We tried 5 times in 2 days and no Sang; I was disappointed but willing to let it go. I had just dinged 50 and knew the second sword would only get used in solo runs, hell even Sul would only me a soloing weapon. This weekend the wife had a bit of downtime between raids and decided to run ZF on her 43 priest and asks me ifin I would be willing to tank a group through ZF. I say sure another shot at Sang, plus I get to play with the wife who is cranking out some mad healz.

She gets a group together and I get summoned to ZF. We set up and dig into ZF and maul through it. We had along an Enhancement shammy (Same one as above, good player) and a mage and a ret pally (giggle, he was wearing a shield and a 1 hand mace, idiot) I had asked him at one point why he was 1 handing it instead of swinging a skull-crushing 2hander…he never responded. The ret pally kept breaking the mages sheep but that wasn’t all that bad as I had no problem keeping aggro. We smash our way to the basilisk boss where we tear through him and his adds. Guess what dropped…SANG FUCKIN THRAZE. I about shit myself. In all the times I have run this place I have seen Jang 3 and Sang 2 times. This was the second Sang. Before I can ask “ohpleasepleaseprettypleasecanineedonthatIhavepentmyentirelifelookingforthatsword!” the wife types in for people to please pass since I have been waiting for it AND have the other half. The mage and shammy have no problem with that and the wife passes also…that leave the Pally. Now I know he was salivating, so I type in

“Dude I’ll pay you 20g to pass on that.”

Pause
Pause
/slash eyeball

He passes, I got it! Fucking yeah baby. I have been to the mountain and seen the virgins and they serve BEER I fucking got them damn blades!! So yeah I am pleased. I tell the pally straight up thank you and if he sticks around after the sun I can send him the cash. Darstar was a little broke but the bank I have has plenty enough to cover that. The wife decides to not let him wait and was gonna pay him for me, but he refused the trade. I don’t understand it but oh well. I got the blades and they look sick together. I’m gonna have to look real hard at the stats for Sul before I decide to join them. I really like the way they look together and they will be good for keeping sword skill up being a matched pair. I will have to see how my damage is solo with a 2hand using devastate to really see if it would be worth it. Till then I have a nice pair of swords that need enchanting.

Now for the new character I made this weekend. Yeah another. I have a few friends that adopted a mascot for their house. It is a little plastic alligator toy they have named Wally Gator. Now there is a cartoon character named this, but this is not the derivation of this mascot. No, it is from an episode of The A-Team where Murdock adopts a baby alligator and names him Wally Gator. Now according to Murdock “Wally Gator knows about war” and since my friends play a lot of first person shooters about wars they immediately felt a kinship with Wally Gator and thus the house mascot was born.
My wife and I were discussing the cleaning up of our accounts and getting rid of older characters we will never play again, so we freed up a few slots on the account I play on. I was looking for a cool name and “Bigdaddykingthunderstick” would not fit in the name box…I tried…several permutations…unsuccessfully. Sigh. So the wife hit on the idea of making a Wally Gator. It took me all of 2 secs to figure out that Wally had to be a Draeni. Since my other Draeni shammy is now the Guild leader/banker of my private stash, I can no longer play him and keep him easily near the important things, ah/bank. So I picked a male Draeni shammy since I still want to see how these guys play and named him Wallygator. I got him to 12 in little under 6 hours. My banker Draeni only ever made it to 14…over 24hours. Yeah I played Wally a bit this weekend. I’m gonna move him to IF to crank some easy quests there then prolly over to SW for those as well. I’m gonna quests his ass off, when ever I have the time. Pretty soon Darstar will be ready for the plunge into BRD and the goodness therein, and with the guild tooling up for some serious runs at TK and perhaps SSC I might get in on those. I really want to get into ZA, which might come about after a respecc. We shall see.

No Hammer, but nice legs there bud.

Now I left KOW then almost immediately got re-invited back to Honor. Much jokes an ribbing were sent my way for leaving in the first place. Now I still felt I left for valid reasons, yet I’m also willing to change my attitude toward dealing with what the guild has become. This means I will actually sign up for raids that I intend to attend. I don’t think I’ll be getting back into Kara since the times for raiding it are still too early for me. I will however be able to attend the SSC, TK, Gruul, and perhaps ZA raids as they tend to happen later in the day or on the weekends.

I happen to be invited to go on Honor’s first run at TK: Eye The plan was to see if we could clear to Void Reaver and take his ass down. We had some scary moments on the dragon hawks pulls and a few deaths to cleaves on the bigger blood elves, but all in all no more then a 30% death toll on the bad pulls, which only happened 2 times due to unfamiliarity and a sheep breaking without notice. We tightened up the strats as we went and made it to Void I decent time. We wiped once on the pulls immediately around Void due to a lock taking a really bad hit. Again we tightened up the strat and went on to clear the room for a shot at Void. As we were setting up for the fight, some one accidentally aggroed void and the race was on to the door. I was last one in and actually took a hit from Void as a parting shot. I lived.

The dead release and run back and we set up for a try at Void. Strats are discussed and we attack. We did a damn good job. We got him below 45%, can’t remember the exact number but it may have been as low as 29%, before the poundings took their toll and kill off the melee dps. We were using the in/out strat, but it ended up costing us too much dps. We wiped but still learned what to expect. I was dead at around 70%.

We set up for another run, this time the melee will stay in and have 2 dedicated healers. The tank was not taking any really big hits so the healing could be eased up from him. So most melee stay in for the pounding and rely on the heals. I didn’t listen as I figured it be more effective to trade off who runs out and who stays. This time I lasted till 30-34% before a bad bomb got me after a pounding. During the fight we could see the trash was re-spawning near the entrance. We reset and discuss what to refine as the strat. People were summoned form the entrance for a final shot.

It was decided that the dedicated healers stay, but the melee try to in/out if needed. Low health or out of position to the healer dictating movement. As we are setting up for the 3rd run we can hear the trash respawning behind us and getting closer. We knew this was our last shot. We set off for the third try. Every one knows what going to happen now. No surprises any more. We settle in for the long fight and tough it out.

VOID REAVER DOWN.

We kicked his ass. We hurried for a pic before lewting the goodies. We kicked his ass. I know we can do it again too. We got the heals, the tanks, the dps. We Cracked his Skull.

Honor has also been working on ZA progression. Lots of nice stuff there to be had. Last night they completed their first complete clear of ZA. Hells yeah. This just after a complete run of gruuls. Yeah we made HKM our bitch. We had one partial wipe setting up on HKM, and one true and a partial wipe on gruul due to some one deciding to res people instead of releasing and runnin. My hammer did not drop, but I’m sure he was just polishing it for next week for me. Its ok, I can wait. We went on and showed gruul that he may slay dragons but he is just a bump on the road in front of the juggernaught that is HONOR.I managed to snag a winning roll for my t4 legs. Oh how nice it will be whenever I get 2 then 4 of the pieces. Very nice bonuses. I’ll run gruuls over and over again. It is a quick fun run.