#1 on the healing meter!

People love talking about crits and seeing where they are on damage meters. But healers, if they are anything like me, don't get that same sense of satisfaction. Who cares if I crit heal for 2400? As the very wise prophet Exe from the WoW priest class forums said "problem is that once healed, warrior gets damaged mroe, and healing must continue".

This poster - well I think he copied it from the EU forums, so I can't give the original poster credit - highlights all the things wrong with the use of healing meters in raids. It has its uses, it can point out who stays afk entire fights sure, but on the other hand it can place added pressure on an already stressful role.

Its lengthy but copied it just in case the forums eat this link. Here you have it, the secret to How to Top Healing Meters:

Alot of people have been saying to me how much trouble they have getting in the top heal spots. One person was warned that she may be kicked if she didn't starting
healing more, and get higher on the heal meter. So I decided to produce a guide for these people to help them reach that top healing spot. This guide is currently only for priests.

The objective.
Your only purpose is to top the healing charts, whilst maintaing a low overheal %.

Your spells:
Power shield : Alot of heal meters don't show this as healing so just ignore it, someone else can shield to stop burst damge, and get their low heal position.

Dispel Magic: Again this is useless let some low heal person waste their time dispelling, if you do it you'll lose ranking.

Res : Useless, but make sure to heal the people who have just been rezzed, they are at like 1 hp so thats alot of potential healing. It might take a bit longer to recover after a wipe, but you'll be higher on the heal ranking so its worth it. If for some reason you are the only res 'er after a wipe left, make sure to res the other res classes last to make sure they dont get a full 99% hp heal bonus from healing the res'd people.

Renew: Spam this like no tomorrow, make sure you have maxed out all talents to increase your renew ability, and always cast your own on top of someone with a weaker
renew, this gives the tank a better healing / tick from renew, and prevents that player from getting ahead of you on the heal meter.

Flash heal: This one is essential for stealing heals from other healers espically druids with their slow heal. In trash pulls and some tank and spank bosses there aren't enough people to heal for the healers, so this means you need to heal first to maintain that #1 healing spot. If you see two people at 80% hp and a druid just starts to heal one, DONT heal the one the druid isn't healing, assist the druid and land a flash heal getting that person to full, then whilst the druid goes ??? and lands an overheal, quickly heal the other players, congrats you just got twice the healing , and your competition (the other healers) got none.

Greater heal: This is good for longer fights to keep your mana up. Getting it talented to a shorter cast is a must to land it before other healers. Dont worry too much about using it for mana conseravtion in trash though, use flash heal to steal heals and make others overheal (this also means they have less mana so they drink more and you get more heals) , the guild bank can always get you more major mana pots to use during trash, but if you dont get a high healing you could lose your officer status or be /gkicked

Fade: This one is quite good for avoiding death, if you see another healer is high on the aggro meter, espically one who has no aggro shedding abilities, run over to them and fade it off onto them, this'll interrupting their healing and give you a target to spam heals on to get more ranking.

Buffs : Inner fire on yourself, get other priests to cast the others on you and other raid members.

Downtime
If there is downtime perhaps after a wipe, or the raid leader calls a 5 minute break, etc try to find a warlock with an imp and run in and out healing yourself when your hp drops, if possible try to enlist other players so you can use prayer of healing as it will get you more healing much quicker. If you see other healers doing this you must heal them first so they dont get any heal ranking out of it. If for some reason there are no imp warlocks, this is the one exception in which you should cast fortitude on yourself and then heal to get ranking that way.

Healing Assignments
If you are in charge of healing assignments then follow this plan to maximize your ranking, if you aren't ignore the assignments and do this plan anyway
You should assign yourself to a tank who will take large amounts of damage constantly, so you can spam your best heals for 100% healing no overheal, with trash
assign at most 1 other healer to the main tank and tell the other healers to "spot" heal i.e waste mana with 4 priests healing one person. Once you get to the boss
assign your worst healers with the slowest reaction times and lowest heal ranking to help heal the maintanks, if you have good healers with a high healing ranking assign them to dispel/cleanse or if you must, to "spot" healing. This will insure the good healers heal ranking is crippled and you maintain a healthy lead as the best healer.

Special Tips for Certain Bosses
Snowballs can easily get you some 20 second silences on opossing healers in places like aq20 with kurinaxx, just stand in a blob of people and throw the snowball.
When nefarian does the priest call, use prayer of healing and lots of heals to make sure you have plently of targets to heal once the corrupted healing effect ends.
If you are a bomb of some sort, run towards the top healers in the healing ranking, this will keep them from overtaking you due to a chance death. (You can say something like whoops sorry my mouse died LOL, if you want to. If anyone complains remind them how you are always #1 healer and hence obviously the most skilled player)

Other Raid Members:
Hunter :
You can use alot more flash heals to get ranking first without going oom, if you keep nagging the hunter (or whoever is pulling) and tell him to slow down and stop pulling, even if the other healers are at 95% if you keep telling him that the healers are complaining he'll get paranoid and hopefully slow a bit meaning you can steal more heals with flash. It is worth noting your rating will drop if you run out of mana so make sure to moderate how many flash heals you use instead of de ranked greaters. And always remember to keep using those major mana pots every 3 minutes, guild banks have 1000's of gold so it doesnt matter in cost, remember higher heal ranking = better healer.

Druids
You must get druids to innervate you. It doesn't matter if someone else has more spirit of if you are at 85% mana, more healing = better healer and you want to be the best healer. If you are an officer its quite easy to tell them to innervate you, if not you can claim that priests are better healers with more benefit from spirit, make sure only to mention how much better priests scale if you scale better than them with more spirit. If you have worse equip just be vague about priests better healing bonus and keep pestering them till they give in, alot of people don't understand the mathematics, in this case its quite easy to make up some numbers to prove you should be innervated even if in reality someone else should.

Warlocks
You should always be soulstoned so you can start healing soon after a death, in addition in can be quite usefull if you find a warlock to spam lifetap even if he doesnt need the mana, in order to get heals in when noone else needs to be healed.

Priests & Paladins
In order to reduce the healing you do you can tell them "Your cleanse /dispel is a little slow" hopefully this will make them heal a bit less and have their finger hover over the dispel key or "Try not to overheal so much" even if they aren't overhealing, if you are an officer this works even better and will help keep the other healers from catching up with you. Sometimes this wont work so make sure to cancel buffs and whisper them all the time to rebuff you, this will keep them healing and lower their mana.

Druids
If the enemy curses try to convince your raid leader that you need mages dps, and just make druids full time de-curse duty, druids have pretty slow heal so you can beat them easily with flash. If you see a druid HoT someone quickly flash heal them and then the druid will not only be denied healing but he will get a load of overheal. These tips can help you become a better raid healer than druids. Again cancelling and asking for buffs can be quite usefull to keep their mana drained.

Shaman
Try to heal 1-2 people near the shaman at all times, this will help make their healing wave overheal more often. If you macro some questions , like "I would to talk to you about your spec for a moment" and use them as an officer you can also interrupt their healing.

Loot
Obviously you need good gear to maintain a high healing position, loot councils work best with you as a coucil member or a loot master if you are the guild leader, try to create an argument for gearing up a "maintank healer" first which basically means you get most of the healing items, if someone complains remind them of your #1 position as the best healer, and then remark to your officers that that person isn't a very good player. If someone is consiently doing well and possibly threatening your healing position you can stir up some drama and try to get them kicked ( I am not an expert on drama so you'll have to find another guide for that) . If someone wants to know why they were kicked just say they were a poor healer and didn't live up to the standards of the guild ( they had a low heal ranking).

Remember everything here will help you get a higher heal ranking. The higher a ranking of a healer, the more likely they are doing these things to increase their ranking, Good Luck!

Report to Goldshire

It was almost two years ago that I was first given a document to take to Marshal Dughan in Goldshire.

"Goldshire lies along the southern road, past the border gates."

I had no idea what would await me. I remember not having a clue how far Goldshire was, and it actually seemed far away!

Funny, when you think how far it is to travel to Darnassus, Stranglethorn Vale, or Nethergarde Keep, or Ratchet, or Light's Hope Chapel, or to the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj.

I've been feeling nostalgic for the feeling of awe and wonderment that WoW gave me.

Give me a moment while I make my way past the border gates and head south down the road to this small town named Goldshire, perhaps I can find a place to rest once I get there...

Time sink

On 11/25/2006 Tobold asked what was Your worst World of Warcraft decision?

I commented that starting out on a pvp server was my worst decision. But that got me to thinking about the things I regret about this game.

I like playing WoW. If you could see my time played (which I refuse to look at!) you'd say I LOVE playing WoW.

One of the things I regret is the immense amount of time I've spent in-game. And its seeped out of game with this blog and reading the forums, etc.

What I can't seem to get a grasp on is how is it so easy to lose so many hours in this fantasy world.

Over my holiday vacation, I didn't even raid much yet I still spent a lot of time leveling, crafting, farming, pvping and beta "testing".

As many have said this is an endless game. There is always a better item to obtain, alts to level, instances to conquer, ranks to hit.

What is it about WoW that makes a time sink appealing or at least transparent until its too late?

From my standpoint I feel like I really can't get anything done in an hour's time. If you want to pvp, you have to wait in a queue for at least an hour before you kill one opponent. If you want to instance (is that a verb?) you may wait for an hour to get a group started. And raiding really isn't all that better, if you want to raid you have to wait at least 15-30 minutes for the raid to assemble and then you're looking at 2-4 hours raiding. If you want to craft you'll either find yourself farming for the materials or farming for the gold to buy the materials. If you want to hit 60 you have to spend more than one or two hours here or there, or you'll be like the player who has played since Dec 2004 and still hasn't hit 60. And let's not talk about trying to get reputation rewards!

Is this why we embrace the time sink?

Just in case I forget...

Have some Roasted Quail on me!

Happy Thanksgiving!

One of you has got to go

The aptly titled blog WoW or sleep - one of them has to go features the writings of a player with six, count em, six level 60 characters! Not only that, if you scroll down further you'll see she also has four characters over 40 (all with mounts) and five more over 15.

Several months ago, I decided that I should delete some of my lower-leveled characters that were crying out for attention. It was an attempt to consolidate my time in WoW. Perhaps with less characters I wouldn't spend so much time in-game (you see how that worked out - it didn't.)

I had alts I created when my main realm was down. Ha-ha instead of just logging off and doing something else when the server was unavailable I would create a new character! How's that for addicted?

I also had alts I created to make up for what I felt my other characters lacked. My current main character - a priest was made because my first character only hack-n-slashed. I wanted a priest so that I could heal. And boy would I! But I won't go off on a healing rant tangent right now...

I made a warlock because I heard they "pwn". I made a rogue to twink. I made a mage because I heard they farm well. I made a druid solely for roleplaying.

What I really wanted was one character that could do it all. But the only "pwn" my healing spec priest would see was "getting pwnd". Also try farming with a spec made for you to stand back and let others do all the work - let me just say, it sucks.

So I had all these alts that together would make my WoW experience "whole". My plan was to heal on my priest, wreak havoc in pvp on my rogue, farm gold on my mage and enjoy easy mode on my warlock.

But I forgot about that leveling thing. The quickest I've ever leveled a character to 60 was 4 months. I can't realistically do another that fast (fast for me) and with each one I level - contrary to the blog I referenced above - the fun factor dies out. And unlike Guild Wars you don't have the option of starting a character at max level.

So my plans for having it all died quickly, and I was left with a cast of characters from level 5 to 35 just languishing about.

Instead of neglecting them, I deleted many of them. I no longer have any characters on any other servers. I transferred the one high-level one to my priest's server. So now they all reside in one place. The next time my server is down - I'm just going to go outside.

I deleted all the characters that didn't make it past level 15 - the only one that was saved from the chopping block for that reason was the druid, because I don't have to level her in order to roleplay with her.

I kept the twink because of all the extra effort I put in to her and I may decide to level her up one day - I hear rogues are easy to level. I'm holding on to the mage for the same reason, although I plan to transfer all of her stuff to a draenei once The Burning Crusade is released. Then off with her head!

Will I ever delete my 60s (70s)? I've seen videos of players disenchanting (destroying) all their epics and deleting their character before quitting WoW for good. But what if in 10 years, for nostalgia's sake I want to boot up WoW and jump on my priest and relive her times in Azeroth? I heard Everquest recently released some of their original classic servers. So just in case, I'm holding on to a few of my characters. I'm sure my priest is rubbing her neck with a sigh of relief...

Exhalted

Through the magic of raiding (i.e. raiding all the time for hours, days, weeks, months) I've managed to hit exalted (or exhalted as the WoW forums say) with a few factions. You get nice rewards such as rare profession recipes, patterns, etc. and also some epic items.

Now that I'm cutting back on raiding (or intending to), I can't imagine I'll ever hit exalted with any other faction on this character or my alts. I just can't bring myself to do so. Since I've come to hate grinding of any kind its almost an affront to think I should do so!

Instead I'll admire from afar those who put the time in to own their own cross-faction mount, have their own furbolg protector, ride their own rare saber, strut around in GM gear or don a red pirate hat.

In the past, I actually thought I'd put in the time to do these type of things. Except for the GM part, anyone can do it by putting in some time here and there - given enough time. But just like I'm trying to put aside raiding, I can't justify that amount of time investment for the payoff. Exalted with the Hydraxian Waterlords will have to count for something, heh.

Giving it another go

I'm going to try to cut back again. Granted I've tried this in the past - for instance around the time I started this blog. I think I'll stick to it this time...maybe.

Several reasons:
1) While some people, on their second visit to raid instance like Molten Core, immediately have that feeling of "been there, done that, got the t-shirt", its taken me longer. I knew I was seeing the same sights, but it didn't bother me. But now, finally after going to MC for almost a year, my tolerance for going to MC has reached zero. I have an alt I've been leveling to 60 and I don't even want to take it to MC.

2) I wasn't with my guild when they first entered MC, but I was there as we learned the final 3/4. Still, I felt as if I had rode their coattails. However when they pressed into BWL, I was there from start to finish. I can say that I've experienced entering an instance for the first time with a group, going through learning stages, feeling the growing pains of losing people due to the stress of it, seeing the end in sight and the climax of beating the final boss and then, yes! enjoying the rewards of having an instance on farm. And that's what all instances are essentially like. I may not do it with AQ40 or Naxx or any others. But I can say I know what its like first-hand.

3) The epics have lost their sparkle. For any players who know nothing about raiding - epics are like blues to raiders. Actually they are like greens. You raid, you'll get an epic - plain and simple. After awhile, at least for me, they aren't so "epic" anymore. Perhaps its due to the fact I'm a healer. For the past few months, I've received new pieces and I honestly can't tell much of a difference in my play style. While a warrior getting a new weapon can quantify the difference.

4) Good ol' healer burnout. I've mentioned this several times in my blog and don't need to rehash it here.

So, for all these reasons, I'm cutting back. But I've said that before...

Priest blogs

I shouldn't be surprised at the number of people who play the priest class and have a blog. I play a priest, so perhaps I gravitate toward them.

Sadly, I found this blog around the time this player seems to be migrating from WoW to EQ2 (Everquest 2).

Looks like she hit 60 the other day, saw what awaited her (raiding) and knew that path was not for her. (It is taking me a bit longer but I'm very slowly coming to the same conclusion for myself.)

Contrast that with this blog. This priest also recently hit 60, but it seems she's looking forward to raiding, as refrenced by her mention of obtaining the Vestments of Prophecy (a priest set that you can only get in Molten Core).

From what I can tell the former seems to have experience with raiding, if not in WoW perhaps some other MMORPG. I wonder if the latter does. I wonder what her experience will be like. Will she enjoy raiding and become hardcore? Will she quickly realize as this other priest did, the raiding path is not for her? It will be interesting to see where she is a month from now.

Raiding for the wrong reasons

One of my guild mates, who became a good friend of mine, decided to take a break from raiding over the weekend. For how long he doesn't know. And just like that, the past two raids I've attended where he wasn't there haven't been very fun.

I've toyed around with cutting back on raiding or quitting altogether for a long time. Healing gets stressful, loot drama occurs. But with my friend there I had a good time. In fact, I think I started this blog saying that in part it was him that kept me playing.

So I wonder, has it been him that kept me raiding?

I've raided several times when he wasn't around (due to work, other engagements), but that was with the understanding he'd be raiding again soon. But now, he may not raid again, maybe not for a few days, weeks, months or ever. And knowing that makes me want to quit raiding. Perhaps I've been raiding for the wrong reason?

Leveling to 70

I heard that someone has already hit 70 in the Burning Crusade beta. A rogue. Color me surprised.

I guess one thing the Burning Crusade will allow is a new list of firsts. First player to 70. First < insert class here > to 70. First blood elf paladin to 70. First draenei shaman to 70. First pvper to get whatever equates to the old Grand Marshal/High Warlord rank. First guild to finish the highest content...on hard mode.

Considering that I'm not competitive in the least, I won't be the first of anything. Add in the fact that some players are actually scheduling their vacations around the release! Yeah, you can't compete with someone who plays 24-7.

But I do hope to hit 70...someday. I think I'll hit 70 on my main character, a priest, but that may be the only one. I'm betting my priest will be the easiest one to level. She has the best gear of any of my characters. And I recall 50 to 60 flying by her. Parties had trouble finding healers, so they were willing to take me along although I was rather low for whatever instance they wanted me for at the time. And there was ALWAYS someone wanting to run an instance.

I don't know if BC will be the same way. It would be nice to ride the instance train to 70. Balancing it with stop offs at all those solo quests along the way. I wonder how many priests are around? The priest review (1.10 I think) caused a influx of priests (notably dwarves) but I wonder how many stuck around to level to 60, and how many will want to level to 70? I may not be in demand.

Level 62 Priest LFG PST.

Raiding guild has a spot for a rogue!

I'd be surprised if by now they haven't filled the spot this rogue left behind.

I don't keep up with guild recruiting trends, but I can't imagine keeping enough rogues being a common issue (especially a guild pushing progress in Naxx). Perhaps I'm out of the loop and rogues have become the new "dwarf priest"? Nah.

A night off

The other evening our guild didn't have any "official" raids planned. But as usual, someone puts one together anyway. I decided to sit out.

Instead, I jumped on one character to get something enchanted. I jumped on another character to help a friend on his lowbie character kill a few things, I jumped on another character to help a guildmate swap something from one character to another. I ran myself through a lowbie instance, first to find an roleplay item, but once I was there I just wanted to see if I could get through the entire isntance. It was a pretty low instance but I'm still proud to say I was able to kill every single mini-boss, rare boss and end boss in the place. I dueled *cough* a guildmate who just got a kick-ass sword the night before. I added my 2 cents to guild chat and I attempted some very brief roleplay with a passing priest. Fun times and I didn't get a single epic!

Happy Friday

My previous post about being "in your blog, reading your words" has never been truer.

Tobolds is blog I like to check every day. He starts some good discussions about the game and I always enjoy reading other perspectives.

The other day he linked my blog and since then not only have I a few visitors, they actually commented! I've really enjoyed that someone has read what I've had to say and whether they agree or disagree, added to it.

I've written my blog as if no one is reading it but me, yet knowing there is always a possibility one other person may drop by.

I can't promise that any of it has been or ever will be interesting. Just know that I enjoy blogging and if you enjoy reading it...well that's just icing on the cake.

IM INUR BLOG

REEDING UR WERDZ

I don't know what the very first phrase was. I'm assuming some variant of

IM INUR < BLANK >
< BLANKING > UR < BLANK >

Just wondering if it is something originally spawned from WoW forums. Because you see it there...alot.

Old School Priest

I came across a thread titled "You know you're an Old School Priest When" on the official forums. I won't bother linking it here because WoW forums links tend to disappear. But I'll try to list many references to old priest abilities I never got a chance to enjoy.

I'm not an "old school" priest. My first character to 60 was another class, and it wasn't until much later (the game had been out for almost a year) that I rerolled a priest and made her my main.

Ah well, looks like I missed out on some good times, but sometimes its best not to have a thing in the first place if its just going to be taken away:

*You were called a pumpkin for wearing the devout set

*You bypassed content with mind soothe

*You were considered extremely overpowered and basically unstoppable in PvP. (beta)

*You could give durability hits to people by MCing them off of cliffs or into a group of guards.

*Crit was actually important to you. (holy crits gave 100% mana regen for 20 seconds)

*You could rez people in combat and from any distance. But then what did druids do??? j/k silly there were no druids!

*You remember climbing mountains with levitate

*You didn't find out about racial spell significance until after you hit 60, because no one knew until then Common thing to ask on the priest forums "Didn't you know how important fear ward would be when you chose your character?" Uhmmm, no.

*you remember being able to use people's spells/abilities with mind control What fun!

*You remember when shield would protect from fall damage Okay I remember this too, and I still find myself trying to do it

*You remember when your shackle could actually shackle undead players (beta) I was so disappointed when I found out this wasn't true, the first time I set foot in WSG on my priest and tried to use it over and over again


*You remember using staff/wand combo's to have awesome dps while leveling. I have no idea what they mean by this

*You remember PW:Sing random people soloing in Westfall And not being able to do so, before forced grouping in WSG, was a pain in the butt

*You remember having a 10k mana pool fully buffed (alliance MC level) I don't know how they achieved this

*Spirit was a godly stat that always ticked (beta)

*Using Levitate to get into all sorts of cool places - above IF anyone?

*Brainwash, anyone? Okay this sounds cool, wonder what it was?

*I remember when I could cast a easily-interrupted channeled spell for 8 seconds, uninterrupted. I dunno either

*You remember when Mind Blast was instant cast. (beta)

*Holy Fire was an actual Fire spell, and you were tempted to collect +fire gear. I've always wondered why it wasn't a fire spell.

*I remember when Shadowform was 20% damage and 20% mitigation :( Wonder if this one's true.


*When you had the only prayer of fort in the core and had to buff all the groups. Okay, some things are best left behind.

*Spirit didn't had the 5sec rules(cry)


*When the best staff for priest was the Argent crusader staff I keep hearing apple on a stick, I think I want one!

*Soft cap at 300 spirit.

*You could eat and drink during battle. Okay...wow!

*Shield was spammable (no weakened soul).

*Dying caused a loss in xp rather than a loss in durability. Goodbye hardcore mmorpg and good riddance!

*The Halo of Trans was really the Orange Turban of Trans. Another thing best left forgotten. I don't like turbans, especially orange ones. Remember this around Christmas time.

*When there was no such thing as mana/5.

*You have a green wand of healing that has more +healing than anything short of an epic.

And now for something completely different

Like I'd climb Mt. Everest instead.

3rd month update

I'm still raiding.
I'm still playing more than I feel I should in general.
I like blogging, but I didn't even realize it adds to the pie slice of WoW takes up of my life.

Hmm.

Loral's Rules for Everquest

Like a blue dropping off a random mob while slaying whelpings, I came across this gem. Except for exclusive EQ terminology it applies to WoW as well.

If you don't get a chance to read it, here are the basic rules:

Rule 1: Enjoy Every Day You Play.

Rule 2: The Grass Is Not Greener.

Rule 3: Gear, Experience, Levels, and AAs, aren't real. Friendships are.

Rule 4: Items, Levels, Characters, and worlds will fall apart in ten years. What will you walk away with?

Rule 5: Roleplayers Have More Fun and Roleplaying is Contagious.

The Unblinking Eye

My guild had it first night of real C'Thun attempts.

We had more than 40 people sign up, but still were down 4 people at the time of the start. That's always disheartening, especially on a weeknight. That mean we didn't start on time, and as a result we end up going longer than planned (and an hour longer than I should have stayed).

I guess we had some good attempts in, given that we really weren't prepared. But we didn't manage to make it to the second phase.

I like to call our guild a casual hardcore guild. We raid alot, but most of us don't really put the preparations in that would make it go smoother. Some people spend alot of time on raid kits, but it is not required. Fights like C'Thun and the other bosses we'll face in Naxxramas makes me think this will change.

It should go without saying that I find the idea of hours of farming for raid materials very unappealing.

Winning the game

Over at Kill Ten Rats, I came across this post about finishing a game like World of Warcraft (WoW), in this case City of Heroes (CoH the comic book, superhero mmorpg that introduced me to this genre of gaming). I think CoH's level cap is still 50, and WoW's cap is currently 60, but soon to be 70 if you buy the expansion.

I had a conversation with a friend last night about why is it we feel the need to "complete" a game like WoW? Why do we play it like we are playing a game of Mario Bros as if it has an end point.

WoW *should* be played where we enjoy it for the here and now, instead I think I, and many others, play it to get to that next level, and the next and the next til we hit 60. And I, like many others, find getting to 60 to be anti-climatic and after running around wondering what to do (or raiding) you realize maybe you shouldn't have pushed it so much.

When I heard the expansion was coming out I started playing my alt more in hopes to get it to 60 - forcing myself not to waste time trying to role play in Stormwind, but instead killing wolves. When I heard there was a chance to fight some higher-end bosses in beta, I started forcing myself to get quests done, instead of just exploring all the new areas. In other words, I started sucking the fun out of the game.

So when those people who find they no longer have fun playing a game and they quit at 59.5 in WoW or 48.7 in CoH, we shouldn't look at them puzzled, instead we should envy them a bit for being able to know when....to say when.

Leaving instances behind

For the first time, since I joined my raiding guild around the beginning of the year, we didn't have an Onxyia/Molten Core scheduled this week.

I, for one, was relieved! Many of the guildies I started with quit going long ago. But as a healer I still get asked. And no matter how I try not to feel bad about it, I do feel bad saying no. So....in most cases I go. In fact, I can't remember a time I said no. And I wonder why I complain about being burned out.

Funny thing is, someone else put together an impromptu Onyxia raid on one of our "free" days and I went anyway. I didn't really mind, because Onxyia usually only takes 45 minutes and that mostly includes everyone getting there , filling in the missing spots, getting summoned, getting water and buffs.

But since we didn't have our normal raiding guildmates there, we started with fill-ins and not a full raid. We wiped, but came back and downed her on the second try. It ended up taking 2 hours, but still not so bad because I actually had fun killing her with a under-manned, under-geared raid.

The same guildmate that put the Onxyia raid together had plans to do the same with Molten Core. But it was there that I drew the line.

I made a point to let them know ahead of time that while I would love to help them, I really didn't want to go back to Molten Core. Since I have a problem saying no, I made sure I wasn't logged on around that time.

One of my friends, who didn't single me out, said by not scheduling MC, it was like the guild had decided to not help anyone else get there gear.

The problem is our guild goes to Naxxramas, AQ40 and BWL. We've always squeezed in MC every week and if someone was willing, we ran AQ20 and ZG. At first I wanted to, and then when I didn't - I still tried, but I simply could not keep up with all those raids.

I've pretty much quit going to AQ20 and ZG and I tried to skip as many MCs as I could (not many).

I'm already looking forward to skipping BWL, so dropping MC is logical to me.

But I think MC should be dropped for everyone. Why do I say this? Because it is a strain on the geared people who also want to attend the new instances. We continue to show up on our main characters, while people on alts get to play different roles. The last MC I didn't recognize over 1/2 the raid.

I think it is at this point our guild should join another guild in our situation and run an alliance MC. That way people who are knowledgeable of the instance are their to guide it, but are basically there because they still want loot or are on their alts. In other words - they are there because they WANT to be!

I feel like I'm held hostage. As many have said, Molten Core has become Molten Chore, Molten Bore and Molten Snore. At what point do you leave MC behind?

Avoiding WoW burnout

Someone on the official forums posted 10 ways to avoid WoW burnout - common sense, something rare on the forums.


10. Good Hygiene - Keeping yourself is good shape allows you to interact with others much better and gives you a much better view of yourself as well.

9. Keep a healthy diet - Eating well gives you much more energy and will make your days feel generally better

8. Exercise - Get outside and run! Do somthing that makes you sweat some. Amazingly once you get past the soreness you will feel great after a good workout.

7. Get a job - As well as helping to support your WoW fix, this will be a good way to get out and meet some new people.

6. Schedule time with friends and family - Go hang out with some people, have some fun outside of warcraft.

5. Get another hobby - Try playing a sport or reading a book doing somthing constructive besides on your computer.

4. Meet some people that play WoW in your area - This would be a great way to get away from your desk, have some fun with friends and play with people that you know by name and face.

3. Get a girlfriend/boyfriend - This would be many people's most favorite way of taking a break from WoW. Takning the time away from WoW for your signifigant other is a great use of your time.

2. Prioritize - Dont allow Wow to take priority over family/fiends/job etc. Keeping your prioritys in line and realizing no matter how much fun it is WoW is still a video game.

1. Find a guild that will let you raid to your schedule not theirs - Finding a guild that does not require raid attendance and allows it's members to keep their priorities on RL rather than raiding.