Blog Azeroth – A Balance of WoW and Life?

February 12, 2008 at 9:47 am (Blog Azeroth, Miscellaneous, Uncategorized)

I also, on top of loving Judas Priest, happen to dig myself some Scorpions; hence why I was torn about naming this post “Wind of Change“. I know it wasn’t a direct pun, but it felt like an appropriate name.

But, today’s topic – balance. Yes, that’s right, it’s time for a personal post, based off a topic I made at Blog Azeroth.

I’m somebody that’s always had a problem balancing things out. Not out of virtue of being excessive, just never cared enough to pay attention to it.

The only way I could keep the balance is by limiting what I did, and knowing when to tell myself to cut back. Hence why I’ve stopped drinking almost entirely. (That, and I like getting to sleep. Me having one drink even messes that up; which is why, as much as I adore bourbon, I’m not a true Survival hunter. :P)

Just this past couple of months, I’ve been keeping a schedule, and that’s been helping with everything else. I’ve got a lot going on in the personal life, i.e. applying for grad school, trying to get recommendations from my old school (been out for almost a year now), quitting my job, et cetera.

I keep a list of things I’ve done, and that helps me keep it all on track, so to say. (and yes, the script writing’s going fairly well. Got two solid ideas that I’m working on right now.)

But I do enjoy WoW, so I have to say I hate it when I get locked into something I’d rather not do – like, for example, grinding money for my flyer, getting keyed for Karazhan, and so on. In an ideal world, I could log on, get some PVP action, and maybe get in on a raid with my guild, laughing the whole time, and be done in 2-3 hours a night.

In real life, there’s hours of stuff that goes before that. Need the Flyer before you can do Arc, need a group for that and Steamvaults, need to get geared for Karazhan, need to have pots and buffs, organized groups, etc.

Now, since I try to keep it to about 2-3 hours a day, roughly, I can minimize that. I can farm a spot here, do nothing but BG’s for a spell, and pester my guild leader for invites to raids. 😛

Mainly, though, there are a couple reasons I still play, even though one could see this as a total timesink, and I’d be inclined to agree with them.

1) My real life friends that play. They’re up at my alma mater, I love ‘em, and it’s a way for us to keep in touch, and on top of all the good times we’ve had at each other’s side, we try
to spend time in groups helping each other out in-game.

2) My guildies. They’re good people, and thankfully, the rest of the officers aren’t loot whores / drama llamas. We all keep a good sense of humor about everything, except when we need to buckle down. (i.e. this week, in which everybody does SSC until, as our GL said, “We get it RIGHT and don’t wipe on the damn blind dude anymore!!”

3) The blog. It’s a nice creative outlet for me, I enjoy keeping in touch with you guys, and I love the challenges that writing a blog brings in terms of scheduling and researching. It’s like being back in college, writing a term paper, except liking what I’m writing, and putting in a couple clips at a time.

4) Being, as I mentioned in the previous entry, the WoW Equivalent of John McClane. I love action movies, and having the chance to be that kind of balls-to-the-wall quick thinking action hero is quite awesome. Honestly, if I could walk into Karazhan and leave a message for Prince on the body of the Big Bad Wolf saying, “I have a Sniper Rifle now, pew pew pew”, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

5) My real life friends.

As far as real life balance, I haven’t skipped work to play WoW, stayed up all night just to play (the few times I have, it’s due to genuine insomnia, and on those nights, I’m up until about 5 AM anyway.), skipped out on social events or hanging out with friends, or given up much of anything else.

Thanks to working retail, I don’t get much of those anyway, so I take the chance whenever it’s given to me to hang with my friends.

For me, WoW’s a bit of an escape. I’m a 22 year old college grad living at home with his parents, working odd hours at a mediocre job, and there’s no end of it in sight. It’s the chance to be something more, as well as the writing I’ve chosen to do about it, that’s helped me get through it.

(but, since I’m quitting the job, it means that there is some kind of end in sight!)

-Track