Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Unfocused Play

Since closing on the house, I've been less and less focused on WoW, for obvious reasons. I'm not going to stop playing, of course, as I'm firmly addicted, but I haven't logged onto my main in quite some time. I bet my friends in CoF are wondering what the heck happened to me. Come to think of it, I really should jump over there just to let them know I'm still alive...

That doesn't mean I haven't been playing, it's just that I've been playing my alts and second main. Seona is now level 36 (nearly 37) and that means I'm just that much closer to getting her into her guild. Leveling is so much easier with rested experience, but managing to stay off of a toon for a day or so to earn it is hard, especially when they've been leveling so fast. Still, the double points are worth the trouble, and it gives me a chance to look at my other toons. Really I should go to Yrovi again while Seona rests, as there's so much I still haven't done that I want to do, but I haven't been.

I haven't finished my rep grind with the Netherwing, yet. The tournament is still ongoing and I've slacked there. I need rep with the Oracles so I can start buying eggs. I still want to gear up some with heroics. There's tons to do, and yet I have no real drive to log onto Yrovi and do any of these things. It's strange.

Perhaps it's that I actually like the leveling aspect of the game more than the endgame. Or maybe I'm just burned out, now, a little, when it comes to dailies and rep. Not running instances, obviously, as I don't do nearly enough of that, but the rest... yes. It is quite repetitive. Leveling, though, has a nice guage at the bottom of the screen, you know exactly how far along you are, you can measure your progress, there are numbers. It's a special kind of satisfying. Plus, the environment changes as you level further, moving on to new places. Yrovi is stuck in Northrend, and the only guage she gets is the rep bar, which moves far too slowly for my tastes. :(

Now, I've run Alliance toons before, up to about level 25 (aside from Liir who started at 55, which I'm not going to count) and the unique starting areas for them are interesting enough. I'm starting to get into zones that are "contested", though, and I'm already familiar with them, but it seems new, now, with the other side's quests.

Hillsbrad, for example. I've run two blood elves, not to mention Yrovi, through this area. I'm intimately familiar with Tarren Mill and the surrounding countryside. I've killed farmers, yeti, lions, bears, and Alliance in those hills, and I've had fun doing so. Now, though, the farmers are friendly, Tarren Mill is something to avoid, and the yeti are still in my way, just for different reasons. It's bizzare and altogether interesting to see a different role and side to the story.

I also like to switch it up a bit with my toons, especially on this RP server. As in, none of them seem to want to do the starting quests for their area. Seona, a dwarf, went to live in the human lands; Leodry, a human, feels more at home amongst the dwarves (where he can drown his considerable sorrows in ale); Loem, another human, found his way to Teldrassil and hangs with the elves there. I'm familiar with the game. I know what I'm doing and I'm comfortable going to other areas to level up new toons. Loem is especially fun, as I've got a special backstory set for him.

I also like my characters on a server to all be connected somehow. I like strange, sometimes convoluted social webs. They don't have to center around my main, though they do on Gul'dan (not that it matters, as it's not an RP realm). On ED, though, it actually might make a difference on how my characters act. So, my character web as I see it right now, though it can change:

Seona (Dwarf Pally, Main) is friends with Fandren (Human Priest), as they studied together in the priesthood. Fandren, as a young man, met Leodry (Human Warrior, primary alt), a jaded, former soldier of Lordaeron who believes everything he cared about is dead and gone. He convinced Fandren to become a priest, and Fan convinced Leo to not give up, but move on... which sort of worked, as Leo moved on to the dwarven lands to live. Unknown to Leo, not all is lost, as his brother still lives amongst the elves. His brother, Loem (Human Rogue), was a squire who followed his knight into battle in Kalimdor all the way to the Night Elf kingdom. When his lord died in the war, he stayed behind, learning some rather interesting tactics from the Elves, like striking from cover and then fading away again into the shadows. He befriended Berryl (Nelf Hunter), who used to live on the Kalimdor mainland. She's become fast friends with the Draenei, but has helped Loem find a place amongst her people as well. She also tries to keep an eye out for any of her friend's family, like a brother, for example...

Now, from that, you can see that Senkka (Gnome Warlock) and Liir (Human DK) are still left out, and perhaps that's okay. Liir is just a farming/banking toon after all, though I've thought about having him have ties to the Church, thus knowing Fandren and Seona. Senkka is by far the oddest one out, although the path that Fandren is planning on walking down (Shadow Priest) means he might end up meeting some rather darker members of the Alliance, such as a warlock, another class that uses shadow magics. I can tie them in, it'll just take time.

So I'm not focused. I think maybe it's time to buckle down, figure out what I want from the game and start making some decisions based on that. Perhaps I need a schedule to keep me on target, like, say play certain toons only on certain days. Maybe I need to take a formal, complete break from the Horde side of things for a while, you know, make it official in some way, and just focus on powerleveling Seona and Co. for a bit. Maybe I'm still overthinking the whole thing and need to worry a whole lot less about it. It's probably going to be a moot point when I have to move into the new house in a month or two anyway.

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