A new start

The 25th of August it happened - I made a new account on US side!

My first 10 Achivementpoints :D

I have a thing about "starting fresh" on new realms, I really like the whole "struggle" with no money, bags, glyphs etc, and work myself up from nothing. However, when I do that (on the EU side) I have access to things that make my life easier, like heirlooms, fully leveled pets and heirloom mount from lvl 1 (love that part btw Blizz <3), so it is not really starting fresh.

Lately I have lacked inspiration, so a couple of weeks ago I started an account on the US realms. After a lot of fuss and confusion and "how do I actually DO this??" (thanks goes out to Rel for mental and practical support :D) I finally could start a character -guess 3 times what race and class I picked ;p.

And talk about starting fresh. I had NOTHING. No achivements, no heirlooms, no mounts or pets. Or that is not true. I had the pets that are account bound (blizzcon pets etc) and the 1 mount from winning some matches in Heartstone, but was also it. 1 mount and 4 pets. But, I dont need more then 1 mount, lucky me it is a flying mount too (once I get there!). :D

My own little bodyguard^^

So basically, I'm starting fresh. The only thing I have is my knowledge of the game, and the character(s). Everything else is wiped clean. Terrifying and exciting, both at once! :D

If you follow me on Twitter, you have probably seen some screenshots from my journey, I am very excited and happy about this. Only backdraw is that there is the 6 hour time difference from servertime and my RL time. Aka when I log on in the morning it is middle of the night realm time, my afternoon is mid-day over there, so I haven't really been online much in the "coretime" of the rest of the realm. Which is fine really, less people around and no queues (I picked one of the most busy realms on US side: Zul'jin). Zolvolt was nice enough to accept me into his guild, Exiled Legion (@zolmation on twitter)  Backdraw is that ofc I dont really get to know the folks in the guild much because of the time difference.

However I am fine with that since I do enjoy just doing "my thing". :) I have never been the "lets group up and quests together" type of person, I like to fiddle around on my own. Me and my bf have tried to level together a few times, but we both get distracted on each our end ("oh look! A mine/herb!" /strolls off :D) so we stopped doing that.

My favorite quest! <3

Also, I have all these plans for my "second start", maybe someone find them recognizable:

- If I start a zone, I will fully explore it AND get the quest-achievement for that zone.
- When capturing pets, try to only collect green/blue pets (if I capture a grey/white one, I will try to find a green/blue, and then I release the lesser one).
-having gathering professions while leveling to get money, later will change it to 1 gathering 1 production profession. What will depend on what AH can offer / cant offer. So far it looks like inscription will be the smart choice. Im over lvl 30 and still not found glyph of penance... GRR!

That is what the journey have brought me so far. At the moment I am in the Hinterlands, one of my favorite zones. Or, one of many. :) I am enjoying it a lot, just running around by myself, being happy over green upgrades to my gear :D I have not done any dungeons yet, I had originally planned to do that, but I chickened out. I really am a wuss when it comes to pugs. Even lower lvl ones :D

I can really recommend it, if you feel like having a new start and start from nothing. First leveles are hard but after that it becomes trivial again. And boy I was happy to have that Heartstead-mount in my bags when I (finally) dinged 20 :D

Onwards, horsie!

Rant

I see in my twitter-feed, and in game in general, many people complaining about this expansion, "nothing to do" and "I only sit in my Garrison" and general QQing. And when new things are out they complain that they have to go out and DO THINGS. "It is too grindy" "Oh great, DAILYS again" etc. I must admit I get a bit /roll eyes over this. 

Like everything else in life, you have a certain responsibility to entertain yourself. There is a lot of content there, you just need to go out and do it. "Yes but I don't like to do that, I don't like to pet-battle / do archaeology / level alts / LFR is boring/heroics are boring" -take your pick. And ofc my favorite: "Omg I have to actually go out in the world and do things to get flying?! I HATE THIS." Excuse my French: then do something else then for the love of all that is holy! No-one is forcing you to do ANYTHING. If you don't like the game they made, fine, play a different game. And yes, the game changes. And yes, it is good. I played the game in Vanilla and believe me, it was NOT better. Running everywhere till you were lvl 40, and then you got a SLOW mount. If you could afford it, that is... 

Damn right xD

 Sometimes I feel that the more Blizzard is doing to keep people happy, the more complaints they get. Yes sure, sometimes things dont play out the way they had planned (pretty sure Blizzard didnt think everyone would just sit in their Garrison all day) but that is how it is. Now they have tried to fix that with adding new stuff. Yes its dailys, and I am the first to admit that the first days I felt overwhelmed with the time it took to do them. Now, a week out in the new stuff and I have my head wrapped around it and its done (if I want) in a  lot shorter time then first round. I can choose: do I only want to do the dailys, or do I want to get extra apexis and do all/most of the bonus events too? 

                                              IT IS ALL UP TO ME!

Or maybe I simply can not be arsed to do dailys that day and just sit and fish all day instead? Maybe I want to level my druid, or log my hordepriest and shoot the breeze with my horde-guildies. I can do that. You are in charge of your own happiness in game just like you are in this thing called Real Life. 

There, rant over^^

Random thoughts about latest events

The things that have happen the last month or so have gotten me thinking (never a bad thing -or is it...? ) about a lot of things. 

When guilds break or somehow don't work out, it give you a sort of  sadness much like when a personal relationship with someone you love comes to an end. When it is going on you are filled with contradicting emotions; anger for how it ended, sadness for what you lost, happiness for the good things you had together. Specially when the ending was not of your choosing. 

Being on your own is not as fun or interesting as you maybe thought (not that I thought it, but if you are the leaver you might believe it will be awesome and find out that it really is not), and finding someone else to fill those holes left is not done in a hurry either. Or if you do, maybe you jump into it for all the wrong reasons. Loneliness, the wish to have fun with a team again, but find out that it is not the same kind of fun. Maybe this is specially for me, since I don't change raidteams very often. In fact over 10 years, I have been only in 5 (raiding) guilds counting my current one. 

When I joined Nova back in February, I so nervous and full of anxiety for messing up or in some other way make a fool of myself. Nova was a big step up for me, progress-vise, but after some stressful weeks, I managed to calm myself down and find my spot in the team, and I felt like wow, this is actually a great team. A lot of nice personality's, and also got to raid with some old friends of mine, as well as getting new ones. 

So the shock when one of the officers, a highly trusted one, "took off" with most of our dps'ers to "start fresh" on a new realm I was really shocked. I could not believe it. (And yes, I know they made an active choice to go and all that, but someone planted the seed in the first place)

This happend right before I was going a weeks holiday, we had just killed Thogar on Mythic and I thought the spirit of the guild was quite high. 

So many dead, but also boss so! :D

Then it exploded. We were left with tanks and healers, but 8 dps was gone and Turalyon is a "small pond" with few "fish" in terms of recruitment. Some felt so betrayed, they decided "this is it" and stopped their subscription. Also the GM's. After giving up so much for the guild, and then have something like this happen to them, it was just the last drop. I can not blame any of the GM's/officers that put so much time into this and then being left like this.

You might say "that is the way of the game" and a lot of other crap, but it is not an excuse to treat people you have known for years as bad as this. I know it is the way of the game, people come and go, but if you are not happy, and it don't get better, you go to try to find somewhere to call home, but you don't destroy the guild on your way out. 

Anyway. I decide to wait a few weeks to see what was going on, but with very few online that also felt very "meh" to use a very common "Class-word". After couple of weeks had passed and nothing new happend, other then the GM telling me to go look elsewhere because they would not try to paste the guild back together, I started looking around... In the end I decided to test out a different guild on a high-pop realm.

It is always strange to be on another realm, first time I have main-raided on a different realm. It is also a PVP-realm, which I am not too excited about xD It feels a bit like betraying Turalyon.

First raid was (sorry Matt :P) horrible in my eyes, and really made me regret the move. Decided that "OK, we can all have bad days/raids/whatever, and there are some nice folks there too, so lets see for a few more raids how it pans out". Tuesdays raid was already a lot better, tho comments like "we need more gear to do this" kinda makes me /roll eyes. :P Sure gear helps but all the gear in the world will not save you if you meet your fate with random trains (yes we are at Thogar Mythic)... Anyway. Fun and games ;p

If I don't not manage to fit in (never know with teams, how they work out and how I work out with them and so on), I think I will have a raiding break and just be a "dirty casual" like the rest of my friends atm. ;-) And I mean dirty casual in the best of ways! :D Hanging out, chilling, playing some lowbies or whateva'. :) 

I am not sure what happend to our realm (connected realm even, Turalyon+Doomhammer= still very low populated :S), in the last month 3 of our top10 guilds have kneeled. All around Nova's progress-level. I know ofc that the subs are going down etc, but really.. Turalyon/Doomhammer now have lost 3 progress-guilds in a month, that is a lot IMO. And this was before the ban-wave even.

Ending this with a picture of the monk that I absolutely love, BUNNY EARS! Just to have something sweet to finish this post with ;D

Transformation

As some might know, I have recently moved guild to Nova, residing on Turalyon EU. I do not change guilds often, so for me it is always a huge step to take, leaving old friends behind to find new friends and challenges. Thankfully I have good friends, and we stay in touch across guild-borders. :)

I have always considered myself as a skilled player, able to follow instructions (and bossmods ;-)), being well prepared and sharing my information with my fellow healers and guildies. 

For my trial Nova they were starting on Kromog HC, and the goal after was Blast Furnace HC. The first trial raids I played quite well, IMO, read up on bossfights and came with suggestions and input on bosses per usual. We killed both bosses -with me on the selected group- and I felt included, even if I was not in the guild at the time. After two raid-nights, they wanted to give me an in-guild-trial. And this Tuesday, a week later, they decided to rank me as raider, making me extremely happy!

Last Wednesday raid, we were clearing up to Kromog and beyond, and WOW I died a lot. Trying to remember tactics for 10 bosses, while learning 30 new voices (ok, 25, since I knew a few from earlier :P) was hard! Didnt help that suddenly we were a much bigger group (30 people vs. 15-20 when learning Kromog and BF) then earlier either, so I felt pretty lost. Everyone knew each other, and I did not know anyone at all.

I have always loved the 10 man raid-format. It was just enough people for everyone's personality to shine through, but those times are gone. I have raided 25 man before tho, so it's mainly an adjustment issue. :)

But it have to be said, my play the first week of raiding in Nova can be easily covered by the meme under here.

Then it helps to have people to talk to, and /soothe my crazy mind. Like a friend in the guild said: I know you. I know you are good! Relax and it will be so much better! :)

Adjusting to the guild socially have gone very well, they are a nice bunch of people, it is a bit step up raiding-wise, more hours, but also very efficient. I like the drive, and the humor in raids.

Wednesday we killed up-to and inc. Iron Maidens on HC in just a few hours, leaving Blast Furnace and Blackhand still alive. Not bad for a few hours of raiding. All over I played better Wednesday then the first week, but Iron Maidens can just go die in a fire (yeah pun intended ;p)... For the rest I did ok, so I am hoping that slow and steady wins the race. That every day I get more confident, and trust myself again. :) I am -after all- pretty awesome! ;-)

I have spent the last days thinking how to change things around, and I think what I have to realize is that TPR-Class is a different person/player then Nova-Class. And I need to find out who Nova-Class is. I have to find my place in the group. I always have some adjustment-time for new guilds, and so it will be here too. Usually I land on my feet. I hope I figure her out soon, so my nerves can get a break, and I can relax a bit. And so my friends can have a break from me obsessing over this ;-)

At the end, a song I have been listening to a lot lately. :D