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Attitude

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Larisa has another keeper over at the Inn, and it got me to thinking. It's very easy to become disillusioned in WoW. The late content tends be very repetitive, and one can get bored with grinding.

Yet when I recall my first days in WoW, they were very nearly rapturous. Never had I seen a game so captivating or fun. Of course, part of that was massive feel of the world--who can forget the first time wandering into a high-level zone and aggroing a huge skull-level mob? Everything was fresh, new, and interesting.

I think there's more to it than that. Back in n00b days, I didn't read the forums, I didn't read wow.com, I didn't check ElitistJerks, and I didn't read any blogs. Now, I wouldn't suggest stopping all that--for a good player, it's basically necessary to read up on your class--but too much forum surfing and so forth is a downer. Larisa had another post about this awhile back, but it's basically attributable to the amount of whining that happens in those places:
Whenever there’s a small temporary change in the game mechanics, people go nuts about it, complaining, bitching, moaning, whining about the cruelness and stupidity of the developers. Eventually they manage to create a negative atmosphere around the whole event, effectively taking the fun out of it for everyone else, even those that from the beginning didn’t have any clear opinion about it of their own.

So I don't do grinds that bore me, instead I seek out new adventure in this gigantic world that Blizzard has created for us. My latest project--soloing every Outland instance. I hit 70 in October, so I missed most of them the first time around. I did the hardest one first--Magister's Terrace--though I suspect due to game mechanics that won't be the worst one. Botanica was a lot harder, due my inability to kill all the tree adds. Ramps, of course, I can do in two pulls.

And while I do check wow.com occasionally, I don't read the forums, and don't read extensive QQ blog posts. I figure Blizzard is on top of their game, and they haven't ever really let me down. I do read things that make me happy, like TPPI, but I would like to mention one more--Wowhobbs. This guy is just so happy to be playing the game, so chill and laid-back, such a wry, subtle sense of humor, and such a natural entertainer that every one of his movies is like a hot cup of tea and a blanket. Course, I play a tank paladin, so maybe I'm biased.
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