Gestalt Mind

It’s official.  This site has been going for 1 year as of today… and that is hard for me to believe.  Sometimes, it feels like I have been doing this for far longer.  Other times, it feels like I just started it a few months ago.

A lot has changed in the last year.

When I first decided to create this page, it was mostly for the benefit of 1 or 2 friends back home.  When I was still living there, we would get together on Saturdays for lunch.  We would spend a few hours eating and talking about games.  During the week, we would e-mail constantly talking about what was going on in this game or what new game we were waiting on.

When I moved, that all stopped.  We tried for a while to keep up in e-mails, but my new job kept me too busy to do much of that and they had less time at work to respond or send e-mails as well.  So, I created this site as a place to write out what we would normally discuss.

The timing was strange for starting this as I was really between games.  I had quit EQ 5 months before and started playing SWG again.  At the time that I began this blog, I had burned out on SWG again, Vanguard had launched and imploded, and I was very much between games.  Going back and reading through my early entries, they were very much about nothing at all.

I never really imagined that this site would spread beyond those few initial friends.  Now granted, it is by no means one of the major players in the blogverse, but it has definately grown beyond what I ever thought it would.

From the day I launched this site last May 16 to the end of the month, it gained fewer than 50 hits.  The next month, it scored just slightly over 60 hits.  It hovered in the 60 hits per month area for some time.

Today, one year later, I get between 1000 and 1800 hits per month.  I have had just under 10,000 hits total.  This post marks post #272 that I have written.  I have made several new friends from this site and have come to appreciate aspects of the games I play in a whole different manner… by seeing what other people enjoy and then looking for those elements that I had missed myself.

I’ve gone from being a part-time SWG player looking for a new game to a full-time EQ2 player.  I have moments of wanting to play something else, but I’ve mostly been dedicated to EQ2 since last October.  I am again dipping my feet into SWG on a very limited basis and am seriously considering re-upping the All Access on one of my accounts so that I can continue in SWG on that same limited basis as well as jumping into EQ1 and Vanguard on occasion.

I can honestly say that I enjoy keeping this site… mostly due to the interaction with others that it has created.  I love to write and babble about what I am doing in whatever game I’m playing, but beyond that, I love the fact that I get the chance to meet and chat with new people on a regular basis who share the same interests as me.

So thank you to those who visit here daily or occasionally.  It makes me happy when I see each day the number of people who have visited and read my incoherent babblings.  A year ago today, I had no idea if this site would even last to the end of the month.  Today, I find that I’m curious to see where we’ll all be on May 16, 2009.

I don’t know the answer to that obviously, but I do know that it will be an interesting ride… full of wonder, adventure and excitement.

I personally can’t wait!

I died hard when I got home from work last night.  I didn’t realize how tired I was.  I’ve been pushing myself pretty hard for the last few weeks and I don’t sleep much anyway, so when my body is run down, it takes no prisoners and makes no apologies for just dropping me.

I walked in the door in a semi-haze.  I remember the drive home and it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but when I was pulling into my parking spot, I remember getting dizzy and hearing a slight buzzing in my ears.

The walk from my car to the building and up the flight of stairs just seemed difficult… as if I didn’t have the motor function to work steps.

The strangest part is that I don’t remember thinking anything about it.  None of it seemed normal, but I just couldn’t seem to care that something weird was happening.

I opened the door, went inside, dropped my stuff on the coffee table, slid open the balcony door (it was cool and rainy all day yesterday, so the breeze was nice and smelled just like spring showers), and dropped on to the couch.  I think I was actually asleep before I made contact with the couch surface.

I opened my eyes feeling a little confused.  The clock said 9:15 and I just couldn’t make sense of that because I knew I had just gotten home from work.

I stumbled to the bedroom and changed out of my work clothes and into my “it’s my house dammit!  I’ll dress like a slob if I want to!” clothes and then fired up the PC.

I started working my way around Qeynos doing the new city quests.  The first one was a bit silly.  Outside the Temple of Life, there was an NPC that I talked to who told me a story about the flying saucer vanishing, then reappearing, spinning like crazy, and going back to normal.  Now, he doesn’t feel worthy to go inside.  He suggests I talk to others to hear their experiences.

The first is right behind him.  The last 3 are about 4 feet away.  All I had to do was click and read their stories.  Well, I didn’t have to actually read the stories and judging by how quickly others were flying up to and past the NPC’s, I think I was the only person who actually took the time.

After clicking all 4, I got rewarded with a book for my house.

I went inside to the temple and there is now only 1 person in there.  I chatted it up with her and she sent me out to try to cure the citizens of Qeynos.  In North Qeynos, there are a few diseasted NPC’s, but I saw now more than 5… and half the server seemed to be racing to cure them.  Once cured, they stay cured for a while and no one else can cure them, so there were just packs of people standing around waiting their chance.

I went to the hamlets, South Qeynos, and Qeynos Harbor.  Tons of sick and ignored NPC’s there.

After the first potion failed to cure the NPC, I had to return and get a different potion.  The second worked and I then had to cure 12 people.  After curing my 12, I returned and she sent me out to kill a false priest who was making everyone sick.  I killed him and was rewarded with a dagger that makes me light up like my robe is on fire.

Here is where things get uncertain for me.  She will now give me the quest again to go cure people.  I do it, return, and she offers it to me again.  I ran it a couple more times last night before logging off, so I’m not sure if it is forever repeatable or if she will eventually ask me to do something else.

I was still far too tired to keep running it though, so I camped out and went back to sleep.

Apologies to Stargrace who started chatting with me.  I think I completely dropped the line of our conversation right in the middle of it.  I was just far too out of it to hold coherent thoughts.

I actually did sleep quite well last night… although I still feel very tired.  Hopefully I’ll actually stay awake when I get home this evening.  Nights when I fall asleep on the couch actually annoy me because it just feels like such a waste of time.

Plus, it makes me feel like I’m turning into my father.

And that is definately a /shudder moment.

With the patch hitting EQ2 yesterday, I really wanted to play last night… if nothing else, to revel in my expanded bank capacity.  I was also curious to take a look at the new city quest hinted at in the patch notes and see what new piece of cool I might get for my houses.

But, I was afraid to log on.

For years in EQ1, patch days were days of dread for me.  Even if all else went well, you could almost bet money that something would be broken for bards.  Over on eqdiva.com, a site that was very alive back in those days, we started running betting pools to see what would be borked this time.  It became a running joke and almost lent an element of fun knowing that the class you played was always going to have things wrong.

It wasn’t an intentional thing on the part of the developers.  They explained time and time again that bards were so complex that there were just countless things that could go wrong with them… things difficult to foresee.  Many players refused to believe the explanations.  I, for one, took them at their word.

Through years of tentatively logging on and carefully making that first pull only to be glamourously smushed when you suddenly found the new bug in the middle of a kiting session, and through years of occasional server roll-backs due to major issues, patch days terrify me… and I simply don’t play the day a patch goes live any longer.

So, last night found me again in SWG… which means up in space killing gunships and fighters in my quest to obtain a gunship of my own.  I realized while I was engaged in that killing that I’m not 100% sure that I can be a multi-game gamer.  I’m going to try it for a bit simply because I’m to a point where I enjoy both EQ2 and SWG, but I need to take both in smaller doses.  Still, I wonder how it will work.

I’ve tried it once before.  It didn’t work then.  When I was logged into SWG, I was thinking of EQ.  When I was in EQ, I was thinking of Vanguard.  When I was in Vanguard, I was thinking of SWG.

I think what we can conclude from this is that my brain has shit for brains.

Years ago, I spent my summers managing a swimming pool.  I started as a lifeguard and got promoted my second year to manager.  Our summer began in early March prepping the pool for summer.  In mid to late April, once the pool was ready, we would start teaching Lifeguard certification classes, First Aid classes, and CPR classes.  We would also start the interviewing and hiring process.  Once we had our guards hired, we would begin certifying them to be swim instructors because our guards pulled double duty.  The morning guards would teach swim lessons in the afternoons and the afternoon guards would teach swim lessons in the mornings.

Through 8 years of doing that, I constantly preached one truism that most people know but still fear to do… the best way to get used to cold water is to jump right in.  Wading in slowly just prolongs the agony.

I dropped the ball on that last night.  I decided, after nearly a week off, to log back in to EQ2.  Rather than jumping right back into the mix, I decided to ease my way in by doing a nice and simple harvesting run.

The last time I played Ray, I was harvesting with him.  Contrary to how I normally do harvest runs, I didn’t complete the evening by heading back to Gorowyn and banking the supplies.  I just camped him in Enchanted Lands at the base of the bridge into Rivervale.

When I logged in, it took me several minutes to even remember where I was.  I spent so much time playing SWG last week that I couldn’t remember even basic commands.  I kept trying to do the commands how I would have done them in SWG.

The result was a night of mistells, uncontolled, nearly spasmatic movement, and mass confusion.

My guild was raiding last night.  Last night was also a raid night for the guild my buddy recently joined after leaving the guild I’m in.  Through listening in on the raid channel for my guild and getting the occasionally broken chat tells from him as he tried to chat and raid at the same time, I started to think more and more than EQ2 raiding may just not be for me.  I haven’t done any yet, but the more I read and hear, the more I simply don’t want to do it.

I loved raiding in EQ1.  The raids could drag on and be a bit lengthy, but I still loved them.  I’m not sure exactly what it is that is different in my mind between the raids of EQ1 or what I perceive the raiding to be like in EQ2, but something has me convinced that it probably isn’t going to appeal to me all that much.

Still, time will tell.  I’m not going to totally write it off until I have tried it.

Jumping back into EQ2 last night did confirm for me that I was just suffering some burnout.  After the initial confusion, I did start to enjoy being back in.

I am now relatively certain that I will be jumping back in on the All Access with my main account.  I’ve been wanting to tinker a bit with EQ1 again just to see it all again and the latest round of changes in SWG are good enough to make me want to keep poking in there from time to time.  Hell, while I’m at it, I might as well pop in to Vanguard on occasion just to see how the game has improved.

I can make comments all I want like I did yesterday and claim that it is time to walk away from gaming, but I think gaming is just something that gets into your blood.  I’ve been a gamer since the first Pong console made its way into my house when I was 6 or 7 years old.  Here I am 30 years later.  The games are fancier, prettier, and more complex, but they still call to that same little boy who used to spend hours in front of the television trying to master hitting a square “ball” with a short rectangular “racket.”

What an unusual title that was.  Still, it was somewhat appropriate.

Yesterday, being Mother’s Day, I did my duty and called my mother.  Right after she said, “hello,” I quickly and in one breath said, “I just wanted to call to wish you a Happy Mother’s Day.”  I didn’t blurt it out quickly because I was trying to get off the phone as quickly as possible.  I blurted it because I knew that was the only chance I had.

And I was right.

As soon as the final word left my mouth, I got a very quick, “Thank you” in return and then, it began.

For the next two hours, I endured the barrage of, “You know, you aren’t getting any younger.  If you expect to have kids of your own some day, you need to get off your butt, find a nice girl, and get married.  Hell, at this point, marriage would be optional.  You just need to get moving.” and on and on and on.

The entire makeup of the argument was silly because it just assumes that I want kids.  It doesn’t matter how many times I tell my mother that I don’t want kids… it never sinks in.  She responds with profound statements like, “Oh sure you do.”  Counter-arguments like, “Actually, no I don’t.  I don’t even really like kids that much,” are met with, “Yeah you do.  You just don’t know it yet.”

It makes my head spin.  It is impossible to win an argument based solely upon wishful thinking and illogical reasoning.

Beaten and metaphorically bruised after about 20 minutes, I slumped back on the couch relatively stupified and, for the next hour and a half, just mumbled faint, “Uh huh’s” and “Sure’s” and “Whatever you say’s.”

I wish I had some wild and exciting (or even drab and boring) EQ2 story to tell this morning, but the truth is that I didn’t so much as launch EQ2 all weekend.

Friday night, I popped into SWG briefly just to chat with some old friends again and to gather some information on the quest to acquire a gunship.  Saturday, I spent most of the day playing SWG working my way through the Freelance gunship quest.  I’m about halfway done now.  Yesterday, I alternated between being verbally beat to hell by my mother, watching movies, and doing more work towards my gunship.  I’m about halfway through the quest now… the easy half.

I’m not sure that I’m going to keep playing SWG.  I have to admit that it is nice being back.  It kind of amazes me that so many people I knew are still there.  The community has gotten so small now that it is definately very tight and most of the people I ran into were friendly and mature… a totally new concept for that game.

Still, with as much as I love that game for the space aspect and even with as much as they have added to the space game, I don’t think there is enough there to keep me interested for long.  In fact, last night, I was logged on and chatting with some friends who were asking me how far along I was on the gunboat quest.  They were amazed that I was as far along as I am and were asking if they could come up with me to see how I was doing it.  I realized that the last thing I wanted to do was play any more, but I went ahead and went up for about 30 minutes so they could watch what I was doing, but that was all I could take.  I ended up logging off and calling it an early night.

All this weekend settled for me is that there is an off chance that I’ll reactivate the All Access on one of my accounts.  Most likely, I’ll be bored with SWG again before my free month is up though.  The problem is that I also seem to be bored with EQ2 at the moment as well.

I’m starting to think that I am in love with having something to play and am just playing games out of habit but that I don’t actually love or even really enjoy any of the games that are out there any longer.  That whole line of thinking has me searching my brain trying to discover some other interest that I can pursue as a hobby for a time… maybe leaving gaming completely for a while and see if I miss it or if I’ve just been playing out of habit.

That, of course, raises other issues… those being of a financial matter.  No matter how you look at it, online gaming gives the most bang for the buck by way of hobbies.  In the greater scheme of things, it is far cheaper than anything else I can think of at the moment.

I guess that is the big question though.  If I were not trudging through Norrath, Norrath 2 or a galaxy far, far away, where would I be?  What would I be doing?

The only answer I can seem to come up with is, “I don’t know.”