The hero of Canton the man they call… Jayne.

If I were a developer, I would so abuse my power.  I would write in code so that every single time I logged in, anyone near me would hear a guitar strum and then a deep voice sing, “Jaaayynnne.  The man they can Jaaaaaynnnnne.”  I don’t know why.  My name is not Jayne.  That episode of Firefly just cracks me up and I would laugh every time I heard that come out of my speakers.

Stargrace wrote this morning about another addition to the game that wasn’t mentioned in the patch notes.  Reading it gave me an episode of cold sweats and muscle twitches because I don’t have a crafter epic yet.  I want one… badly.  I have since they were introduced.  Now, I REALLY want one.  But, my closest crafter is only level 65… and he probably won’t be who gets the first crafter epic.  That honor will be reserved for my jeweler who is currently 61.

I should have some motivation to grind soon though.  I’ve let my crafting and, well, damn near everything with regards to EQ2 lapse recently because I have been so apathetic towards that game.  It hasn’t been a lack of interest in the game really… just a general frustration with my part in it.  I’ve been increasingly unhappy with my guild as their focus shifted in the past few months from “having fun” to “we didn’t reach the next tier of raiding on our first attempt at this mob?  We need to kick people from the guild and recruit some new people.  We have to progress, dammit!  Progress now!”

I’m not a raider yet.  I will be of the proper level soon, but I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to be consumed with raiding again as I was in EQ.  I want raiding to be a subset of the game… something I do on occasion.  I don’t ever want to forget that my guildmates are my friends and that the game is a form of entertainment. 

But, that is exactly what has happened in my guild.  They raid several times a week.  If they happen to lose a fight, the screaming and finger-pointing starts, war is raged on the boards, and then the pouting and silent treatment begins.  As an outsider looking in, it reminds me very much of watching 3 year olds play in a sandbox.

I’ve been on the verge of quitting the game for about 2 months now.  I still get a great deal of joy out of the game, but I was just so frustrated.  There are things I would like to do and see, but they are things I can’t solo or 2-box and they are all “beneath” my guild.  They no longer do things for fun… only for loot.  If it doesn’t have loot they can use, they have no interest.

I began speaking with Jaye several weeks ago about possibly joining her guild.  I’ve been concerned about doing it because of the cost involved of moving my toons… even with leaving behind several of them.  She allowed me to create a level 1 and join up so I could get to know them and decide if the cost was worth it.

I have to say… I love that guild.  Very fun group of people.

Still, the cost concerned me.  Money is tight at the best of times, but now?  Things like this have to be carefully weighed and considered.

I’ve waffled a lot over the last few weeks.  I’ve continued interviewing other guilds on my server… something that most of those guild leaders seemed amused by.  They seemed to think it was their job to evaluate me but that I shouldn’t have the same concerns and desires, but let’s face it… guild membership moves two ways.  The guild wants to make sure they get good people, but individuals should be just as concerned with getting all the information they can about a potential guild as well.

I actually found 2 guilds on my server that I like.  Unfortunately, I have strong reservations about both.  One is a multi-game guild and they are relatively dedicated to having an active presence in all major active MMO’s… which means that each time a new MMO is released, all of the other chapters falter a bit until they can rebuild.  My SWG guild did this and I hated it.

The other guild is a great group of people, but a little TOO casual for me.  I chatted with quite a few of them over the last couple of days and they are great people.  I would probably have a lot of fun there, but they actually currently discourage running certain instances because they feel that those instances go against the casual nature of the guild.

Checking these other guilds out was just an excuse though.  I’ve known for several weeks where I want to be.  I’ve just been dragging my feet because I didn’t want to spend the money for the transfer.

Last night, I finally made up my mind.  I spent nearly 4 hours stripping my crafters, selling what I could, and putting all of their nodes and advanced unscribed tomes into shared bank slots.  A few of those guys… it HURT to do that.  I’m the type of person who really gets attached to the toons that I play… even if I only log them on once or twice a week to craft a stack of arrows or a stack of food.

I also realized that I’m going to have to bite the bullet and transfer 1 more toon than I had planned.  I was going to transfer 4 toons… which makes my wallet weep.  Now, I’m going to have to do 5… and it is DAMN silly.

The 5th is just really a syntamental character for me.  He is the character that I created using the pre-order character creator disk.  He has my pre-order rewards.  He also has useless items in his bank… items that were removed from the game at some point after launch.

He is also a reminder of my old friends from EQ1 who I made my short initial journies in EQ2 with… and I just can’t bring myself to delete him.

I guess tonight is the moment of truth.  All I have left to do is to move the final 4 boxes out of my shared bank slots and then take down my final 4 brokers.  Then, I bite the bullet.

I know that I’ll be glad I did it in the end and I am more anxious than I can express to get over there and start adventuring with that guild.  I’m just dreading the bill.

But, back to my point… that guild still has some leveling to do.  I believe they are level 56.  I love helping people and helping my guild, so knowing that I’m helping more than just myself by crankng out tradeskill writs will result in me grinding my crafters even harder.

Plus, rumor has it that guild halls will FINALLY be released in just a few more weeks.  I want to help my new future guild on their journey towards GL80 as much as I am able to.