Just when I think I’m out…

Cue Al Pacino.

Okay.  So, I didn’t really think I was on the verge of MMO retirement, but a vacation might not have been beyond the realm of possibility.  The fact remains that I will always have a few hours each evening to kill and need something to fill that time slot.  Since I can’t stand to sit on the couch and watch television, that is out.  I enjoy going back and playing old console games from time to time, but I can only do that for brief periods.  I’m not about to buy one of the new console systems because I think they are stupidly priced, I think the games are even more stupidly priced, and no matter how much people crow about a particular game, when I play it, I tend to find it boring… or at the very least unable to live up to the hype.

And I can typically find a way to kill a couple of hours in my MMO of choice because typically, MMO’s have several options available for things to do.

That not withstanding, around this time yesterday, I was pretty convinced that it was time for a break.  I thought about dusting off an old favorite like Baldur’s Gate or FF7 to play for a bit while I waited for my MMO batteries to recharge.

I jumped on last night with the intent of just chatting with a couple of people and, depending on how I felt by the end of that, possibly letting them know that I was going to take a few weeks off.

Right when I logged on, I got invited to an impromptu run on the Shard of Hate.  It was going to be an alt night run and I was told I could bring my brig if I wanted (my only other toon high enough to zone into the zone) or I could stay on Rao.  Not feeling like swapping accounts, I stayed on Rao.

I enjoy the Shard of Hate.  We haven’t ever cleared it.  In fact, I don’t think we have ever killed any but the first 2 named.  Still, I enjoy it.  Those fights that I have done don’t have any of the crazy scripts that I dislike so much, so it actually feels like one of the old-school raids that I enjoy.

As I was traveling to meet up with the raid force, something in my chat window caught my eye.  I scrolled up and got quite a shock.  The husband/wife team who were officers in my old guild on my old server were both online.  They hadn’t been online for MONTHS.  I shot them a tell and ended up spending most of the night in cross-server tells with them.

They had taken a break from EQ2 and tried out World of Warcraft.  Like me, they found the game boring, predictable, and overly simplified and burned out relatively fast on it.  Afterwards, they took a break from gaming but then started feeling the pull to come back.

They logged in to discover our old guild all but gone.  There were still a few members left, but they were mostly lower level alts of people who had moved on to bigger things.

During the course of the conversation, they mentioned that they were debating a server transfer and started asking me about RnH.

I don’t know if they will end up making the move or not, but all I do know is that it would be a lot of fun to play with those two again.  I could definately see myself having a lot more fun and hilarious adventures with those two.

Working out this morning hurt like hell.  I’ve been a runner off and on my whole life and, for whatever the cause, I have also been prone to getting shin splints my whole life.  Today was supposed to be racquetball day, but after yesterday, I didn’t know if I would have anyone to play against.  As a result, I decided to do the treadmill instead.

For the most part, up to this point, I have just been doing a very fast walk on the treadmill.  I know what kind of condition my body is in and I didn’t want to force too much too soon, so I’ve been walking.  I had planned to kick that up to a run today and then alternate running and walking if it got to be too much.

I got on the treadmill and started it up.  I intended to do 1 minute at a slow walk, 1 minute at a medium walk, and 1 minute at a fast walk before kicking it up to a run.

During the first minute, I felt a twinge.  When I sped up for the second minute, I felt a burning.  When I sped up again for the third minute, I was gritting my teeth.  When I tried to speed up again to a run, I nearly fell off the damn treadmill.

I ended up slowing it down to a fast walk after less than 10 seconds and spent the next 20 minutes gritting my teeth and sucking air through my teeth in an effort to keep from being beaten down by the pain.

By the time the 20 minutes was up and I stood off of the treadmill, I was limping so badly that I wasn’t completely sure I could even make it out to my car.  I spent a few minutes walking slow laps around the workout area and the pain finally passed.

Afterwards, I hit the abs for about 10 minutes before finally heading home.

I’ve always loved running and it is definately something that I miss doing.  I definately don’t miss the pain though.  Maybe on Saturday, I will be able to get up to a run and keep it there for at least a little while before having to go back to a walk.

The Pirates Curse

Continuing the trend of slinging my half-assed opinions around, I came up with an analogy in my head last night that explains (and makes sense to me anyway although others might and probably do disagree) why I am so disillusioned with raiding in EQ2 right now.

My dislike for raiding is a relatively new phenomenon and I’ve been trying to figure it out myself for some time.  I couldn’t quite seem to put my finger on when it started or why I had these feelings, but in a moment of sleep-deprived genius (or insanity) last night, it hit me.

I loved the movie Pirates of the Caribbean.  I thought the story was well done and hysterical.  The plot moved along nicely and there was a perfect balance between the realism and the special effects.  I enjoyed it so much that I was hugely excited when a sequel was announced… and I rarely get excited about sequels since they generally suck.

Well, I thought Pirates 2 did truly suck and I thought 3 was even worse.  The plots for both seemed clunky in the extreme, the humor felt forced, and the balance between realism and special effects was gone.  The special effects had taken over.

That’s how I feel about raiding in EQ2.  I didn’t start raiding until recently (relatively speaking), but I have gone back and done many of the old raids mentoring low level people.  My first raid, however, was Vaults of Vyemm.  I loved that raid.  I also spent quite a bit of time raiding Freethinkers, Mistmoore and other various older raid zones… and loved them all.

My dislike for raiding pretty much arrived when we started raiding Kunark zones.  The Kunark raids are so bloated… so overly-scripted that they just make them completely… unenjoyable to me.  The whole concept of “melee for this long using only auto attacks.  Use only CA’s during this period of time.  During the next phase, only casters can do damge.  In the background, X number of people have to click this item in their inventory.  Later, Y number of people have to enter into the creature and click Z number of clickies.  Later, all DPS has to be turned off and 4.2 people have to click exactly 8.7 items scattered around the room.  Once those items are clicked, only people whose names begin with an R can engage while all people whose names start with an S have to dance.  People with 4 letters in their names have to drink potions while those who have green eyes have to immediately enter the Legends of Norrath card game.  Exactly 14.3 minutes into the encounter, everyone has to scream into their voice chat, “Oklahoma!” and then slam a shot of whiskey aged exactly 12 years and only from the state of Oregon.  The second the mob’s health drops to 1%, everyone has to strip off their armor and trade it with the person to their left or the mob will complete heal and you have to start over…” that just sucks the fun out of raiding for me.

I didn’t log on last night at all.  I didn’t log on for 2 reasons.  Reason #1 was that last night was raid night and I had a fear in the pit of my stomach that we were going to raid Venril Sathir.  I simply couldn’t face another stupidly scripted raid.

Reason #2 is that a good friend from back home was driving down for a short visit.  He has been playing EQ again on the Mac server and he really thinks I will enjoy it with as much as I enjoyed EQ in the pre-GoD era.  He had an extra Mac machine and he brought it down for me to use to check out EQ mac.

We got it loaded up and spent some time just talking like we used to over our Saturday lunches where we would frighten the hell out of normal people by talking about “killing dragons.”  Once the machine was loaded, he logged on to one of his toons to show me what the game was like.

I’m anxious to give it a whirl.  My current disillusionment with EQ2 demands that I do something different for a while and this might just be the perfect answer at just the right time.

 

This morning was the best workout I’ve had since I started this last Monday.  It was intense, tiring, exhausting, and it felt great.  What made the difference?

My workout partner that I griped about yesterday didn’t show up.  I was able to get in, do what I wanted to do without worrying about him, and get out.  I feel bad for saying so, but I hope that this morning was a sign of things to come.

Meh

I hate days like today.  I woke up… not really angry, but just a bit cranky.  Smiles are forced and I can’t seem to summon a laugh at all.  There is no reason for it… it’s just how I woke up feeling.

I’m trying to fight my way out of it, but situations so far are testing my ability to do so.

My “workout partner” is only a workout partner in the most basic sense.  Prior to last week, he had never stepped foot in a gym before.  For those who have read this site often over the last 2 years, you have probably heard me mention on more than one occasion that I have 2 co-workers… 1 who does his job and does it well and 1 who literally does nothing but surf the web and play flash games all day.  Whenever he actually does something, he screws it up and creates more work for me and the other guy.

It is this lazy co-worker who has been working out with me… and his “work ethic” follows him to the gym.  He shows up late every morning and half-asses his way through everything.  He complains constantly, has a can’t-do attitude, and wants to spend more time talking and watching the TV’s scattered around the place than anything else.

This morning, it got to be too much.  It was his idea to do treadmill cardio today instead of playing racquetball.  As usual, he showed up 10 to 15 minutes late.  He got on the treadmill next to me, put it on the slowest speed the thing would go, and immediately started talking.  When I didn’t answer, he asked if I was pissed.  Not wanting to get into it at that point, I said, “I’m trying to concentrate and I’m starting to get a bit winded.  It’s not that easy to talk.”

He laughed and snarked, “I guess I’m in better cardio shape than you.  I’m hardly feeling it at all.”  That’s when I got pissed.  I glared at him and said, “I’ve been at this for 15 minutes already.  Why?  Because I got here on time.  You’ve been at it for about 2 minutes.  I’m at a 6% incline grade and the speed is set at 7mph.  You are set at a 0% grade and the speed is 2mph.  Now, it’s your money and you can half-ass this all you want, but don’t expect me to go down that road with you.”

I got finished with my run and went over to work abs.  Literally a few minutes later, he was over there.  He must have spent all of 5 minutes on the treadmill.  I kept doing my abs and he stood there watching television.  When I was nearly done, I asked, “You going to do any of these?”  He looked confused and said, “Oh, I thought you were just playing around.”  When I told him what I was doing, he said, “Oh, I can’t do those.  I guess I’m done.”

Out in the parking lot, I let him know that if he wanted a quick and easy workout that would never bring a single bead of sweat to his forehead, I would be more than happy to write one out for him.  However, starting next week, I’m out of slow motion mode and hitting it hard.  He could either get on the bus or be left behind, but I didn’t join a gym just to hand away money.  I’m taking this seriously and I’m not going to just sluff through it all because he can’t handle a little discomfort and doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of the word “work.”

Now that I have that out of my system…

I didn’t play much last night.  I logged on and saw that nothing was going on, so I skipped over to my ranger and started working some of the Butcherblock quests.  I’m kind of sick of those quests though so I didn’t stick with it for long.  I did enough to ding 25 and then logged.

I jumped over to Ray and ground out a tradeskill level on him bringing him up to level 64 sage, but I wasn’t into that either, so I called it a night.

I spent the rest of the evening lying in bed reading.  I’ve been reading an autobiography called I Am Jackie Chan.  I bought this thing years ago, but forgot I even had it.  I dug it out a few days ago and started reading it and it is actually a fascinating book.

I’ve always been a fan of Jackie Chan movies because I love how he just doesn’t take himself all that seriously.  I also respect how much of the work he does himself rather than only doing the easy stuff and leaving the harder stuff to others.

The book actually explains how he came to be that way while also telling the very rough road his life took to reach the point he’s at now.  I’ve been enjoying it a great deal.

A coercer, an illusionist and an assassin walk into a bar

Without order or planning, this weekend turned into alt weekend.

I’ve been tinkering around with a few alts lately for a very specific reason.  See, for the longest time, I was the only dirge in our guild.  Not much time passed after I joined that I became the only bard of any kind in our guild.  This was both good and bad, but I think the bad far out-weighed the good.  For all the griping I do about the bard class (mostly in jest), I recognize the utility that both dirges and troubs bring to groups and raids and I always felt bad knowing that we had 3 groups on every raid who were not getting all the help that they could be getting.

In the last month or so, however, we have had an onslaught influx of bards.  We gained a second dirge and then had an old dirge who had left the guild come back.  We gained a new troub and then had 2 other troubs level to 80.  Suddenly, we had 6 bards… 3 from each flavor.

I am by no means a raiding genius in EQ2, but my personal understanding is that you want 2 dirges and 2 troubs on a raid… no more.  Suddenly we had 6… all of whom were interested in raiding.

Since I have a mostly love/hate relationship with the dirge, I started thinking about the situation and decided that perhaps the best thing I could do for the guild was identify another area where we were missing a key class and level up one of those.  That way, if we ever faced a raid where we had more bards than we needed, I could switch over to another class and fill a different roll.

Of course, I have an 80 brig and we haven’t had a brigand on a raid in a long time due to the fact that our main brigand also has a fantastic healer and we typically need him healing instead of… briganding… or something like that.

The problem is that my brigand is pretty gimp and I am not 100% sure why.  Part of it, without any doubt, is his gear.  Part of it is my lack of grouping experience on him.  Part of it is, I’m sure, just me.

We have a few brigands who show up from time to time however.  What we don’t have is an assassin.  We gain an assassin from time to time only to have them leave a few weeks down the road.  So I thought I would try one out.

I created my assassin a couple of weeks ago and worked him through the Freeport version of the Isle of Refuge, but my main intent at the time was to farm items I could use to level up transmuting on Rao.  Once I was done with the Isle, I parked him in Freeport and didn’t touch him again.

Saturday morning, I dusted him off and started to work on him.  I initially took him to Darklight Woods since I’ve never done the quests there, but I just couldn’t get into that particular quest line and soon found myself over in Timorous Deep.

I get into tells with a friend in the guild and he tells me he has a zerker over in TD.  He was at the Mok Rent portion of the questline.  I told him I would let him know when I got there and we could group up.

I hit level 16 right at the time I got over to Mok Rent.  About that time, another guild friend logged on and decided he would join us.  But then he changed his mind on which toon he wanted to play.  Originally, he was going to play his zerker, so it was going to be 2 zerkers and an assassin.  He decided on his coercer instead.

The only problem was that his coercer had already done the TD quest line.  We decided to hit Fallen Gate instead.

We weren’t in FG for long when we started gaining new alts into the group.  People saw what we were doing and were eager to dust off an alt and join the fun.

We blasted through Fallen Gate taking out every named that happened to be up and then moved over to Crushbone.  We pretty much did all of Crushbone and then did the D’Vinn instance at the end.

When all was said and done, I had leveled my assassin from level 16 to level 29.

When I got online yesterday, I saw the coercer and illusionist alts back online and working through Zek, so I headed over to join.  It wasn’t long before we had more joining us again.  Even though we were too low, we decided to give Deathfist a run.

In annoucing what we were doing, we had one of our level 80’s ask if he could join and mentor for the AA, so we joined him up and in we went.  We kind of figured to die to one of the first mobs and be forced to head somewhere else, but we ended up clearing the zone.  My vitality long spent and not having anyone mentored to me, the exp went quite a bit more slowly, but I still managed to hit level 34 before we were done.

Last night was raid night, but I honestly can’t remember much about it.  By the time the raid started, I was physically exhausted.  Getting up at 5:30 every day last week was difficult, but my body has already adapted and I was up at 5:30 on Saturday and Sunday as well.  As a result, my body was screaming for a pillow by the time the raid started.

I remember that we started on Pawbuster, but I honestly couldn’t tell you why we decided to do him.  About all I remember is the pull and the kill.  Everything else is kind of a blur.

Once he was dead, we hit Tomb of the Mad Crusader to take down the first named.  Again, I don’t remember anything about the fight or the loot.  The only thing that I remember from that part of the raid was that when we were setting up for the first pull on the named, my screen suddenly went blurry.  I was about to announce in raid chat that I had been hit with some kind of an AE when I looked and saw a message in my chat that I had just taken a drink.  I checked my drink slot and realized with horror that, in my tired state, I had equipped a highly alcoholic drink… and I have an alcohol tolerance of like 3.

For the first pull, I literally could not see a thing.  Fortunately I had my raid window open so I was able to target through people and target those who I needed to battle rez.  When it came to attacking though, I don’t even know if I was facing the right direction.  For all I know, I could have been swinging at a light fixture.

Fortunately (for me), we lost on the first pull and death cleared my vision.  I quickly destroyed the remaining drinks from that stack and put something else in its place.

Beyond gaming…

I woke up Saturday morning around 5:30.  My alarm was set for 7, but my body didn’t want to stay in bed that long.  My gym doesn’t open until 7 on Saturdays so I read a while passing the time.  When 7 finally rolled around, I hit the gym and did a few miles on the treadmill. 

I got home and showered and then went to a clothing store and bought some more workout clothes and some court shoes for the days when we play racquetball.  I own several pair of running shoes, but I hate playing racquetball in them.  I used to play exclusively in running shoes because they are more comfortable, but the first time my shoe lost its grip on the floor, slid the wrong way and I broke my ankle cured me of that.

I also ordered a new racquet over the weekend.  I still love my old racquet despite the fact that it is definately old, but the strings and the grip are worn out.  Due to the unpopularity of the sport where I live, I haven’t found a single place in town that can re-string it so I just decided to buy a new one.

Sunday is my off day so I didn’t do anything.  I nearly went to the gym to hit the treadmill again, but I decided that I need to take at least 1 day a week off… and that means taking it off.

Needless to say, I was anxious to wake up this morning and get back to it.  The workout this morning felt great.

I’m going to put us through a fairly rigorous workout on our weight days this week and we are going to do more treadmill than racquetball this week.  After this week, I’ll shift gears and we’ll go more to a workout designed for toning, endurance, and quickness.  I already told my workout partner that I have no intention or interest in “bulking up.”  I wanted to when I was younger and the result is that I am already bigger than I want to be.  If he has an interest in putting on muscle mass, I will be happy to coach him on how to do it, but that isn’t my focus this time around.

Of course, my biggest challenge is getting him to put down the damn food.  He seems to think that he can eat whatever and as much as he wants… especially now that he’s hitting the gym.  I’ve got to find a way to convince him that he needs to start regulating what goes into his mouth.

I got a look of fear out of him this morning that was priceless though.  He said, “My back is really giving me problems.  Can we do something to strengthen my lower back?”  I grinned the most evil grin I possess.  “Remember those abs you said you didn’t ever want to work?  The best way to strenthen your lower back is to strengthen your abs.”

Bringin’ the pain tomorrow.

Don’t listen to me

I can’t decide if it is silly or just sad how many people are annoyed with me right now.  Most are people I deal with in the real world although there have been a few in game who show the same annoyance.

The worst bit came from a co-worker just this morning.  He asked if I wanted to go get stir-fry for lunch.  I thought about it and said, “No, I better not.”  Instantly, he was upset and said, “This is because of that stupid health kick you are on, isn’t it?  I wish you would hurry up and get over it.”

In game, the frustrations have come because I’m not spending nearly as much time online as I used to.  Most especially, I am logging off several hours earlier.  Where I was playing from 7PM until 11PM or midnight most days, I now log on around 7:30 or 7:45 and then log off no later than 9.  People invite me for instances and, most of the time, I have to tell them that I don’t have the time.  If I go and the instance runs long, I end up leaving before it is over.  I warn them in advance that I’m gone at 9 whether we’re done or not and they seem okay with it… until I actually leave.

I had one person say recently, “Geez.  All you talk about on your site anymore is fitness crap.”  Maybe my perspective is a little slanted, but I’ve written 504 posts (not counting this one) in less than 2 years.  Of those, maybe a dozen even mention fitness or exercise of any kind.  Most of those that do have happened this week and also go on to talk about EQ2.  That doesn’t seem like a lot to me really.

“But you are just an IT guy.  You try to talk like you know what you are talking about, but seriously… do you?”

I don’t know.  True, I’m an IT guy now, but I worked in the fitness industry for 11 years.  I held multiple training certifications from The Cooper Institute and was also a registered dietician and nutritionist.  I was a certified aerobics and water aerobics instructor.  I was certified through the Red Cross to teach basic and advanced water safety, lifeguard certification, first aid, and cpr.  I was a martial arts instructor and a self defense instructor.  I studied exercise physiology at my university for 3 years and, for the past 10 years, even though I haven’t been active, I have tried to keep up with all of the trade journals… and I don’t mean Muscle and Fitness.

Does any of that mean anything?

Not really.  My certifications are long defunct and the most exercise I have gotten for the last decade (with few exceptions) was running to the fridge to refill my Dr. Pepper before the raid started.

“So why should anyone listen to you?” came the question from a mouth curled in contempt.

Honestly?  No one should.  I don’t care if my certifications were all current and up to date.  I’m talking about it because I have a passion for it and this week has reminded me why.  I feel like I’m waking up after a long nightmare and I can’t even express how good it feels to be feeling like my old self again.  I’m sorry if the person you knew is being replaced by someone who is happier, more energetic, and laughs a lot more, but I hated who I was.  I was ashamed of who I had become.  When I looked in the mirror, I saw a stranger… and I’m not talking just physical appearance although that is part of it.

But no… no one should listen to me.  They should listen to themself.  Without doing that, you could be working with the most motivational person on the planet and it won’t do any good.  It’s just noise unless you listen to yourself first.

And if you have no interest whatsoever, that is fine too.  I’m not trying to be an evangelist.  I won’t try to convince you to change your mind. 

But I’m sorry… I am going to talk about it.  I might not discuss it every day and I might even go days or weeks without making a post about it, but they are going to come.  Why?  Because this is what I am excited about now.

And you know what else?  Remember how down I’ve been about gaming and EQ2 lately?  Well it seems that much of that was just another symptom of the larger problem.  Since making the decision to try to find that person I used to like who has been gone and forgotten for a decade, and since finally putting all of that into motion, gaming has become fun again.  I might not be doing it to the extent that I was and it has fallen WAY down on my priority list, but the time I do spend online is much more enjoyable to me than it has been in a very long time.

So while I am sorry that there are people out there who don’t necessarily like the changes to me, my game time, or this site, I am not going to change back just to keep the peace.

This is who I am.  This is who I’ve always been.  I had just forgotten for a while.