There is a time for everything . . .

. . . and the time for me to stop subscribing to World of Warcraft is now.

That's right. After just over five years, I'm hanging it up as a subscribing player. I'll still play occasionally, since now WoW has gone "free to play" to level 20. But my days of raiding and playing at level cap will end as of next month when my sub expires.

This is not a sudden decision; it's been coming on for the last few months. It's not because I cannot afford it.

Basically, I'm paying for a sub I am not using as much as I once did. I've logged into WoW maybe three times in the last week for maybe an hour or so each. Before this, I was spending in excess of 20 hours a week playing the game or reading up on the game or researching specs, raid strategies, gear, etc.

Now, with all I have going on, I have a different set of priorities.

There's also the fact that Jameece no longer plays. I really enjoyed playing WoW with her. However, she did not enjoy raiding, she hates PvP and is far more into the social element of the game. I like having her along for my adventures.

Finally, there are the changes that went in with the latest expansion. There's some awesome stuff in there . . . but when they dialed the difficulty up on normal mode raids, it hit a point where I could no longer keep up. My reflexes are not that good to start with, so I tend to stand in fire too much for the folks for whom this game is life. In the last expansion, I could keep up with the kids in terms of staying out of the bad stuff. I cannot do that anymore.

Even now that they dialed down the difficulty a bit on the previous tier's raids . . . I just don't have the time or inclination anymore.

Right now I am getting my game itch scratched through Facebook games like Backyard Monsters, Galaxy Online 2. I'm also active in the Central Valley Pathfinder Society, doing table top RPG at Fresno's most awesome game store, Crazy Squirrel Game Store.

I am not rage quitting and it is not goodbye forever. It's a sober recognition that now is the time to go do something else. After all, things change, people change, and under a different set of circumstances I could see myself going back to Azeroth.

Weekend WoW: Loot Piñatas Gone Wild

A Good Weekend™

The quest to get Decently Geared™ took some twists and turns this weekend. Ran Naxxramas-10 Regular on Friday night. Anub'Rekhan, Grand Widow Faerlina, Maexxna, Noth the Plaguebringer, Haigan the Unclean and Loatheb -- all enjoying their weekly dirt naps. Of course, I was a "FAIL" once again at the Safety Dance with Haigan. In Military Quarter Instructor Razuvious took us to "The School O' Serial Wipe," thus ending a decent raid. Clothisis, holy healer-type and Girlfriend Supreme, pulled some nice upgrades -- as in "Tier 7 shoulders" off Loatheb. It was FUN helping her determine which Tier 7 shoulders to get. Tier gear is tailored (pun not intended) for a specific specialization. Since Clo's specialization is Holy (healer), all her spells are cast at friendly targets so there is no miss chance and no need for Hit Rating stats on the gear. Were she a Shadow Priest, she'd need Hit Rating to overcome miss chance against bosses. I helped her select the Spellpower / Haste, not Hit Rating / Spellpower model shoulders.

My wow-heroes.com gear score -- an index of gear quality that too many party leaders are using to evaluate people for pickup groups -- is now a comfy 2246. This value is the best among all death knights in Clothing Discouraged and 15th overall in the guild. I am happier and happier with my raw damage output -- 2.5k damage per second when full-up raid buffed with food, elixirs and spells. We have some folks -- warlocks and rogues -- pushing 3.5k dps.

I'm getting there. Now to help Clo get there too. Need to run her through more Heroics and get her some much better gear.

Saturday was the weekly guild progression / wipe-a-thon in Ulduar. Sadly, Clothisis is barely geared for Naxx-10. We are still learning the fights. I missed the guild's dropping Flame Leviathan, XT and Razorscale, but I got in on kills of Kologarn, Auriaya (the Crazy Cat Lady) and Freya on Sunday. Fortunately, the proceeds of Gear Nobody Can Use -- as in "I already have better / and there's no paladin who can use that piece of mana-regeneration plate armor in the party" -- fund the massive repair bills (8 gold per wipe, 25 personal deaths on both runs all weekend, times 10 party members, is a buttload of gold) for the armor repairs from all the wipes.

Sunday morning I went on a timed run through Caverns of Time: Stratholme (aka "More Zombies! More Zombies!) on Heroic mode for a shot at a bronze drake epic flying mount -- and I won it! On Sunday, it seemed like I was beating loot piñatas . The belt I was after for so very long (before I sprung for the badge belt) dropped in Heroic Nexus . . . three straight times this weekend. Ran Trial of the Crusader on regular mode with the guild and got a new epic helm for my secondary specialization armor set, then on Sunday night after Ulduar I ran ToC in Heroic mode with a pickup group (the Looking for Group channel / interface is.my.friend) and scored, you guessed it, Tier 8 shoulders off Eldrac the Pure. The T7.5s I got the other day look better on my toon, but the T8s increase my dps.

I still have one non-epic item in my main spec set: a trinket. My off-spec set can still use rings and trinkets, and I'm still nowhere near defense-capped.

Random Bloggery

1. Health milestone was reached today -- I am back under 400 lbs! I weighed in at 397 lbs this afternoon. Me has a happy. Walking and taking the bus really really helps. Walking consumes kilocalories from the food I eat, makes me think at least twice before wanting to go out and get more food, and generates natural endorphins that promote mental health, taking the bus builds up my supply of "cope" for assorted random stimuli.

2. WoW: Scored enough emblems last night to buy my first Tier 7.5 armor piece for Tyrtrinos, Valorous Scourgeborne Shoulderplates. In doing so, I also replaced the PvP trinket I was using with a good one for raiding -- Sphere of Red Dragon"s Blood. That trinket is my last remaining non-epic piece of gear. There's a Naxx run tonight; I hope to get Grim Toll tonight.

(Later) "Tonight" has come and gone -- the Naxx run made it through Arachnid and Plague Quarters. I still suck at the "Safety Dance" but Clothisis -- Meece's toon -- scored for herself some new bracers and, on her first try at 10 man Naxx, her Tier 7 shoulders off Loethab. My haul was a set of boots for my tanking armor set.

Musings, ventings, raids, etc

Just a bit of venting. Nothing serious.

1. It seems like ripoff artists are getting more and more brazen all the time. Between idiots who do not know how to make change (and assume that I do not count back my coin and match that count to the math when it is given back to me . . . I've had two of these con artists at various retail establishments in the last month), "scare-ware" scams, "Free" Credit Reports that are anything but, getting honest-to-Ghu checks in the mail with fine print like "cashing this check signs you up for our exclusive service where we charge you $15 / month for a 2% rebate (max $100 / year) on your credit card", "credit cards" that are little more than sweet looking poisoned hooks into one's income stream . . .

Fortunately, my father is an astute businessman who counseled me even as a wee child to read the fine print. I did, and do. As a wee childe, I was also a fan, back when being a consumer advocate was still cool, of TV consumer advocate David Horowitz' wonderful show "Fight Back!" Horowitz's segments on predatory business practices always included "the tip-off to the rip-off" -- the clue that you are headed for a fiscal reaming by buying into a too-good-to-be-true "deal."

The same tools can be applied to the various Internet scams, like the recent Facebook drive-by scare-ware antivirus / anti-porn download. The driveby download popped up a scary looking Windows Explorer window on my Mac (running 10.5.7, not Boot Camped or running winderz in a Virtualization engine) with a dire warning about virii and pictures of nekkid people and the immediate need to remove them by downloading this lovely little .exe file.

However: Windows virii do not run in OS X
Not only that, OS X does not have Windows Explorer windows.
I can see how an inexperienced user might be panicked into buying
Preying on folks who do not know better and in some cases cannot know better pisses me off.

2. "Your Skill In Cooking Has Increased By (a lot more than) 1" -- I got a confirmation this morning of one of the reasons I have eschewed cooking my own meals at my current digs. My roomie, an otherwise reasonably tolerant and calm soul, is a neat freak's neat freak who makes Felix Unger of Odd Couple fame look like Pigpen from the Peanuts comic strip. I am not a total slob -- at least not anymore! -- but I tend to be not obsessive about my immediate surroundings. Common areas are another matter. Roomie informed me that my kitchen cleaning was not to spec, the stove top and counters needed to be wiped down. However, I did those things!!

So, rather than get pissed off and engage in my nominal default (avoidance) behavior and not cooking just to keep His Anality off my arse -- and to save money -- I need to do a better job than the everything but polish the fscking thing job I'm doing now. Part of me -- the lazy, tantrum-prone little boy inside me -- wants to say "Bite me!" and stop cooking. However, since Meece entered my life, I've begun to get a certain enjoyment from cooking my meals. It's more than saving money, it's about crafting something healthful that I will enjoy in the making, the eating and even when I talk to Meece about it. She inevitably suggests variations to my ideas -- some I'd already considered, some that I'd not even thought of.

I know, about bloody time I started cooking. The old excuse -- "Mom did not deign to teach me" -- does not cut it anymore, if it ever did. I've had some good teachers to overcome my lack of childhood instruction. Now I have the positive feedback that enjoying cooking gives to motivate me to try New Things™

3. Naxx-a-ramma, Part Deux. Tyr's been back to Naxx. Phat Lewts dropped from the Lewt Pinatas therein. Tyr even got some phat lewts from there. I'm very close to having a full set of main spec epic gear. My "gear score" -- a numeric measure of equipment quality -- is over 2k (which is OK for normal Ulduar!) now, and there is still room for improvement.

4. Major annoyance last night. One of the USB ports on my MacBook no longer accepts a USB A plug. Visual inspection of the lower case showed that the port appears physically misaligned. Looks like it's going to need service.

Assorted SoTR bloggery 2009.07.23

Health: Weight, SGL and blood pressure are down, mood and exercise are up. My wounds are getting smaller every time I get the dressings changed.

Relationship: Meece continues to amaze and delight me. She has taught me some good, practical and cheap cooking tricks and tips. With her help, and that of my roomie, I now have a mini-fridge in my room in which to store food. My roomie is still adjusting to my trying to cook, but I'm actually starting to enjoy cooking.

WoW: After a lot of thought I've decided to not move my Alliance shaman over to Kilrogg (the realm where Meece's toon lives) for the time being. A couple of reasons for this -- one, I have some close friends over in Draka I'll lose contact with if I move Dak again, and two, I have another shammy (Marty, over on Kul Tiras) that I might be able to move and switch factions to Alliance because Blizzard is working on a cross faction transfer feature.

So, to play with Meece I started a Death Knight and leveled him to 80. Now I'm raiding Naxx again.

Last night was my first Naxx raid on Tyrtrinos. It was a 25 man Heroic raid, so there were some good loots. I really got lucky and got three new epics: off Grand Widow Fraelina I got Fire-Scorched Greathelm, from Anub'Rekkan Ruthlessness, and Strong-Handed Ring from the end boss in Arachnid. We're going back tonight, but the only things I'm going to be able to win is Tier 7 gear, since this raid's rules forbid me winning any more boss drops except for Tier pieces.