Revenge of the Nerds

Fair warning: this entire blog post, except for the picture that will appear at the end of this paragraph, is going to be interesting to exactly ONE of my regular readers, and even then, it's only of interest tangentially, because it's about World of Warcraft, which her husband also plays -- hi, Uelander! (Incidentally, I just felt all your eyes roll back in your heads.) Today's WAB-fest is about how I spent the entire weekend dying repeatedly on a 25-man Naxxramas run, and how this has caused a nervous breakdown / midlife crisis. Again. So feel free to skip this mess, after you check out the photo of the Cupcake below, which I managed to work into this entry because she is wearing my new gaming headset.

Minimage the Pwnstar - "Less QQ, more pewpew!"

Meanwhile, back in Azeroth: recently I have been bored just questing and farming and working on achievements, so unless I knew I had something going on, I haven't been spending a whole lot of time in-game. I hit level 80 back at the beginning of February, and my guild was pretty casual, so we weren't really going anywhere, and there wasn't a whole lot for me to do. I worked on getting some vanity pets, and made some gold, and grinded some reputation, but mostly I loitered.

And then a week ago, one of my guildmates (who was also something of a mentor to me) left to join another guild, one that was more active in running heroic dungeons and raids, and which had actual healers and stuff. When he went, two other of our active high-level players went on to other guilds too. In all of my life -- or at least in the game, anyway -- I had never felt so alone.

The thing about MMORPG's is, they're very social, even when they're also very competitive. Which is pretty much me: friendly, yet competitive. (Ask anyone who's ever played Trivial Pursuit with me.) And as much as I love the people in the guild, I also needed a challenge. Sitting around in front of my monitor for hours at a time, virtually shooting the shit, was not worth the however many dollars a month I am paying to play the game.

I needed to see new things, do new things, blow up new things with my (relatively) new talents. So with the gentle prompting of my mentor (and "game husband"), as well as a fellow guildmate of his who is so many kinds of awesome, I left one guild and joined another.

And suddenly found myself completely over my head.

For the last three nights, I was part of a 25-man Naxxramas ("Naxx") run, which means that 24 other people, most of them complete strangers to me, spent approximately 12-15 hours killing big bosses and getting "phat lewts" and gaining honor and tokens and prestige, and I spent that time trying not to look like a complete asshole and occasionally setting out a Fish Feast.

Great success on the food front; not so much with the "not looking like an asshole."

Which -- as World of Warcraft so often is -- is a total metaphor for my so-called life. I jump headfirst into things without being completely prepared. I fail at first, or come close to it, and feel like a yutz. I wallow for a day or two, cry and scream and gnash my teeth and rend my garments, and then ... I pick myself up, dust myself off, start all over again. That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

Except Patchwerk. He's a badass.

And why are you still reading this? Are you waiting for another picture? Okay, fine:

Cupcake Jenkins - "GTFO n00b! WTF? BBQ!"