Words that annoy me

I made a list of words which MMO bloggers use that make me feel dumber just for reading them. I will assign them "dumbpoints" which is a word I made up to express how much dumber I think a person is for using these words in a serious context, along with a short definition of what they really mean.

Content -- 2 dumbpoints. The cutscenes that you need to watch before you're allowed to complain that you're bored with an MMO.

Casuals -- 4 dumbpoints. Term which can be adapted to refer to any group of players of an MMO who are not currently in a world first raid.

Dancing -- 8 dumbpoints. Term describing what players do in any action video game ever made, but hate doing in MMOs.

Themepark -- 10 dumbpoints. Term used to indicate that an MMO is designed for kids who need to be told what to do and are entertained only by Content [see above].

Sandbox -- 6 dumbpoints. Term used to indicate that a game is a proper MMO for intelligent adults.

Free2play -- 14 dumbpoints. Everyone seems to use this nonsense term these days. Is it a trademark or something? Why do people think it's a word? It's three words, with spaces in between, and none of them are numbers!

LFR -- 0 dumbpoints. I need to accept that everyone in WoW uses the wrong names for everything. There is no feature in World of Warcraft called "Looking For Raid", it's called Raid Finder. But everyone calls it LFR for no reason.

Directionless

It occurs to me that I haven't been blogging much recently. I don't even mean posting... usually I end up with at least one or two drafts per week: ideas that I don't end up having the time and/or impetus to explore properly. I guess I've been busy.

My raid group has folded. It's been a long time coming-- I know I've felt it since early Dragon Soul. Too many of our regulars left, and recruitment just wasn't happening. Feathermoon Alliance seems to have very few skilled players these days [though ironically Horde seems to be doing well]. Plus I think recruitment is something that really needs to be done proactively, not just once our progression starts faltering due to not having enough people to field a consistent roster. It doesn't matter how good your people are, having poor progression will scare away anyone good enough to improve it.

So this is kind of the end of an era for me. I've been raiding with Drunken Badgers since Ulduar. I'm not really sure what to do now. Our raid was actually pretty unique; few competitive progression groups raid only once per week.

Maybe it's time to try a new server. Or even faction... I've always liked the Horde races better anyway. Feathermoon is just not the place it was when I joined the server back in early Wrath. But with seven Level 85+ characters on Feathermoon Alliance it would be a pretty big tradeoff to lose all that... infrastructure. [Or a hefty price tag to bring it with me.] But I recognise that it's only because I feel like I've spent so much time building it up that I don't want to "lose" it. The raiding game is deliberately designed so that people with a lot of in-game resources don't have an unfair advantage-- these days the only way to get an advantage in raiding is to spend three hours every day grinding daily quests.

I got my auction mule account back up and running again, so that's been churning away again. I don't feel like I'm totally poor any more! I'm currently stocking up on base materials in anticipation of the upcoming raid patch and the massive sales spike that that always brings.

Right now, the auction house is the most compelling part of the game for me. I've got fingers in more than a few pies these days, and managing it all can be a pretty involved process. I have multiple google docs full of notes, lists of materials and optimal crafting procedures. It actually works out to be a really well-structured timesink, I can spend a small amount of time and just do the optimal stuff [relisting items, craft something I'm obviously low on] with diminishing returns on any longer amount of time I want to put in.

I think I should raid again. Not just for the enjoyment of the activity itself, but the way it makes the rest of the game more meaningful by having that social group at the core.