Project Lore

Thanks to a lovely excursion to Anaheim, California for something, an enjoyable trip to plague ridden Seattle, and the recovery time from said plague, I've missed a fair bit of raiding.  Actually, I have missed almost a month's worth of raiding.  I've never missed a full month of raiding unless I was still leveling, or not playing the game at all.  Coming back to raiding is a new experience to me, one that makes me feel incredibly dirty. You know that feeling when you haven't showered for a few days; your hair is oily and shaggy, your skin feels like it has an extra layer to it, and your feet have begun to grow a new breed of penicillin?  I've felt like that, disgusting, dingy, dirty, during this week of raiding. I've misplaced Tricks of the Trade (be faster on that Feign Death next time!), dropped Slice'n'Dice, blown openers, allowed Hunger for Blood to dissipate and mistimed Envenom after Envenom.  In short, I've been a total n00b the last few play sessions.  As if completely dropping off of the "good" side of the DPS chart wasn't bad enough, I even did something I haven't done as long as I could remember.  I failed at the same thing in an encounter not once, but twice.   You better believe that was a night filled with /facepalm. My utter failings came as a complete shock to me.  Sure, I've take a week or two off here or there for vacations, I've had friendly rogues come back from excursions only to complain about ruining their spell rotation, but I never thought it was this bad.  I never thought it could happen to me!  I never dreamed I could be this bad again!  But the proof is in the pudding, I've absolutely blown chunks in every possible way since returning. Other than raiding - simply brute forcing my way back to nimble fingers and high DPS - I have no idea what to do.  There's nothing I can easily correct.  As far as I can tell the only remedy is to simply get back into the rhythm, get playing and get focused.  If you guys have any bright ideas on clearing the cobwebs and knocking off the rust of vacation I'd love to hear them. Please, for the sake of my ego, tell me I am not the only person to ever experience a total lack of skill after an extended break.  Lie to me if you must.

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Hardcore. Casual. Newb – however you spell it. These are all terms that are tossed around a lot in World of Warcraft. Our own glossary defines hardcore as the following, oh wait, we don't have a definition. We do have various incarnations of newb though, newb, newbie, noob. All the definitions are the same, a new player or a derogatory term to “suggest that a player is not very good”. I have never tended to agree with the classic definitions of hardcore and casual gamers though. Just because you spend a lot of time gaming does not make you hardcore in my mind. The flip side is true as well, only playing WoW five hours a week doesn't necessarily make you casual in my book. The labels should not be linked to the time spent on just the game but on the experience as a whole. I was hardcore in the traditional sense before The Burning Crusade hit the live servers. I would eat up any and all information on the game while spending more than a few hours a day in Azeroth. Like many hardcore raiders of vanilla WoW – including most of my guild – I drifted off into the sunset when TBC hit. No longer do I raid multiple times a week, or spend more than three hours in front of the screen commonly. But I still consider myself to be a hardcore player. Why do I consider myself hardcore if I only play the game for a few hours ever other day? Because I still dedicate myself to the experience. I have created long standing goals for the game, I spend massive amounts of time reading the background lore, staying up on the latest happenings in Wrath or the PvP scene.  Oh, and I also write about it.  WoW isn't simply a game for me, or the other hardcore players out there. It is THE game. So if the hardcore make it a part of their life, what would casual be then. Casual players to me are the ones who are in it for the short term gains. Mainly, these are the players who just hop on to kill time or chat with friends. They never bothered with the quest text, they don't knit pick over who the first Death Knight really is, they just play the game for something enjoyable to do. Of course, there is no 'a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square' restriction. A player from the casual group can become hardcore at any time and a hardcore player can become casual just as easily. It is all a matter of how serious you take the game, in my opinion.

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