Combat Tours and War(Craft) - Part 2: Ch-ch-ch-changes

First let me apologize for the generic and totally uncreative title, but I couldn't think of anything more appropriate to sum up the feel of what I'm trying to do with this post. 

You see, recently I went through a pretty significant change in World of Warcraft.  My old guild, Royal Apothecary Society, run by my wife and I, had become pretty much defunct.  When the holidays rolled around, a lot of folks went on hiatus.  We stopped raiding, lots of people stopped logging on, and things slowed down considerably.  Then, I spent some time in the hospital, an incident which you reading this may or may not know about (it's been resolved, I won't revisit it).  Long story short, when everyone started to come back from the holidays, fewer and fewer people were online at any given time, and those that were rarely did anything as a group.  Holly and I were left to make the hard decision: we packed up and left.

A good number of our close friends and allies came with us, but we decided we'd had enough with the Horde guild on the Winterhoof server.  Instead deciding to join a few friends before us who had migrated to Azgalor, on the Alliance side, we resolved to bite the bullet and pay for the faction/server changes. Since the migration, I've noticed a few things.  First, we're enjoying the game again.  The people on the new server are mainly new friends, with a few old familiar faces peppered in there.  It seems that most of them, however, share the same philosophy and sense of humor regarding the game and life as my wife and I do, and it's been a very welcoming environment.  There were bumps here and there, with a few of my friends who made the trip with us, but aside from the initial culture shock, I'm happy to say it finally feels like a fit. 

Another thing I've noticed, is how much fun PvP servers can actually be.  I had always dreaded leveling on a PvP server, hearing the horror stories of the maxed out characters who patrol the lower level areas, looking for fresh, easy targets, sitting on their corpses, and making it impossible to progress at all.  While I've only run into that instance once, I find it exhillarating.  You never know when a high level player may swoop down on you, or when there's a rogue lurking around, waiting for the right time to strike while you're minding your own business.  It adds tension and frustration, sure, but it makes the game more exciting.  Plus, when you get tired of getting killed over and over, you just hop over to your higher level character(s) and give those players a run for their money.  It adds a dynamic to the gameplay I never knew was there.

All in all, I'm glad I made the change.  Along with the fresh new content that Cataclysm has added, coupled with a new, well-suited group of friends to enjoy the game with, and a familiar entorage of old companions to share these new experiences with, the game has become like new again.  It's fun, it's engaging, and it makes me feel better about dropping almost two hundred dollars of my tax refund to move all four of my level 85 characters. 

Stupid alt addiction.

-TehKnuck out.

Fourty Thousand Kinds of Awesome.

So it's been a while--quite a while, but I think it's good that I'm writing again. Quite a bit has gone on in the past month or so since my last post. Things have changed at work, things have changed at home, but since I'm a gamer, and I blog about gaming, I think what I'll talk about here is what's changed in game.

So I recently started really getting back into the Warhammer series. Warhammer - Age of Reckoning was always fun, and the 40K Dawn of War games were great fun, but I'm discovering a passion for the actual tabletop miniature game. I'm not sure if I'll ever actually play the game in a real setting, but there's something therapeutic and relaxing about sitting down, putting the miniatures together, painting them, and watching the army come together. Maybe it's the part of me that loves being creative, maybe it's the part of me that enjoys methodical repetition of creative pursuit, but I'm at peace when I'm working on my miniatures.

Ironic, then, that a hobby that revolves around an intellectual property that thrives on combat and war, can bring so much peace and tranquility. Is it the creative outlet of assembling and painting the miniatures that I find so relaxing, or is it some part of me that never truly made peace with the fact that I am not in a combat zone anymore. Maybe on some subconscious level, I need that sense of conflict and warfare, no matter how artificial, to truly allow myself to feel any kind of peace. Before I go off on some introspective existentialism, I'll bring this back to where it should be, as are all my posts: video games.

The true draw of Dawn of War to me, is how it's not only a mixture of two things I love; the Warhammer mythos and video games, but it's also just another thing I can share with people I share these interests with. Both avid fans of the Warhammer series, I've played Dawn of War 2 cooperatively with both James and Shawn, two of my closest friends. Something about being able to log in from our home computers, in James' case several states away, and communicate effectively and quickly enough to establish and enact strategies that push us through even the most difficult of the game's encounters. It's amazing to me, that we can command our respective squads, operating so differently and with their own unique abilities and strengths, to balance our assaults and overcome the challenges the game sets before us. It's being able to take that adaptability, experience, tactical knowledge, and calm-under-pressure that was tempered in a real-world combat zone, and channel it in a fictional, recreational environment.

Now that Retribution, the most recent expansion pack has been released, I'm excited to rekindle that camaraderie. With James engulfed in RIFT, something I'll tackle in a later journal entry, I look to Shawn to help me take on enemy hordes and stand side by side against the onslaught of attacks. One of us will have to make a sacrifice, though, you see. He prefers the undisciplined fury of the Orks, and I have a sacred obligation to my Emperor and fellow Space Marines.

Ah, who am I kidding? I'm a sucker for a good WAAAAAAGGGH!

-TehKnuck out.