On Tuesday night we cleared all of Flex Siege of Ogrimmar in about an hour. Things fell quickly and we moved like a well oiled machine. We then conquered Siege on normal mode in the time we had left. Once again everything was a one shot and we smacked things down with brutal efficiency.
O.k., you got me. We didn't raid this week because someone decided to go on vacation and visit another state for his nieces wedding. It's my first trip to Arizona and i'm loving it here in Mesa. The scenery here is beautiful and it's nice and warm at about 80+ degrees daily. The kid's are going swimming each day and I'm getting lot's of reading done. (I finished Brandon Sanderson's "The Way of Kings" again, and I'm half way through "Word's of Radiance" the second book in that series. Might sound like a little reading, but each book is 1,000+ pages.) In a different world I could live here. I would happily trade the snows of Utah for 115 degree summer days.
Here is the big thing, I have internet on vacation. Decent connection etc... but I still haven't been playing a lot of World of Warcraft. Why? Because I'm on vacation. I'm in a space with my family, and my mother and father in law and I'm spending time torturing kid's and family as a good man should. That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of times where we are off doing out own thing. But it means that my priority is to be available to go out and take the kid's swimming, or run to the store again for the 15th thing we need for dinner tonight.
I get the feeling this will be my last vacation for a long while too, so I'm trying to enjoy it. Due to job switching I don't have a lot of excess time or money. As a matter of fact, if we hadn't already planned this trip I would have probably opted to sit it out and stay home working, rather then taking a week off and stretching finances a little.
So what does this post have to do with world of Warcraft?
The fact it's all about priorities.
In and out of game we have a lot of priorities putting pressure on us. I have known several people who have left game because they didn't have jobs or had strained finances. I applaud those folks for taking care of what's important before game time. I have also known several people who have played without holding a job, running up credit cards etc... that should have put their focus elsewhere. While I think it's important to keep some sort of entertainment budget even in tight circumstances, I also acknowledge that Wow is a time sink that can eat up time that people could be using to job hunt or otherwise better their situation. It's not the fifteen bucks a month that seems wasteful to me for these people. It's the time they spend online, often several hours at a time, that could be better spent elsewhere.
Even more Wow related is the time spent in game. When asked about whether or not you prepared for raid, the question should not just be, do you have your flasks, food, etc.... The question also allows for, have you worked to improve you ability to DPS, Tank, or Heal? If there are still upgrades in LFR have you run it? Have you looked up the boss fights so you know what is going on when you step in? Have you looked at your rotation, reforges, and gems recently? There is several things you can do to prepare for a raid, and it's not just the obvious things.
Same goes for PVP or any other part of the game. As far as preparation do you know the battlegrounds/arenas? Have you looked up strategies, or learned them yet. Have you studied your class? Most people just step in and learn here, and that means the moment you are in the BG or arena, you often become a liability for your team. Please give people the respect to at least have an idea of what you are doing.
This of course is not an all inclusive list, and there are always shifting and changing priorities for people. Our lives change as we get older and we find our selves stretched in new ways every day. The game we play is almost ten years old now, meaning that if you have been in from the beginning your life probably looks different from the day you sat down and rolled your first character. As a person this means you need to occasionally step back and look at how you have arranged the priorities in your life.
Edited, but might still be offensive to a couple of peeps
So I guess the question is, How do you prioritize things?
Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye
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