Crickets!

Woah - over a month since my last post! I haven't lost interest with the blog, just lots of extenuating circumstances. See, for me the creative process takes a lot of energy. Perhaps my inspiration threshold is higher than others or something. Is that just an eloquent way of saying that I'm lazy? The latter might be more accurate!

The long version: Cold #3 of the season (or the 3rd return of the same one?) really kicked my butt. I'd been skipping gaming sessions, not playing World of Warcraft, going to bed early instead of hanging out watching DVD's with my wife, etc. Just pretty much sucked out my motivation and energy. Antibiotics and one week later, I'm feeling pretty much myself again.

Factor #2, for the last week or so at least, was finally hitting level 60 in WoW. I'm still on my level 60 honeymoon, and loving the WoW. Being able to finally hang out with my guildmates that I'd fallen so far behind is just great.

Without a wonderful group of people to hang out with, a MMO could be a boring game. Raiding with the Twilight Alliance bunch though? What a great group of folks. We're a casual guild, but we attempt some difficult game content. Most guilds would look at me, a recent level 60 with my crap gear and, admittedly, rusty instancing skills, and say "yeah, maybe you'd better stay behind for a while."

Not these guys. I'm welcomed into the raid, and everyone does their best to help me to learn and progress. The family atmosphere we have is really amazing. We've got a great diverse bunch, including lots of women (which I think is really refreshing), and just generally a hilarious bunch of gamers.

My most recent example? We were raiding Zul'Gurub last night, and one of eeeevil bosses that we slew, Bloodlord Mandokir, dropped the third best bow in the game - Mandokir's Sting - as treasure. Most guilds run a points system, and only give out epic gear to the best of their players and/or the ones that contribute the highest amount of hours raiding. Not my guild. These guys really want to help out everyone, working very democratically to pull the guild up by its collective bootstraps. They happily presented this bow to me (as the sole hunter on the raid but still the newest level 60 in the bunch), with well wishes. Great bunch of folks. No, they don't need to worry about me putting my time in to "pay back" for this bow - I'll be there simply because they are the kind of people that they are.