Guest Post: Musings of a Mod

Matt’s Note: Today’s guest post comes from a friend and colleague of mine from Curse. Thanks to Indelible for his help! You may or may not find it… disturbing and/or depressing. I finished exam #2 yesterday. 2 down, 2 to go and it concludes Saturday afternoon. Then I’ll go back to my daily routine of a near post-a-day rate.

It’s Sunday. It’s 12.45. It’s that time of day when you’ve just got out of bed and the air around you feels fresh and exciting. It’s damn cold as well and I want to go back to sleep. I can’t however as I was asked by Matticus to provide him with a guest blog about something wholesome and interesting…

I have however, run in to one major problem…

What exactly is there left to talk about? We’ve had our token PvP and PvE blogs. We’ve got our class blogs and our spec blogs. We’ve even got our blogs about other blogs. The blogging world is just a sphere of repetativness. What one blogger covers one week, is another bloggers gold mine the next and we end up going round in these viscious circles that claim the lives of many a blogger.

I guess that is what I shall talk about then. To hell with TheoryCraft and, “How To…” guides. To hell with Top 5 lists and, “You should try…” blogs. I’m going to talk about… something.

I’ll think of something in a second…

What Now?

I’m not an expert. I don’t know who started the very first blog. I don’t know much about the political side of blogging. All I know is that blogs have gone from being an obscure entity deeply hidden in the depths of the Internet, much like forums and Paris Hilton, to one of the single largest outlets of moronic and arrogant point making. They are sometimes opinionated, sometimes interesting and fullfilling, mostly painfull and anger-inducing; probably one of the most testing media arms in the known World, closely followed by Sky News.

Sounds like the perfect place to succeed, right?

Wrong. Blogging has to be one of the single most time consuming and effort involved activities you could ever undertake as a passtime. On average, I spend about 1 to 2 hours a day on my varying blogging efforts, and that doesn’t include side projects I am exploring and moderation duties at Curse so blogging really does b(l)og me down…….

I’m sorry. I’m in one of those moods.

Now, this neatly leads on to why you are all here (because I’ve finally thought about something to talk about properly). Well, it does in my head. I don’t actually think any of the above has any relevance to what I am going to be discussing but I’ve had a long day (despite the fact that I only just woke up) and you’ll have to sift through the crap to find the good bits… like with meat and… stuff. You are all here to get your daily WoW fix. I know that I have started off poorly and it is getting worse. You are worried you will be seeing pink Tauren’ if I don’t hurry up with the WoW-speak, right? Well, you are in luck as that is about to start now as we compare…

I can only think of one thing in the world worst than reading a blog or worse than writing a blog when you have major writers block.

Blogging – ’tis an art form.

Grinding… oh the horror…

Grinding – ’tis horrid. I hate it. I hate you for putting up with it. I hate me for hating you for putting up with it as I put up with it and put up with you putting up with it. Meh.

Both blogging and grinding are evil. Pure unaltered evil. They are fonts of the most sinister and horrid evil you will ever come across. They make the Devil look like one of the Teletubbies. Stand Illidan next to the personification of blogging and Illidan will cry like a baby. The personification of grinding is a stereotype and we all know what stereotype that is (you can see the fat man from South Park too :o) so I feel no need to add wit to my point.

They are both evil. There is no doubt of that. My girlfriend thinks I’m sad for playing PC games all the time. She thinks I’m even more sad for writing about those PC games. Mostly, she takes pity upon me. Both blogging and grinding are the evils that destroy social lives around the world but which one is more evil?

Grinding.

An Example… sort of

Oh this is fun. I want this flask, right? I need 25 Glowing Bits of Leaf (?) and 600 Roots of Lesser Drop Chance. I need them by next Wednesday. You’d think that was a fairly respectable amount of time to have to get yours stuff together, right? Well, you’ve never played Lifeless Gaming Online have you? I can tell you that Roots of Lesser Drop Chance only drop off Mobs of Lesser Spawning and, as the name suggests, it takes hours to find the things… and we haven’t even started on the Glowing Bits of Leaf yet.

All in all, grinding sucks. I needed 200 stacks of Netherweave Cloth. That doesn’t sound like a lot when you think about how many mobs drop Netherweave but I’m one of these people who finds the act of grinding hard to swallow. Let me put it this way…

Day 1

I woke up this morning – ’twas a nice day. The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. Even the old woman out back waved to me as I stared like a lifeless, mindless automaton out of my bedroom window.

So I went downstairs, got a cup of Coffee, admired the back of my hand for a while and then…

Spent the next 7 hours of my life on Ventrillo, talking to the rest of my 5 man guild group. We’d arranged to go Netherweave farming in Netherstorm.

Good times.

Day 5

The sun wasn’t shining today. There were no birds.

I’ve installed sound proofing. The constant chirping was breaking my concentration. The black out curtains have limited the glare on my monitor. I was finding it hard to see the goddamn drops.

My girlfriend’s told me to get a job. I’ve looked around but no one wants to sponsor me to play WoW. She says that isn’t what she meant. I don’t know what she means.

Today is once again Netherweave day. We’ve all (25 man raid groups ftw) decided to go to Netherstorm again and make a day of it. Mark is taking his picnic set. Jack is bringing the fireworks. It should be fun, especially with the Leather Ball Sally crafted last night.

Good times.

Day 15

She left me. We were sitting in Orgrimmar chatting and she said she met a Nelf called MoreManly who had taken her heart away from me. I sobbed. She rofl’d.

She left me too. She said that a job wasn’t just going to walk through the door. I said that I was looking for sponsors but all the good ones had been taken. She said that that was the only reason she got with me. She took the kids.

We’re off to Shadowmoon to farm Primals. I have enough Netherweave for my Frozen Shadoweave Robe but Johnny needs my Shadowcloth for guild tailoring so I’m going to have to spend all of today farming Primals and Netherweave.

Good times.

And so on and so forth.

It is tragic; when your life is reduced to grinding. Your girlfriends leaves you and your kids disown you and yet the most immediate thing on your mind is Shadowmoon Valley.

The first part of this entry was really a look into my mind and the way I blog – chaotically with no clear purpose. The second part was almost entertaining and informative but was, mostly, High School humour.

I apologize.

It has been a long day but I would like to thank Matticus for allowing me to infest his blog with this poison. I’ve had fun.

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