One Extreme to the other – Raiding.

When hubby and I decided to come back to WoW, we vehemently decided to not be raiders full time or to treat this game so seriously.  We are at heart hardcore players though, and I am not entirely sure how to reconcile that issue.

The guild are in, is our old old guild.  They are very casual by our comparison.  Hubby and I, as anyone who reads my blog would know, have spent our time gearing our toons up and running heroics etc doing everything you would expect raiders to do.  Funny that in our mindset we were not raiders, had no plans to be and didn’t want to make it a massive part of our life – yet we find ourselves making our toons as good as they can be.

Our first week back in game we were using RAWR and simcraft to see what needed to be improved with all the changes – our first week….hrmmm.

At the time, we were in the casual raider rank – and after finding out what I could, I determined the guilds raid days were Sunday, Monday and Thursday – occassionally they did Wednesday depending on the numbers.  So far though it feels as though I have raided every day of the week – for someone who didn’t want to raid every day but obviously can’t help herself (and himself) I am not sure how to handle the pressure.

Hubby and I got made raider rank the other night because (I assume) we haven’t missed a raid and we are always online and ready to go.  However there are some nights I would like to play WoW but not raid – I have alts I want to play – or level and because we have a numbers problem I am always needed, and I feel bad saying no to them because if they are one person short (me) then I am effectively stopping them from raiding.

We have been raiding Sun, Mon, Wed, and Thursday for the last couple of weeks and I am honestly having trouble remembering Fridays…as by that stage I am almost raided out.  Some of you may be thinking “How can you have that much to raid?” well because we start raiding at 7.30 (read that as 8 by the time we get started) and we finish at 9.30pm because we have some kiwis.  So we are really only getting 1.5 hours in a time…minus time for wiping, buffing and fluffing about.

Last night we went to BWD, and we wiped 3 times on Chimaron (spelling?) and then we wiped a fair few times on Nefarion.   But we also don’t just wipe….people keep fighting and hoping we can do it with a healer and a tank down…why waste time – just get in there and die 😀 So as you can tell we are not actually doing much raiding.

My crossroad is this – the small amount of time we are spending “raiding” is enjoyable to me – I love raiding, and killing bosses and working together in a team, but can I really justify spending almost every single night raiding (and not getting much content done) when neither myself or hubby wanted to make this a full time pursuit again?

The reason I am asking is because I feel we may be in a very different headspace to those we raid with.  As I have said previously, I prefer a more focused raiding environment where people know what they are doing so we don’t have to spend 20 minutes before each fight discussing who is doing what and who take the time to learn about their class and what can be improved…but then if I go to a more focused guild am I not then just putting myself in the position of having to dedicate more time to the one thing I promised myself we wouldn’t do?

AARRGGHH!!!!