(Do you have something worth a “Grats!” on the guild site?  Post a screen cap on the forum or send it to me at splat [at] myguildhome.com!)

The bigger they are...

Grats to Flamebait and Docmean, our favorite DPS duo. Last night they managed to kill the end boss, Prince Malchezaar!  (I think they may have had a little help, but still…) The last time I saw him he beat the snot out of me.

That I know of, this was a guild first for us – at least on this server.  My only regret is that over the past week or so I’ve been too sick to really play my role as a healbot.  Looks like they got by just fine without me.

(Do you have something worth a “Grats!” on the guild site?  Post a screen cap on the forum or send it to me at splat [at] myguildhome.com!)

Hey, don’t laugh! At 95 gold that was far from the most expensive part of the whole ordeal.  I was grinding for weeks to get my riding lessons up to snuff!

And that’s exactly what it was.  Grinding.  Excruciating.  Running dailies I didn’t even like, treating the AH like it’s a stock market, all so I could squeeze out another few hundred gold per day … it wasn’t very fun for me.

Oh, the end reward is nice, don’t get be wrong, but for me it’s the journey that should be more important than the destination.  And to be blunt, this journey stunk.

World of Warcraft is a game, and unless I’m hired by Blizzard (doubtful, as I wouldn’t apply for a position in the first place) it should continue to be a game, right?  Right, and games were meant to be fun.

So here’s the problem – one person’s version of fun is not universal.  I’ve met plenty of people who absolutely lived for the end game content.  I’ve no doubt when the expansion hits they’ll be power-leveling to 80, in some cases even staying home from work to do so.

That’s not fun for me.  After I hit 70 my routine became a round of daily quests so I could afford what I needed to do twice weekly Kara raids, which would get me better gear so I could do more Kara raids.  Now, yes, there is a great sense of excitement whenever we down a particularly difficult boss, but there’s more to the game than dungeon crawls.

Fortunately there are enough people like me for Blizzard to consider us a target demographic.  World events and holidays add a bit of spice to my game time, allowing me to break up my grinding into smaller and more digestible bits.  (And let us not forget achievements, which make the game that much more fun to play!)

And even then I still feel compelled to roll a new alt, turn off all of my addons, crank the graphics all the way up, and bask in the glow of levels 1 through 20.  Maybe it’s just because Blizzard wants to immerse new players into the game as quickly as possible, but in my opinion the first bunch of levels are the most enjoyable lore-wise.

And that’s the key, isn’t it?  To enjoy the game?  We’re not paying Blizzard so we can work in the game, are we?

Look, we each play our own way, but when I find that what I’m doing isn’t fun any more, I’m going to stop and look for something that is fun.  It might be an achievement, soloing an instance, or maybe even spending a little time on an RP server.  I’ll always come back to my main because, let’s face it, paladins rock, but the moment I feel like WoW has become less than fun I need to either leave or change the rules by which I’ve been playing.

At least, that’s my opinion.  What’s yours?

A certain someone just learned how to make the engineer’s flying mount, and doesn’t mind flaunting it.

(Do you have something worth a “Grats!” on the guild site?  Post a screen cap on the forum or send it to me at splat [at] myguildhome.com!)