Former WoW Widow's Journal: Rise of the Warlock

Connections

2010-02-06T17:56:00.041-05:00

I was flying to Storm Peaks to pick up [Greater Inscription of the Storm] when I got a tell from someone who Sky and I had run a couple of dungeons with way back in the day when we were leveling. I have a good memory - if I didn't I wouldn't have remembered this person. I asked Sky if he remembered this person and his response was, "He keeps sending me tells wanting to know if I'm a JC, etc. Wanting stuff." So, I was polite and said hi and made a little small talk... but I didn't really have any desire to strike up a conversation with someone I haven't spoken to in at least 6 months, and was only a convenience acquaintance at best 6 months ago. The conversation went down hill quickly:

It makes me wonder about this person that they are so dependent upon my conversation to not just take the ignore as a clue that I don't want to talk to them - so they get on ANOTHER of their toons to tell me to go F--- myself.

So, it got me thinking... how often to we make simple connections with others and they take it as more than that. Or how often to we become more attached to others who only see us as the same - A person/player to fill a need at the moment? I have been thinking on this subject more and more over the past month or so. Sky and I joined a guild. He was a part of this guild previously but left because of a conflict with the guild leaders and schedules and accountability, etc etc etc. Long story short - the former leader of the guild and most of the officers left the guild and it was handed over to Nikk- who is a friend of Sky's mostly in game, but who also dated in RL one of Sky's RL BFFs. So, Sky got in touch with some of the officers over at SD and applied for membership for himself and his army of alts, as well as Aurora (me), his brother Tal, and his sister Rayl. Was also supposed to be for Kobeck too - but Kobeck has school and is happy lording over an empty guild since he doesn't have aspirations to be a raider at present.

The reason behind this explanation is that when I joined WoW I was a part of Sky's guild. It was just us - family, RL friends, and a few in game friends who parted ways with whatever guild they were with at the time. The other in game friends were transient and it became just RL family and friends. Mainly Sky x10, me, Kob's, Tal, Ray.

Joining a REAL guild was a big step for me. For Sky it was a means to an end. He's a raider. The group he was raiding with was no longer meeting his raiding needs, so he wanted something bigger and better. We now have a guild who runs a raid almost every night. They have ICC25 man 2 nights, ICC 10 man 2 nights, TOC/Ony gear run 1 or 2 times depending on who needs it, and then also the weekly raid usually on Tuesday nights, and then VoA when we have WG and there are enough people to get a group together. They also have started doing PvP on Friday nights as it is the only night that isn't a designated raid night. I have made connections.

True - the connections aren't deep ones. There are people there to ask to craft things for me, or to buy mats off of, or to run random heroics when I don't feel like waiting on the queue. Guild connections. There are a few people who I recognize above others, a few who recognize me as someone other than Sky's wife. But connections have been made. That's all. I know that these people are in a guild with me. They are people I have a common interest with, who may help me and who I may help. But I know that they pledge no allegiance to me, I am just another player in the game. They may talk to me, and recognize me, but when I log out there is no "I soooo miss Aurora!" or a "Hi!" tell every time I log in. It's business - the business of fun.

RE: Confessions of a Gender Bender

2009-12-05T18:53:00.016-05:00

The following is in response to : Altoholics Anonymous' post "The Confessions of a Gender Bender"

I think the gender thing is hilarious in WoW. "What's My Main Again?"'s characters are dominantly female. His reasoning? The guys are ugly.

We had a discussion once about guild dynamic involving females (in RL) vs. females. When I started playing Wow 7 months ago, there was ONE female in his guild. She had played w/ hubby and Kobeck in a previous guild, until they broke off and started our own family/friend guild.

When I started playing hubby and I were questing in Tanaris and said female player decided that she would come on her 80 and kill off the stuff we were needing to kill for our quests. Now, this was my first toon, I was trying to get to 80 ASAP ... and here is the person stalling me by one-shotting stuff that I needed to finish my quests. She wasn't in a group with us..just following and, I guess, trying to show that she was better than me? So I told her to back off. She got all huffy, logged off and 2 days later /gquit her main. I see from her POV that I am a new player, the only other female in the guild, and the GL's wife.

I guess from a purely female POV I get what I construe as intimidation. I may be wrong... maybe that wasn't the problem at all. I've touched on the fact that we are not a raiding guild and mostly raid with people from another guild who are also small, and this works for all parties. When I started playing hubby informed the group of my entrance into WOW as a player and not a wow widow (haha) and the MT/RL's wife was really excited... as I neared 80 she and I started chatting and hit it off immediately. One of the other female players in their guild has been friends with hubby almost from the beginning of his WoW days nearly 3 years ago. She has known me as the reason that hubby had to cut back on raiding, the reason he has been forced to quit for several months in the past. The person screaming at him while he was on vent back before he switched from open mic to push-to-talk. But again, she and I get along.

I'm not sure if the lack of cattiness in this group is the fact that I am totally in awe of both of their playing skills, but don't feel personally intimidated by either. Or maybe it's the fact that since I started playing it has been easier for hubby to play MORE.

I had expressed that I found it interesting that while both of these women are awesome in their own right... they have their own skills, their own names, their own personality and standing within the group... but, for whatever reason, I am Arty's wife. And that is also funny considering he hardly plays on Artorin anymore but that is what he was known as in the beginning and it has stuck through all his other alts. And Cass is Marr(MT/RL)'s wife. <-- names have been changed to protect the innocent (haha) And Blan is B2's "whatever" (they're not married and actually met over WoW, I think)

In my opinion a lot of the gender issue in games really depend on the people.

From what I have seen the range of females tend to fall into 5 categories:

The Females who play Female toons:

Angry Female: The female player who acts like she is badass, actually SUCKS, but then says that it's because the males don't respect her.

The stereotypical female: Plays girly characters, says girly things, acts girly, is rarely hardcore, and most likely has a male counterpart who IS hardcore, and has suckered her into playing. (this is pretty much me)

The smirking female: the female player who plays a female toon, doesn't say anything, and totally mops the floor with the other people in the group/raid, all while the MEN in the group are most likely whispering each other something like "She's a girl, you ready to pick up the slack when she sucks?" only to quickly replace this with "Must really be a guy under that female toon" (Ha!)

The Female players who play male toons fall into two categories:

The She(rocks)male: The female player who rolls male toons so she doesn't feel like she has to prove herself to be accepted. She establishes herself as awesome, and then after she has the respect of her group it slowly becomes more apparent that she is actually female. By this time though it doesn't matter because she's awesome. And this also generally prevents her from catcalls, etc. while establishing herself..because even if you play a male belf... you aren't likely to get hit on by other guys unless they are playing a male belf and are, in all likelihood, truly gay in RL.

The She(hates)Male: This is the female player who probably has this toon as an alt, plays it terribly just to prove that guys CAN suck. Then comes in on her true female character and totally rocks.

I think i'm probably missing some..but these are the general types that I have seen.

Being an altoholic (and master of none) I have both male and female toons, horde and alliance. I am pretty much cool with whoever. However, if you have a problem with me I most likely will tell you to knock it off. I am not going to submit someone disrespecting me whether there is a real reason behind it or not. I am not down with being treated like crap in game for something that I didn't do. I am not hardcore enough for it to matter to me if another girl is a better player than me. I really just don't care. If you try to do something like prevent me from doing what I need to do, I will tell you to back off. I like playing, but I am not competitive. I never really have been, with anything, in my life.

And now I did this girly thing and totally went of topic... but it was fun anyways.

Hunter FTW!

2009-11-12T02:33:00.000-05:00

Having pretty much lost interest in doing dailies on Aurora, and not really interested in questing in Zul 'Drak on my DK, I decided to make a new alt. I have a lvl 16 ret pally that I had been working on, but got tired of melee DPS. I have a lvl 24 Mage, but got tired of being so squishy and not having anyone to quest with to either tank with or heal me.

So.. I had created a hunter on Ravenholdt and was having a pretty good time with her, but I missed my friends on Durotan. So I decided to take on a new alliance hunter on Durotan. Her name is Kalandra. I have been working on her pretty much constantly. I have taken up maybe running the fishing dailies on Aurora just for a little cash, as I am stuck at 427 on my enchanting and don't really NEED any enchants to help lvl it to max. And that mats are so expensive! Most of the higher end enchants cost more to make than they sell for on the AH. And my tailoring was great for when I was lvling because I could make my own gear.. and not to mention that I can make BAGS!

So, I created a hunter. Kalandra is a night elf beast mastery hunter. I chose BM because David said it is one of the fastest ways to lvl her. I have been working on her maybe 3 weeks and she is lvl 28. I probably could have her higher by now but I get bored just constant questing. I have been working on primary and secondary professions for her, and her primaries are neck and neck for lvl. And are both above the zones that I am currently questing in. I chose Herbing and Alchemy as my two profs. My alchemy is at the lvl that it requires herbs from lvl 30 zones. And my herbing is high enough to obtain these herbs.

I almost always enjoy lvling my profs more than my actual character lvls.

Raid Schmaid

2009-11-05T15:06:00.001-05:00

So, it's been awhile since my last post here. Hubby was questioning me about WHY I don't post on my WoW blog, and didn't seem satisfied with the answer that I wrote in my blog about RL instead.

The point is, I kind of lost interest there for a while. Aurora was maxed out lvl wise, but not so geared that I got invited to raids anymore with the introduction of the TOC 10 and 25 man raids. The first or second run that we did I was invited in for 10 man. Now, this was new to the entire group and everyone was just getting a feel for how the fight should go. It started out ok, but then the kobolds or snobolds or painintheassbolds, or what ever form of bolds they are in that fight.

I am TERRIBLE at switching targets, especially in raid because I raid on a laptop. It is fine for normal play and what not but it goes SooOOOOoOO slow in raid. 10 man is pretty bad and 25 man is impossible. So, if I am focused on the boss I can usually do ok just on pure feel as long as I can see anything on the floor (fire, poison, etc) and get out of it in time. But having to switch the the kobolds to get them off others during the fight was nerve-wracking for me. Not to mention that when I have a kobold on ME I freak out because I am squishy and also very claustrophobic and don't like relying on someone else to kill the monkey on my back. I got claustrophobic. So, after a few tries we made it thru the first boss and on to the jormungar worms. Not ONE, but TWO jormungar worms. We wiped a few times, which of course meant we had to start all over. I kept getting paralyzed but couldn't find the person with the fire debuff to run to to get the poison off me. Not to mention that the tanks hadn't found out yet that you have to keep the one worm facing away from the group.

I didn't go back after that. And the group didn't go back to Ulduar at all. RL doesn't see the point in it as the ToGC gear is so much better. Up until the past couple of weeks tho I would run VOA with them if we had wintergrasp. The past couple weeks hubby and Kobeck haven't been raiding though because they are just so fed up with hitting their heads against a wall. The raid leader insists on starting out on hard mode and then after 2 hours of endless wiping switching to regular mode. They say this is so people don't come in and leave as soon as they are done w/ regular. But... they are losing some of their better players because of it.

So, last week (maybe?), Selgar asked us if we wanted to go run the last 3 bosses on Ulduar. Someone had an expired instance ID that we could run off of. So we decided to go. I had SOO much fun!!! When the raid group before was running Ulduar (pre 3.2) I got to go for the first few bosses but then had to leave because David didn't feel that I was capable of making it through Mimiron and those other people at the end... haha I am so bad with the names of the bosses. So anyways, we started out with Mimiron. I am such a dork that I was extremely excited to even SEE these parts of Ulduar... it was all new to me.

So we managed to get through Mimiron and were working on General Vezax, we wiped several times because I kept killing our top DPS Gandreolf (Hubby's mage) RL said dps was to wand only until the pool thingies were on the floor and then to go in them and DPS our little hearts out. Well, problem is... me and hubby were the only ranged DPS, and we had two healers. So the pool would drop... Gandreolf and Aurora would both run for it and BAM! we're both dead. Got too close to one another over and over and over again. Finally, RL says that Gandreolf is the most important and he CAN'T die at the very beginning of the fight... he was pulling off something like 14.5k DPS.

So, we did that for awhile. I think eventually we downed him, but I don't really remember. Unfortunately I only have 5 screenshots from that night, and 4 of them are from the train. I find it funny because when Ulduar was the shiz David had a TON of ss's from the train and even had one as his desktop wallpaper for a good couple of months. So, my first trip on the train was nothing but the same ol' thing for pretty much everyone in our group.

The 5th SS I have is from General Vezax just before the raid wiped. I just remembered that during Mimiron hunny was tanking on Skyru, so it was myself and a hunter who were the only ranged DPS. It made it interesting because when the head was up only one of us was alive. The first time the hunter died 2 seconds into the head portion leaving me to solo DPS it. We actually managed to get pretty far, but the rest of the raid wiped on the body, so we all went down. The next attempt I died just before the head came down, I was DPSing my litte heart out on the body, but I aggroed an add and Skyru wasn't fast enough to steal aggro and I died 1 sec before he got it off me. This left the hunter to DPS the head alone. The group made it through that time, and managed to get the whole thing down at the same time. Aside from the fact that I was dead, it was a fun fight. One of the things about me being down is that it freed me up to watch the health and aggro bars for the boss and let David know what was going on, leaving him free to do his thing and not having to keep an eye on all that stuff. I already explained about General Vezax for the most part... so.. on to the ss's that I DO have.

This is just after getting on the train: DPS stats are still up from Mimiron

Another of the train:

More train:

Getting off the train

And...finally... General Vezax. "Ulduar The Descent Into Madness"

I love that. That title is the only reason I actually have a screenshot of this room.

Bugs!!!

2009-09-10T12:11:00.005-04:00

So...Had an interesting night the other night. Went with our little group (Me, Lanora, Cassiana, Marrus, and Kobeck) to run Heroic Trial of the Champion daily. So, we get in the instance and I'm looking at Kobeck and I'm like "Why are you naked?" Now, this is something that we had done a while ago after the release of 3.2 - ran through it naked just to see if we could. But, I figured I must have missed the memo.

Then I notice that not only is Kobeck naked but our tank, Marrus, as well. So now I'm going WTF? So, I say to hubby (Lanora)... "Why are they naked?" He says, "It's a bug." Apparently there's a bug that makes people naked? Sweet!!! In this case it was our two male humans. So of course I took lots of screen shots. It's amazing how feminine a pally tank looks casting some blessing or another completely naked. Not to mention Kobeck, the all powerful DK. I mean, these guys are normally all decked out in bulky gear and looks ferocious. Not so for this fight.

Here are some screen shots from the fight:

When I first realized they were naked: (best viewed enlarged, look at the chat pane)

Marrus and Cassiana - Husband and wife and two awesome people!

Bless me Puh-lease!!!

My, what a big sword you have!!!

All in all it was a mostly easy fight (as usual) and we had some fun, and I got lots of laughs at naked guys... Coz, you know, I'm like 12 and naked boys! OMG, where!??!!? *giggle*

Anyways just wanted to write about this coz I thought it was humorous. Will bbl to give u some more lolz.

Expanding My Horizons.

2009-09-01T19:05:00.005-04:00

So... It's been a month since my last update, and a LOT has happened! I want to lay out the deets of my alts. Especially since I seem to be collecting them. I not only have added 2 new alts on Durotan since my last update, but 2 new alts on Ravenholdt as well. (More on that later)

The Roster:

Auroradawn~ Human Warlock LvL 80 ~ Destruction

Professions: Tailoring 442/ Enchanting 267
Hit capped at 14.83%
While I didn't hit "Epic" achievement yet, I did manage a "Superior". Good enough for now I guess.
Have just kind of hanging out on this character, don't really go on her much unless I am called upon to fill and empty raid spot. I guess have also been running 3-4 Daily Heroics a week on her with my hubby in his various forms, and our good friends Marrus and Cassiana.

Jesckara ~ Dranei Death Knight LvL 70 ~ Unholy

Professions: Skinning 434/ Leatherworking 201
Have worked on leveling this toon a bit, nothing too exciting just running quest lines in Outlands and have recently headed to Borean Tundra and questing there.

Xalixian ~ Dranei Mage ~ LvL 24

Professions: Herbalism 179/ Inscription 143
Have leveled this character up slightly since last post, however have somewhat abandoned my mage due to creating additional toons.

Aallina ~ Night Elf Druid ~ LvL 34

Professions: Mining 97/ Jewelcrafting 59
Nothing changed on this toon, haven't played on her at all since last update.

Ealiana ~ Gnome Warlock ~ LvL 10

Professions: Herbalism 73/ Alchemy 65
Nothing changed on this toon either, again haven't played on her at all lately

Alinari ~ Dranei Paladin ~ LvL 16

Professions: Mining 83/ Jewelcrafting 58
Newest addition on Durotan.
Created to have as melee DPS, not overly impressed with being in melee range, so have not been leveling this toon much lately.

Onward to Ravenholdt

Recently my good friend Kobeck had two things happen. His sister and nephew moved back home, and school started. Kobeck had decided to give up raiding so he has more time to study and all that stuff that college kids do.
Because of these two changes he made an alt on Ravenholdt, the server on which his sister plays.
Hubby and I followed suit.
To the dark side: The Horde.

Introducing...

Auroradawn of Ravenholdt ~ Blood Elf Hunter ~ LvL 19

Professions: Herbalism 53/ Inscription 76
O!M!G! Hubby suggested that I roll a hunter, knowing my preference for ranged combat. Best idea ever!

Kalindra of Ravenholdt ~ Blood Elf Death Knight ~ LvL 58

Professions: None
Created Kalindra as a source of income for Auroradawn in the early stages on this realm. Not sure if I will actually play her or not.

So I think I've covered the updates. See you in Azeroth!!!!

Raid - I can do this???

2009-08-06T08:18:00.016-04:00

Having only hit lvl 80 a few weeks ago, I mostly use Auroradawn for dailies. However, it seems to be occurring more often that I am finding myself raiding.

We had attempted to run Naxx 10-man and it was a colossal failure. I was so keyed up the entire time and didn't have any fun at all. We made it through the Arachnid Quarter with some difficulty and then proceeded on to the Military Quarter. We (miraculously) made it through to The Four Horsemen. This is when things fell apart for me. David kept trying to explain to me exactly what was going to be going on in this boss segment and I was completely intimidated. Not only that but he put me in the back to DPS with only me and a healer. Now, from what David told me this is the normal set up. For those of you who haven't done it this way, there are 4 bosses (thus the FOUR horsemen) two in the back and two in the front. The back person (me in this case) is responsible for TWO of the four bosses with only a healer to basically be there to keep them alive. You have to run back and forth between the two bosses but you have to stay within a certain distance between the two of them so that you are in range. David told me I was supposed to switch when the boss had three stacks on it. That's all fine and dandy when I know what the hell stacks are. Apparently this is one of those things that he "forgot" to explain to me. When I asked him to explain he couldn't and our raid group was waiting so we just went for it. And we wiped. And we wiped some more. And we kept wiping. Not so fun trying to kill the same boss over and over again when you're not having much fun to begin with. Especially because the main reason we were running Naxx was to get better gear for my husband's warrior, Skyru, who had just hit lvl 80 with me; our good friend Averlexis (Drooooo) who had just hit lvl 80 with us as well; and...Auroradawn. I got 2 rings out of the thing. TWO RINGS. bleh. Granted they were better than what I had, but still was a disappointment. (Band of Neglected Pleas and Signet of the Malevolent) After several tries David was down to the "we'll try one more time and if we don't beat it we'll call it." I told him I was done. I'm done. So we called it there. I swore I wasn't going to raid again. Was too much stress and chaos and my poor little panic meter was getting close to red-lining.

And then ... the raid group that my husband raids with was down a DPS so he asked if I could tag along for Emalon. I was nervous about going in but I said "sure". After all this was a 25-man raid... and they said they could carry me. After the Naxx misadventure I was nervous about running even the ONE boss with Saravid's (hubby's shaman/ current main) raid group. What if I failed? Would I ever be invited back again? Would it reflect badly on Saravid? Well... I thoroughly enjoyed it! And while I was the lowest DPS, it was expected due to being supremely undergeared. I mean seriously...I was still wearing mostly lvl 70-75 gear with the exception of a few things. (Like my Hat of Wintry Doom and my Frostsavage Bracers) and the two rings I had gotten from naxxramas.

The next week during a 10-man in Ulduar I was invited back. Luckily I had made enough Ebonweave to create my Ebonweave Gloves. Was still majorly undergeared though. My mana bar was hanging somewhere between 17000 and 19000 completely raid buffed. Which was about 6000-7000 less than the next lowest caster. I somehow managed to make it through. I died more often than the others and was almost always the first one to go down. But I must not be so terrible as I have been invited back a few times since then. Mostly because they are down a person, and it would be better to go with an undergeared warlock than have an empty spot, or because someone else is supposed to be coming in and they just need someone to fill in for a little while (although the two times I have done this I ended up going through the whole session because the person didn't show up) Regardless of the reason I actually enjoy the parts of Ulduar that I have gone through. Even the vehicle parts on The Gauntlet preceding Flame Leviathan. This was probably mostly due to the fact that I didn't have to operate the vehicle while trying to fire on the enemy.

I went on with the group through Auriaya (Or the Crazy Cat Lady as David refers to her). After that the person I was filling in for was able to come in so I went back to being normal ol' me.

All in all I have to say that I never thought I would be raiding Ulduar. I had watched Saravid and Kobeck raid before in 25 man and it looked like WAY too much chaos and flashy-ness on screen that I said there is NO way I am going to be able to do that. At least not without throwing myself into a panic attack. But I seem to be getting semi-used to it. At least on the "easier" bosses and mobs. We'll see how I do once I finally get geared up and am ready to compete with the other DPSers. I am hoping someday (hopefully soon) to be able to claim the acheivement EPIC!

Below are some of the screenshots I have taken in game for various acheivements and special events.

Lokan falls! Normal Halls of Lightning:

Lokan falls harder! Heroic HOL:

Bjarngrim Defeated! Heroic HOL:

Volkhan defeated! Heroic 5-man Halls of Lightning

Skylu went from lvl 5 to lvl 20 in about 30 seconds due to Refer-A-Friend bonus... I was able to grant him up to half of the amount of levels that I was.

Archavon the Stone Watcher defeated! Heroic

Yeah, you better run! Emalon defeated!!!:

Me HUGE on my tiny pwny... haha.

An Introduction To The Way I Roll, Yo!

2009-07-25T08:58:00.003-04:00

Having only been a WoWhead for about 3 months now, my <3 belongs to my main: Auroradawn of Durotan.

Auroradawn is a human lvl 80 destruction warlock. My favorite spells on this toon are Immolate, Conflagarate, Chaos Bolt, and Incinerate. I also use rain of fire as my main AOE. My professions are tailoring which I am up to lvl 435, and enchanting that is hanging somewhere around 130 as I just started that profession a week ago when I hit lvl 80. We attempted Naxxramas 10-man a week ago and made it through the arachnid quarter and into that other place and called it after wiping on the four horsemen.

In addition to Auroradawn on the Durotan realm I have: Jesckara- lvl 61 Dranei Death Knight unholy spec; Aallina- lvl 35 Night Elf Druid resto spec; Ealiana- lvl 10 Gnome warlock; and my current favorite project Xalixian - Lvl 18 Dranei Mage frost spec. I am currently working on trying to lvl my mage, David just created a priest to lvl with me since I am *squishy*. I am lucky to have a husband who creates complentary characters to accompany my squishies. He created a Nelf druid for Auroradawn's first 30 lvls or so...then switched to a lvl 30ish warrior that he had to tank for me who then lvl'd to 80 with me.

The WoW Widow: An Introduction

2009-07-25T08:09:00.002-04:00

I need to start this blog off by saying that World of Warcraft was almost the end of my marriage. But that was 2 years ago. My husband started playing WoW in February of 2007 - referred by one of his friends/ex-girlfriend. So immediately that was a strike against the game. Then the countless hours that he spent playing WoW instead of paying attention to me, well, that was strike two. If all you're interested in is Wow stuff...scroll down to the purple text. For my IRL WoW drama, read on...

About 4 months after he started playing WoW I went into a deep depression (but that's for a different blog. See: Rainy Day Ramblings) at which time he didn't know how to help me, so instead he spent even more time playing WoW just to NOT deal. This ultimately ended up in me seeking out emotional support elsewhere that almost ended in the demise of my marriage. From my POV hubby was too busy playing WoW to pay attention to me, and too caught up in it to realize or care that I was beginning to rely on someone else to provide for me what he couldn't or wouldn't. All due to WoW. Or so my mentality was at the time.

And then I told him I was moving out. Immediate response was something to the effect of: "I'll give up the game! You're more important to me." So now I am more important, now that I am leaving. I moved out for a week and a half, we started marriage counseling, and I think somewhere in there we came to realize the things that we loved about each other again. He began to understand, if not how I felt, then at least how to gauge how I was feeling by my actions. He learned to pick up on what I WASN'T saying. He learned to TRULY pay attention to me, beyond the fact that I was there physically or not.

I started to realize that I didn't really want him to pay attention to me so much as I wanted him to be AVAILABLE to pay attention to me. Which the game interfered with, of course. He started to realize that he REALLY needed to pay attention to me... to pick up on what I wasn't saying, because I wasn't saying it out loud because I didn't think he would listen.

We grew. As people, as a couple, as parents. Our marriage grew stronger over that period of time than it probably ever had been in the 5 years we had been married at that point. I think he finally realized that I was ill.

But I digress, the two weeks in January 2008 that I moved out..he gave up WoW. When I came home, I noticed the difference in him. He was there, he wanted to spend time with me, he was smothering me. This is when the revelation came that it was the feeling of him being able to pay attention to me that I sought. Because in reality, I like my space. I like to do my own thing and not have someone shadowing me.

So I let him off the hook, I told him that I would be ok with him playing WoW again, but there had to be some changes.

1. He was in a guild that REQUIRED guild members to raid AT LEAST 2 or 3 raids each week and they were at a set time. Seven o'clock on Friday and Saturday nights and then like 1 or 2 during the week. Now, if you are a single person, or a married couple and you both play then this is fine, whatever. But when you have a wife who doesn't play, and a 3 year old kid, being out of commission due to RAID is NOT ok 3 nights out of 7. And if getting in trouble with the guild bothers you more than getting in trouble with your family...then something's gotta give. So he left the guild. I believe he joined a different one that didn't have the same raid requirements..but regardless of what happened in game... I got my husband back.

2. Raiding was ok...but not if it interfered with our life. I.E. if we schedule going out Friday night for dinner around when he HAS to be home for raid..this is not OK.

Other things changed as well but mainly we learned to communicate.

So...fast forward a year. A lot happened that I will spare you. May 2009 he got me to start playing again on a free trial through recruit-a-friend. Triple experience for both of us and I was a lvl 20 Warlock within a week. I was hooked. Herein starts the adventure.

A true warlock was born: in game and out. And now I am becoming an altoholic.