It's not you...wait. It's totally you.

World of Warcraft is starting to get annoying.

Let me rephrase that.

Playing with people is starting to get annoying.

I actually think that Blizzard did a really good job with this expansion. Shortening the talent trees was a great plan. The DK changes feel fine, the mage changes feel fine, and the content is fairly challenging.

People have a ton of complaints. I'm not talking about class-specific complaints (*waves at wife*), I'm talking about sweeping 'THEY BROKE ALL HEALZ" types of complaints.

Raiding is hard! Heroics are hard! I don't like having to worry about mana as a healer!

We've been trying to raid. It isn't the same without the old group, but we found a couple of great replacements that I really like having around.

However, our raid leader and MT...he's not even heroic geared. And after 4 hours of wiping (2 hours last week, 2 this week), he realized that his gear just *might* be causing problems. Healer mana issues, etc.

I know he's been busy lately and stuff, but I don't understand why you wouldn't offer to step down for a week until you can actually take the time to use a meta gem. (And we have 5 spare tanking ones in the guild bank. And with the new Mobile Banking guild perk, he had access to the gems while we were rebuffing. I didn't get it then, and I still don't.)

After much wiping, we finally downed the first boss in Bastion of Twilight. The attempt that finally worked seemed to go flawlessly, but that was immediately after MT and OT switched duties.

I've been playing 3-4 different characters, my DK being my focus. Even so, somehow I've found enough time to play Fallout 3, beat Castlevania, have board game nights (Shadows over Camelot -- play it if you haven't) with my cousin-in-law and friends, AND get TWO full sets of 346 gear (tanking / DPS) -- fully gemmed and enchanted.

Unless our tank has a new girlfriend, I don't see how he couldn't attain one set of 333 gear...

Maybe that's it. I should ask.

Regardless, I think he's aware of the issues now, and as far as I know, he's planning on fixing them.

He's a good tank, in terms of technique and strategy, so I'm hoping he catches up with gear shortly.

In the meantime, I am going to play the Rift beta with the wife.

I logged on over lunch to get our character names saved. Someone took Kaliera, which is really disappointing. I don't even know what it's from, but I stole it for my DK from my paladin friend that I used to play with. I actually really like the name. More than most of my character names. Rowsdower is funny and a great running joke, and Nuke is an old school name that I've carried over. Dyne is always used (thanks to the two other people who played Lunar. Jerks.), so Diyne is my second option in that phonetic family.

But the only name I really *like* is Kaliera. Maybe I should see if "Kevin" is taken. (He was a guard in Dynasty Warriors. You had many asian names, then Kevin.)

I think I figured out that there are 216 character class combinations in Rift. 4 groups of 54 (set of 8, choose 3, order irrelevant).

That's pretty sweet, even if only 10% of them are viable.

The character creation seems to be detailed enough to give my wife something to do all night. I might log on and quest to get a feel for the game while she creates her harem.

Also: I now have a decent laptop. It should run Rift, which makes it good for me. As long as it runs diablo 3 when it comes out, I'll be thrilled. Refurbished, but so far it looks new and acts new.

Anyway, WoW, I think it's time for us to take a short break. We can still be friends. I'll visit and do a heroic occasionally. We can still have our raid nights. But I just don't think I'm going to stay logged on for a couple of hours every night. I just need space. Space from the whining.

(Unfortunately, from what I could tell by being in Rift for 3 minutes, there is still going to be a lot of WoW bashing / praising in general chat. I'll have to disable that.)

Raids, Glaives, and Arena Ratings

Raiding is going to happen.

At some point. With some group of people.

Word on the cross-server is, Archon / Legends has accepted me and the wife into the guild. On non-max level characters. In fact, they accepted characters that neither one of us have played a whole lot lately (my lock and her DK).

I think this is cool. They're rather srsbsns about raiding (but not so much as to be 'hardcore'), and they weren't accepting applications for any class whatsoever (and the applications they had been accepting required level 85, heroic level gear, and 9-10k dps). But, since several of them had played with us before, they knew that we subscribe to the "Don't stand in things, do your job well, see content and clear it" brand of game play.

However, I haven't done serious warlocking in forever, and the wife leveled her DK to 80, did some heroics and then semi-retired her. Maybe we should switch accounts when we get over there...she's the best lock I know, and I'm pretty good with my DK...

In fact, my main is my DK, and hers is her lock. Or this *would* be the case, if our (awesome) guild would ever get a freaking raid going. We need a 10th person, and someone needs to iron out everyone's schedule.


PvP is officially fun again, now that I'm on my mage. I didn't like it on a rogue, paladin, or DK. It was only ok on my warlock. But my mage (who is going on 41,000 kills) is doing pretty well in both battlegrounds and arenas.

The new cataclysm battlegrounds are good. Very good. MUCH better than stupid eye of the storm or even isle of conquest (which isn't that bad).

Twin Peaks is a 10 on 10 capture the flag game. The map is set up well. Each base has three entrances -- a front entrance, a side entrance, and a different side entrance that is a bit more out of the way. There isn't an annoying roof camping spot. I rate it a 9/10.

The Battle for Gilneas one is a 10 on 10 king of the hill game, like Arathi Basin. Except there are only 3 nodes instead of 5. This leads to more fighting, less zerging, and better defending. It is much more fun than basin (which I enjoy, but only with at least 2 other people that I know).

Also, there is no cliff. There are only so many times a person can be mind controlled or knocked off the lumber mill flag without it getting just a little annoying.

For arenas, my wife and I are running in a 3's group with a paladin healer. We're up to around a 1600 rating, which isn't great, but it's not bad considering that both the mage and lock in the group are sub 2k resilience. Our problem groups generally have warriors in them. Or groups with a shaman healer. Paladin healers don't bother us so much.

We might end up running a 2's group instead, just to make it less stressful. Our healer is really good, but she's also really sensitive. I swear, you could sneeze wrong and make her cry. (And this may have happened once or twice. It's so hard to tell.)

Next Up: Kinect, Castlevania, and ... cookies?