Bleh.

I am currently writing another edition of "Exercises in Creative Design," where I do a bit of fantasy WoW design. It'll come up tomorrow, I think, so for now, while I chip away on that at work, you are left with a bit of a QQ post today.

Yesterday, I came really close to ninja-gquit. By that I don't mean steal a bunch of crap from the gbank and then leave, but rather, log on outside of peak guild population hours and simply /gquit. To be clear, there wasn't any drama leading up to it at all, but if you follow this blog closely, you might have seen the signs already.

Simply put, here are my reasons that I would quit:
- I'm getting quite busy at work, leaving me too tired to do much at home regards to WoW. I have early mornings, so I can't really stay up to instance or whatnot. Lately, most of my extended WoW sessions during the week is to raid, and that's only once a week.
- As a result of my schedule and lifestyle, my availability does not mesh well with raid scheduling. I don't know exactly what my plans are for a given period of time, because family always plan out impromptu parties and dinners and whatnot that always take place on raid days.
- Guild is literally swimming in mages as it is. I've become somewhat redundant in my role in the guild, since there's already a number of mages who are more geared, and more "appropriately specced".
- I haven't connected as much on a personal or professional/gaming level with the other members..
- As a result of all the above, I get literally no opportunity to participate in progression, if any progression happens at all.

There are a few reasons listed above that are perfectly reasonable (ie, real life), and some that could simply amount to whining on account of my frustration with a lack of character progress.

I'm always put on standby for raids due to first-come-first-serve signups, but oblige to run farming runs, and end up carrying a significant load of the raid DPS in the absense of the other senior members, going the extra mile to ensure raid success such as kiting Moroes adds when there's a lack of cc, or decursing on AoE pulls in addition to doing AoE.

At the end of the day, everyone progresses, yet I stay behind to continue doing Day 1's to help gear up the new members. And once the time comes where we can actually field a co-guild run of 25 man content, I'm left out. Not just hypothetically either. This Sunday, I'm on Standby for Gruuls, and despite voluntarily acquiring a Stamina set for tanking HKM, and gemming/enchanting it out, and studying the bossfights. You know, just in case.

Do I have to do all of that to prepare? Of course, it's my duty as a member of the guild to play my part, regardless of the significance of the role. And I'm willing to say that I do my job well. I might not top the DPS charts against the other senior DPSers, but I'll hang with the ones who outgear me by miles. I've turned heads, particularly those who originally were convinced that Fire is the only way for a mage to go. They've acknowledged me, but somehow, it's just not enough to get to the next step.

I could never really I've already turned my corner. I'm ready for the next step. I just want to be given a chance, that's all.

Is that too much to ask for, or is this just a bunch of QQ? Please let me know what I can do to experience new content; I'm willing to do anything to make this situation feel less...bleh.

(EDIT:) Now, it's almost 7:20pm, and Kara Day 1 starts in 10 minutes. Guild Leader asks me if I could hand my spot over to someone so he can get his first chance. I happily hand it over. And I feel good about it. Oh, and there's still a free space, so I join up anyways. Heh.

My reward for being a ncie guy? Raid Assist. Pretty sweet timing, if I do say so myself. I'm not going to delete this post. I was honest about it at the time, but I just needed a good train ride home to get some perspective. Have a nice day!