Sidetrek: Balancing Lives

Yesterday, after that insanely fast xp-grinding mission, I had a bad taste left in my mouth, so I stopped for a bit. Was wondering if it was just too high a level for me, so I putzed around on the MA scrap for a bit and kicked some hellions to level 3, but that was also somewhat boring. So I took a break for a bit, then went back to Ravenhill. Chugged through some missions with him. Was fun for a bit, but then I got sick of seeing Tsoo after finishing the Tsoo Coup arc, and Talos and IP are damn huge to run around in.

(Oh, and I was bored enough to do something anti-productive with him. I found out the debt cap by patiently racing out of hospitals to do lemming suicide on purples. It seems to be 11 deaths, which lead to half your entire xp ring (about 5 bubbles/xp bars?) filling with brown. This is at level 23, so each death was 2500 debt. For some reason, that was more fun than churning through missions.)

Maybe because it's a goal I set myself. A discovery kind of journey, instead of led around by the nose - here, go do this, go rescue them, defeat all these.

Then I got thoroughly bored and depressed and logged off and chanced upon an interesting website.

http://www.olganon.org/Gamer/Ideas_to_Help/Alternatives/alternatives.html

As well as their forums, which made an interesting read.

It's both sad and fascinating that a lot of these people have made the same realization with Everquest, that we did facing RoD. And we were one stage better off because our RoD friends had pretty much drifted away already, and expansions designed by devs to increase addiction were nonexistent in RoD's case, but we were just clinging on, hoping things would get better and logging through habit, mostly, imo.

And then I wondered if I was getting addicted to CoH.

In a way, I don't think it's the same thing. Certainly I play multiplayer games with the same kind of intensity I threw into RoD. Look at NS. And CoH now. But thanks to one experience, as well as the careful picking of games with a certain game design, I think I can recognize the danger signs.

One really bad problem is LOOT. That uber piece of eq. Only attainable by attending a 9-11 hour long run/raid, yadda yadda. No. Never again. I picked CoH because it's practically no loot. And I'm not gonna sucker myself into one more Hami-O, ever. If I ever run Hami, I'll do it when I have the time, just for the experience. If I never get there, so be it. Even in games with loot, like the upcoming Guild Wars, I am just gonna tell myself it doesn't matter, period. I won't even try for it.

In the end, it's not even bits and bytes. It's ashes of memory with a bitter taste, thanks to all the evils spawned by human nature faced with loot.

The other problem I need to be more wary of. GUILDS. Organizations/SGs, call them what you will. It's a community of people. That have a channel. That means...CHATROOM. Once I end up building a permament identity there, it becomes helluva hard for me to pull myself away and leave. I know this much now as Juli and Khelf are permanently parts of me.

I suspect this could be why I'm having this sudden change of heart and feeling uncomfortable and everything. I think I'm joining too many SGs. I'm trying to foist myself into a community when I know I actually should not need it. I need to maintain the solo existence with random PuGs because it's fun, unpredictable, novel and I can go off as and when I feel like it.

Now I feel compelled to show my face (log in) every day so that my SG info reads that I logged in "Today."

In a way, it's dumb. Because I can tell you The Core has people not logged for 14-25 days and they are still in there, and it's like 2/3 of them. But I feel compelled to be, the good guy, all over again. I wanna be that promising fellow. I want to be the ascendent star of GoC, the rising star of Ascendere, the guy who just joined but shows so much potential, he hits the top of the charts and hits Hall of Heroes fame.

And THAT -IS- DUMB.

But evidently it is some kind of personality compulsion in me. It's like this "be a good girl" introversion in real life twisted inside out to suddenly be this fantastic extroverted expert in a virtual world or something.

I need to fight this. I need to stop it. I could just hit QUIT SG and run away for good, but that might be just avoiding the issue. I need to learn how to balance my life properly. And if the leadership doesn't understand that, then it's not a SG I want to be in anyhow.

I think The Core is actually all right with this. The leader spoke of RL always coming first and so on. But somehow I am projecting my Asc/GoC sentiments onto it.

Buffer Overrun is still rather odd, but because it's so big, they don't seem to give a damn. I'm just gonna stay my not-there self, and if they kick, they kick, when I feel like playing an ill/rad, then I'll play.

Grammar Police is no sweat. No one's on, I don't care, it's just a cute secondary title.

A** Clowns is also ok because it's one of those periodic gathering things, not a compulsive log everyday thing.

Anyhow, it's becoming more and more clear to me that I cannot adapt to the 25+ crowds/teaming, and expect to learn the missions and the maps at the same time. And teaming is starting to leave a bitter taste in my mouth, so that's again another danger sign to stop.

This weekend, I am gonna make the A** Clown meet, and I'll do ONE Synapse TF on Ochre. That's all the teaming I'm doing. Otherwise, I am gonna solo on Ravenhill and earn me some influence. Lots of it. The other alts need so much help it's sad. And I'll solo for at least this coming week, and maybe the next also.

BECAUSE it's time for balance in my life again. When I can't think of anything good to do with my life besides play CoH to forget about stuff I should be doing...stuff is outta whack. Time to just groove along for a while and do 1-2 missions every day with Ravenhill and log off to take care of other business.

Inspired by the webby and the boards, I decided to make a list of my own:

And because I like brainstorming and find that it's always best to push it so that you break through to the really good stuff that wasn't on the surface of your mind, I hereby present my personal "100 Things To Do Besides Play CoH Obsessively" list...


1) Make a list of nice places to visit/eat and make time to go see them. Places like Lai Meen, ThaiExpress, Original Sin, and more funky places.
2) Go check out the Boon Lay shopping complex and the comics store there and see if they have Alien figs.
3) Pick up my Joseph Campbell book from SAN Bookstore.
4) Order the rest of the books from Amazon.com because waiting takes too long.
5) Learn Macromedia Flash and attempt some work-related Experiment Tutorials.
6) Dream up funky mystery scenarios for work – things the public can do, based on the cell mystery – except use bigger things like leaves, insects, macro life science STUFF, so they can have some fun with the stereoscopes, eh?
7) Go look at the shareware/freeware sites for those ancient games that may be worth playing again.
8) Figure out which computer and how can play Nomad WITH sound. :P
9) Database inventory thy book collection, and thy DVD collection.
10) Perhaps even do a miniature figure inventory somehow and START PAINTING. Eeee Figmentia. :P
11) Actually play some of your precious wargames. Blood Bowl, Hybrid, the works.
12) Find solo wargame rules and matrixes if you need to as well.
13) Actually READ some of these RPG books you collect and collect.
14) Download some nifty RPG stuff from RPG now.
15) Set up a printer so you can print in color
16) Start printing out cardstock and making them.
17) Then you can buy and make cool and aweinspiring things like the Sea Maiden ship from Worldworks.
18) Work on cross-stitching projects. If I ever finish the ones I own, I could go do the Natural Selection eye one, which totally rockz0rs.
19) Lego – need to sort your collection out, build a few pirate ships, and keep the rest properly for other projects.
20) Art projects – attempt to draw/paint in colour pencil, watercolour, etc. Read tutorials. Do a sketchbook
21) Sort through all older mindmaps to get more ideas for this list.
22) Make up some con-langs and read those fantasy linguistics webbys.
23) Read up on world design, and make new worlds.
24) Especially the 31 days of world-building on my sci-fi and fantasy world.
25) Read up the old Dragon magazine articles which could be of lots of use.
26) Make up a website/blog ABOUT these new worlds so I can have a place to record an encyclopedia of this stuff.
27) Look up hosting options, I might actually be able to afford proper hosting if I wanted to. And then self-craft something of my own.
28) It’s too bad play-by-email games don’t seem to last. I guess I don’t have staying power, personally. But I could lurk and check a few more out.
29) Make an inventory of the Lycaeus the computer as it is now, and plot out hardware upgrade options for it.
30) I don’t think I mentioned up setting up Nimuhar the laptop in the hobby room.
31) Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Again.
32) There are a bunch of classics in your library that you wanted to read. Stuff like the Iliad, the Odysessy, and others. Well, why aren’t you reading them?
33) Organize my modeling tools – I don’t even know where my glue is, and I still need proper wire clippers for plastic sprues.
34) Cook. There are a million and one recipes in books that you bought that sound so good. Well, pick some recipes out, go downstairs and buy groceries and COOK ‘em. Doh. Potatoes, cheese, eggs, da works.
35) I wanted to build up a Philip K Dick collection of short stories. I haven’t even read the first book, how can I justify buying the other books?
36) Come to think of it, there are a bunch of other anthologies you bought but NEVER READ. Aieeee.
37) Make a wish list of all the things you want to buy but cannot justify buying because you already have too much crap in the house and “no time” to do them. Translation: I’m too busy taking the easy way out of gaming to spare any prioritized hard-work time for them.
38) Read Terra Genesis website and make some nifty cool terrain pieces.
39) Make a list of all the DVDs you’d want and stories you’d want to watch or watch again.
40) Come to think of it, Monty Python and Little Shop of Horrors make it up there on my list again.
41) Visit local library and check out more books. Especially self-improvement, spiritual types.
42) Poke my nose into a community center to see if there’s any interesting classes that might be worth me trying.
43) Dedicate some time to treadmill usage.
44) Buy a swimsuit and actually use the swimming pool once in a while.
45) Write stories.
46) Participate in Nanowrimo, for real this time.
47) Figure out more aspects of digital photography so that I can actually take good pics of my minis.
48) Set up things like lighting and a tripod for it too.
49) Learn greek.
50) Learn latin.
51) Learn Old English.
52) Read some classics in these tongues.
53) Heck, read Chaucer in Middle English too.
54) Meditate.
55) Sort through stamp collection.
56) Sort through CCG collection.
57) Repaint pre-painted minis.
58) Grow some plants – carrot tops, chili seeds, a sweet potato. Green beans. Cactus seeds. Other flower seeds bought but never used.
59) Repot my cacti, they probably need serious help again.
60) Consider getting another hamster. Or a cat. Just not both at the same time. Heh.
61) Work on life goals and career paths and self-assessment and personality understanding.
62) Heck, work on your resume while yer at it.
63) Oh and your INCOME TAX. Shit.
64) Finish a bunch of single player games which never seem to get finished. Demon Stone, Lord of the Rings, Doom 3, NOLF 2, yadda yadda. Heck, I haven’t even installed Icewind Dale 2 or Quake III Arena yet.
65) Set us up your Xbox so we can actually play with it now and then? Stuff like Mechwarrior, etc.
66) Get that FRAG system for the Xbox so I can use a mouse without crying over the controller in Halo.
67) Work on Interactive Fiction projects. You wanted to write some once. And play some.
68) Heck, you should actually build a few SMAUG areas for the heck of it some day. Can toss it to the Smaug Area Archive or go shove it to some immie in RoD. The ironic thing would be that you would need that distance to actually finish a mud area, and then let someone else handle the debugging and installation as needed. And then you wouldn’t actually care about what happened to it, cos yer gone. More or less. And the funny thing might be, by the time I get around to this, Smaug 2.0 might actually *shock, horror* be public domain. Hahahaha.
69) Clean up room and find some place to put all the files.
70) Clean up everything that is just sitting and taking up space in the living room.
71) Make some friends in the real world?

[This is a tricky one because they have such mundane, prosaic, materialistic interests. Even if I don’t online game, I have no interest in movies (not when the tickets are now $9-9.50 and a region 1 dvd costs $36. Hello, for just 4x the price, I get the permanent ability to rewatch any show I want, in the comfort of my own home, without people coughing and sneezing and blocking my view and laughing at inappropriate times and trying to grope each others’ private parts without giggling too hard in various adjacent seats.) I am not interested in talking about TV shows like Survivor, American Idol or Desperate Housewives. Thank God and Tao I never had an addiction where TV watching is concerned. Nor cars. Nor public transit. Nor children. Nor exercise regimes. Nor politics. Nor natural disasters. Nor the weather. Unsoweiter.]

72) Play some board games, maybe visit Settler’s Café again some time
73) Hey, I could actually watch a couple of interesting Discovery channel programs, or tape them.
74) I could surf the net and check out PBS-Nova’s vids and transcripts before they steal them all away and make ‘em disappear.
75) I could check out TSR’s, ok Wizards, ok Hasbro’s, I give up, which takeover is it now? website and wait with baited breath for Ed Greenwood’s next books – especially the KNIGHTS OF MYTH DRANNOR ones and the drooly seven sisters type books.
76) Go look for some greatest game type football dvds and see if it’s worth watching those. I’d give a ton for the Colt’s game of last year or so? The 28 points in practically 4 minutes was jaw-dropping.
77) Hey, I could actually –install- or copy Madden 2005 and play it.
78) Consider trying out some comic trade paperbacks like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Hellboy, Hellblazer, etc.
79) Update my comics on the web subscription and actually read it.
80) Send some money to Aaron William’s and get my 6-monthly autographed fix of Nodwick, PS238 and all that.
81) Read their websites like Dork Tower, Nodwick, etc for free daily fixes of comics.
82) Check out some gaming related fan-made comics for the fun of it, like I said I would, but never got around to doing.
83) Buy Harry Turtledove’s e-book and read Homeward Bound.
84) Order Neil Gaiman’s audio CD. While yer at it, listen to the free clips on Sci-Fi channel’s Seeing Ear Theatre again.
85) Mess around with something like Angband for fun.
86) Oh, you never did finish Diablo II. Mess around with that.
87) And FF8. And FF7. Why the heck am I playing CoH for? Cos I spend $15 (x 1.65) a month on it and need to justify it? Um. Seriously, that is small beans. My pocket money in school would cover it without twitching. Let alone my salary now. I don’t mind helping their development costs along cos it’s a great game, but I really shouldn’t act like a powergamer freak and try to exhaust the content in 6 months.
88) You know, I never did play through Blood Sword 5 properly, or even read through it, once I got my grubby hands on it via Underdogs.
89) And I’d love to get my hands on freeway warrior and other old advenure gamebooks to play ‘em through again. You know, I’m sitting on duel masters – the mage thing that aren’t even thumbed through yet.
90) Order Babylon 5 Season 5 and the Crusade Series of DVDs. How could I have forgotten this till number 90?
91) Have a LOTR Extended Edition marathon.
92) Watch the appendixes in the LOTR extended editions while yer at it.
93) Watch a whole bunch of directory commentaries for various dvds.
94) Get my hands on the Troy dvd and a buncha greek warriors from somewhere. Do you think Tamiya has any or I need pewter type deals? Paint ‘em up.
95) Rewatch the two anime series I have. Rurouni Kenshin and Sakura Taisen. *swoons* I should attempt learning trivial Japanese while I’m at it. Or something about their customs.
96) Read some reviews and consider picking up another fav anime series. There’s this Inuyasha VCD series out for 29.90 for 6 episodes, properly english subbed, Jap dubbed, I wonder if it’s worth sticking with or trying it out?
97) Even the gundam stuff looked quite interesting. *twitch* More giant robots? Sol Bianca or something was another one I was pondering.
98) Pick up a proper atlas. And/or read the geography textbooks online for proper world building background.
99) Finish the books you borrowed from your work library so you can actually return them. How embarassing, they must be like a year overdue by now.
100) How can I not end by saying, make another list like this again. Make more lists. Make any type of lists imaginable. It’s fun. It’s brainstormy. You never quite figured out what’s in your head until you do lists like these.
101) This is compulsory from sitting at my messy office desk. Clean it up. File stuff. Do the necessary paperwork. Clean up the unnecessary paperwork while yer at it.
102) Tidy up the powerpoints as needed, improve them, they are your livelihood after all. Devote some effort beyond minimum needed to do something creative? And kewl?

Yep, I think it's way past time to try and do some of the above list than game my life away on 30+ alts.