Grumpy

(Warning: This is a WoW-related post. And something of a rant. If you are unfamiliar with WoW, you may not understand the entire rant. For that, I apologize.)

Ah, the raid instance known as Molten Core. Where all the big kids go to duke it out with extremely powerful monsters of flamey hurtiness in the name of "uber phat lewts." Where folks must go, time and time and time again, in order to get their "leet" armor for their class, going again and again and again on the off chance that they might maybe, just maybe, find that drop they were needing.

Over, and over, and over, and over...

The very thought of it made me cringe. Made me shudder. For a long, long time, I resisted every invitation. Especially since I much rather play my dwarven paladin IC over OOC, and most raids of Molten Core are by necessity OOC. And sitting at the computer for more than 6 hours straight staring at the screen and having to be completely OOC...?

Bleh.

I mean, in all honesty, I like Branny more than I like *me.* I'm stuck in my own skin 24/7 as it is - I like my WoW time being spent trying to look at the world through eyes not completely my own. It's more enjoyable. It's a nice escape.

Then someone said they were going to start an IC group to run through MC. A group which would be consisted of RPers - not hard-core raiders, but dedicated RPers who would merrily RP their way through the Core. And I got invited.

The idea was intriguing. RP and Raid? At first, I was hesitant, not wanting to go. I know myself - I am not much of a raider. The whole "lewt" thing isn't that important to me. Oh, not to say I don't drool a bit when I see someone dressed up in all matching high-end armor or anything. But, knowing the number of hours necessary to GET to the point where you can get all that, well, seems like an awful lot of work just for a few pixelated goodies. I'm not "leet," I don't need (or honestly deserve) stuff like that. There are no rewards for being IC - but that doesn't matter, I prefer being IC to "lewts" anyway.

Not to say I don't enjoy being OOC from time to time. I thoroughly enjoy running instances with Tatsurai and friends from their guild, Rising Nova, most of whom are usually OOC. There's nothing wrong with playing the game OOC. It's a lot faster when you run things OOC. You get people being silly and goofy and joking around, and it can be a lot of fun.

But RPing your way though an instance can also be a lot of fun. It's just labor-intensive. But was it possible to do for a large 40-man raid? This group seemed to think so. So, after much encouragement from various friends, I agreed to go. And went. Twice.

And griped through the entire thing. Twice.

There was little if any RPing. People weren't even bothering to try to be IC. There was just a lot of goofiness, and silliness, and general playfulness going on. Now had this been a raid with non-RPers, or light-RPers, I probably would have been fine. But this had been billed as an RP Raid. An IC Raid. Filled with stellar RPers, some of whom I've played with quite a bit over the last year or so. I know it's not easy to play IC when learning a new dungeon, but I thought that we'd at least try to stay somewhat IC. But that wasn't the case. And it left me feeling disappointed and betrayed.

I feel bad. I feel guilty. Friends want me there. They had fun there. They look forward to going back. Me? Every moment spent there OOC made me more and more irritable. I took no satisfaction in successfully taking down boss monsters. No sense of victory or pride. No sense of belonging, of being a contributing member. Only a growing sense dissatisfaction and disappointment. A growing sense of division and loss.

A sense of, once again, being left behind. And of knowing that, once again, it was no one else's fault but my own.

Still, even so, I just can't force myself to continue. I'm not having fun. It's just making me grumpy and irritable. Deb and Wes have had to listen to my griping about it for two weeks now.

It's time to face facts: I just don't belong.