End of expansion blues (or how I quit progression raiding to take a break and still not have a life)

It's the end of an era, friends. After over a year of wipes, kills, and watching people come and go due to RL or ragequits, I officially left my raid team to go casual until Mists of Pandaria.

How I feel right now.

I know. I know. Only baddies are casuals. But in all honesty, this decision was in the best interest of my mental health. For most of the past year, I have always been able to stay unphased by the raid leader with narcissistic personality disorder, an overwhelming majority of the team being so incompetent that they can't be helped, and boss kills that tend to feel more like happy accidents than the products of strategy and hard work. However, as of late, I've found that all of these negative factors have been slowly chipping away at my sanity, and for ten hours a week, I turn into someone so angry that the thought of strangling kittens arises way more frequently than should be considered normal. Yes, we admit that the sassy female raider on vent that calls out people who die stupidly only to make excuses is always a turn-on in that psychosexual way of people who like fiery make-up sex. But when did I become that jerk who calls people out? I'd guess right about the eighth time that hunter died because of her "cat."

Anyway, due to harassment and drama, I went back to my Wrath guild to hang out with my perennial buddies while waiting for pandas. In a totally unrelated mutiny, a large chunk of the old raid team took the opportunity to jump on the /gquit bandwagon and subsequently formed their own guild. Sadly, this means that after I finally freed myself of the necrotic limb that was my old guild, I have all my former raid members badgering me to start progression raiding again in their fabulous new guild with a terrible new name.

Just let me gear my alts in peace!

-Avia.

CAT FIGHT!!!

With Patch 4.2 coming, I’ve been so caught up lately in final preparations. Honestly, all the casters are caught up in final preparations: transmuting truegolds, collecting chaos orbs, and generally anticipating becoming the first player chosen by our guild leader to wield the new legendary staff, the first caster legendary since vanilla. We’re all overly optimistic for sure.

With all that going on, I had just managed to watch the Firelands trailer a few days ago and I was PISSED! I had heard rumors that Thrall had a new girlfriend, but when I saw him wrap his arm around Aggra’s waist, my eyes popped out of their sockets and tried to ocularly bitch slap her.

Obviously, I’m upset that my favorite character in WoW lore is now taken. For some reason, Thrall seemed the type to be an eligible bachelor forever, asexually placing the needs of others before himself, like an orc Yoda. Plus, once he and Aggra have a child, he’s at greater risk of being killed off by the Blizzard developers, because you know they looove orphans.

Hungry for more information on this new woman, I bought and read The Shattering, which I had been meaning to read, but raiding (and school, maybe) has been my main priority for a few months. I won’t be spoiling anything by mentioning that the story of how they meet is pretty unspectacular: the usual “don’t get along at first but then grow accustomed to each other’s complementary personalities and fall in love” type of deal. What I found really sad was that a shamanic advisor mentions Jaina as a perfect mate for Thrall if only she wasn’t human. Despite the whole mixed-race(lol) thing, Jaina and Thrall were supposed to be WoW’s couple, and their denial of each other because of their differences irritated the hell out of me. Now Jaina will forever be the Other Woman, and I’ll have to figure out in my rampant imagination who she will hook up with in the end.

The rest of the book was amazing, by the way, and I highly recommend reading it. My choice for star of the show: Anduin Wrynn. Who knew he would grow up to be such a compassionate little cupcake? I think I found my new crush.

-Avia.

Tits Team #1!

My old guild had "girls".
IRL, I’m one of those girls who has very few female friends, hanging out with and talking to mostly guys. It’s probably because I never had much experience spending time with women despite being one myself. Plus, there’s that one-sided sexual tension I feel when she’s really hot. Goddamn social awkwardness/bisexuality dual spec.

This week, I’ve started reaching out to reinforce my connection with other women in the easiest way I know how: in game. Somehow, my guild has managed to recruit a large percentage of the female gaming population on the server, formerly only rumored to exist. My fellow ladies and I in our raid group created a password-protected channel called TeamTits, a penis-free zone where we can talk freely about... the raid. So far, our conversations have been pretty limited to rolling our virtual eyes when Vent chatter becomes overly testosterone charged about MineCraft. But I’m sure we’ll eventually use the intimate and confidential space to discuss important issues about being women in a predominantly male arena and how to consistently overcome Recount’s glass ceilings to top DPS and healing charts.

Unfortunately, someone confessed to our raid leader that she didn’t want to be included in Team Tits, and she didn’t tell him why. The rest of us can only guess that she either thinks the name is offensive or she is just as uncomfortable with other women as I am. If it’s the latter, then there’s no way I can let her leave the team! After all, I’m sucking it up, seeking camaraderie with my fellow women, and grasping for common topics beyond the fact that we’re in a 25-man raid group full of one-up’ers. You know... when someone tells a story, they have to tell better one. We have twenty of them. All one-up’ing each other. For four hours.

Hopefully, it’s just contention about the word “tits,” which admittedly is a little crass. If that’s the case, I’ll propose that we change the name to OvaryOffensive. Or BoobBrigade. Or BraBattalion.

I’m full of these.

-Avia.