Greetings from Strand of the Ancients

Time off

I earnestly wonder when I’ll become weary of WoW and permanently stop playing. It’s different for everyone: depending on your circumstances and personality, WoW has the potential to go on and on — though not necessarily in any extremely consuming way — as any hobby you engage in for several hours during the weekend; but it can also just die in you if you have better things to occupy your time with.

Lately, I feel like I’ve suddenly realized how tired I actually am. I feel spent. Spent! That is the word that fits perfectly to describe this feeling. Even the way the word ends, a great expulsion of air that ends in a slouch. I am weary of everything about it — from how boring my gnome’s hairstyle looks, to how boring all my mounts are — but then it seems like I go through this every year.

I’m really curious to know how it will end. I see so many people come back to the game. There is always an interest in it for me, too, be it serious or casual. When do people actually stop playing the game, and why? What fills their time? What kind of personality do they have? What kind of people are they? What kind of people are we, to be continually entertained by this world? Are we creators? Or are we followers? Is that the division, the difference?

For me, WoW has been a great escape, a stress relief. But when the game starts being stressful — like being in conflict with people in-game you’ve met, or not finding partners for arena, or witnessing hostilities escalate because people do not know what motivates their meanspiritedness, or even how they affect one another — then there little reason to continue.

It’s a game, and Blizzard tries to make it endless, but I think some people will catch on and realize that the content is not endless, that it has gotten old for us “veteran” WoW players. Not anyone’s fault. I’ve tried both factions to my limits. I’ve tried all the races and classes. I’ve tried PvP and raiding. The only thing that keeps me playing are the cuteness of my gnome characters, but even that is losing relevance for me. Like all things, it seems, nothing can maintain their enchantment on my mind for long. The gnomes that I love have always represented my ideals, but I’ve never lost sight of the fact that it is the ideals that count, and that they (the ideals) have their applicability to the real world.  Yet even ideals are not the end, but a means to greater revelation about one’s self, others, and life.

Right now, WoW has become a casual affair, and I feel pulled to it by two things: 1) My obligation to my newfound arena partners (3v3), and 2) my last and final wish to get a Gladiator title, which I’ve desired so greatly since arena came into the game. But even if #2 does not come to pass this season, I’m not entirely sure if I’ll stay.

A consolation

It’s not often that the words of “bad” parents are repeated. In inner circles as in outer ones, it’s the tendency of people not only to shun the words and the memory of an emotionally (or otherwise) abusive parent, but also to be offended at the thought of considering that we have something to learn from them.

Not all bad parents are equal, and my dad, who has since passed, was not really bad when you think about it. I remember one thing he said, or rather did for us. He tried, or said he tried, and knowing what I know now, having even considered “it” is a huge deal. (What “it” is, follows.)

He said that he didn’t have a good start in life so he was going to try to help us have what he didn’t have. He could’ve approached it differently, with a little less indulgence and a little more discipline, but I really do appreciate the sentiment of swallowing your present dissatisfaction and, if you have children, to try to make it better for the rest of us who’ll follow.

Our family progressed for sure, from my grandparents who were, to my knowledge, never formally educated, to my parents who at least finished high school and/or college, and to us children who’ve at least finished college or post-grad school. I know my dad valued education above all, and I’m happy to see that his dreams were fulfilled, at least from this generational perspective.

But I don’t think he felt the same way about this accomplishment. I remember when we were little how much he wanted our eldest brother to go to a prominent U.S. university, like Stanford or Berkeley. He’d bring home a thick book of college rankings, and I remember browsing through its columned pages, the felt of recycled paper in my fingers. My brother moved to the US in 1989 — a turbulent year for the family — and ended up spending almost a decade in community college. By the end of it, I was almost graduating from high school, and he was just then moving on to a less glamorous but capable state university. But after graduating, he wasn’t too eager to join the workforce; my mom intervened and helped him find a job with a prominent computer company. Perhaps it was for her own sake as well as his.

I don’t think I held too much hope for our dad either. Being the youngest, I was probably his last hope. (It’s no wonder now why he would have three more children.) It occurs to me now that my having been expelled from the academically rigorous and highly regarded Catholic school (K-12) that all my siblings (and cousins) and I went to was probably a blow to him. I was expelled for “subversive” activities — for being “vocal” and “frank” about my then Christianity — and I was one of two in the family not to graduate from there. I transferred to a comparatively rural Christian school, where I specifically remember feeling like my brain was turning to mush. I eventually transferred to a suburban U.S. high school for my senior year, took all the American history courses for freshman year up, and got a 3.55 GPA without even trying. Maybe my provincial high school wasn’t all that bad. But my face or name never showed up in the yearbook that year. I never knew how to network, never knew what was going on, never could get socially engaged, and after awhile, I decided it was safest to say I didn’t care to. In retrospect, I’m confident it had as much to do with my general reticence about society and my knee-jerk aversion to conformity as it did with American society’s view at the time (late 90s) of Asians (or maybe even just Asian males) being unfit for assimilation, or our lack of “social ordinariness.” I would learn this harsh lesson soon after graduating from high school when I bicycled across America, through the Midwest, with my brother and sister, and met countless times, in Iowa especially, the saddest and most frightening displays yet of bigotry.

I’ve strayed. This wasn’t a Father’s Day post, and if it were, it would be offensively late. The first paragraph wasn’t the point; rather, it was the third. I prefaced what I was going to say by acknowledging my father’s role in instilling the thought in me.

It’s the consolation I write about after witnessing how my generational peer, Chelsea Clinton, is so far and away unlike me. I’ve visited the topic of her twice in this blog, but the first one I think I’ve already deleted for embarrassment, for what it said about me. This post, too, written on as a text file and soon to be sent to myself as an email for later publication, is at risk of being concealed. But who writes to be revealed when one knows there is nothing proud to be revealed?

I was just going to say that I’m like my dad. I don’t know if we’ll ever get where we want to go in life — who can tell the future? — but it’s consolation to know that we’re trying and that others are trying, too, FOR US.

What is a good life good for?

A: For hitting someone with a bad one over the head with.

WoW has made me a better person? Wut?

I am always on the lookout for ways to bring this blog back to the topics of World of Warcraft, even with just an article blending personal testimony with social commentary with a little unexpected thesis — usually not common sense.

Who would believe me if I said that this game has made me a better person? I’m sure Blizzard would love to hear stories like that more often, as hard a statement it is to believe for WoW fans as it is for detractors.

My friend didn’t believe me, for example, when I told him that WoW’s latest installment (Lich King) got me involved in guild management and raiding so much that I improved my leadership and management skills, and consequently my self-confidence. I do not gravitate towards leadership positions in real life, owing to my egalitarian ideals and natural timidity, but the game allowed me chances to “show [my] quality” from time to time by filling leadership roles with trivial responsibilities (trivial in the sense that it’s just a game). Not that I’ve never had a leadership position, but judging from the change I see in myself, I’m sure now that the acquisition of leadership skills is in part due to being recognized by your peers as a leader deserving merit. (Being recognized as such allows me to see my own merit, which furthers the development of various leader-like attributes.) Was there no recognition in real life of my personal contributions as a leader? Apparently not.

WoW doesn’t deserve a lot of credit in and of itself, because it’s just a video game made by a (big) group of individuals with verifiable expertise in a variety of areas (art, computer programming, animation, story telling) who are, like everyone else, trying to make a living by doing something they love and enjoy. But I was fortunate to start playing it at a time in my life when I was consumed by my thoughts: WoW was a reprieve from my depression. And though it hasn’t all been for good — with bouts of neglect for time, my health, or even my career — I’m not sure I would’ve come sooner to the realization that my unrealistic expectations about my future were in need of revision. My dreams rooted me in place. They motivated me, yes, but they were sadly unattainable given my own temperament and my social identity, which I cannot wholly control. But WoW gave me time, reason, and opportunity to disassociate myself from these dreams long held, long enough to see that I would be undone by them sooner then they would yield any fruit.

So was WoW a mere distraction, albeit a powerful one? Would any other distraction of equal or greater strength have worked then?

I’ll say that true solutions are not one-size-fits-all. The search for a solution itself is complex, because it fits, like rain water on a patch of street among millions of miles of streets in the world, in the intricacies of your personality, your childhood, and the sum of your experiences. And like rain water, it flits about, rises, falls, never stays put.

So WoW was a solution to my patch of street, and it flitted about like a beautiful white sheet: it shaded, it soothed me to sleep, became a wall or a roof at need, a source of light, a palette of shades, a motion picture, or a silhouette in the night. It gave me new ideas, gently suppressed the old ones, and became a door to possibilities. (That is, it was a creative, aesthetic, literary resource at a time when I was exhausted of all inspiration. Through it, I could project my version of reality, my values, and see them play out kaleidoscopically.) It helped me to see that what I spent a good chunk of my time doing was fun, exciting, and deserving of investigation. My ideas about living and happiness needed to be reassessed, re-conceived, on multiple levels.

For I was embracing something I thought was below me. I stopped thinking about, among other things, what I was above of. I stopped looking at myself. I stopped caring (in more ways than one). I started seeing what was before me — the “what is” — and started to think presently. It was a relief to realize that I enjoy the present and that I don’t like vying for what could be. I realize that kind of realization happens to all of us, but it happened to me — it happened on my street — on account of this game, which I still play.

I don’t claim to know everything for I really only know my part, but I reject the knee-jerk characterizations made regarding the game, not even to say of the typical dullness, ignorance, and hypocrisy of those making the characterizations. There is much that goes on beneath the surface, and sacredness has been ascribed even to the mundane. Video games do not have power in and of themselves; they are not sacred by themselves. It is what we make them out to be, like in so many aspects of life, that instills them with power, whether for ill or for good.

EDITED/ADDED: WoW, and all its interesting and engrossing aspects, was like emptying out the drawers and wiping clean a workdesk for me. It was like seeing the separate pieces again, scrutinizing their purpose, and putting them in a new place or else throwing them all away. I threw a lot of stuff away. A lot of things I didn’t need.

The outright rejection of the game I see from people whom I mention the game to is itself a signal to me that I am on an interesting path. People’s close-mindedness clarifies, at the very least, the advantage of being a WoW player to be able to see the irony of close-minded people telling me not to waste my time with the game and to do other things, when they don’t know what the game is about or don’t know what they’re talking about. To engage them in discussion regarding the positive aspects of the game is generally fruitless, for it requires the person to learn about the game, which hardly ever happens if they’re coming from a place of rejection. Either they become defensive, or the WoW player becomes frustrated.

Son of God

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9).

Purty screenshot

Flying over Icecrown

My gnome’s adorable combat animations

So, in case you haven’t heard, female gnomes are impossibly cute. Unfortunately, in the midst of all this fortunate-ness of having rolled a gnome, I spend about 99% of the time staring at the back of her cute head.

But one day (while doing quests for the Loremaster achievements and getting attacked by a level 9 furbolg), I realized that my defensive combat animations — dodge and parry — are pretty spiffy, as you’ll soon see…

When silly people don't have enough +hit, this is what my gnome does. Yes, she just stands there being cute.

As shown, this is THE dodge animation. Apparently, as a rogue, I perform this move a bit excessively; my ret pally partner approves, however.

The rest...

And finally, the animation I’ve been savoring to show you…

Ok, I admit, this is all very strange, but... this is just too cute.

Don’t talk to strangers

So I’m chilling on my lowbie Dwarf priest, getting my quests done in Stormwind, when some dude passes me by on his mount, does a double take, and then whispers me. Random rudeness. So I do this to him:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Never talk to strangers, folks. They might just be more psycho than you.

A minimal desktop

I discovered a whole new world the other day. I had no idea how customizable the Windows XP desktop was until I stumbled upon a theme add-on for Firefox called hmmXP. It hinted at Windows themes out there that completely change the way the desktop looks. Forgive me for my noobiness, but I simply had no idea.

The hmmXP page, as you’ll see, contains a link to deviantart.com. Starting from this page in deviantart, you’ll find thousands of themes that you can download. The catch is that you’ll need to download and run a file called uxpatcher, which does something kooky to your computer, but in turn allows you to activate these theme packages once they’ve been unzipped and placed in your themes folder (C: > Windows > Resources > Themes). You would think they’d show up on your display properties menu once you’ve placed them into the theme folder, but it isn’t so; you’ll need to double click on the theme file itself, which will open up the display properties for you and allow you to apply the theme to your desktop. (If you, dear reader, have any questions about these things, please leave a comment! I’ll answer them the best that I can. Please note that I am not a computer expert, and that I do recommend exercising a modicum of care when working in the Windows folder.)

After searching through more than a thousand themes, taking cues from a variety of styles, I arrived… here:

Minimal is the theme. The fonts used are called ”hooge 05_53″ and “kroeger 05_55 caps” (”hooge” comes with Minimal, but the ”kroeger” font was scrounged from another theme). The Firefox theme is, funny enough, Gnome Classic. The wallpaper was found somewhere on a site called interfacelift.com.