Snarks and Ladders

Well, if anyone managed to track me down from my old WoW blog, I guess you deserve to here the full story, just for sheer perseverance’s sake.

For the record – I still maintain there was nothing wrong with my old lifestyle.  I’m just choosing not to live it anymore, because it’s not good for me.  That doesn’t mean I am condemning it, or saying it’s not good for anyone else.

I spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet.  I’m a bit of a social networking junkie.  I love chatting to the wonderful people I have met from all around the world on the internet.  I spend most of my downtime hanging around online while doing other things – the internet is great for multitasking.

Unfortunately, I seem to have a problem with meeting guys online.  I know that there is nothing wrong with meeting people online and forming relationships that way – I totally get it.  I am a little concerned though that it IS how I met my last two boyfriends, as well as the guy who was involved in the dismal mess that I am now trying to get over.  Clearly I either meet the most fantastic people online (partially true), or I am just easily convinced to fall for someone (perhaps also easily true).

In real life, people tend to annoy me more.  You have to actually put up with their little quirks and habits.  I know that I have several annoying things I do which don’t come across online (I’ll compulsively rub my hands together when nervous.  Or my eye will itch and I’ll rub it until it’s red and sore.  I fail at making conversation with strangers, and I invariably end up blushing when I talk to them, which leads to further embarrassment and MORE blushing).  Online, I am a much superior version of myself.  And I guess a lot of other people are too.

So, yeah, I find myself falling for the wrong people.  And then getting hurt when it turns out I am not as likable as they once thought.  So, partially because of this, and partially because I want to try and reclaim my pre-gaming life back, I basically threw my hands up and said ‘no more!’ to the WoW community.

So I’m going to try and be better at my job.  I’m going to try and be fitter and look and feel healthier.  I’m going to try to be a better house keeper.  Read more.  Eat less.  Be a better pet owner.  Spend more time socialising with people who are physically around me, even if I would much rather curl up on the couch and stay in.

And I’m not going to fall for anyone who blindly leads me on, or let myself get in over my head like I have in the past.  I’m just getting tired of it.

The ever delightful Marylin linked to me in this quick n easy meme (thanks Marylin!)

I don’t change my desktop very often, so I have had this one for a while.  However, I think it is the first gaming desktop I have had in a long time – I usually stick to an image of the cats or something.  Perhaps I am just getting geekier?

For those who are unfamiliar with the image, that is a WoW screencap… specifically of my character about to fly into one of the major cities.  What can I say, I thought it was pretty!

However, I think I might be changing it soon to one of my photos from Nymagee.  What is Nymagee, you ask?  Well… maybe I’ll write a post about it sometime this week.  If the cars weren’t in the shot below, it would perfectly capture the feel of the place… one tree.  Lots of dirt.

I don’t actually have anyone to tag… instead, I’ll leave it open for anyone to take up on their own.

Warning: yeah, this is a gaming post.  yeah, you may not care – but who says you have to care about any of the stuff that I write anyway?  Just click ‘mark as read’ and move along

Also – HOLY WALL OF TEXT BATMAN!

I moderate a forum for WoW bloggers, amongst the other random things that I spend my time doing.  It’s usually a pretty straightforward, easy job. I approve new users, occasionally steer conversations back to an appropriate level, but as a rule the people who join are nice people who just want to help one another out.

The moderator list appears to be quite extensive.  We have something like, oh, 8 moderators, 4 administrators… unfortunately, the only moderator who is really at all active is me.  While this isn’t usually an issue… it does present some concerns occasionally.

The other day, someone registered for the forum that I had doubts about.  They weren’t a blog, for starters.  And their site definitely wasn’t about building a community.  In fact, it was more about naming and shaming than anything else.  Sure, that has its purpose (and I may have actually used it once, regarding a certain lazy moron), but it isn’t really what our little forum is all about.  So, I was of two minds as to whether I should approve them or not.

Unfortunately… we don’t have any other active mods that I can hash this shit out with!

Well, they are now approved.  I don’t like to say I was ‘forced’, because I most certainly was not, but you know how it is when someone says ‘I was just wondering… why was this not done?’ etc etc.  So, well, I felt bad (because I have been feeling bad about the whole thing for a couple days now), and I added them.  However, I didn’t like the implication when it was said that OTHER people had not been approved.  Because they had.  Occasionally, it takes a while.  If I am not around for a week, because there are no other mods, nothing gets done.  Some days, well, I just don’t feel up to the rigours of my internet chores.  So fucking sue me.

And if the implication wasn’t that I was lazy, then it was that I had been discriminating against people, and only approving who I felt like.  So not true.  If I approved the guy who can’t use god damn punctuation, then I’ll approve most everyone.  Unless, of course, you are a troll or something.

Or maybe there was just no implication at all.  Maybe I read too much into it all because the whole forum thing is starting to piss me off.

– I don’t mind moderating.  Really.  But I would love to NOT BE THE ONLY ONE.

– If I AM the only person actually, you know, working on the damn thing… y’think I’d be bumped up to being an admin at some point.  Of our current 4 admins, only ONE of them is a WoW blogger.  One who doesn’t have a great deal of time to look after things anyway.  There is a lot of shit that needs tidying up… and I can’t do all of that as a moderator.

– A lot of the old heads in the community no longer use the place.  I guess that’s because, well… the community is changing.  We don’t NEED it so much anymore, because we pretty well know what we are doing, and things like twitter and chatrooms have replaced much of the forum’s purpose.  It makes me sad though when I see all these new people registering, and they will rarely get feedback or comments off the old heads.  You know what sort of things made my fricking god damn day when I started blogging?  Comments from the old heads, from the big bloggers who I respected.  That, I would guess, is one of the things that actually kept me blogging.  Aren’t you all glad that happened?

– And, because I am human… even though I KNOW it doesn’t matter, and I don’t explicitly want it… there is absolutely no recognition for doing this.  None whatsoever.  Which, y’know, is fine… just occasionally irksome when you see people tooting their horns about other shit and getting pats on the back.  But, hey, I’m a selfish bitch who wants her own fair share of back pats, and I’m not going to deny it.

I feel like that particular community is breaking down.  Part of it is that it has gotten bigger than what we can all stay in touch with.  Part of it is the community becoming more diverse.  I guess another big part is the attrition that community is currently seeing.   I’d like to see the community booming again like it used to… but I can’t do it on my own.  I think it really has to grow again, from the bottom up, with the new people.  And some days, I really just feel like packing it in.  The current state of the forum, for example… makes me want to cry!

/end wall of text.