Reflections From The Pond

Candy, the shadow priest (mostly) of Bible of Dreams came up with this meme and tagged me a while ago. She managed to hit the busiest time of the year for me, and what time I’ve had to spare has been mostly spent playing the game or sleeping, so I am very late in answering this. But hey, better late than never, right? :-)

So thanks Candy for being interested in how I think about my year in WoW and here we go:

My Warcraft Year in Review

1) What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before?

I joined a guild which focuses on raiding and actually calls itself a raid guild – not a casual raid guild or a casual guild that raids or any of those fuzzy labels that can mean just about anything, but a raid guild.  And I like it!

2) What was your favorite new place that you visited?

Since I have been so slow in replying to this patch 3.3 have been released and I get to answer: Icecrown Citadel! 

Probably due to the fact that it is new and fresh and I have so far only seen the first wing of it, but how can you not love a place where you get to fight like a pirate and board ships? 

Had I been quicker to respond I would probably have said Ulduar due to the epic beauty and grandeur of that place.

And I really like the woods of Grizzly Hills.

3) What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

This is a hard one, since I really don’t feel I’ve lacked that much in 2009.

I’ve had fun, progress, achievements, I’ve made lots of new friends and met old ones again, I’ve had a little drama but things have worked out fine in the end.

So, 2010, surprise me!

4) What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Sadly, I don’t have any major milestones either.

I got three chars to 80 (my warlock, druid and priest, the shammy dinged 80 in 2008), I made a DK, I’ve seen all dungeons and raid instances on one difficulty level or another, I have explored the world, I’ve done a lot of fun things that all are achievements of one kind or another, but nothing outstanding!

5) What was your biggest failure?

Probably getting extremely bored with holiday dailies and stopping working towards the proto-drake. But hey, it’s a game right? I was a bit disappointed with myself for letting it go but also a bit proud that I didn’t kept doing something I found frustrating and extremely boring for days on end just to get me a new shiny set of pixels to ride on.

On a related note, not getting the Raven Mount to drop for my druid after 30+ of Sethekk Halls solo runs also feels a bit like a failure although I know the droprate for that mount is abysmal.

6) What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I see a pattern emerging… I got excited about a great many things, I got really excited about many many things and I actually got really really really excited about quite a few things as well…

Things like tanking Naxx10 the minute I hit 80 with my druid and pulling it off with her still wearing half her lvl 70 raid gear, doing Flame Leviathan on the day Ulduar was released, doing Flame Leviathan with all four towers up months later, all of the Ulduar hard modes, running the Northrend instances with my shammy without a clue what to do but still working our way through them and having so much fun!

In general, my biggest thrills over the year was from doing things, not by getting things.

7) What do you wish you’d done less of?

Ambling around really bored in-game not knowing what to do but still not logging out to take a walk in the woods or go to the gym or read a book or anything really except that mindless staring at the screen. Didn’t happen often but too often for me to feel comfortable with it.

8) What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

I didn’t listen to any WoW podcast and my favourite blogs are all linked on my blogroll. I really do wish I had time to read more blogs more often.

9) Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.

I didn’t learn it per se but was often reminded that in WoW as in life it is not worth it to get annoyed or irritated at people, that you will feel better yourself if you try to see people in a benign light and always interpret things for the better. The many pugs of different varieties I’ve been in (5mans, 10mans and 25mans) have had ample opportunities to get irritated and annoyed at people, but life (and WoW) gets better if you just don’t let it get to you.

Smile, and they will smile at you, and if they don’t, well, at least you are smiling yourself :-)

10) Folks I’m tagging to Complete this Meme

I am not one to tag folks but if my blogging guildies Jacx, Zetter, Larísa and Bouncy Gnome would like to complete it I’d be most interested to hear what they think about their WoW years of 2009. And of course if anyone who reads this is interested too please fill it out, and please make a comment on Candy’s blog where she started the meme when you do!

If you enjoyed this post check out these posts as well!

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