A bit of RL musings..Why my wife is uber L77T

I try to keep this blog on topic, focusing my insights about human nature to what I experience playing wow & not what I go through in my real life. But this little instance run that I had last night was just such a funny rl moment that I had to post it.
My wife & I are busy professionals & our work week schedules are not always in sync. I tend to have steady hours (albeit long) & predictable patterns, while she has travel, friends that need to be visited & family to have coffee with. We do try to spend more time on weekends together, but this is usually 1 part chores & then 1 part exhaustion. Date nights have in earnest become few & far between. I'm to blame for this as much as my wife. As I try to tell my SAT students, your parents appear dull & boring to you not because they are inherently that way, but because the obligations of adulthood made them that way.
But I want to say though that my wife is l77t and it's because she has an ability that is a prized in raiding. She can call the raid. Last night was her night out & we went to see Mamma Mia comp'd. She was excited to see it regardless of the reviews (or strategy guides) if you will. But when we sat down & the movie started she realized that the film stunk. Like a good raid leader she did try to make the best of it. & like a good raid leader when we reached a point where we had hit the brick wall of wipes (or in the case of this movie Mr. Pierce Bronsan signing "S.O.S") and she called the event. We then left & she apologized for making me going to see that stinker of a movie.
This is big, I mean there are a lot of reasons I love my wife, but this ability to concede that what she wanted to see was a bad movie & that she was sorry for making me sit through that schlock fest. Many women lack this ability, but she has it
Just wanted the world to know

Love in the time of Warcraft: A primer for the married man

My wife hates video games. Although she'll deny it or say I was too extreme in my belief, she really does hate video games. In her heart she views them as childish & immature. She's not alone, she holds onto a view that many adults cling to from the earlier ages of video games. That they're for kids & teenagers, that grown adults don't play them. Or if they do play them they're acting childish.
Of course the paradox is that her along with many other adults who share this archaic view but play videos games. She loves Zuma, but to her Zuma isn't WOW, it's a diversion. Just like the Wii she bought for her conferences. The adults who come to her booth & will play Wii Sports aren't gamers, they're just goofing around.
And I'm the Pope.
It's cognitive dissonance, it's the ability to hold the matter\anti-matter together, Adult's don't play video games, When I play Wii sports I'm not playing. I'm not going to rake my wife about this, I'm just saying that she & a lot of people have this view.
With that said, I have started to come up with advice for married men (or men who are in relationships) that may help you with your significant other if she's not a gamer.
1.) Sometimes you'll need to logoff: I cannot stress this enough, the dailies will be there, there will be another daily heroic, they're will be another raid. Logging off when she least expects it goes a very long way.
2.) Don't bother explaining the game: Again, she may fawn interest, but it's not the same interest that you friend who doesn't play wow but plays COD 4 will give you. Also you may annoy her as you explaining game mechanics, talents, & lore.
3.) VOIP may be beyond her: VOIP is getting more common, but for most non-geeks they only see it through the office or a digital phone. Headphones & Mic though may be beyond her. Therefore be prepared that while you chat over vent, she may be baffled.
Take care for now..

WOW = Golf

I discovered about two weeks ago that a large group of my co-workers had a WOW guild on Blackwater Raiders. We more specifically they all belonged to a horde guild on BR. (I later found out that the gm was not a co-worker.) After speaking w a good friend in the guild he told me where they stood on Guild Progression (Hyjal, BT) & if I level up a toon there I'd probably get in since I knew about 8 guys in the guild from real life. At the same time he understood that I had almost two months of real life invested in Neren & that if I did this I would be putting an end game toon in cold storage. We then discussed Vash strategy & joked about being end game druids. Also one of the VP's at the location was in the guild but he was into PVP, so he & I talked WOW but not in the same perspective as my other co-worker who was into end-game content. Still though both of them thought my Blog was awesome so that's cool!
I told this to my wife as she was cooking dinner. She then looked at me with eyes that were infused with seriousness & told me that she wanted me to level a character on that server so I could play with them since it would help me with my career. I think she even checked on me once to see if I was on my main or working on my new toon. I explained that it would take about 30 days to reach were my friends were at in WOW. She was like ok that's a month, to which I replied no 30 days (or 720 hours) to non wow players.
To be honest my heart just isn't into it. Leveling a character to play with my co-workers (who aren't even at my location) because it might help my career doesn't feel right. I think my wife relates it to Golf & I can see the analogy, but it's not the same as Golf. We can talk WOW, we can share experiences, but it's not like a golf PUG, where you can chat and make deals. Raids are focused events, you don't discuss anything other than the raid.
Still though I can see WOW becoming like golf over time, servers are clubs, guilds as groups, etc. One time I helped my friend Meatpuppet IRL with his company's cell management issues.
But I see it taking time for WOW to develop into the networking atmosphere that the golf course is famous for. Real World relationships take time, as opposed to WOW relationships which form\fail at an accelerated rate.

Update Why I'll never goto BlizzCon \ Husband Talent Points

After my wife read this post she added this comment:
"No one would get close enough to you for me to threaten them because I emit Keep Away Aura."

Why I'll never goto BlizzCon \ Husband Talent Points

As I've posted before I'm a happily married man, who's been blessed to have a geek wife to call his own. She really is the best thing to happen to me & she makes sure to remind me several times a day! She also is a very protective wife, and when I say that I mean that she watches over me like a hawk. Not because I'm a cheating man but because she has put time & effort in leveling my husband skills to end game progression & she gets concerned that another woman will loot her epic goods so to speak. I relate this to our pet chinchillas specifically female chins.
Doe's (as they are called) are very territorially. Unless two Doe's are related by blood, they cannot be put together! If one is bigger than the other the Big one will beat down the smaller one until submission. If they are the same size they will literally fight to the death for dominance. The only time my wife has been bitten by chinchillas were by Doe's that viewed her as competition. As we say in our house Doe's hate Doe's. Doe's are also crafty & shrewd, again similar traits in human women. Another rule in our house is KTDH: Keep the Doe Happy. When in doubt always refer to KTDH.
So where does this lead, well last week I was watching on the HD Videogame channel a show about BlizzCon 2007. I wasn't able to attend because we had just gotten married. But my wife had agreed that it would be ok for me to attend the 2008 convention if it ran. That was until she saw some 20 something girl dressed as a level 20 Draeni mage! My wife looked @ me & said "No Fucking Way are you going there unless I can come with a death bringer!" I then had to correct her & tell her it was called the bringer of death! http://www.wowwiki.com/The_Bringer_of_Death
It's always important to use correct verbiage!

Ok fast forward to last Saturday night, I'm in SSC & we're trying to take down Vash. More specifically we're learning the fight. I tell my GL that I'm pulling out @ 8pm. He was like "No Problem I know you had to pull strings to raid on a Saturday night." I tell my wife I'm done & she says to keep raiding because she was working on scrapbook. I jump back on vent & my GL says "Wow what skills do you have to get back into a raid, I'd like to know!" So we joke about Husband Talent Point's which I'll go into the end of the Post
Now fast forward to Thursday's Badgeazhan run: My wife comes over to me & does an impersonation of the Draeni Mage that damned me from every attending BlizzCon. She added the
some more details. She heard I was end game, that I had Tier Gear, that I had a lot of gold & could I come back to her room to show her how to setup macros on her laptop. Meanwhile the PTT key was on so everyone in my guild that was part of the run heard her skit & was laughing their asses off. Yesterday I was thinking about her little skit & I thought, hmm what would my wife really say to that girl if she was at BlizzCon w me & small gamma doe came up & was flirty.
Here is what I think she would say
"Hi I've got a level 70 DOE stick that I've had enchanted with Doeish Fury. Ron Pardo & Chris Metzen's wives told me to tell you that if your around after we get back from our Pedicure's I need to show them the proc rate on it by using you as a Advanced Targeting Dummy."
With that said how do I keep my wife happy.
Here is part of my talent build ( I wasn't allowed to post it all..you can guess why)
3/3 points - Sense wife's needs
2/2 points - fetching which I then put all 5 point into Advanced Fetching
3/4 points - Improved foot rub (i'd put another point but I'm afraid I'll be rubbing her feet forever)
3 points - Improved Listening
3 points - Detailed Housecleaning

My thoughts on online game addiction. Part I

My WOW gametime has been practically zero since Monday! A combination of several forces has kept me from logging in other than to check mail\auctions. But it makes me feel good since one thing I've battled with is the concept of online game addiction. Especially since I come from an addict\alcoholic background (both sides of my gene pool..so I'm double damned!) However I did come to a realization last Friday night that may shed some light into the WOW Addict Debate.
As I've posted before I work a part-time job & so does my wife. She was working late last Friday (it happens once every six weeks.) This permitted me something which even with our new home network is still very rare. Friday night guild dungeon \ raids!!! But alas my guild was fairly impotent on Friday due to a majority of guildies offline and\or doing PVP for rep. This left me lfg for about two hours & when we finally did get a group running & into the daily heroic (Auch Crypts), she had come home (bearing gifts of love & very tasty ice cream) only to find me going over how to clear the treacherous first room of the dungeon. Needles to say she was not happy.
Once I logged off because we couldn't get the pulls right w the tank we pugged, my wife asked me to quit WOW, she felt I was ignoring her & she didn't like the fact that I was playing 5 nights a week. I then realized that was she was saying was that she didn't like me running heroics \ raiding 5 nights a week. She didn't care if I was doing dailies or leveling an alt, because I wasn't involved with other people. If I needed to stop mid quest no big deal, I stopped was w her & then started the quest later. But when I was in a run\raid I was just a lump of flesh on the couch. Also even though I was actually playing less WOW (due to my part time job eating up my weekends), I was now playing during prime hours which cut down on us spending time together. Which brings me to my main point.
In one of my earlier posts I talked about Digitalization of Obligation, taking real world commitments and applying them to a virtual settings. This also means that there needs to be Digitalization of Moderation, the same level of prioritization & self-control that you apply to how often you play poker w the guys or meet w the girls for coffee needs to go towards social activities online.
Also, if your going to be at the higher level of sociability online (Vent\Voice Chat) then you need to have a space apart from the Real World group to do this. In my case I'm debating if I want to start running my raids in the dining room instead of playing in the living room,since I can chat without bothering her while she watches TV. I've noticed on a majority of the people who complain that their loved ones are wow addicts, that one of the biggest gripes is that they are in the same room as the player but being ignored while the player is talking w friends\guildmates online. So main point respect your offline friends need for quiet & attention!