Play v.s. Farm and some MrT

Pie Hands posed a very good question: “You know, I don’t want to take over your fine blog, but I was wondering, what is the difference between playing and farming?”

This line has gotten blurry in WOW like no other MMORPG, and more specifically, since Burning Crusade. 

Grinding is something you do that is repetitive.  In other games the EXP gained by questing was not enough to get you leveled up so you used to spend DAYS killing mobs to pick up that one level you need to get the next batch of quests.  When you hit max level you don’t need EXP but now you need gold.  Then, since you need to “grow” your wealth, the name of grinding changes to farming.  Farming is repeated killing over and over to glean a small reward. 

For example, killing Furblogs for Timbermaw rep, killing ogres in Nagrand for Kurnai rep, or my personal favorite, killing the etherials south of Area 52 for the good money, cloth, greens, keys, and consortium rep, or killing the Clefthoof in Nagrand for meat and leather. 

Playing is the fun part of the game.  Doing instances is fun, raiding is fun, PVP is fun, but they all cost money.  Prior to BC, if you wanted to raid, you had to farm to make the money to support the cost of raiding.  It was expensive.  Blizzard wised up and discovered that people were buying gold so they didn’t have to farm.  So, blizzard made a source of easy cash, the dailies.  The dailies have made it so that in an hour you can accomplish what used to take many hours, so things got comparatively cheap fast. 

People that want quick cash for raid / PVP consumables crank out a couple dailies and they are up and running.  People that want a LOT of money, go farm those mats and sell them.  The economy has shifted.  It used to be that if you wanted potions, you gathered the materials and got someone in the guild to make it for you.  Now, it is easier to do a couple dailies and then just buy the finished product from the AH.  Rather than spend 10+ hours farming for mats a week to be able to raid two nights, now you can do 2 hours worth of dailies and have everything you need, or do the same 10 hours of dailies and make a TON more money that you can spend on other things. 

So, the short answer is, farming is what you do at max level so you can have the things you need to be able to play. 
Now, on to the Meat and Potatoes.  Yesterday I had an epic play day.  Started at 7:30am, took a break from 11-12:30, then played non-stop from 12:30 until 9:15.  /leatherbutt

My mage dinged 63 and I mentioned in guild chat that I had never been inside an instance other than Deadmines and one Stockaides run.  So, I get an invite to a group.  When I ask what it is for I am informed that I am being taken on a whirlwind tour.  We hit Ramparts twice, then Blood Furnace.  We had a DPS warrior, an UBER DPS Enhancement Shammy, a healing shammy, and a lock, all level 70, all kara – PVP geared, and me the ragtag 63 ice mage with over 400 spell damage and 17% crit (AKA glass cannon). 

I have to say, I LOVE AOE.  Seeing so many numbers fly up on the screen is really cool.  Having a healer that heals me more than the “tank” is also priceless.  Due to the never-ending string of blizzard I was near the top of the damage meter the whole time.  I think the fact that I was giggling the entire time as the AOE blasted was helping. 

So, enough fun, now down to business.  We all headed up and tried out the new MrT instance.  The warrior re-specced prot.  The group was Me, prot warrior, rouge, lock, healing shammy.  We are all well Kara geared, with splatterings of PVP gear.  Should be a piece of cake right?  WRONG.  That place was a BITCH.  It is almost as if it is designed to have either two tanks, or a pally tank. Even with my liberal misdirecting, trapping, and superb sapping, there are so many pulls that are 4+ mobs that it is incredibly difficult.  6 wipes got us to the last boss.  Oddly enough, we one shot the last boss after all that. 

The purple mail chest piece dropped, and was a huge upgrade for me. 

All in all, I give it a 4 out of 10.  3 points for sheer beauty, and one point for my piece of loot. 

However, the packs of mobs need to be nerfed SIGNIFICANTLY to be on par with the gear that was dropping.  A boss dropping 1 blue that would not be good enough to replace most quest gear is a basked full of crap.  This place on regular mode is harder than most heroics I have done.  We farm Heroic Bot, Mech, and Shattered Halls, and they pale in comparison.  In the other non-heroics my bear can off tank.  In this one, the off tanking targets hit as hard as mobs in heroic mode of other instances. 

The other thing that was a bunch of crap was respawns.  In every other instance in the game, including heroics and raids, if you kill part of a group of trash mobs they do not respawn if you wipe.  In MrT they do.  In ALL other instances if you down the boss, then die from the adds, the boss is dead when you rez.  In MrT we wiped on the 5 man boss fight, we downed the boss and all but one trash mob and were down to two of us.  I got feared and the healer got killed, then I died.  When we got back the entire pack and the boss was back up. 

I wonder if that could not be exploited?  Kill the boss, loot, wipe.  Kill the boss, loot wipe.  You could loot the same boss over and over until you got everything.  Yeah, the repair bill would suck, but I would gladly have paid 500G for the chest piece I got if it were in the AH, so I was more than excited to get it for the 18G in repairs.

Post vacation days report

Well, the boss conned me into working today, so my mini-vacation is over.

I started the vacation with 720ish gold on my main, less than 20 on my bank toon, and 300 on my 61 mage alt. 

Wednesday and Thursday I did all 25 dailies that I could do on my main, and spent some time on my mage and hit 62

I took all the cloth I received and had a friend DE all the greens I collected.  That gave me enough to have someone make me FIVE 18 slot bags.  My main and my mage both have them, so now my level 33 rouge has all 18 slotters, and the bank toon picked one up.  I sold the 2 BOE blues I picked up.  I sold all the herbs I gathered, and the stacks and stacks of leather I gathered while doing the dailies I traded to a LW for a Nethercobra armor kit for my rouge.  I used some of the mats that I got from the DEing and bought some more mats, and got a total of 5 enchants.  Agility on my hunter main, and 4 different enchants on my mage. 

So, I ended up with (5) 18 slot bags, (1) Nethercobra armor kit, gaining one full level on my mage, and now have 1200G on my main, 450G on my bank, and 350G on my mage. 

Best two days of farming of my entire gaming career.

Farming

Well, there will probably be a post tomorrow, but then I will be taking a well earned hiatus.  See, I normally write my posts in an outlook e-mail body for two big reasons.

1) It has spell check.  I spell worse than an illiterate person from a Russian speaking country.  I have written entire posts with spell check turned off, then turned it on to see how well I did…there were more underlined words than non-underlined words.  Part of this is due to the fact that Word does not recognize Dragonmaw, Huntard, or DPSer as a real word…well…now it actually does recognize huntard.

2) The second reason is that it resembles work.  I work on Salary.  When we get busy I have to work overtime.  I do not get paid for this overtime, and it is not optional.  I make up for this un-paid work by slacking off during paid time.  It is a happy balance.

So, I am off work Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  Happy Happy Joy Joy!

My plans you ask?  I actually have only one goal, I plan on going from Thursday until Monday without being encased in Pants.  My goal of remaining pants-less is out of a strong desire to become a hermit for 5 days, and accomplish as few Real World goals as possible.  I desire to be as frivolous with my time as I can be.  The ONLY acceptable reason I can think of to don pants will be a Taco Bell run, and that is only because I think that falls well within my goals of not accomplishing anything tangible.

I have two goals for this sabbatical from leg coverings.  I want to get my horde Shammen leveled up from 18 into the mid 20’s.  Luckily I have someone that plays most of the day on that side that owes me so many runs that their first born is going to have my name.  The other goal I have is to raise some funds for my Mage’s inevitable need for not only a flying mount, but an epic flyer as soon as they reach level 70.  I plan on not even buying a standard flying mount. 

I was speaking to our pally tank and our lock.  They are both low on cash, and have days off later this week.  We have a farming date Thursday.  The lock is an enchanter, so our goal is to hit Strath and farm the entire place.  The live side drops the mats needed for the Crusader enchant (a twink must), and all the blues and greens that drop mean good money also.  The pally AOE tanks, the lock does Seed of Corruption and I just kill stuff.

The last time we did this we made over 1000G worth of cash, cloth, DE mats, and even the Argent Dawn turn it items are worth some cash.  I may bring my mage just for the AOE and the AD rep.  Also, we are about to start doing Nightbane in Kara, and the Wowwiki guide suggested bringing the Strathholm Holy Waters to AOE the skeletons…which makes me wonder if the holy water will work on all Kara Mobs.  Perhaps I can use it to AOE along with the Mage a little. 

So, when you want to farm where do you go?  (and don’t say “Oh, I go to the Elemental Plateau and farm for motes”.  Everyone knows about that, and on our server primals are getting really cheap due to over farming, but mid level DE mats are INSANE right now.)

Chat Buddy

When you are playing do you have a chat buddy?

Someone that you send tells to, or talk over voice to more often?  I have a few, depending on the situation. 

90% of the time I am talking to the other hunter.  The hunter is his alt, and he is new to Beast Spec, so I am always giving him tips on where to stand, where and when to send pet in, where to use growl when needed, what to misdirect and when, when to use different traps and when not to, and when to FD.

The MT pally is another common target of tells.  Asking if I am pulling too fast, too slow, in the right order, making sure he has enough mana, am I giving enough warning etc. 

Who do you talk to?

/gFlex !

Ok, I am BEAMING from ear to ear. 

Our normal first night of Kara is Morose, Opera, then if time is permitting we head to Curator.  For some time our time was not permitting so we would do Attuman and/or Maiden.  Then the second night we would usually end up starting on Curator.  For a while we would spend 5-6 wipes on Curator then give up.  A month or so ago we started getting it together and was able to down Curator, then head to Aran for a wipe or two before doing chess. 

Last week night 1 was Morose, Opera (I got my poison vial), curator, then back for Attuman, and Maiden because we lost 1 high DPS and could not do Aran.  Night 2 we got Aran, chess, and 4 solid attempts on Prince.

We were all GIDDY at how well we did.  I have been running since August, and that was my first Aran kill, and first attempt on Prince.

Last night we hit Morose, Opera, Curator, AND Aran.  Our only wipe was a bad pull on my part (the dance floor, an eliete group pulled with a normal group).  We are used to one shotting Morose and Opera.  We have never one shot Curator, and this was only our second Aran kill, and we did both Curator AND Aran without a single person dead. 

Not only is Morale at an all time high, but I got my Tier gloves from Curator.  /epreen.

The big difference is we adjusted the group.  A few people switched around to alts, or their PVP toons.  So, we had Pally MT, druid heal, priest, shammy heal, and Affliction Lock in group 1.  Group 2 was Ubercrit glass cannon Fire Mage, Two Beast Spec Hunters, Feral Druid, and rouge. 

The pally kept Judgement of Wisdom up, so both of us hunters could run aspect of the Hawk, rather than Viper, and we both have Imp Hawk, so we both get not only more AP, but faster attack speed.  The feral druid buffed our crit.  The Rouge was using the armor reducing finishing move.  Both of us hunters were giving the FI 3% damage buff each.

DPS was flowing like WATER.

When all was said and done I was #2 on the DPS meter.  Partly because I was pulling the entire time, and partly because with a Pally tank, the mage could AOE all the time. 

Everyone logged off in the highest moods that we have had in a long time.

I’m not even smooth in my memories

This past weekend while visiting family my wife and I told of how we met.  I heard this story about some un-smooth guy making a pass at a girl.  I tried to remember a moment in time that I may have been smooth.  I had a little flashback into my past.

It was the summer of 1997.  I had just moved into the dorms at Western Michigan University, and was a wide eyed freshman.  They have a big event the weekend before classes start in the quad and all the groups on campus have tables set up to let everyone know who they are, and what you can do.  I wandered around for a couple hours taking flyers of interesting groups. 

In the large grassy area in the middle a group started to form and there was music playing.  The cheerleaders were out there dancing.  Who am I to miss a chance to watch cheerleaders close up.  Let me tell you, if you think they are eye candy from sitting in the bleachers, from 5 feet away they are eye diabetic coma.  So, for 20 minutes or so I stood there oogling them.  They took a break, but the crowd and I stood there in anticipation that they would resume.  All of a sudden the girls scattered around the crowd and each grabbed 2-3 guys…I was one of them.  The girl that came over to me was a girl that I had seen in my dorm, and was UBER MEGA hot.  I stood there like a deer in headlights.  They explained that they were incredibly short on guy cheerleaders, and the best way to find out if you could do it is…hands on experience.

/GULP.

You mean….could it be true….I get to TOUCH them!?!??!?!??!!!!

/GLEE!!!!

So, the first thing we got to try was a “Toss”.  A toss is when I stand behind the girl, put my hands on her waist, then she jumps and I push her up as hard as I can.  Simple enough.  Apparently, most of these guys did not pay attention in physics when we were taught about gravity, and what goes up must come down.  About half struggled to even get the girl into the air, and about half of those that could throw them, then neglected to CATCH them. To those guys: Hey dumbass, something that soft lets you touch it, DON’T DROP IT!  The incredibly cute girl from my dorm came over and had me throw her.  She rewarded me with a hug when I did not drop her, like she had just been dropped.  

So, those guys were kicked out of the middle, leaving about 20 of us.  The next maneuver was called “The Chair”.  This starts with a throw, then I hold my right arm up, palm facing up, and catch the girl with her sitting on my hand.  Her foot is pointing down, grab it and hold it to your chest.  BALANCE.  Do not drop the girl.  Then, in a controlled manner drop the girl and catch her.  Sounds relatively straight forward.  It is much harder than it sounds.  Don’t get me wrong, when you have a girl sitting on your hand…your hand is narrower than her body, and the idea of her…mommy parts pretty much in direct contact with your hand…hey I was a freshman in college, this was the coolest point in my life up to that then. 

So, toss the girl, catch her on your hand, balance, drop her, catch her, and set her down gently.  No problem.  At this point only the tiniest girls were being thrown, and the other girls were standing around us in a circle as spotters.  The 20 or so of us that could get the girl into the air, about 50% of those could catch them on their hand, about half could balance, and only a few of us could drop the girl and catch her.  So, there were 4 of us left in the middle that could actually complete a “Chair”.  Over and over we were tossing them in the air.  As soon as one hit the ground, the next would jump in her place to be tossed.  We were in effect being interviewed. 

At this time I need to mention, this was my first year of college.  My freshman year of high school I was a football player, then later took up swimming.  My first year of college I was 6’2”, 250 lbs, and less than 8% body fat…I didn’t float.  In fact, I sank like a rock.  I was shaped like a tree trunk.  I mention that because it becomes relevant in the nest paragraph.

The cute dorm girl came over and said “do me next”.  I was a little let down when I realized she meant for me to do “the chair” move with her…but more than excited to do the chair move with her.  Girl after girl I popped them up in the air.  After the little light girls, the more solid ones came.  No problem.  Two guys walked off exhausted, leaving three of us.  At this point the trainer / coach person came out and was talking to us.  The tallest girl on the team came over and stood in front of me.  The coach looked at me with wide eyes as I balanced her over my head. When I sat her down the coach got an evil gleam in her eye.  She called out to some girl that had been standing behind me.  When she did the entire team looked at her in a combination of shock and disbelief. 

The girl walked around the front.  I would not call her fat, but she looked like a cross between a rugby player, and the women’s basketball team from East Germany in the 80’s.  She was husky.  About 5’10”, and pushing 200lbs.  Not that I am dainty or anything, but I would not describe her as someone that could be thrown easily.  So, she nervously took her place in front of me.  The entire team circled around us, partly to watch the pending injury, partly to act as spotters should we topple. 

I took a couple deep breaths (i.e. the noise a power lifter makes just before attempting to give a semi truck a piggy back ride).  I stepped close behind her and I put my hands on her hips.  As I did I whispered for her to jump hard.  WE HAVE LIFTOFF.  She jumped, I crouched, I got my hand under her, I pushed with all my might.  I got her up.  One little wobble is all it took for me to get my balance.  I was red faced and trembling.  She was giddy up in her new vantage point.  The coach congratulated her and I.  I said “ready?’ asking her if she was ready to dismount.  She told me to wait.  The seconds seemed like YEARS as the minor trembles turned into a cross between Parkinson’s and a seizure, and my face was a shade of burgundy not seen on a living human. 

Up to this point I had the entire flock of cheerleaders eating out of my hand.  They Loved that I could throw girls that the other guys could not, and had the balance and agility to catch them, and the sensitivity to not crush them as I caught them.  Far be it from me to entice these women without doing Something to muck it up.  I am simply not capable of doing something smooth like that.  About 7 months passed (in my time) as I stood there balancing her mid air (it was more like a minute).  Finally I said “I REALLY need to set you down, I’m pretty sure my spine is fusing, and my feet have probably ruptured.” 

Apparently, in girl speak, that was me calling her fat. 

Apparently, calling a girl fat is a bad thing.

Apparently, cheerleaders are a very close group. 

Apparently, calling one cheerleader fat makes all of them mad at you.

Apparently, hot girl from the dorm felt the same way.

/sulk.

I ended up having a class that conflicted with practice so I was not able to do it.  Later it dawned on me that being a male cheerleader might not seem like an incredibly masculine thing.  Then, I realized that having girls ask you to throw them up in the air and fondle them was a good thing, and that having to do it over and over and over would be an incredibly good thing.

Shoes

Ok, I don’t really know if any women read this, but guys, ask your women.

What the hell is it about shoes? Women are drawn to shoes like cats to catnip …like a lawyer to the scene of an accident…like a crackhead to crack.

I don’t understand.

Shoes are a piece of material that protects your feet from the ground. They are portable padding. They are decorative, but are the one point on the body FURTHEST FROM THE EYES.

On the stairs leading up to our apartment there is a landing and my wife decided to locate a “Shoe rack” there. When I agreed to that I was imagining the 1-2 pairs of shoes that the two of us wear regularly. I have work dress shoes and sneakers. She has two pairs of sneakers and a pair of black dress shoes she wears on weekends sometimes. That means 5 pairs of shoes tops.

The day after I agree to the “shoe rack” I have a frekin Payless located on the landing. The rack is 40” wide, and three shelves tall. Most of the pairs of shoes are wedged in there sideways because there is not enough room for them to sit side by side. I have never seen that many shoes outside a store before, and I grew up in a house with 4 people.

This morning I go to get my shoes…I poke around the shelf. Now, her feet are a size 8, and I wear a 13….when you add that difference to the inherent difference between men’s and women’s shoes, I should not have trouble spotting my shoes. They were no where to be found. So, look under the edge of the table where they used to be located…gone. I wake my wife up and ask her where she put them. “Oh, there was not room for them, so I decided to put them in your closet.”

So, the pair of shoes that she wore in our wedding and said she would never wear again is now conveniently located next to the door, where they can collect dust along with 35 other pairs of un-used shoes, while the ONE paid of shoes I wear every day are located in the closet in the bedroom.

Conclusion: Women are simultaneously attracted to shoes like a fat kid to a doughnut, but also they repel logic like an Emo kid from Donny Osmond trying who is to give them a haircut.

Some smack needs to be laid down.

As mentioned previously, the hunter alt that was running with us is a friend and after seeing my DPS he converted to Beast Spec and is now making me pay attention. 

We just got another hunter that is the boyfriend of our warlock.  I was excited at first because he was BM spec.  The first week he ran with us was two weeks after the other hunter switched to BM spec.  I was literally Giddy and seeing what 3X FI buffs did for our raid DPS.  (FI = Ferocious Inspiration = +3% damage for everyone in the party)  That week I was #1 in DPS, a rouge was #2, the other hunter was #3, and the boyfriend was #5.  I did nearly double the damage of this guy.  Something is wrong.

Then I noticed something…I never saw 3 FI buffs up.  So, I started paying attention.  My pet goes in, we get FI buff.  The other hunter pet goes in, we get FI buff.  The boyfriend sends in his pet (which is REALLY rare) we get no FI buff.  Hmm…something is DEFINATLY wrong.  I scour the net wondering if there is some bug that prevents it from stacking three times.  I found people with screen shots of 5 hunter ALL with FI buffs up. 

So, I hit the Armory and check him out.  It positively makes me cringe.  No FI, but he was sure to get Aimed shot (of uselessness), and Hawk Eye, and 2 points in Imp Mend Pet.  About 30% of his points are spent in the points that I suggest “Taking these points means you probably bought your account on eBay, and have played it less than a week”.

So, last night we were starting off heading towards Curator.  We decided to run with one tank, so the off tank came on his main, a hunter, and my hunter friend sat out this week.  So, this week it was three hunter week again, but this time it was me, the gimp spec BM hunter, and a headstrong Mark spec hunter.  The mark spec hunter is old school.  Like me, the hunter was his first toon, it ran MC, and is his main.  He only plays his pally because we needed another tank.  This week our Ret pally was with us, and threw down the gauntlet and told the mark hunter that he had to keep up with me on DPS to prove that Mark was as viable as BM spec. 

So, we one shot Curator, we one shot Aran, and chess, and then had 4 attempts on Prince.  We had HORRIBLE infernal drops every single time, and ended the night again, blocked by Prince. 

The pally was running damage meters, and sent me tells after every boss showing me what was happening.  On curator I was #1 with 23% of the DPS.  On Aran the pally died about half way thru the fight yet was still able to hold on to the #5 DPS position, BEATING the mark hunter. 

At the end of the night I was #1 on the meter at 23% still, the pally was #2 at 17%, rouge #3, BM Hunter #4, Lock #5, and Mark Hunter #6.  The Mark spec hunter never died (other than prince wipes) yet only managed to put out less than 1/3 of my damage.  ONE FREKIN THIRD!

I checked his gear and he has almost everything I have.  1790 RAP and 19% crit.  Then I noticed one gaping hole.  His Hit rating is in the low 30’s, but hunters need 142 to not miss.  He is missing 9% of his shots.  My hit rating is WAY too high right now, but I have not tried, and I have removed all hit rating gems, so it is going to stay too high.  The hunter boyfriend has the same problem with a hit rating in the 40’s. 

My challenge is that the Mark hunter is the Co-GM, and is not good at taking advice.  90% of the time his cat is sitting at his side when it could be attacking.

I need to issue a memo to them or something…maybe a singing telegram pointing out their lacking Hit Rating.

Changing allegiances

I was talking to a friend in the guild about the state of the guild, and the future.  We both had a somewhat grim outlook for the future. 

Our guild formed 9 years ago in either EQ or UO (I’m not sure which, because I did not find them until WOW).  They moved to WOW.  My first toon was level 23, and had gone back to Redridge to do the quest with the Eliete orcs in that castle.  I teamed up with a mage.  We struggled to kill them, but were able to.  The problem is that the respawn was faster than we could clear.  All of a sudden 3 other people joined the party, and the people came flying in on horses.  I had never seen a mount before, because I almost never made my way to the capital cities. 
HOLY CRAP, I want a horse!! 

They came in and decimated the bad guys, then cleared the castle for us.  I was so happy, I wanted to say thank you.  I opened a trade and gave the most valuable thing I possessed, 8 Light Armor kits.  They all laughed.  I didn’t understand why, those things represented the pinnacle of my crafting ability.  They invited me to their guild.  That was April 2005.  A year and a half later the GM decided to grow the guild to become a raid guild.  They had been running with two other guilds to do MC, but that is a struggle. 

They grew large enough to start MC.  Then large enough to start a second MC. Merge after merge, the guild absorbed guilds to get larger and larger. The core of old school players that formed the guild way back when felt that the guild was no longer what they wanted, so they split off and formed a new small guild.  The server was overpopulated so when offered a realm transfer for free, the guild migrated to its current home. 

I stayed in the first guild to run MC.  When BC came out I was working on leveling, and became upset with the direction the guild was taking.  I contacted my old friends on the new server and eventually made the decision to /gquit and transfer to the new server to join my old friends. 

We have had a great time.  The problem is that the new GM’s felt burned by the overgrowth of the old guild, so they are against any growth of the new guild.  Since august we have lost about 8 people, but only replaced 4, 3 of which are not even 60 yet with their first toon.  (they are not exactly hardcore). 

I was venting my frustration over that to my guildie and he was expressing the same thoughts.  He then told me that 4 months ago a bunch of them started some horde alts.  They are now running Kara on Horde side.  Last saturday I decided to start a Horde.  A Tauren Shammy.  The first night I dinged 13, and have gotten to 17 since then. 

I have expressed that if given the chance I would  pay to transfer my toon from Alliance to Horde to start running with them. 

That brought about a question, would you pay to transfer and change factions just to play with friends?

Painful realization

The last post I made is a little out of character for me, and followed a pair of sleepless nights while contemplating the universe.  All of this stemmed back to a simple observation. 

Why do we do what we do?

My wife told the in-laws that we would not be visiting for Easter due to a tight budget.  She asked me if I wanted to make a nice Easter dinner.  I said not really.  She asked why.  I asked her why why?  Why do it?  Both of us have religious beliefs and were raised in religious households, but neither of us attends church.  Both of us strive to do what is right, but do not practice our religions.  She said “because my family ALWAYS has Easter dinner.” 

The dinner was the event, Easter was just the catalyst.  The reason for the gathering was family, not a celebration of religious piety. 

So, that set the hamster in my brain to running on the little wheel, and that energetic bastard would not stop.  Why celebrate a holiday that has no religious significance to you?  Which degenerated into: Why do things that are not important to you?  Which degenerated into: Why do things? 

After pondering my motivations and what makes me do things I came to a realization that was incredibly painful. 

I am selfish. 

I do what I do because it helps me.  Even things that seem like I am doing something out of charity, I do because I can find some fathomable reward for my doing so.  I will go out of my way to help someone move, just because I want that person to be better friends with me, so I can invite them to do things with me.  I want the fun out of them going somewhere with me, and I pay for that fun by helping them.  I run people thru instances because then when I am leveling my alts I can ask them to do it for me.  I run people thru instances to gear them up, so Kara goes better, so I can get more things that I want.  Nearly everything I do is done with the knowledge that there will be some return for doing so.

I never understood the phrase “Ignorance is bliss” until now.