Valkyrie's Page of Wonder

March 17, 2008

Willpower

"The ability to exert one's will over one's actions"

I thought I had this whole entry laid out in my head, but after reading that article, just about everything I had is gone. So instead you get a lovely, uh...gimme a sec.... Stream of Consciousness entry, which I'm sure will end up on many different tangents as I go along. Anyway, back to the topic.

I like to play WoW, World of Warcraft in case you didn't know. I think it has become one of my favorite games of all time. Probably has something to do with how in depth it is, or the massive amount of configurations all the different items allow. There are hundreds of quests to complete and several large scale, multi person dungeon things to attack and conquer. One in particular that has caught my interest lately is called Alterac Valley. It's a battleground which allows for Player vs. Player action (PvP), but in this case its 40 on 40. The main premise is to attack and kill the opposing side's main boss, but there are several other side things to do as well. There are towers to capture, good guys to save, parts to collect and turn in for extra rewards, and on top of all that fun, you earn 'Honor Points' which allow you to purchase more/better pieces of armor and weapons.

One of the things I like about battlegrounds is I don't have to find a group, meet somewhere, find an opposing group, and start fighting. I just click that I want to join a battleground and within minutes it has matched me up with 79 other people that wanted to join a battleground, 39 for my team 40 for the other. This is made even easier by allowing 'Cross-Realm' players. From my understanding each realm is part of a Battlegroup and when I want to join a battleground I can join with anyone else in that Battlegroup regardless of which realm they are on. For example, I play on the Draenor realm which is part of the Cyclone battlegroup. When I join a BG(Battleground) I'm not limited to the Draenor realm but all realms inside the Cyclone battlegroup, expaning the player base by several times. All this makes it a lot faster to get into a BG, which in turn reduces downtime, increasing fun.

Um...where was I? *scroll* Oh yeah, Favorite games and willpower. It has been mentioned that I might like this game a little too much, that I might be addicted. And while I highly doubt that, there is always that possibility. Plus most addicted people don't usually see themselves as addicted. So in an effort to prove to myself mostly that I am not addicted I plan to not play WoW for a week, starting now. In fact I plan on doing zero WoW related things. That includes visiting WoW websites, looking up WoW item information and the like. Now I can't not think about WoW simply because it's something I like so much, but if I can control my actions and not act on those thoughts, I think I can prove to myself that I am not addicted.

To help with the not playing of WoW, I plan to start working on my story more, which is coming along pretty well I must say. My single 'Fallen Angel' novel, I realized, was too much story and spanned too many years to be contained in one book, so at the moment I have it broken into three. Why three? Because three just seems to fit everything else in my little universe. Three major factions: Good, Evil, Balance (Good and Evil being relative terms). Three sections of Xannon's life: Rise, Fall, Rebirth (Which happen to be the subtitles of the trilogy). The number of sets of wings that Archangels have, which Xannon turns out to be. And I'm sure a whole bunch of other stuff that I can't really think of at the moment. Plus there are the triangles. Triangles are supposed to be the strongest geometric shape, and I can see why. They don't suffer from shear, they can't really be squished. They just work. I used a triangle for the symbol of Gi'erth(the name of the planet my characters live on), with each point representing one of the major forces. The sun represents Good (Creation and Life), Fire represents Evil (Destruction and Death), and the tree represents Balance. I also have a triangle key chain which reminds me of that symbol and my story every time I see or touch it.

I think I got off track again... Oh yeah. One other thing I plan on doing to keep from playing WoW is to start drawing again. I did a little drawing after I got home today and realized my skills, to put it bluntly, suck. That doesn't mean they can't be improved on. Granted I was focusing on figure drawing, in particular a person sitting with their head in their hands. I was studying the pose to hopefully make use of it in a piece I want to create for the song lyrics I posted a while back in reference to Xannon and Sarah, Letter from the Departed. It's supposed to show Xannon/Valkyrie sitting either at his desk or perhaps somewhere outside while Sarah in ghosty form hovers behind him, perhaps giving him a spooky hug or something. I haven't quite worked out the details. If anyone reading this lovely brain spewage(brain spewage? Don't ask it just came out) wants to create this lovely piece of art for me, it would super cool. If not, well...I guess I'll do it. *shrug*

If I'm not writing and not drawing I don't know what I'll be doing. Maybe watching TV/Movie, maybe playing some neglected PS2/Xbox games, preferably ones that don't crash on me like X-Men Legends 2 does. Which really sucks cause it's right near the end before fighting the final boss. I'm tempted to exchange it, but at this point I don't think it's worth it. I've already tried cleaning it to no avail. Hey, maybe I'll use some of the extra time to hang out with Chris and bust out my awesome plastic guitar shredding abilities, also known as Guitar Hero. He recently (last week on...Thursday I believe) got an Xbox 360. He picked up Guitar Hero III Legends of Rock (and since when is Tenacious D a Legend of Rock?), the Lego Star Wars saga, and Sonic, which I think is more for his fiancee Wendy. I figure since he owns the game he should be able to catch up to my awesome skill pretty quick, right? I guess we'll see.

So anyway, If you managed to make through that raging river (instead of a stream) of my thoughts and are still reading let me sum up the article for you: WoW = Like, Me != Addicted, .'. No WoW for a Week to prove: Me != Addicted, Copious Free Time used by Writing, Drawing, Other Gaming, Showing off my awesome plastic Guitar skills and making Chris feel oh-so-bad for oh-so-sucking. At least thats the plan. Only time will tell if everything works out like it's supposed to.

And before anyone asks, I don't want to cancel my WoW subscription because A) it's a pain to cancel and then reactivate, and B) I plan to play again. Plus C) $15/month really isn't all that much when you stop and think about it. I spend more than that on interest on one credit card(stupid interest rates).

So...um....yeah. I guess I'm done. I'm off to bed. Leave comments and let me know if thought this whole Stream of Consciousness(does it suck that I have to look up how to spell that every time?) thing was a stupid idea and should never do it again.

....um....k, laters.

Posted by adrian at March 17, 2008 11:06 PM