Yet loving something like such which also requires time and attention means other areas of my life got neglected. My wife, my work, my pursuit of the promise of a close and intimate fellowship with the Almighty, all sacrificed at the altar of pixilated purple epics.
As I became a father, the realization of how to juggle what I sink my time into became more visceral. The cry of the child at 2am for a feed and I am just logging off a WoW raid is an all too familiar scenario of my past.
This is my first foray into today's blogging so please bear with me.
I found as a parent that I have to put priorities in order, as by doing so, it puts purpose on each minute you stay on line. Here are a few things I like to do whilst on line:
- Know why you log on - Each time you enter your password and your authentication codes know the purpose. Is it to level a toon? Is it to quest or to farm materials for an item? The clarification of "WHY" not only improves your productivity on line it most often gives you "more" time on the game
- Focus on one activity at a time - There are opportunities that call you all the time as a player on the major cities. Trade chat is always asking for tanks or Raid members (/pst iLvl and Achi or NTY) or the guild is always a hive of activity. If you logged on to do some gold making, focus on that. If you want to get better healing gear, do that instead and put the other activity on hold. Remember the reason or reasons you logged on for. As like in real life, trying to do everything just means you are liable to miss out on the best of things.
- Character Selection - What type of characters to play for maximum enjoyment of the game. Personally, I love instance grinding. I love getting gold from the AH and I just love the social aspect (confrontational or non) of the game. But the same time, I have 2 young kids who, if not in need of a cuddle, needs constant companionship before they are lulled into sweet sleep. Play to your strengths. If you are playing and one of the kids asked for you or your wife asked for your assistance, you will NEED to leave your group in the Random Dungeon Finder that you have waited for over 35 minutes to form. Hybrid classes offer tanking, dps or healing so you can easily find a group again. Got kicked from the group? The game also offers you a much more confrontational play style with PvP and the cooldowns from the "Deserter" debuff are separate from the RDF and PvP so if you needed to duck out and see to the kids you can easily do so.
- Economic Interaction of the Goblin Kind - Questing gives gold at max level. Buy materials from the Auction house, craft an item that costs more to buy in the AH than material costs, sell it on the AH for pixelated gold so you can repeat the process. The act of crafting and selling on the auction house is, in my opinion is pure PVP. REAL player vs player. See these guys Euripides , Cold's Gold Factory , Flux (aka Jim) and enjoy an economic pvp in this digital world.
The reason I wanted to blog about this is to make all the WoW dads out there know that you too can enjoy the MMORPG's offered and still be a good father. It's all about prioritizing activities. For my life it has always been:
God
Lyn (my wife)
Kids
Business
Rest of Family
WoW
Whenever I have found an imbalance and things go astray, I tend to look back and contemplate on the list and see where I put one about the other.
I hope some of you have found this post helpful. Do not hesitate to leave a comment.
I look forward to our future correspondence.
