Keeping the Lights On

It has been a while since I posted here. It has been a while since I had much to say. Truth is, I have been having a lot of trouble finding my way in WoW since our idealistic guild experiment over on WrA fell through and as I have been unable to find my feet in the game, I have not had much to write about.

I have never quite stopped playing, this isn't like my earlier angst-driven exiles, but I have played less. Along the way I have changed factions, changed servers, done several long rep grinds, geared a second toon, given up on capitalism, reskinned my hunter three times hordeside, given up on my alts, redone the Crusader grind, rediscovered battlegrounds, not talked to a single stranger, and still I don't know what to do when I log in every night.

The thing is, I don't really like playing WoW alone, but I am so terrified of strangers that I am unable to join a guild or even a chat channel. In the early days, back when I was a devout roleplayer, I was able to find just the smallest crack in that wall and use my character as a way to make the handful of contacts which gave me years of thin but ever-present social contact in-game.

Unfortunately, the decision to leave SwC cut my already-anemic social circle down to a handful of names, and my decisions to then finally give in to horde-curiosity and then move to a random unfamiliar server have left me with precisely one friend in-game. It's become lonely even by my introvert's standards.

So, what do I do now? RealID offers some potential, assuming any of the small cadre of people who know me are willing to sacrifice privacy to reestablish contact. The effort Eric and I made to form a guild with our own in-game agenda resulted in the discovery that no one else has our in-game agenda. Joining a guild would be the right answer for anyone not incapable of taking that step (though I am seriously considering giving the megalithic AIE a try - maybe it's too big, and guild chat would be no more coherent or accessible to me than trade chat is now, but I would have more chances to interact with people in a safe context than I have now).

It's funny, so many bloggers are adrift in WoW now due to the lack of worthwhile or novel content and are only staying to be with their friends, I have no trouble finding things to do, but I have no one to do any of it with.

But enough tearful introspection, the real reason I am here is to get advice on spending my Frost badgers. I am on the brink of hitting the 60 milestone (which is a lot when you don't raid and often skip your dungeon daily to concentrate on Argent Dawn rep or whatever). My original plan was to buy the 264 cloak, as I did with my druid - twice - on the grounds that it was one of the highest item level bump I would get and would be unlikely to be quickly replaced in the expansion (I wore my Kara cape all the way to Ulduar afterall), but I had a pretty good cape off some Keeper or another and then got a 232 piece from the Midsummer boss. At this point, the biggest upgrade Frosts will get me is a nice 264 trinket to replace my iLevel 200 Mirror of Truth. The mirror's a good toy, but the Frost trinket is really nice and will probably last a while in the expansion as well, in addition to giving my gearscore a nice kick up the ladder toward the event horizon of 5k.

But, then there's tier 10.

In theory the tier 10 two-piece bonus is just a month and change away, even for a non-raider, and especially with the extra two cheap badges a day during the holiday, but that's for a more diligent player. For me, the extra 60 or 95 badges is a huge mountain to look up at, and I may not hit the peak until we are so close to the expansion that the effort risks going to waste, and seeing as I already overgear heroics and have little chance of going back to ICC, do I even need that class of gear to begin with?

So, grasshopper or ant? Where do I spend my Frosts?