I’d be tender – I’d be gentle and awful sentimental
Regarding Love and Art.
If I Only Had a Heart
Embracing the Design
Thinking back to my childhood, I really did have a Norman Rockwell type of growing up. I really did learn to fish with a bobber and hook with the line behind my ear to wake me if there was a nibble. My dad really did make a kite out of newspaper, sticks and a scotch tape. I played in wheat fields, swam in the creek and learned how to yo-yo in the back of a truck during harvest time.
My grandmother (pronounced “gramma”) really did cook. The grocery store was for five pound bags of flour, sugar, Arm and Hammer, baking powder and lard. She taught me, “in the country the spices go on in the kitchen, in the city it happens at the table.” There were no salt and pepper shakers on the table.
This is profound to me. At a restaurant, my first effort is always to taste the fare as designed; let the chef make his statement. The same in everything now; from the avant garde theater to playing a video game, a sure attempt at acceptance.
Yet, there is something in us that wants to try to warp, subvert, force reality into a version of our own desire.
It has taken me a while to embrace the design in Legion. I’ve resisted 80 dungeon quests, for example. Yet, if I follow the design (as we slowly discover the template) then the pieces fall into place: better gear, more AP; better, stronger, faster.
There is a ton of irony in the design of which I attempt to support. My two Legendary rings and my titan-forged cape are from the LFR. This is after many EN runs on Normal and Heroic. How skewed is this reward system.
The design is there. We are running 80 random heroics. This week it rewards extra loot on the final boss. This week we are to run four mythics (this with a reward from Heroic EN to which I say, give me a break; my stuff is never War or Titan forged and I’ll delete it like I do every Emissary Cache and Chest from Mythic Plus and the box from the end of Timewalking). The good news in the design is while we are dunked and steeped in the same dungeons; at least the path is familiar.
If we are to play, don’t we have to sample the design? Of course we do. I don’t want to fly to the entrance of a dungeon and look at the group finder and hope someone will accept me — but, like 80 dungeons, I’ll get used to it and maybe even enjoy it.
If the Blizzard is a Blizzard who will serve. Then I’m sure to get some gear, a role, a guild, a gnome.
Coffee Cakes and Crits 
The game develops a different feel when you step back and say I’m not going to race through it. I’m on the 80 thing quest. I think I’m at 13 from just volunteering to run a dungeon. I’m not nocking myself out spending all of my time in there. I’m just working at things a lot slower. I see people in guild doing Mythic +10. I know it’s not for me. But it is for them. I even heard a group did a Mythic +20. That is great there is a challenge for people. It’s a challenge for them, and I don’t see people not involved with social media yelling for change. I think there is plenty to keep you occupied, to run at what ever pace you want. The tough part is hopping off the back of the run away hay ride, and just saying, nope. This is enough for me now. Maybe later.
It’s taken me some time away from reading hundreds of comments a day to realize, I’m playing how I want to, when I want to. Sure I still have problems, I try to word them in a non pitch fork and torches way.
There is enough for me to do on my one character. And that’s ok.
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