Seems like an’ old friend has come tae visit… but there’s a wee bit o’ trouble when we’re tryin’ tae mesh oor goals an’ aspirations…

Recently I had the happy task of transferring my other half’s druid over to Bloodhoof - where I play.  He had been playing with some friends there but they’ve decided to go play Warhammer and so I decided we should play together *ahem*

One character transfer later and I now have someone to ’spoil’ in game.  Khi (pictured to the left with my young paladin) and I used to play together and I liked being able to gift mats and boosts back and forth or for us to simply go an explore a dungeon together.  Playing in the same room means you can react quickly and we’ve had a long-standing habit of doing instances as a pair which we should have been doing with a whole group.

Back then, though, it was a rogue and hunter we played - now we’re both druids it’s become even more fun!  Khi made it through the Dark Portal and we ran Ramparts as a pair.  Now, I know Ramparts is pretty much soloable as a feral druid but, still, it was nice to just hang out together and beat up some orcs!

So, what’s the catch?

That’s pretty cool, you might think, and some nice random chatter but where does the title to this post come in?  Well, we’ve hit a bit of a snag.  You see, I’m a raider and, casual-ish though I may be, I am an enjoyer of end-game content.  Khi has never really experienced end-game content and admitted the other night that I was maybe being a little too pushy when it came to ‘advice’ or my thoughts on pre-70 stuff.

Now, I love to help people, I love to sort them out with shinies and give what little advice I can.  I have gotten somewhat into the habit, though, of disregarding pre-end game things as ‘not as worthy’ and I’m not exactly sure when that happened…  When I levelled my own druid not so long ago I was still getting upgrades which were stupidly expensive (mats or time wise) given they’d last me only two levels so why am I advising Khi not to bother enchanting this or that - “it’s not worth it” - and essentially putting someone off the game by ignoring those pre-end game goals in favour of getting to that end-game as a starting point.

Caring too much?

Is there a point where, if you invite a friend, relative or loved one to play with you, and you actually put them off playing by forgetting what it was like to be new to the game?  In this case, too, it’s not being new to the game but simply having a different playstyle.  By trying to get them to where you are, rushing them and telling them that the endgame is the real game are we lessening their chance at enjoying the game?

I wonder, then, where one could mesh - where is the middle point which you can both go and enjoy?  I don’t want to feel like I’m dragging Khi to do things just because I want to but I also don’t want Khi to miss out on things because I wasn’t available for us to do them together.

One of my favourite wow memories is running Scarlet Monastery with Khi’s hunter.  The mutual friend who had told us about WoW and gotten us started had said we couldn’t duo Scarlet: Cathedral at level 35 and yet we decided that was exactly what we would do (I think we wanted cloth drops). That sort of teamwork is something that I crave but, at the moment, I feel like maybe I’m just doing stuff for instead of with Khi due to the level gap and as much as I don’t mind helping out it’s not the same as doing things together.

Basically, I wonder if, by playing for so long, I’ve become too ‘jaded’ to enjoy the simple pleasures of levelling and the journey, rather than the goal.  I think it may be that, for me, Burning Crusade content has become a little stale - I’ve done the same progression already on five chars and find it hard to not mentally assign things as less important because I know where the next reward will be and so on.

Wrath

Expansions are big levellers - whether people reroll, change an alt to a main or simply play ‘catch up’.  I am hopng that I’ll actually get to level somewhat with Khi and wecan actually explore some of the new content as a team again.  We will be experiencing new things together again.  Khi is a lot faster than me at picking up things, though, so no doubt my druid will be left in the dust skills-wise as Khi zooooooms off into whichever role he chooses!

Druid Addon Help

On that note - we’re looking for reccomendations for druid addons for tree type druids.  Khi likes numbers more than I do and is looking for a numerical addon for grid, or something compact outside of grid, which will tell him when his hots will run out on all targets.  As much as I enjoy the healy side of druiding I don’t do it enough to clutter up my addons with this sort of stuff (yet, anyway) so any recommendations would be great!