Feedback to the readers

I've got a few comments to my blog. Wohoo!

After all feedback is one of our essential human needs. You may call yourself a lonely wolf and self sufficient, but in the long run you'll go crazy if you never ever hear anything but your own voice, sort of hovering around in a bubble of your own.

I come to think of my friend and raid leader who leads the raids so well that sometimes everybody goes silent, in a trancelike state of mind, only silently doing their job. A lovely state for everyone, except for the raid leader, who eventually gets a bit frustrated out of the lack of feedback and communication. "I'm only hearing my won voice, is there something wrong with teamspeak", he asks, sounding worried, and we have to reassure him, telling him that we're actually there. He's not alone in his bubble, we share it.

This may not be any Top Blog with thousands of readers all over the world, where advertisers are competing about the best spots. This is the small world of Larisa, with four or five, at the most ten visitors a day (the record is 19, when our guild split, something that makes it quite obvious that it's mostly guild friends that read it). But you who actually read it care, and I'm delighted and surprised to see that from time to time I get comments, even on old posts that are only viewable by looking in the archives. You have no idea how much it means, you are the ones that inspire me to keep on writing.

The interface of this blog tool is far from perfect, and even though I in theory can change the code in whatever way I want, it's more than I can manage. I wish all of your comments were viewable by default, but the aren't. And there's no easy way to give comments to the comments ore to let the one that has given a comment know that I have written an answer. That's why I've decided to let the blog post of to day be about giving feed back to a few of you - encouraging you to keep on writing.

First of all: thanks Hardyman, Nigina, Flawless, Spoten and Emilie for all kind words!
And now a few comments to the comments:

Nigina, who wrote about The art of going to bed, that the hardest thing is to stop chatting. You're so right. All of those errands that you're up to, all those "must do"-things, aren't they mostly an excuse not to stop chatting? Fascinating enough those nightly conversations are going back and forward. Often it's conversations pizza level, but sometimes it takes a completely new direction and becomes very personal. Preferrably at two o clock in the night for some reason.

Consentire about Mage for good and bad, I hope there's no doubt that I really like the mage class - I do - in spite of the flaws. Right now I'm going fire, and I'm happy about that, but If I'd ever get the opportunity to pick up a bit better gear - a couple of T5 pieces, I've planned to go back to arcane. (I see no reason to question the common advice given in the Elitistjerks forum.)

Kazzandra, about To measure yourself, I'm impressed by your Commander titel as well as by your tiger. The sad thing is that there probably are very few players that actually know enough to appreciate what you've achieved. Being a PvE nerd, I'm completely ignorant about the title system. If someone is running around being a Sergant, Pivate, Knight or whatever it is, it doesn't tell me anything, except for that that person probably has played a bit of PvP. On the other hand if I inspect someone and see an interesting drop from a higher raid instance, well then I make a mental bow of honour, aware of how many nights of wiping and how much effort and team work that the drop has cost.

Wukas, about Recruiting according to the mouth-to-mouth-method, yes, certainly my arguing is full of exaggerations an black-and-white thinking! It's more fun that way... I actually do respect guilds that work out forms and demand that you put time and effort into your application. If you have a bigger, seriously raiding guild, it takes a certain amount of continuous recruiting, outside of you're closest circle of acquaintances. It's unavoidable to get more applications than you can handle by just test them out in practice, running a few instances and so on. You need some sort of sorting tool to come to the pretty hard decisions that it takes. One bad recruitment can cause devastating consequences. It's just as if you have a symphony orchestra - if even only one of the instruments is badly tuned and is playing false, you'll hear it and everybody else will suffer. And to be that person that has to tell the badly playing flutist that he'd better find another orchestra, The Orchestra for Not Tuned Musicians, is hardly a nice job, not even for players that are supposed to have cold hearts. If you can avoid it by sorting it all out at the moment of application it's a good thing. Even though I think it's hard. To write is one thing, to actually play and behave in a group is another.

Flawlless, about To level fast or with pleasure, I must say that I don't understand how you can level up not just one druid but a whole bunch of them! You must be an expert on low levelled druids! But now at last you're 70 and will be able to try out endgame. An entirely different kind of game than the levelling, actually more fun in my opinion, but that's a matter of taste. By the way it would be interesting to hear a bit more about your experiences from playing on different servers. Does it differ a lot between them, is there a certain climate, an atmosphere, that is special to each server? I curiously ask.

Finally: keep on commenting - or why not protesting, when I'm talking rubbish. My blogging is running on a mixed fuel of inspiration and transpiration, but most of all communication. Thoughts meet thoughts and suddenly something new is borne, there's a flash, just like when Larisa has discovered her last alchemy recipe. That's what makes it so charming.