The challenge of un-preparing myself

Tuesday night was supposed to be one of those nights that you won’t forget in the first place. I was looking to three and a half raiding hours filled with tries and hopefully a first kill of Hodir. Maybe we’d have a few shots at some other raid boss as well.

It was a couple of minutes to raid start and almost every player in the raid was already at spot, ready to pull. The table had been served. In the mage channel we had settled the focus magic buff order for the evening. Any minute now the officer would finish their pre-meeting and join the rest of the crew in the raid room at vent. I was sitting by my cozy fire, hugging my chosen companion pet for the night, Chuck the crocodile.

Then I heard it: the disturbing little melody that tells me that I’ve been cut off from the vent server. I was just about to ask in the raid chat if someone else had been tossed out when I was disconnected from the WoW server as well. My Internet connection apparently had decided to go down, at the worst possible moment.

Growing frustration
First of all I called a friend in the raid on the phone, so he could inform the others what was going on. Then I immediately took action: restarted the router, restarted the cable modem. No result. The lack of shining lamps at the modem was disturbing, and when I tried to call my internet provider and was completely unable to get through I was even more worried. Apparently there was some major issue going on. (Later it turned on there had been a major power shutdown in the Stockholm area, making hundreds of thousands of people go offline for three hours.)

As the minutes passed I went more and more unsettled and frustrated. The raid would probably wait for me through some trash pulls, but if I didn’t turn up to the boss encounter I would no doubt be replaced.

Eventually I knew my chance was gone. One of my two raid nights this week wouldn’t happen. I just had to accept the fact.

Dealing with it
Things happen in real life as well as in Azeroth. I guess part of being a grown up is that we more easily can accept it, cope with it and move on. Smashing things around, cursing and screaming won’t change anything at all.

I must admit though, that I don’t find it entirely easy to deal with un-expected cancelled raid nights. It’s not that I don’t understand that a lost raid night isn’t a big deal. There will be more of them. Even after this night there would surely be more first kills to enjoy in Ulduar, not to talk about the other raid instance that Blizzard will present us in the future. The loss wasn’t more than spot in a fun raid and a few dkp.

So what’s troubling me? It’s the process of un-preparing. When I’m about to start a difficult raid, I’m like a high strung blow string. I’ve been preparing for days. Of course I’ve done the standard things that all raiders do. I’ve seen to that I’m repaired, got my agents, flasks, potions and buff food in order and that I’m on spot long before raid start. I’ve done my out-of-game homework, checking that my essential addons are updated and looking up strategies for the bosses we’re likely to do, written as well as movies. But most of all, I’ve prepared myself mentally, like any sportsman thinking about an upcoming competition. I’ve already gone through the fight in my thoughts, picturing all that’s going to happen, mentally focusing on that it’s going to be a successful night, when I’m going give my very best, everything that I’m capable and a little bit more.

I’m like one of the 100 meter sprinters in an Olympic game, standing on the start line, waiting for the gun shot to send them off.

How to wind down
It’s not easy to wind down from the level I’ve been on, to go from “prepared for a 3 hour non-stop adrenaline intense rush” to a quiet evening in front of the TV with my kids. There’s a part of my brain that refuses to adjust to the new situation as quickly as I want it to. And it surely doesn’t go easier since I’ve just had a couple of big cups of coffee to make sure that I stay alert even if the night will be long.

So how did I finally spend my night? Well, at first I continued to do some tries to get in contact with my IP provider, even though I knew that my raid spot was lost. Then I watched an episode of House with my family, which helped me relax a little. And finally I wrote this blog post, to get it off my heart. It helped a bit, but not entirely. Probably it would have been a better idea to do something physical – jogging or going to the gym – to get out the tension I had built up.

I wonder how other players deal with it. How do they get their mental preparation out of their system, how do they “un-prepare” themselves? Do they take a drink? Go playing some non-online video game? Or maybe they’re just better at turning off their brains from the raid mod than I am?

And yeah, they did get Hodir down this night, but Thorim didn’t fall this time. Next week he will. And I’ll be there. Prepared!