10 Things You Didn't Know About Matticus

When Larisa approached me with a number of ideas after I made a public guest post offer, the one that stood about to me was to expose a side of Matticus that no one has seen before. There’s this image and conception of a writer who happens to be a healer GM that takes a disciplined and no-nonsense approach to the game.

But is there more? Oh you bet. There’s a few aspects of me that you might not be aware of but that’s because I don’t openly talk about it.

I’m not the one that runs the raids

I defer to one of my officers for that. He’s done a great job so far and we wouldn’t be where we are without him at the helm. In the raid, I take control of the healers and work with my crew to figure out what they plan to do. Once I get that, my job is to plan out how healers can make that goal happen. As much as I’d like to dictate our plays, I am not the best person in the guild to do that and I recognize this.

Outside of raids, I take on more of an administrative role as a GM (Boring stuff like posting tactics, talk about personnel/recruits, etc).

I spend more time managing than playing

Sadly, it comes with the job. There’s more managerial work to do then there is actual playing. I don’t even participate in PvP or in many instance runs as much nowadays. That’s attributed to other stuff like writing and school. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind or anything. You might think it’s weird that I find it equally as appealing as playing. White collar gamer? I think so.

I multi-task when I raid

Yeah, I know it’s terrible of me. Thankfully, it only occurs on trash. I pause videos when we get to bosses. I have to catch up on my House, Stargate, Glee and Fringe somehow. Sometimes I’ll listen to some music while raiding. My guildies will attest to how diverse my musical selection is. They can hear it in the background when I’m speaking. I’ll catch up on some blogs I haven’t caught up to or work on my next blog piece. Having two monitors helps with that sort of thing as well. I’m also a huge sucker for My Life Is Average. I can’t begin to imagine how many hours I’ve lost to that.

I am just as scared shitless as the next GM

There are times when I’m not sure what to do. I experience periods where I just want to turn off my computer and forget things just happened. It sucks not knowing what the answer is or what the next move should be. My biggest fear has always been the fear of failure. Messages will be sent to me by grateful readers who are reassured when they read some of the posts I’ve written. They can relate to the experience, of course. But I don’t have anyone to turn to for help or advice. It’s lonely up here and as the boss you’re expected to lead. I do my best to hide uncertainty and it’s a lesson I’ve learned in poker. In order to win, you’re supposed to represent strength as opposed to weakness unless you’re trying to bait.

Unfortunately, I’m not that good at poker.

I flee when confronted in world PvP

I don’t mind world PvP. It’s just the fact that I’m severely lacking in the survivability and offense department. I won’t participate unless I know we have superior numbers. I don’t see the sense in charging straight into a group of Horde with little to know backup. If I sense the battle isn’t going well, I’ll run away pretty fast.

What? I’m advancing in a different direction!

I wish I rolled a mage and wrote about that instead

I tried a Hunter once. Got her up to level 16 before I called it quits. I just couldn’t manage the whole pet thing as much either. When it comes to melee classes, I’m completely useless. At least with a Mage, I’d be relatively self sufficient. My own food and water? Yes please. Portals to any major location known to Gnome? Even better.

But this ties into one of my earlier points about calling the shots in raid as I find it harder to micromanage raid stuff when I’m healing than I would as DPS.

Big achievement collector

Well, I used to be up until recently. I haven’t invested as much time into achievements as others have. Still, I think breaking the 7000 achievement point mark is a fairly sizeable sum. I just couldn’t work up the desire to go tackle Loremaster though.

I keep my alts in other guilds

Sometimes, I just want to be a normal guy. I’ll need a break from my guild and just randomly join a raid on my alt’s guild. It’s nice to simply be a grunt instead of the commander. As you can imagine, my guild policy on this is quite lax. If they have alts, they can either sign onto the main guild or sign with other guilds. I know some players have bank alts with their own guild charter. Some players want to socialize and hang out with a different circle of friends. Maybe they want to raid on their alts without having to rely on weekly pugs so they turn to a guild that raids on different nights. If they have the stamina and lifestyle to support it, they get no argument for me.

Plus maybe they’ll learn something from other guilds that they’ll pass onto me. I’m no stranger to adopting other guild’s strategies.

I have “diverse” language

I’m just going to leave it at that. If I know I did something wrong, I will curse crazily because it’s my fault. No, I sure as heck don’t broadcast this stuff on vent either. Seriously though, it’s something I’m working on. I don’t have anger issues or anything. It’s just a form for me to vent my frustration in an isolated room. Not the best option, but I’m taking steps to improve. These stress balls come in handy. In fact, I suggest you get one too. As healers, we’re under quite a bit of strain.

I’ve been a tank all these years

Witness the greatest secret since the dawn of man. I don’t actually play a Priest at all. I’ve been nothing more than a shield wearing, threat generating machine. In fact, I’ve never even healed before. The past two years have been nothing more than a lie!

And there you have it! Little known aspects of me that aren’t made public that have now seen the light of day (which I hope didn’t scare anyone away).