'Tis the season...

To level like crazy.

Oh wait... sorry. The holiday season is always hectic and full of pressure.

Usually my escape is diving into EQ2 and trying to get away from all the crap the holidays bring. Buying presents, visiting family, blah blah blah.

Unfortunately, this year the level cap raised. So now I have... * counts * Five characters to get to level 80 in one form or another. That's three crafters and two healers. For some of them the trip is relatively short. For others... * shudder * We just don't talk about them.

It certainly isn't that I don't love the game and the excitement of leveling and getting new gear and new spells and all that. But there is pressure involved.

Because I'm in a raiding guild. Granted, we're not exactly uber or anything, but we want to do certain things. This requires leveling up to the cap in a rather short period of time. It also involves upgrading spells and gear etc. in that same period of time.

This is an expensive proposition on several levels. First, the time factor. Second, plat.

Time is an issue. I have two jobs. And believe it or not, even with being sick for a few weeks and slacking off ridiculously during that period, it still takes up a lot of time. I still need to find a way to work in time for other stuff too. * frantically tries to activate her mutant power of time control *

Finances are an issue too. I'm not rich. Either in real life or in game. Winning either lottery would be helpful here. Real life lottery solves my time issues and that in turn would solve the problem of not having money in game cause I'd have SO much more time to do stuff that makes money... * buys a ticket for the lottery and tries to activate her mutant power of whatever would make her win *

So there is no rest for the wicked here. I'm actually not really that upset about it or anything. I love the new expansion. I love that I've got 10 more levels to get and work through. I don't love that I have a time limit... but that was my choice and I'll live with it.

In the meantime I'm loving the new expansion for the most part. I'm fond of the quests, but I would love to be able to get experience effectively by grinding again... just a little bit. There are nights when I just don't want to think as hard as I have to in order to do quests. I just want to mentally phase out and heal through a two hour run of mob slaughter.

That small annoyance aside, I think they've done an excellent job thus far.

And I still love my little guild. So yay me.

I'm going to go back to trying to activate my mutant abilities now. I wonder if juggling a zillion things at once and trying to cram everything I need to do into a 19 hour day qualifies as a mutant power...