Don't worry...be happy

Notoriety...

Do you have it when you think you have it, or do you have it and don't even realize it?

Celebrities know they have it.  How many people buy their movies, music, go to their sporting events, concerts, etc.  They have it easy, recognizing their notoriety.

What about the rest of us?

Everyone has their own types of notoriety, for sure.  Someone you work with might be notorious for being a loud mouth, or selling a lot of something, or being lazy, or any number of things.

Some gamers, and guilds, have notoriety.  Fatal1ty, Thresh, Swifty, SoloMid, Moscow Five, Blood Legion, Method, Dream/Paragon... I'm leaving a ton of other people out, but those are names that immediately come to mind for me.  YMMV.

What about local notoriety though?  As everyone who reads my blogs know, I play WoW.  On my server, I and my raid team are kind of a big deal, at least in our own eyes.  We're leading horde side raiding.  We're working Lei Shen this week, and fully expect him dead on Sunday.  We're not leading all raiding, but we're the team on top on horde.  Those assholes in Impudence and Apotheosis are good.

So yeah, we (Remix) lead horde.  But who really even knows us?  Does anyone follow us, checking out guildox or wowprogress to see what we are up to?  I know some people do, as some of us on the raid team will get messages every once in a while, other players checking to see how we're doing on progression, or just seeing what we are up to.  It's fun when that happens, that people are interested in how well you are doing.  It makes you feel proud, special, warm fuzzy feelings, etc. 

But do we really have notoriety?  Is there any such thing in WoW if you aren't a world first calibre guild/player?  I like to think that, on our little server (Elre'thalas US), that there is some.  Our server doesn't have the population of other servers with bigger name guilds/players, but we do have some. 

And yes, those of us on our raid team that have talked about this some fully understand that if we, as a team, were on other servers with more raiders/raiding guilds, we'd be way behind.  There are other servers with infinitely better teams playing on them.

We're not in that situation though.  We rule Eldre'thalas.  We didn't, for quite a while.  We were on alliance side.  Since Firelands came out.  And really we weren't our own guild until part way through Firelands.  Lots of drama there, nobody cares though, so I'm skipping the how and the why.  Short story, we're the new kids on the block, but we're also the best kids on the block.  Maybe, if we keep doing as well as we do, or hopefully improve and get better as players/raiders as a team, then maybe we'll be the absolute best on the server. 

Or maybe some other group of players will pass us up, who knows.  Or maybe Titan will come out (please God, oh fucking please come out already!!) and we'll move on to that game.

But for now, I'd like to think I've got some notoriety on my server, some clout, someone that other players look up to in some way, or envy, or hate, or whatever.  Makes me feel like some what of a special snowflake.  Makes me enjoy my life just a little bit more. 

And that's the ultimate goal, to enjoy life just a little bit more...right?