A new mode for WoD...

So I spent the past few days trolling the MMO-C forums like usual.  I came across what I considered a troll post about how Blizz is trying to kill off casual progression raiding, and it was filled with the usual suspects, people talking out of their asses and not making much sense.

It naturally started with how Blizz is making 10man guilds second class citizens.  The LFR crowd bitched at how they aren't getting real loot.  And the people that never raid complained at how their dungeon gear can't compete.

However, there were the shining few who explained the reasons why Blizz was changing raid size formats and stuff.  Mixed in between all of that, an idea sparked in my mind.

It’s a warm summer evening, circa 600 BC, you’ve finished your shopping at the local market, or agora, and you look up at the night sky. There you notice some of the stars seem to move, so you name them planetes, or wanderer.

Just kidding, but I love that scene in BBT where Sheldon tries to teach Penny physics.

So Blizzard has a lot of different types of content.  You have three man scenarios.  Five man heroic dungeons.  Ten to thirty man for LFR, normal, and heroic raids.  Twenty man mythic raids.  On top of all these, differing levels of rewards.

What if, maybe as filler content between raid tiers, they could develop ten man content.  This content would let them showcase other story lines away from the main raid content.  They could make the rewards equivalent to LFR, so it isn't required for Mythic raiders.  It would be something that is a higher challenge than heroic dungeons and LFR, allows them to explore more lore, and is completely optional.  They can periodically release new ten man content after each raid tier to give more stuff for people to do.  This could be very helpful at the end of expansions, where there are huge amounts of time with players getting bored.  They could release little zones, tuned at a slightly higher difficulty than LFR, so coordination would be required, but being twinked out wouldn't be needed, nore would it require everyone to be the perfect raider or have the perfect group comp to complete.

This would give the casual audience, the lore audience, something to do that wouldn't require set days or times, something that could be completed within just a couple hours if one-shotting.  You would have to be in a pre-formed group like our current Flex model.

I don't quite know what I would call this mode yet.  But that is my idea.

The love of my life, the reason I'm here.

Certain things happen in life that completely change your perspective on, well, everything.  Something can happen, some singular event, that spins everything in on itself.  You realize that what you worried about from day to day, things you planned for the future, the mundane parts of your life fall away, like leaves off a tree, and just the trunk of the tree stays, what really matters.

My life is like that tree now, stripped bare of all its leaves, small branches falling away, to show just a trunk, a few thick branches, but everything else has left, fallen, littered the earthen floor below.

I'm not the best at spoken word when I'm trying to convey emotions.  When my emotions run strong, my brain tends to shut off.  But the written word, when I have time to let my brain formulate what it wants to express, I do believe that I have a modicum of ability in this regard.

I've used this blog as an outlet to my passtimes.  Looking back now, I realize how fortunate I was to be able to spend my time on such things.  This isn't to say that my missives on that part of my life are being stopped.  I'm sure I still will in some way.  However the filter, the perspective, the frame of reference, has changed the focus of what I write about.

And now for the reason behind all these words I've strewn before you, my few dear readers.  On Thursday, July 31st, 2014, my wife, Tabytha Holland Armstrong, was diagnosed with cancer.  Initial tests show it to be aggressive, and the doctor's initial estimates give a year.

Yes, it feels like Wile E Coyote has dropped the Acme Anvil on us.

We aren't taking this lying down.  We're going to explore everything possible, different treatments, experimental drugs, anything.  But for now, realization is hammering home.  As I said, speaking can be difficult for me.  But I can write much better.

So many thoughts have gone through my mind.  The rage at how this...thing...this faceless monster can infect my wife and take her away from me.  The despair at how I'm given this finite amount of time with her.  A million other emotions.

My wife has cancer.  This woman, this glorious, beautiful, brilliant human, who loves her family and friends with a force of will that I've never experienced before, has something inside her that wants to consume and kill her.

You see this on tv, in movies, but real life?  It doesn't work out the same.  There isn't a montage of doctors working together.  There isn't a commercial break and then coming back to people working out a cure.  This is sitting in a room with her, her parents, as our emotions overwhelm us.

All that day I'd had moments of crying, of emotions taking me to very dark places.  But not a major breakdown, not then.  For me, my heart broke the early morning after.  At four in the morning, I woke up and got out of bed and began typing a message to a friend.  While trying to compile everything as I typed on my keyboard, my hear felt as if it would burst, and tears poured out of my soul.  My body closed itself, all my muscles tightening in unison, my voice screaming in silence as my brain wanted to scream in ways inhumanly possible.  I cried in a way that my body has never felt before.  This pent up rage, fear, hate, despair, it poured out of me, left me exhausted as it coursed through and out of me.

Why her?  Why now?  I've only know her for seven years.  Seven.  When my life was planned around growing with this woman, taking her away at the age of 33 is cruel.  It's not enough time.  I barely know her.  We've just started our lives together, and now these cells want to end her.

There are so many things I want to do with her.  

I want to watch her have a career in nursing, somethin that she has just finished school for just two months ago.

I want to travel the world with her, visit other countries, try so many things, see so much.

I want to buy our first house with her.  Pick furniture.  Paint colors for walls.  Buy our first car.  

I want to celebrate a tenth anniversary, fifteenth, fiftieth.

I want her to see her niece that is about to be born.  Watch her grow up, get to know her, do things and go places with her.

Movies, tv shows, books, games, music that I know she wants to see happen, to share with her, that now may not ever happen.

We've shared ourselves through gaming.  Mario, Halo, WoW.  We've built this bond in WoW.  We've created something in it together.  We've built this digital home, where people have come, shared themselves with us, these people from all over the world, who have found my wife, who have decided that she, the atmosphere she's created, this world she's formed around her, they all want to be a part of it.  They are all a part of her.

This point in the world, that so much revolves around, that is the center of my life, my being, others even orbit her, there is this chance that it will end.  Soon.

It crushes me, like that anvil if it were to hit the Road Runner.  In the cartoons it doesn't.  It always misses.  But this isn't the cartoons.  This is the real world, where anvils fall on people all the time.

But I refuse to believe this is the end.  I hear all the time of how people were told they had months to live an they live on for decades.  I refuse to believe that my reason for living is going away any time soon. This can't, won't, be what ends my wife.  

This does change me.  In all sorts of ways.  Perspectives, outlooks, beliefs.  I hope that this is just a way for is to change together, and not something that seperates us permanently.

But maybe I found something.  I've been talking with others, her parents, friends, family.  Maybe there is a reason for this.  I feel like this isn't the end, just the start of something else for us.  Something we need, have needed for a long time.  This is how it is shown to us.

All of you who read this, I love you all, hold you all close in my heart.  Thank you for being in my life.

That's all I have for now.  I'll be writing more often.  This helps my heart.