an eccentric meditation
May. 27th, 2015 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauraque_bkAs some of you know, I'm a long-time World of Warcraft player. And one of the things I do in WoW is collect mounts — horses, dragons, dinosaurs, elephants, motorcycles, and all the dozens of other things you can ride in the game. I would call myself a semi-serious collector. Players who don't collect consider me obsessive and eccentric, yet hardcore collectors don't see me as one of them. I have 223 mounts, plus a few that don't "count" because of the idiosyncratic way the game tallies them, but folks in the big leagues have cleared the 300 mark.
[Frostwolf Howler - My first rare mount (rare at the time, not so much anymore), obtained in 2005 through player-vs-player combat.]
This is admittedly a very arbitrary hobby-within-a-hobby, since the differences between mounts are primarily cosmetic. There's no reward for amassing a big collection (except, at a few milestone numbers, a bonus mount). The rare ones don't even go faster, and some of them can actually be inconvenient on a practical level.
[Traveler's Tundra Mammoth - Best 16,000 gold I ever spent! Doesn't fit through doors, though.]
There's a lot of variety in the collecting process. Some mounts are handed to you for a few gold pieces — or a hundred thousand. Some come at the end of elaborate quest chains that take months to complete, or are rewarded for defeating bosses so difficult that 90% of players will never even attempt them. Some are from cross-promotions with other games or real-money microtransactions. Some only appear rarely, leaving die-hard collectors camping out for them for hours or days. Some can only be obtained with help from other players and become a social event, while for others you fly solo.
[Amani War Bear - Awarded in 2008 for leading a 10-person group to complete a 45-minute speedrun of a series of bosses.]
Some are a guaranteed reward if you follow the right steps, while others have only a small chance to appear and you just have to be lucky.
[Drake of the North Wind - 1% chance, dropped for me on my first solo attempt.]
Of course, luck may eventually be trumped by persistence.
[Armored Razzashi Raptor - Also 1%, recently dropped for me after 154 attempts.]
Patiently repeating solo mount runs over dozens, scores, or hundreds of attempts gives me time to think, and sometimes I think about why I'm doing it. There is a thrill when the mount you've been waiting for finally appears, and a satisfaction in knowing you were patient enough to make it happen. It's also fun to see other players stop in their tracks to check you out.
[Argent Warhorse, rewarded after a few weeks at the jousting grounds. This is the mount that gets the most comments and turned heads. It's not that hard to get but most players don't bother because it's tedious. It's one of my favorites.]
In those moments it always feels worth it, but when you're on an unlucky streak and making your way through another 30-minute run for another 1% chance, thoughts can pop up like: Isn't this stupid? Shouldn't I be doing something more productive than this?
My collection is only pixels on a screen. It will never be valuable in any material way, and in the end it doesn't even belong to me. Even if I never choose to quit playing, someday the game's servers will shut down for good, and the decision will be taken out of my hands, as will my collection.
[They'll even take away the Gray Kodo, my first mount ever.]
Then, one day as I was playing and thinking about this, I had the realization that this isn't so different from real life. Someday I will be gone, and I can't take any of my life's achievements with me. Although some of the things I do will have an impact on the world that outlasts me, not everything can, or perhaps even should. Purely present moments are part of the experience of life.
After I had that thought, I started to feel very relaxed about the time that I spend on this. For the hour or two a week that I spend on mount farming, I see it as an almost meditative exercise in choosing to take a break from worrying about the future, choosing to put energy into something ephemeral, while being aware that a lot of things in life are more ephemeral than we usually consider them to be.
[Armored Red Dragonhawk - Rewarded for collecting 200 other mounts, and a testament to the dual pleasures of frivolity and patience.]
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Feel free to comment wherever you're comfortable.
[Frostwolf Howler - My first rare mount (rare at the time, not so much anymore), obtained in 2005 through player-vs-player combat.]
This is admittedly a very arbitrary hobby-within-a-hobby, since the differences between mounts are primarily cosmetic. There's no reward for amassing a big collection (except, at a few milestone numbers, a bonus mount). The rare ones don't even go faster, and some of them can actually be inconvenient on a practical level.
[Traveler's Tundra Mammoth - Best 16,000 gold I ever spent! Doesn't fit through doors, though.]
There's a lot of variety in the collecting process. Some mounts are handed to you for a few gold pieces — or a hundred thousand. Some come at the end of elaborate quest chains that take months to complete, or are rewarded for defeating bosses so difficult that 90% of players will never even attempt them. Some are from cross-promotions with other games or real-money microtransactions. Some only appear rarely, leaving die-hard collectors camping out for them for hours or days. Some can only be obtained with help from other players and become a social event, while for others you fly solo.
[Amani War Bear - Awarded in 2008 for leading a 10-person group to complete a 45-minute speedrun of a series of bosses.]
Some are a guaranteed reward if you follow the right steps, while others have only a small chance to appear and you just have to be lucky.
[Drake of the North Wind - 1% chance, dropped for me on my first solo attempt.]
Of course, luck may eventually be trumped by persistence.
[Armored Razzashi Raptor - Also 1%, recently dropped for me after 154 attempts.]
Patiently repeating solo mount runs over dozens, scores, or hundreds of attempts gives me time to think, and sometimes I think about why I'm doing it. There is a thrill when the mount you've been waiting for finally appears, and a satisfaction in knowing you were patient enough to make it happen. It's also fun to see other players stop in their tracks to check you out.
[Argent Warhorse, rewarded after a few weeks at the jousting grounds. This is the mount that gets the most comments and turned heads. It's not that hard to get but most players don't bother because it's tedious. It's one of my favorites.]
In those moments it always feels worth it, but when you're on an unlucky streak and making your way through another 30-minute run for another 1% chance, thoughts can pop up like: Isn't this stupid? Shouldn't I be doing something more productive than this?
My collection is only pixels on a screen. It will never be valuable in any material way, and in the end it doesn't even belong to me. Even if I never choose to quit playing, someday the game's servers will shut down for good, and the decision will be taken out of my hands, as will my collection.
[They'll even take away the Gray Kodo, my first mount ever.]
Then, one day as I was playing and thinking about this, I had the realization that this isn't so different from real life. Someday I will be gone, and I can't take any of my life's achievements with me. Although some of the things I do will have an impact on the world that outlasts me, not everything can, or perhaps even should. Purely present moments are part of the experience of life.
After I had that thought, I started to feel very relaxed about the time that I spend on this. For the hour or two a week that I spend on mount farming, I see it as an almost meditative exercise in choosing to take a break from worrying about the future, choosing to put energy into something ephemeral, while being aware that a lot of things in life are more ephemeral than we usually consider them to be.
[Armored Red Dragonhawk - Rewarded for collecting 200 other mounts, and a testament to the dual pleasures of frivolity and patience.]
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Feel free to comment wherever you're comfortable.
