Gaming troubles

Silver did not go to sleep. At all. She came for a bit of attention when I went to bed, but left the room once she’d had enough. She woke me a couple of times throughout the night, and by five I finally lost it and kicked her out. No actual kick was involved, of course!

Just after six my phone rang. A colleague warning me that they’re burning tires along the R75, I should better take a different route to work. Which I did.

On the way to work, I thought about this Adventure feature currently running in my online game. It’s a really fun feature – but: Teamwork and communication in the fellowship are absolutely essential to success. I was rather miffed when some fellows wasted resources by working outside the team and simply not bothering to communicate! Our Archmage shared a spreadsheet on Google Docs, where everyone should record what they are planning to build (some build’s take 24 hours – that’s why Teamwork and communication are so crucial!), what they have in their Inventory and what they have already contributed. There are three Stages and each stage as three options. Our Archmage decided we should take the ‘blue’ route – he’s a wizard with numbers, so he had worked out the shortest route to get to the final goal. We rushed through Stage 1, finished Stage 2 – and now we really need to carefully plan who builds what so we have everything we need to get to the Finish.

Only to see some people throw valuable one-day builds away on the wrong waypoints! Only to find out half the ‘contributors’ don’t bother with the spreadsheet ... so our Status (Fellowship Inventory) is all wrong. At which point I seriously start thinking about changing to a better organised fellowship, where I’m just a Fellow, not Admin. Seriously thinking about it. As in composing-a-message-expressing-my disappointment-in-my head serious.

But that would have me following in the footsteps of the drama queen. Who spent hours spitting her venom against ‘slackers’ in the chatroom before she left in a huff with a spiteful message. And her followers followed her, leaving equally ugly messages. Since then, I have tried my best to re-build a harmonious fellowship - but I’m not a leader. It’s a role I don’t want in real life, nor do I want it in games online.

So. What shall I do? There are some members of the fellowship who go all out for teamwork, and they communicated, accurately. Whilst the majority approached the ‘Adventure’ as an ‘do what I like, when I like, how I like’. Leaving those of us who DO work together to hop and jump and change to adapt in order to achieve the required target! I spent an hour verifying everyone’s contributions-to-date to get an accurate status of what is still needed! Ok, so this feature started pretty much unannounced – and caught most of us unprepared. There was no announcement that it would start – suddenly it was just all happening. In full swing, so to speak. Well, let’s see how we’ve done by the time I get home and take it from there. It’s just, the fellowship is named ‘Active Ones’ not ‘Mediocre Ones’.

Back home I took another look through my lovely garden: three more purple and yellow Iris’ getting ready to bloom! How wonderful!

Took out the garbage, hung up the laundry, did part of the dishes, cooked dinner and then downloaded the photo’s off my camera, which I hadn’t done in two weeks! Hence the pretty photo’s in yesterday’s blog (which I only posted tonight).