First post to my thing, ever.  Should be sleeping, but those damn energy drinks and Jamba Juice have me all wired up.  Also, it's been a long time since I've written anything, so get ready for some tasty disjointed flow.  On second thought, leave flows out of it.  They never end anywhere worthwhile.

In any event, what am I playing right now?  Pretty much World of Warcraft. Occaisionally Obilvion.  My feeling is that there's enough content between the two games to keep me contented.  The problem is, I find myself wanting more.  World of Warcraft is where I connect with my friends, now that we've all got 'real' jobs and are somewhat geographically scattered, but we've reached the point where endgame progression becomes rather difficult without a larger organization of non-idiots.  Which is where the wanting more comes in. Our merry band of murderers, hippies, cultists and zealots is only limited to more or less six people that I would consider competent.  The first endgame instance(s), namely heroics, were defeated without too much difficulty.  We slayed our enimies, acquired our loots, and were generally very happy with ourselves.  Then came Karazahn.  Or Karazhan.  However it's spelled, we managed to slog though it by picking up members.  Slowly, we got it on farm status. For the confused, that means that we got competent enough at running through the place that it was no longer considered a challenge, but merely a place to harvest gear.  At this point, I stepped away from the game for a few months.  A new relationship completely captivated my attention- and that, coupled with career developments and an associated  move, had my time more than occupied.  But once the relationship passed and I settled in, I rejoined the game with vigor.

Lo and behold, my friends and a few other awesome players had turned our little casual guild into a semi-casual raiding guild.  Which was cool.  We made some more progress, excited that things were coming together.  Our core group was getting better gear at a nice clip, and the dreams that I secretly harbored about joining the upper echalon of WoW seemed certain to come true.  But then, like all trends, the pendulum began to swing back.  Members started leaving our guild to join ones that were more progressed, and attendence suffered.  Long story short, all the gear progression and dungeon challenges that fueled my addiciton to World of Warcraft have dwindled to basically nothing. 

The only thing that keeps me coming back to is simply the desire to keep up with my friends from way back and the new friends I've made in-game, but the interactions are now covered by a thin-but-all-too-preceptible film of boredom and frustration.  Oblivion filled the loot-get void temporarily, though it ceased to be challenging after only a few days.  But the biggest problem is that to truly enjoy a session of Oblivion, I need to be immersed in it.  That means lights off, no music, and for heaven's sake, no Vent!

The game's McGuffin status, now laid bare, is grating.  How many times can you go bowling with friends before it becomes a duty rather than a fun activity?  And how can you separate not wanting to bowl from not wanting to see your friends, especailly if they all still seem to be really in to bowling? 

This is getting way too meta.  I think I'll turn to booze.  Or maybe just sleep.