older players

Return of the middle-aged MMOer (is that a word?)

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Asation, from http://www.swtor.com/

 

This really is turning into a yearly blog!   Maybe I will try to rectify that.  I was thinking of doing Nanowrimo (again) this year, and my decision not to do so has freed up a huge amount of time that I wouldn’t otherwise have had!   So, time to write about gaming again.

I’m still trying to balance gaming with “real life”.  When I quit SW:TOR about three years ago, I realised that spending hours in front of a computer screen was not good for my health, my fitness, or my figure.   I got fit, I lost weight, and I cut down my gaming time dramatically.    I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, that has to be a conscious decision.   If I didn’t make that decision, I’d quite happily sit for hours, playing games, while no doubt drinking wine and ordering takeaways (no time for cooking and washing up!)  I have to accept that it’s kind of addictive for me.

However, it works the other way too: the less I play, the less I’m drawn to playing, oddly enough.   I’d still rather do it than housework, of course, but it’s not like it was a few years ago, when I could happily have spent the whole day staring at the screen, given the chance.

And the less I play, the less social gaming is.  I don’t have the time and experience to do “dungeons” in ESO or SW:TOR, so they have become solo games.   PVP didn’t appeal terribly much in either of those for different reasons (I wasn’t wild about it in SW:TOR and in ESO, Cyrodill was so huge and I kept dying and having to run back and get killed on the way … rather frustrating and boring).   I did have a stint in WoW recently and that was much more social as there was so much group content that didn’t require a long time to organise and do: dungeons, old raids and achievements, world bosses, etc.   I enjoyed grouping up with other guild members.  Even raiding was quite accessible.   I know many people hate that WoW has become so casual-friendly, but I have to say, that if you are casual, then … it’s friendly.   It’s easy to gear up and you don’t feel excluded from the good stuff.

As for the hugely anticipated (by me), ESO: what happened there?  (So long since I last posted!).   Well, I loved it at the beginning, had fun doing the starter dungeons, but being a slow leveler I once again went through the experience of being stuck in what seemed like a single player game: levelling through quiet areas and lonely delves, not feeling I had the skill for veteran dungeons, and not managing to find a group for them at a suitable time (I did try to organise one, but the timing seemed to be wrong for everyone else).    It was SW:TOR all over again!

I still pop in now and then as it’s now buy to play, and called Tamriel Unlimited.  But oddly enough, I’m back in SW:TOR.   Some of my guild have returned to it and as it’s now free to play I thought I’d give it another try, and finish off the main class storyline for my inquisitor at least.  The story is actually turning out to be a little disappointing, but never mind: my misgivings about the game still apply, but I’d forgotten how pretty and atmospheric it was.

What I really want is to play Witcher 3 and Dragon Age:Inquisition, but my computer says no.  Maybe in a year or so, when they’re in a sale, I’ll buy them and put them on my son’s computer.    Meanwhile SW:TOR is providing a nice combination of single player story and MMO.

Return of the middle-aged MMOer (is that a word?)

The Cat Lady

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Image

My MMO time has been limited recently, and probably will be for some time to come.   There are a number of reasons for this, but foremost is my cat’s habit of sitting in front of the screen and pressing buttons on the keyboard.   It doesn’t mesh well with games that don’t have a save/load buttons.  I still pop into GW2, but have been using some of my limited gaming time to explore some cat-owner-friendly single player games. 

I stumbled across The Cat Lady, played the demo, and was intrigued enough to buy the full game.    It seemed appropriate, given that my own cat was altering my gaming style!   A big draw for me was the main character, so different from most protaganists in video games.   You play a 40 year old reclusive, depressed woman called Susan Ashworth, known to neighbours as “The Cat Lady”, because you feed the local stray cats.   It was interesting to play such a non-typical character, and I hope we see more of this in games. 

I expected it to be a scary game.  I’ve talked here before about being scared in games, particularly in the first Thief game, and I expected to have to play this one during the day time, with all the lights on.   The sound should have been scary.  As you’re exploring rooms, you’re constantly aware of sounds around you, creaks and taps, possibly made by people who want to kill you.   There are some disturbing, Silence-of-the-Lambs-esque characters, and the game is fairly graphic in its depiction of their horrific crimes.    There are also several “jump” moments.   However, I wasn’t scared!  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps it was the simple, scrolling 3rd person view, and the knowledge that Susan was immortal.  What was the worst that could happen?  At first I thought that being immortal still allowed for pain and maiming, but in fact, each “death” was a fresh start, with a healthy Susan.   Sometimes “dying” was a useful strategy. 

Instead of feeling fear, I became drawn into feeling for the character.   Near the beginning of the game, there is a conversation with a psychiatrist which gives you the chance to make decisions about Susan’s background and motivation.   I don’t know how these decisions affect the game, but they do have the effect of bringing you closer to Susan.   It’s only as the game progresses that you understand why Susan is the way she is.  In fact, for me, the game became more like an interactive story about this character.   Some moments were truly moving.

Susan’s voice acting was great.  Initially, it sounded flat and unexpressive, but those very features helped to convey her depression.   Unfortunately, some of the other voice acting wasn’t so good, and I felt the actors were reading from a script while doing a funny voice.  There was good use of music in the game.

I enjoyed the game play.  It was like a point and click adventure game, but all keyboard controlled (you have a hand free all the time!) and no pixel-hunting.   Things that you can interact with are clearly shown as you walk past them.  This made the game pretty easy to play, and you won’t need to be searching for walkthroughs.   It might be too easy for some, but I didn’t mind as I was caught up in the story and didn’t want to get stuck with the puzzles.

I bought this game while it was on sale at Desura, but I think it’s worth the full price.    It’s on the Steam Greenlight list. 

Now, I would just love to play a female protaganist who is even older than 40!  

The Cat Lady

The loneliness of the less typical gamer

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Long time, no post.   Like most people, I’ve been playing SW:TOR in my (limited) free time.

I say “like most people”, but I probably mean, “like most people in my guild” or “like many MMO players”.    I’m in a situation where I don’t know anyone in real life who plays SW:TOR (apart from my son, and the guild member whom I’ve met in real life).   I hardly know of anyone in real life who has heard of SW:TOR.

Such is the loneliness of the older gamer.  I very occasionally mention my gaming to friends my age, but there’s nothing to discuss unless they play.   I think they’re mildly amused at me pretending to be a gnome or whatever in my free time, but there’s nothing to discuss unless they’re gamers too.  Which they’re not.

Even on the internet (never mind real life!), older female gamers don’t have much of a presence.    I can only think of one in my guild, and she’s not playing SW:TOR.   I’ve had a look for blogs or forums, but haven’t found much – it’s easy enough to find female bloggers, but older female bloggers?  And I don’t mean older than 25.  I mean around my generation or up.  Teenage or older kids, wearing varifocals, remember everything (leggings, dry hair shampoo, Thatchermania, all the older-than-me singers making comebacks, the story referenced in this post title) first time round, etc.   We exist, but we seem to be largely invisible.

There are websites, forums and blogs about “girl” gamers.   I know that I don’t have to be under 18 to be referred to as a girl, but still, I can’t seem to think of myself as a girl gamer.  To be fair to those who do use “girl”, they aren’t exactly spoiled for choice.   What should we be called, if our sex is to be identified?  Lady gamers?  Women gamers?  Female gamers?   All of those names come with baggage.   I’d go for “women” myself, but apart from anything else, I’d lose the alliteration of girl gamers.

And when I’ve read about girl gamer issues, a lot of it seems to be about being “hit on” by guys, something which doesn’t seem to be a problem for me.  (Why not, eh?  Do they know that I’m somebody’s mum?  Can they sense it?).   (Not that that’s the only issue.  I’ve been reading some interesting stuff about sexism in SW:TOR, something I feel I’m not far enough into the game to make judgment on at the moment).  I don’t even have much in common with the women who are juggling (not literally) small children and gaming, although I can sympathise.  I’m past the small child stage, and on to the picking up from girlfriend’s (my son’s, not mine) stage.

So what are my specific, older female gamer issues?   I suppose that it’s balancing game time, but in a different way.   My son goes to bed at the same time as me so I no longer have a couple of clear hours in the evening.   I’m in a household which has a certain level of noise right up until bedtime, so using Mumble, Vent, etc., is problematic.    I’m having to budget for my son’s education and my own pension, so money is limited.  I have health problems that I didn’t have to deal with when I was younger and that can sometimes affect my gaming (I’m convinced that my many medications don’t help!).   My eyesight isn’t what it used to be and my varifocals don’t seem to be designed for looking at a computer screen.

These aren’t moans, but just issues that I don’t seem to have in common with other people.   The main issue is simply that I’m on my own.  I can’t talk to my friends about my gaming because it would be boring and they wouldn’t understand.   They don’t seem to feel the urge to game and I don’t understand that!     It’s not loneliness as such, because I don’t feel lonely, but maybe aloneness.  Solitariness.   But with the feeling that there are others like me out there.  I just haven’t met them yet.

The loneliness of the less typical gamer

Being Geralt

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I don’t tend to play myself in games.  Obviously not.  I’m somebody’s mum.   I go to work, do the housework, take some light exercise and enjoy my leisure time.  There’s not much call for me to save the world or the universe, or even my immediate neighbourhood, and should the call come, I wouldn’t have the resources to answer.   So clearly, I don’t play as myself.  I suppose I role play the character, maybe including aspects of myself.  It’s not so much “what would I do in that situation?” as “what would I do if I was that character in that situation?”.

So I’m quite happy playing characters who aren’t me in terms of gender, age, abilities, etc.   But for some reason I’m having difficulty with Geralt in The Witcher.  It’s not that he’s male.   I’ve got on fine in the past when I’ve had to play male characters, and I sometimes even choose to play male.  Is it that he doesn’t seem to know who he is himself?   That could be it, although I loved playing the character of the Nameless One in Planescape: Torment,who suffered from the same problem.

Is it something to do with his voice acting or animation?  It could be.  Although the scenery looks fantastic, Geralt doesn’t.   He seems kind of flat, but maybe that just fits in with his background and story.   He doesn’t seem to be capable of changing his expression, so it’s difficult to work out what he’s feeling.

Or maybe it’s that he’s just not close enough to me in what he says.   The things he says and the way he says them seem a long way from what I would choose.

Maybe I just need to take control of the character more.   It feels as if the game pushes him to be a drinker, a gambler, a womaniser and generally a fairly unlikeable hard nut.   But there are choices to be made, and I can choose not to drink, gamble or womanise and choose the most likeable route.   I speculated about my motivation for choosing the “good” options in other games in a previous post.   Maybe another motivation is simply that I want to like the character that I’m playing.

It’s not that I’m particularly against drinking, gambling or womanising.  I do wonder if gender comes into it here: if it was man-ising rather than womanising, would I be able to identify more?  Perhaps, and maybe I’d find it amusing to collect the cards.  But there’s something about the way sex and romance in the game has been handled so far that isn’t appealing to me at the moment.   I was trying to put my finger on it, and I think it’s perhaps that it’s so skimmed over.   The casual sex might be interesting if you saw a little of it, maybe a kiss at least, and perhaps had to choose some dialogue that would change its course.   Instead it seems to be a quick agreement that you’re both up for it, then a flash of a card, like a notch on a bedpost.  It all felt a bit juvenile and detached.

But then I completed a quest where, just after sex with a woman, I had to choose whether to save her or give her up to a baying mob.   Suddenly, there was a point to the sex.   Having done it seemed give some extra meaning to the following scene where Geralt had to make that choice.  Of course, giving her up to the mob would be bad enough, but to have had his way with her first would make him an out and out cad.  Although I’d still like to see a little more substance to his sexual encounters, however brief and fleeting, I think I will feel much more drawn to the character if his liaisons had some meaning in his story.

Where Geralt is at a disadvantage, is that he’s finding his way in what appears to be quite an old-fashioned, sexist world.   There’s a general atmosphere of misogyny that I find disturbing, and perhaps it’s harder to subvert it when playing a male, rather than a female character.   I’ve become overly used to games which show a world where woman have the same status as men.   Sadly, Geralt’s world perhaps has more in common with the world I grew up in.   Meanwhile, I have to try to develop a connection to Geralt, a man in a man’s world.

Being Geralt

Discipline … and the rudeness ratio

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Wouldn’t it be nice if this blog was just about one character, and I could discuss the issues facing, say, mages in WoW, I ask myself?  I answer myself ‘No, it wouldn’t, necessarily’.  There are plenty of fascinating blogs there dealing with a single class in a single game, and written by much more competent players than I.   Meanwhile, I don’t see many blogs written by people’s incompetent altaholic, game-tarting parents.

I have three priest characters, so I’m not obsessed.  My highest level is in the 70s.  She leveled as shadow, then dual specced to holy at 40.  I thought I could use shadow for soloing, and holy for dungeon healing.  It worked OK, but not as well as I’d hoped.  I’m mostly out on my own soloing.  The minute I hit a dungeon I have to get used to a new setup.   If I wanted to level as a healer, I would have done better to stick to holy and queue for the dungeon finder, over and over.

A day or two ago, I decided to experiment with discipline on one of my other priests.   I had tried it for soloing before and it seemed terribly slow.  Now it seems much improved.   As a shadow priest, I always felt it wasn’t right that healing was sidelined.   I’m a priest, you know?  My low level discipline priest seems much more of a healer-killer.

I thought I would queue for dungeon finder and give it a try.  I explained to the group that I was new to this, and that they’d have to bear with me, giving the opportunity to kick if they didn’t want an inexperienced player.   Everything went fine until right at the end.  The tank ran ahead and engaged the boss in a different room while I and one of the others were catching up.  By the time I’d got round the corner, he was at half health.  I healed like mad, but sadly, it wasn’t quite enough to keep him alive.  Never mind.  I healed the rest of the team and we finished, then I ressed the tank, who blasted me for being a ‘noob’.  ‘Yes’, I said, ‘I explained that at the beginning’.

Now, who’s to say who was in the wrong?   He would probably argue that I was in the wrong for not keeping up with the tank.  I could argue that he was in the wrong for not waiting for the healer.  But in the world of Somebody’s Mum, ultimately, he was in the wrong … for being rude.  I honestly don’t care whether people I group with play well or not.  (And actually, with everybody except me using heirlooms, it’s difficult to fail even if the players aren’t that great).  I do care about them being polite.  I had explained at the beginning that I wasn’t competent.   Perhaps, given that, he could have spent a few seconds waiting for me to catch up at the end, or even doing a ready check (whatever happened to those?).   Or he could have acted exactly the same and just said nothing at the end.   I wouldn’t have minded.  But I did mind him being rude.

Does World of Warcraft bring out the worst in people?  I don’t encounter rudeness in real life nearly so often as I encounter it in game.  Is that because the fact that it’s online rather than real life encourages rudeness – it’s not like being rude to “real” people, to their face?  Is it just that I’m lucky enough to work, live and socialise with fairly polite people, and I have too rosy a view and too high expectations?  Still, although the rudeness seems a lot more common than in real life, it’s nowhere near across the board.   Out of that group of five running that dungeon, only one was rude, so 20%.  Nobody was rude in my next dungeon run, which brings the figure down to 10% rudeness.  And so on.  Perhaps only 1% of people in WoW are rude, but of course, it’s the rudeness that makes an impact, and not the quiet co-operativeness of the rest of the group.

The trouble is that I have heard people cite the attitude of other players – the rudeness – as a reason for leaving WoW.  I don’t blame them.  I can remember rude incidents from literally years ago, that have made me lose interest in the game for a while.  It’s not a case of stomping off in a huff because people aren’t playing nice.   It’s a case of not having the motivation to log in to be insulted – while paying for it.

I’m still here, off and on, paying for the occasional month and happily being rather antisocial.  I think that’s because the rudeness ratio actually is quite low – nearer 1% than 50%.  I would rather not have an ‘incident’ every few months, but I can maybe cope with that frequency.  I can leave the party, use ‘ignore’, go and get a cup of tea, and maybe, now I have this blog, write about it here.  And be grateful for the 99% of players who are polite, helpful or just silent :).

Meanwhile, I carried on and did another couple of dungeons.   Nobody died, even though we had a hunter with a death wish (who was eventually kicked from the group for incompetency and lack of English.  I didn’t vote.  As I said, I don’t mind how people play as long as they’re polite.  And it added a little extra level of challenge and practice, having to keep the hunter up).   So I did OK, although I definitely need more practice to get to grips with discipline.  I don’t have any add-ons at the moment and don’t intend to get any, so I’m using the default interface, and haven’t yet worked out if I prefer to use the function keys for targetting and the number keys to cast, or to use the mouse for one or the other or both.

Discipline … and the rudeness ratio

Why do I pay to do things I don’t want to do?

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I’m playing World of Warcraft again for a while, with the aim of getting my characters ready for Cataclysm.  Not all of them, of course.    I have the full compliment of alts, but have only passed level 60 with a small number of characters, and I only have one level 80 character (after playing since just after release!).   My plan is to get one more character to 80, and to level up the 80s characters’ professions so that they’re ready to train up.

Why only two characters?  Simply because they’re the only characters with cold weather flying.   I’m sure the price of flying in Northrend is going to go down when Cataclysm comes out and I don’t want to spend the money on my other characters.   Amazingly, after playing for all those years and spending very little, I don’t have much in game cash.   Pretty much like real life.

Another thing I need to do, is make some bag space.  Those characters banks and bags are pretty full.  Of junk.

The character I’m levelling up at the moment is a druid herbalist/alchemist.   I make some potions, I have some spare herbs, I put them in the bank.  For 70 odd levels.    That’s a lot of “spare” herbs.  I don’t know what use I think I’m going to have for a stack of liferoot, but you never know, do you?  I could send them to my inscription..er (what do they call them?  Scribes?), but they “belong” to my druid.

My druid took a long time to level.  I originally started out in restoration.   I thought it would be useful in groups, but it wasn’t a huge amount of fun to level with.  She got to about 40 and then I more or less abandoned her.   At some point I decided to change to feral and suddenly it became much more fun.   I played in cat form up until I reached the Burning Crusade content.  Suddenly there was a host of new gear and I had to decide if I wanted to stay feral, and at some point I decided to change to balance.

I’ve stuck with balance for oh, about three years or so?  But you never know.   I might want to change to feral again.  Or, since I’m now able to dual spec, I might want to have a feral spec.  What that’s meant is that I’ve had to keep a complete set of feral clothes and equipment in my bags and bank.   It doesn’t sound as if that would take up a lot of space, but I need two lots, a tanking set and a dps set, because I don’t know if I might go bear or cat.  Then within those sets, I find it difficult to decide between items, so I end up keeping several dps shoulders, for instance.   And I’ve been doing that for the last couple of years.

This week, I’ve been trying to clear some of that stuff out.  Instead of spending ages comparing items, I’m going by the item level and the rarity.    I may even just go by the rarity and get rid of my stackload of green items.  Will I really need them, even if I do respec?  Couldn’t I just buy some stuff on the AH?

I may also have a purge on all those “sentimental” items, and the things that I need once, but probably don’t now.  Talvash’s Phial of Scrying that I’ve had since 2006?  Isn’t it time to let it go?

The process reminds me so much of real life.  Every so often I declutter my house and have the same dilemma over clothes that are the wrong size (but which I might wear again!), or items that I must have kept for a reason, so still feel the need to hang on to, even though the reason now eludes me.  Or things that I was given as a present, so don’t like to just throw away.

And that makes me wonder why I am paying to recreate the low level stress of sorting out my affairs, but in a game?  Or is it actually helpful for me to succeed at this task in game? Does it motivate me in real life?  I’m not sure.

It has often struck me that I lot of what I do in MMOs has a real life equivalent, and the real life version is often something I don’t really want to do.  Sometimes I don’t even want to do it in game, but feel the need to for some usually minor reward.  (For instance, fishing repeatedly to get a skill up, or killing multiple boring, samey mobs to complete a quest).  I not only do it, but (in WoW, at least) I pay to do it.   What is it about these games that draws you away from some boring household task, such as cooking, to do some boring in game task, such as cooking?

Why do I pay to do things I don’t want to do?

Playing a DPS class with no DPS

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I admit to having too many alts.   I reached the alt cap on World of Warcraft (I think it might have been 50).    I can’t wait for Cataclysm, although I’m going to have to delete some so that I can play in the new starting areas.    I love levelling.   I love starting areas.   I love trying out new classes.

So my warrior tank keeps getting neglected when I suddenly get an urge to play on some of my other alts.  It’s so confusing.  I thought it might be fun to practice playing my warlock so that I could give a go at playing a random dungeon at level 80.   I’d left her in Icecrown (what a miserable place that is), and set off to smash some skulls.   What a joy after playing my warrior!   The kills were so quick.   I felt uberpowerful.   I was all set to queue up as DPS on the dungeon finder.

Then I decided to have a look at recount.  Oh dear!   My damage was rubbish.   I had read that 900 was a terrible amount of damage at level 80, and yet I was only hitting that occasionally.  Usually I was about 800 and something.   Also my damage didn’t really kick in until the end, when my dots added up.    I could imagine that running through a dungeon with quick kills it would be even less than 800 – more like the 500 or so it is nearer the beginning of a fight.

Now, I suppose I don’t have very good gear.   It’s all quest rewards apart from my goggles (engineering), and I think my robe was bought from the Kaluak.    I thought that improving my gear might make a difference.   So off I fired up my Ultra-Safe Transporter to Gadgetzan and flew up to Darnassus to hit the Auction House.    I couldn’t see much that I wanted at a low price, but I bought a purple robe, and blue shoulders, and then some gems to put in them.   I also bought some glyphs, some spellpower thread for my trousers, and some spellpower elixir, then went back to test it all out.

It wasn’t much different with the glyphs and the new clothes.   I ended up switching back to the blue turtle robe over the purple gemmed robe, but whatever I did didn’t help much.  I fiddled around with the order of my spells, tried switching shadowbolts for drain life and so on.   Not much difference.  The one thing I haven’t tried yet is the spellpower elixir and food.

Much as I love the dungeon finder, I wish there was a way to queue up as a ‘noob’.   I could try queueing only for the lowest level dungeons where my lack of dps wouldn’t be felt so much, but I don’t really want to do a level 70 dungeon at level 80.   What I want, what I really, really want is to do a level 80 dungeon with a group of equally bad players in equally unimpressive gear.  It would be an interesting challenge, and I wouldn’t feel as if I was being boosted.

As an aside, back in the old days, I didn’t used to worry too much about DPS on my warlock.  I thought of the warlock as the crowd control class or the utility class or the bag of tricks class.    I didn’t do huge damage, but I could soulstone, healthstone, summon, seduce, buff, debuff, dot, fear and if needed, tank (with my voidwalker).   Being an engineer, I could also whip out a shrink ray, exploding sheep or mechanical harvest reaper when needed.   (The shrink ray was great!).   I didn’t really want to dps – I wanted to do all the other fun things.

Playing a DPS class with no DPS

Tanking woes

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Although I play my tank like somebody’s mum, I do like to read up about it and have some idea of what I’m doing.   I’ve read a few guides to tanking, but there is a bit in the middle that’s missing!  What I mean is that there is plenty on written on the very basics of tanking (i.e. your job is to attract aggro and  take damage, to protect the group and provide a single main target for the healer) .  Then there is a lot written for people who already know how to tank but want to  fine tune the details in the endgame (Elitist Jerks, I’m looking at you).    But for people who understand the very basics, but are not at (or never going to get to) end game, there isn’t so much advice.  I am muddling my way through, and it’s leading to some mistakes.

I’ve had a few comments about my lack of damage.  I tend to be between the healers and the others in damage, at the same level.    Other people with warrior alts have pointed out that they normally are high up the list, if not topping it.   I wasn’t terribly worried about my lack of damage, as I had been mainly concentrating on taking damage, not dishing it out.  In fact, I’d expected to be just where I was on the table, below the dpsers, who are the damage dealers.   But possibly I should be doing more damage to get more threat.   At the moment, I am not dying in instances, so I must have about enough protection for the healers to keep up.   I maybe need to think about sacrificing some protection for damage dealing – for instance, replacing stamina with strength.

I’ve found out that if I’m a higher level than my group mates it’s easy to keep aggro.   If I’m a lower level, I keep losing it.   That’s probably because at a lower level I do less damage, and keep missing.

I’m also learning about the pace of these dungeons.   As I said earlier, the days of planning and mana breaks have gone.  I’m now charging ahead, trying to get the first hits in.   I’m still not fast enough as sometimes I’m running over to the mobs while they’re running back to a ranged player.   My taunt is single target, so it’s a pain getting a group of them to focus on me after they’ve gone for one of the other players.   Speed definitely helps, and if I can get in quickly enough I have a couple of aoe skills that I can use while keeping the group together.  That works well for me, but not so well for other players who are trying to crowd control them.   Oops.

Finally, no matter how much I read and learn, I think I’m always going to struggle because I use my keyboard and mouse like somebody’s mum, if not somebody’s gran.   I’ll call it granny typing.   I slip about when I try to use the number keys and get the wrong ones.   The mouse seems to stick and the buttons are too small to press.  I’m not sure if they’ve worked or not when I’ve pressed them.  There is too much on the screen and I can’t see what’s going on.   I can’t work out who’s attacking who, or not immediately.   I find it difficult to pick out the mobs from the players.   Tab targeting gets me the wrong mobs, and clicking on the mob targets a player instead.  This is one of the reasons I usually avoid mêlée classes, because I find it easier to be able to stand back at range.   And it’s one of the reasons I like healing – because the players are easier to target than the mobs!

Tanking woes