1) Studying counts
How it applies to life:
I've never really had to study for a test before college, at least not for more than a few minutes. Now I'm learning how much proper preparation can really make everything you do, big and small, go much more smoothly.The story here is that I've picked up raiding (collaborating with 9 other people to kill bosses) again, but this time with a new character that I've had to learn. Now, before, I've come from playing what I would call "wishy-washy" characters; not that they're bad, but that there's really no consensus on a "best way" to play them; most tanks and healers are like this, but I've played some damagers that are the same way, where every possible stat helps you out in some way, and a conglomeration of all, or possibly specialization, would be best; no one really knows, but everyone has an opinion.
Playing my mage is a completely different experience. The research is profitable. There really is a lot to learn about how to play a video game better that comes from math and computer science. The community over at Elitist Jerks really works hard at crunching numbers in interesting ways to figure out which gear and which move rotations are best for us, and I've learned a lot about optimization from them
2) Practice, practice, then practice some more
How it applies to life:
Studying and homework are really hard for me to get motivated to do, but putting in that effort day in and day out really does make a difference.Where the real work comes in is the same as in most disciplines: reading about how to climb rocks doesn't make you a great rock-climber. In this same way, reading about how to play my mage has helped me, but it would be useless had I not spent hours practicing the rotation (by enjoying the game) so that it's second nature to me.
The trick here is that most fights are not "tank-and-spank" in this expansion. There is constantly something different to do, from "don't stand in the fire" to "run around constantly" which changes things up for me considerably. Having the rotations down to a point where I can focus on these new, extra things really helps in terms of my output. Damagers, or DPS (damage per second), can easily be evaluated or compared by the numerical output alone, where tanks and healers are much harder to compare.
3) Teamwork is more important than your work
How it applies to life:
I've always been a loner, especially when it came to group work. Through experience with helping manage a guild and a team, I've learned a lot about proper delegation and teamwork.I've been noticing this in different games for a while now, but it still hasn't really "stuck" in my mind yet. We raid with 10 people, and if one of us screws up, we all lose. The ways to screw up, however, are sometimes subtler than you'd think.
When I put up big numbers it helps us win, but not at the cost of my helping everyone else. Just like a basketball team; if one player scores 30 points but can't pass or assist team mates, the other 4 people's performance won't be good enough to win.
There are times when I need to sacrifice my "numbers" for the betterment of the team; for instance, even though I can stand in fire for a second to finish my current spell cast, it helps the healers if I don't. Then they have more time and energy to heal someone who really needs it, instead of just wants it. Little things will snowball into big success. Which brings us to...
4) Little upgrades make for big improvements
How it applies to life:
It doesn't seem like a lot to save $0.20 a day, but it adds up. So does a similar daily addition of some good habits; you don't form them overnight, but they're worth the time and work.This is an easy story to figure out. Let's talk about loot, or items. These days in WoW, items have a shown value called item level, or ilvl. This gives you insight to how powerful an item the designers think it is; ilvl goes from 1 up to infinity, theoretically, although the current hard-mode gear is 372, regular raids give 359, and heroic dungeons give 346.
Now, obviously, if I make the upgrade from an ilvl 200 to an ilvl 372, 99.9% of the time I should be much better off. However, it's not so obvious moving between two adjacent tiers, even less so considering side-grades in the same tier.
The point here is that although your stats don't jump up as sharply when going from 346 to 359 as they do from 200 to 372, the bonuses help every little thing you do, from how long you'll be alive in a fight to how hard or how often you hit with each move. Fights are often 6 minutes long, and several classes have moves that they use every 1.5 or even 1.0 seconds. When you have such a huge amount of action over a course of time, even a 1% upgrade in stats can be huge for you.
Conclusion
I went a little longer than I was hoping to, but hopefully that was a semi-interesting read. The real takeaway here is the last point; it encompasses everything else. It's not realistic to think I'll start studying 4 hours a day tomorrow when I don't normally do this; it's something you have to work towards, a little each day.
