SWTOR and PvP

  I tend to talk mostly about health and gaming on this blog. For people who don't really know me, or who don't know my leisure activities, I'm a gamer. I play online MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) as a sort of "painkiller"--it allows me to focus on something outside myself when I'm in pain. I focus on things to the exclusion of all else, so it works perfectly. And before anyone comes out and accuses me of being addicted or the like--nope, I'm not. I've been known to do things like read, knit, bead, or sleep when dealing with pain. It's whatever I feel like doing at the moment. I have no cravings to play if I'm not, but let's be honest. Fun activities mean you tend to do them, and gaming is fun for me.

  Over the past couple of days, I've begun PvPing in Star Wars: The Old Republic (that's Player vs. Player to those of you who don't know the terminology). PvP consists of real people playing against real people. TOR's PvP is some of the better PvP that I've encountered in games, although I'll admit that I haven't participated in PvP in most games I've played.

  In TOR, there are a bunch of maps that you're randomly sent to. Each map has a different sort of goal--there's are "capture the flag" style maps called Huttball, several maps where you capture different locations with varying results (in one, you get points from each location, so holding as many as possible is the best way to win. In another, holding a location causes you to attack the shield of the other team. Whichever shield hits 0 first is the loser. More locations mean more attacks against the opponents. In a third--well, I haven't quite figured that one out yet, since every time I've played, my team has lost). There's an arena, where the only goal is to kill the opposing team. There's a map I haven't played yet, so I can't tell you about it.

  Each team is made up of 8 players in most of the maps. There are a few with 4 players, and I'm told that ranked matches are always 4 players.

  My PvP character is in the low level bracket (from 10 to I don't remember the higher end but I think I'm getting there. 40?). I play a healer, as when I tried DPS (damage per second, don't ask why it's not just D instead of DPS, I don't know the answer) I found myself healing anyway. That's probably because the last time I did any serious PvP, I played a healing class.

  From what I understand, you can't do team ratings or solo ratings without being level 65, and my PvP character is only 34. I've played fewer than 20 matches, and I've been voted MVP 14 times (cool! I didn't even realize I'd been voted for MVP once, much less 14 times until I opened the window for this screenshot). I guess players like to thank their healers.

  My UI is currently a bit crowded--I have a combination of leveling buttons and PvP buttons. This isn't my full screen, just the lower quarter. Eventually the two side boxes of hotbars will go away, and the target windows will lower down. In the meantime, I keep my combat buttons on the bottom bar, and my heals up in the floating hotbar by itself. I tend to spend most of my time looking around my character, so that allows me to see what moves have cooled down.

  I'm a mouse-right-and-movement-left player who uses mouse look a lot. My main moves are all bound to either my mouse or keys near my movement keys. I try to make sure that no moves require me to remove my hand from the movement keys or the mouse buttons, so I can run at a moment's notice. As a healer, I do a lot of running in PvP, usually towards the DPS in the hopes that they'll peel whatever is attacking me off me and kill it. The hard part is that I have the directional sense of something with no directional sense, and can get lost in an empty room. Sometimes I wind up running away from my team instead of towards it.

  The worst is when I'm healing and suddenly the entire group of enemy players converge to slaughter me before turning and slaughtering my teammates. On the one hand, it makes me feel like I'm doing a good job if they're going for me first. On the other hand, I'm dead!

  Nothing proves how necessary a healer is like getting into an arena (4 vs 4 matches where the only goal is to kill each other) and fighting against a team without a healer. That happened last night, and the poor other team didn't stand a chance. They had one tank and three DPS (Tanks are heavy duty characters who soak up all the damage for their teammates, so that their teammates can do the what they do best--kill. Or in my case, heal). Our team was made up of a tank, two DPS, and me, the healer. We didn't lose a single person.

  It probably surprises some people that I PvP. In EQ2, I did housing almost exclusively, and constantly lost my buttons when trying to do combat. The thing is, EQ2 is the exception rather than the rule. Housing was so much fun in EQ2 (and still is) that I didn't bother to do anything else. EQ2 was my escape from combat. Before EQ2, I did hardcore raiding in several games, along with pretty serious PvP. When I came to EQ2, it was to take a break from all that.

  PvP right now allows me to relax and let off some steam. I don't do the trash talking thing. I don't mock my teammates or get unnecessarily annoyed at them. But there's something about slaughtering (or in my case, healing while someone else slaughters) a bunch of other people that's strangely soothing.

  With everything that's going on in my life, I need to relax, even if it's through slaughtering other people in a game!

Abandon All Hope...

  ...ye who enter here.

  I start every doctor's appointment with the expectation that nothing helpful will happen--I try to remember to hope for the best but to always expect the worst. Considering the number of appointments I've had that haven't produced any results, it's not surprising that I have this attitude. It's the only way to continue going to the doctor when you've been going for half your life, and no appreciable progress has been made. In fact, my headaches are getting worse.

  So it was surprising to me how disappointed I was after visiting my headache specialist recently. You don't really think about it unless you suffer from one of the myriad of chronic disorders, but eventually you change doctors. You exhaust the knowledge of the doctor you're with, and you have to find a new one. Or the doctor you're with retires, or moves to another state, or some other situation arises in which you can no longer visit your previous doctor. This doctor is one I've been with for years--practically since reaching adulthood. He's been with me through it all, and it's taken until this past year for him to run out of ideas. I'm probably his toughest case. Nothing works for me.

  I'm used to disappointment when it comes to medications. Why it suddenly hit me this time when I learned long ago not to hope for anything, I don't know. Maybe it's because my doctor finally admitted that he's out of ideas. The only thing he can think of is constant, low doses of painkillers. I'd prefer to stay away from that route, as that's how people become addicted to various painkilling medication. In fact, I ration my painkillers very carefully. It took me a year to finish one bottle of a popular extra strength prescription painkiller. Despite being told I could take the painkiller two days a week, I made 30 pills last 12 months. I'd rather be in pain than addicted.

  There is a bit of hope--my doctor will be attending a neurology conference in June. He'll be asking around to see if any other doctors have suggestions on what else to try. If that doesn't work, he'll help me vet clinical trials to see if anything will work. He already suggested another TENS unit that might help more than my Cefaly, or that might help more if used in conjunction with the Cefaly. Unfortunately, it's currently extremely expensive. In the meantime, I'm going to wrestle with the disappointment of another three months of uncontrolled migraine pain with no treatment in sight.

Testing Testing 1 2 3...

This is just a test. I repeat, this is just a test. No one panic, this is just a test!

The Parking Attendant From Hell

  Well, that was one of the worst customer service experiences of my life.

  Family member has a handicapped parking permit. We came to Kaiser for her dialysis lessons today, and were actually on time. Unfortunately, the Cadillac Kaiser clinic is always horribly congested, especially after 8 AM. We expected it would take some time to park, but we weren't expecting to run into the parking attendant from hell, who made us park at the furthest end of the parking lot from the elevators.

  When I asked him why we couldn't park closer to the elevators even if we didn't park in the handicapped spot, I was told that they were using the spaces for employees (they're clearly marked "Patient Parking"). He then insisted there were only 4 handicapped slots for the entire parking garage (there are 2 per floor, and 4 floors). Finally, he told my family member that the closer parking spots were for "real" handicapped people, that a lot of people cheat the system, and he was going to "keep [his] eye on [her] and watch [her] walk to the elevators." The implication being, of course, that she doesn't need a handicapped permit, and he's going to revel in watching her get her comeuppance.

  We're easygoing people, but that was beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior. We complained to his manager, and I hope that he receives an attitude adjustment. Bad day or not, there's no reason to take it out on other people, and to accuse them of lying. As I pointed out to his manager, just because someone's handicap isn't readily visible doesn't mean that it isn't there. She had knee surgery 20 years ago, and her knee has never recovered.

  The worst part? My family member stopped me from getting his name, so that we could be sure that the right person was disciplined.

  Not an auspicious start to a Wednesday.

  Also, today is street cleaning, and I think I left my car on the street. Damn it.