Chilly Winds and Pilgrim's Flu

I've been a bit demoralized lately, for several reasons.

Five of the members of our "Saturday Evening Heroic ToC 10 Fun Raid" left the guild last week. Not only were they five of the guild's best players, but also five of my best friends in the game. I won't discuss their reasons for leaving in this blog, but both I and my wife, who enjoyed our 10-man raids immensely, were not surprised to see them leave.

The guild's 25-man raids are stagnant. The guild management and the raid leader decided to stop doing heroic Coliseum several weeks ago, and instead pursue hard modes in Ulduar. This decision has resulted in lots of QQ on our forums, fewer signups, and people leaving the guild. The morale of the remaining raiders are low.

The combination of no longer enjoying our 25-man raids, losing our fun 10-man raid group, and spending a week sick with the flu has made me spend my game time on things I might not have done otherwise.

I've been running Outland heroics with my wife to grind reputation with factions nobody really cares about anymore. I've been fishing. I've been doing cooking and fishing dailies I never bothered with before. I even bought Haris Pilton's fashionable bag for many gold coins (shopping is supposed to make you happy, right?).

So when a new in-game holiday shows up, I'm first in line to get those shiny achievements done. I have nothing better to do anyway, right?

But, to be honest, Pilgrim's Bounty is a pretty stupid holiday.

• The quests that kept sending you back and forth between Stormwind, Ironforge, and Darnassus wanted me to reroll a mage just to get the portals...
• Getting people to understand how to pass food around the tables is like teaching dogs to read and write.
• Killing 40 turkeys in a row in competition with 40 others? Everytime you reach over 30 turkeys you know there will be a gnome mage popping up, stealing your next turkey with an Ice Lance, and you will weep when you see your timer run out.
• Finding a rogue of each race to shoot with your Turkey Shooter? Good luck with that one...
• And how many times will you get ganked in Horde cities when you just want to sit down and enjoy their food and hospitality?

Well, at least it's Christmas soon...