OMG -- The Pressure

What was BRK thinking when he linked to my blog? There were like eight people reading this beforehand and now... god I just checked my meter and well there's a lot more people now! I can't do this-- there's too many people watching, what if I screw up, what if I write something stupid, what if people don't like me?

Actually, I am ready. I can do this.

Welcome all -- since your all fans of BRK, you must be intelligent, thoughtful, insightful... ok, I'm laying it on too thick now.

Pressure situations -- thats what I want to talk about today. The higher the imaginary stakes the more you have on the line. Here are pretty much all of my highest pressure moments in WoW:

Grouping up with someone I didn't know for the first time (around level 3).
Grouping up for my first instance.
Raiding with my first guild for the first time. (We had one 60 and we went down to the crossroads, and got our butts kicked.)
Real raiding with my guild (ZG, I think).
Switching servers and finding new friends.
Submitting the application for my new guild.
My new guild interview.
Signing up for a Molten Core run while still not being attuned (and praying that I get attuned in the next two days).
The Molten Core run as a brand new member of the guild.
My first run of Karazhan (as a replacement of the Kara 2 team). For the full story of that read about it here.
My first run of Karazhan (as a replacement of the Kara 1 team).
My first run of Karazhan on my team.

Each of these circumstances dealt with working with new people, new situations and potentially the death of everyone involved, ok not potentially -- inevitably, but you don't want to be the one the Tank yells at that you are costing him gold.

The n00b inside me quaked at each of these moments and even including the stupid raid on the Crossroads (a nice guild bonding moment) they all turned out great! Sure, mistakes were made, but I wasn't the only one making them and if people were talking about me behind my back , I didn't hear it so I didn't care. When I needed to be nudged, someone would nudge me. When I did something well, someone would praise me.

So a little fear, a little pressure is a good thing. It made me read up like a madman on Molten Core and the bosses in Karazhan to look like I knew what I was doing. (It also made me re-read and re-write this entry three times.) I find that it's the braggarts that go into the instance without any preparation and think that their massive gear will show everyone and the MoBs who is boss. They are the ones that usually wind up wiping the group over and over again, while we insecure, overly prepared n00bs try to correct their errant course and set the raid aright with all our big book learning.

And everything turns out great!