The pursuit of goals. . .

Any meaningful activity must at some point include the pursuit of goals. If progress is being met, these goals will change over time. This is true of any activity in life, but in MMO's it is quite easily to quantify.

The reason why I started this post with generalities is that everyone's goals are different. There are many who measure their success by their level, gear level, amount of purple gear they have, their completion of the endgame content or amount of achievements they've completed. Greedy Goblin, seems to measure success by his ever increasing bankroll. I don't know how I would quantify my "success" at the game, or even failure if looking at it in those terms. I do know it is not the same measures most seem to attach.

I look at my characters as a community. They provide for each other, they craft for each other, store for each other. I occasionally craft things for guildmates, run others through instances and the like, but really I do things to further my alts. I don't really have a "main". That assumes I favor one character above the others which is more a factor of my mood or needs at the time than any real major preferrence. It's an almost perfect communism, each character performing as best they can for the good of the whole. I guess my end "goal" is a community of alts that is more than the sum of it's parts, able to fill whatever role I require at the time.

My pursuit of this goal has been very different than any other I have read about or known anyone to experience. I did not blaze through content to the level cap and then use my max leveled character to fund alts. I do have a highest level character, but I hit level 71 only yesterday (although at that rate I should get to WotLK's cap a bit faster than TBC's). I want to progress my whole stable of alts almost as one so that everyone is fairly even and I can best assess everyone's strengths and weaknesses. I want to grand master every profession (except maybe engineering, I am back and forth on that, although I may level it on the warrior for the sake of completion). I only have 2 epic speed mounts (one was the free DK one) and only one flying mount, not the epic variety. I have less than 1000 gold, not because I don't make gold, but I see it more as a means to an end, so I spend it rather liberally.

I used to think I wanted to see everything. After some consideration about Kara, I found that to not be the case. Kara was all in all not really relevant to me. Although Karazhan itself has a place in the Wow mythos, it's current inhabitants don't really. So the whole run to me seemed like nothing but the pursuit of gear. My goal now is to run only those elements that are inspiring. I want to experience Mount Hyjal and kill Illidan. I want to (maybe) kill Arthas. Maybe I will still be playing when we get to fight Deathwing. (As a side note, wouldn't it be cool to do a CoT instance with a pre and post metal plating deathwing?).

So I have goals, just like everyone else. However, my goals are both easier and harder to acheive. One of these days, I will have a goal which is not possible to attain. Maybe at that point I will be done with World of Warcraft.