Recently I decided to look for other guilds in World of Warcraft before the new expansions hit. A lot of guilds I've seen give template and ask very particular questions that you merely fill in the blanks, but one guild had a very broad application. They gave you their personal requirements, but other than that the application process was "tell us what you think is important".
Instantly I got to work and thought back over my seven years on/off relationship with Warcraft, and sooner or later I had thrown something together. I refined it and split it up into sections to make it easier to read; personal life, career summary, raiding experience, my other characters, my pc and addons - that sort of thing. After editing it I saved it into Microsoft Word so that I could use it for other applications I may make and I noticed that it was 4 pages long. For a hobby. To join dudes who kill dragons a bit faster than I already do.
I found that really insane, my online dragon killing CV is more impressive than my real CV, so I asked a friend how long his was, and we had a look at each others (yeah, I know how that reads...) and his was also around 4 pages long. The interesting thing was a lot of the information we gave differed - whilst he went into the more technical aspects of his current play style and justified how he did things I focused more on my past and heavily suggested that I as a person was good and adaptable.
I find it very interesting how two people of about the same age who play the same game and know it well can apply to the same guild and produce two very different answers. By keeping an open application the guild in question must be able to judge various players on their preferences and priorities without having them explicitly state or reel off a "this is what they want me to say" answer. It seems like a fantastic way to find the like minded people they want to kill some dragons.
Hopefully by the end of this week I shall have a response from them as to whether I am an eligible candidate or not - and then I get on to the Ventrilo interview stage - for those unfamiliar with Ventrilo, it is a Skype-like service. Again, for my hobby of killing dragons I have to go to a phone interview to see if I'm an eligible candidate to contribute to the murder of magical animals.
Without sounding like a jaded player, it's hard to remember when Warcraft simply felt 'fun'. It seems now whenever I play any class on the game I think about the over all use of him, be it his professions or raid viability, it's never just "I leveled him because he was cool". It seems the awe and mystery was taken out of the game after the first time playing, when I started raiding the game became about getting those extra numbers through any means; gear, gems, food buffs - whatever.
That being said, I do still enjoy the game and there are not many things more satisfying than that first kill on the dude who ground you into the floor forty times. It just seems a shame that for me to feel like I'm not 'wasting my time' in Azeroth I have to jump on my high horse and sneer at those who still haven't killed Spine of Deathwing...
