A typical day during progress


To give you guys an idea what my life has been like for most of the time after Cataclysm launch, let me show you how a typical weekday during the progress used to be for me. This isn't really any single given day, but rather a composite of how the days went on average - on some days the raids started earlier or later and I didn't always wake up at the same time, but this should give a reasonable idea what it was like.

 

08:10

Alarm goes off, I generally fail to get up on the first try and just hit snooze...

 

08:20

Alarm goes off for the second time, now I really have to get up if I want to get to work in time so off to shower I go.

 

08:35

Done with shower, so it's time to wake up the laptop from standby and check the news. The first sites I check are our forums and mmo-champion and some local news sites. Getting some breakfast would be nice at this point, but usually there's nothing left in the fridge.

 

08:50

At this point my long-ish hair is usually dry enough, so it's time to get dressed and shave and get ready to leave for work.

 

09:00

Off to work. First a roughly 10min (at my walking pace, which most people consider to be a bit on the fast side) walk to the station, then a few minutes of waiting for the train (unless it's late as usual) followed by a 15-20min ride to the railway station where I switch to the metro for another 5min ride to where I work. Somewhere along the way I usually pick up "lunch", meaning a muffin or two...

 

09:50

At the office, working hard on fixing one SEPTJBY or other (that's Someone Else's Problem That Just Became Yours, for those who don't work in the consulting business) and occasionally refreshing forums and checking IRC.

 

16:50

Notice it's time to leave if I want to make it to the raid, curse for a moment about the day being left short again meaning I have to do extra hours later on. The trip home is pretty much just a reverse version of the trip to work in the morning, except for a quick visit to buy some groceries on the way if I have time (which more often than not I don't, because it's rare for the trains to be on time during the winter).

 

17:45

At home. Usually there's only time left for a quick snack before the raid starts, often even that has to happen during the first trash pulls of the raid.

 

18:00

Raid starts.

 

02:00

Raid ends. Now it's time to do some daily quests, maybe a random heroic if necessary to reach the Valor Point cap on either of the raiding characters and restock consumables for next raid.

 

03:00

Done with all the "mandatory" stuff ingame, so it's time to get some food in real life. Depending on how lazy I am, that means either cooking something or just tossing a frozen pizza in the oven or nuking something in the microwave. Most of the time, it turns out to be pizza. Check the forums and news while eating. Try to fix some addons, do some parses on combatlogs to figure out boss ability timers and such.

 

04:00

Finally ready for bed.

 

 

As you can see this is pretty hardcore schedule to sustain for multiple weeks and in fact I could not have done it for much longer had the last bosses not died. Another thing that helps immensely in finding the motivation to do something like this is seeing the results - had we been unable to get any world firsts during the progress I suspect I might've ran out of motivation to keep to this kind of schedule much earlier, but seeing the bosses die, knowing there's an end to it in sight makes it much easier to tolerate hardship.

A lot of people would wonder "Why does anyone do something like this?", for which I have no better answer than vanity, wanting to be one of the best. That's the desire that dominates most aspects of my life, both in gaming and at work.


Comments

Hardest to the core

I gotta say I wouldn't have been able to do this. Luckily I was able to arrange my school schedule so I could pretty much only focus on raiding. Hats off to Kruf for this.

Just a simple question, sir. Have you told your boss why you are skipping like 2-3 hours of daily work to play a game?
As for the huge effort made to be on time to raid, I have nothing else to say than to congratulate you for your effort and dedication to the game. And last but not the least, congrats on your perfomance in this tier, you were amazing.

And could you please tell me whats the age of the oldest/youngest member (irl)? :)

Regards

Yes, my boss knows about my "hobby", and if you look closer it's not like every day was 2-3h short. Flexible working hours, saved hours and having just finished a big project were the things that made this possible though, had we been very busy at work I doubt I could have made it.

I'm not sure about the ages of most of our members, but I suppose the youngest would be about 18-19 or so - however I do know very well about the oldest, since that's myself. I'll turn 32 in about a month.

Tell your boss you're the world first in your "hobby". A "hobby" of 12Million people.

That's some baddass dedication for being the best. Respect to you. P.S oh the delight of waiting for another delayed train to arrive, way to go VR.

So, you've been slacking during trash!

It was either that or collapsing from low blood sugar... ;)

lol shh don't tell anyone :P

Now that is the kind of blog that I really like to read. As much as I enjoy reading about WoW I even enjoy it more to read about the people that play WoW. And something like this, as simple it might be, is pure enjoyment for me.

Thanks for sharing this Kruf. As others pointed out before, including you, this is a really rough schedule and it is understandable that this is hard to keep up for serveral weeks. Especially with a full-time job. Good that you can relax a bit more now and it is doubtful that Blizzard will add that much raid content at once at a later time.

For the eating habbits: How are they outside of raiding? No breakfast, close to no lunch, a snack before raid and a hot meal at 3AM doesn't sounds like a good every day eating plan ;)

I have to agree with Niroth here, as a diabetic on insulin I know how hard it is to eat healthy during progression when you have to raid 30+ hours and work 30+ hours. Plus I have a wife to devote time too ;)

If you are having low blood sugar issues you should probably move toward multiple snack sized meals throughout the day and get off of the frozen pizza, last thing we need is an emaciated hunter. ( then again you would probably disengage farther) :P

Great, it's nice to read and really interesting.

Madness Kruf!
I did that for a long time as well, but it really didn't work out in the long run. :/
At least for you, it's getting them world firsts that kept you going! GL in the future with more WFs. :)

i don't want to make a shadow but in my country, you'll do the same 300+ days in the year with no satisfaction in the end which is the most vital thing. Plus just to throw in some numbers of my schedule for more than year and a half to be an example of what not to do, and on the other hand how tough the human body and nerves are: get up at 7:20, going out at 7:35, work like a dog with heavy metal pieces 'till 17:30-18:00, get at home at ~18:30, get a shower, raid starts at 19:00 and i'm eating on the run, raid ends at 00:30, doing same stuff as everyone on at least one more alt 'till 03:00, going to bed trying to fall asleep 1 hour after all wasted nerves and the same again for all that period. And was in a guild with "yellow bus" raiders, something like 50% moving out of the fire on Northrend Beasts after yelling to em in TS.
Now, i've never thought i'll say this. but its sooo goood to be a student! :)

Nice post, very inspiring and motivating. Keep up Kruf.

nice post, very inspiring ! Hope there will be more.