WoW angst: my first raid
Last night I went to Karazhan for the first time.

Everyone except me was epic geared and knew exactly what to do. We cleared right up to Curator in one evening. I got two epic drops and a void crystal. And I feel really terrible about it.

Before last night, I would have sworn my trapping was one of my strengths as a hunter. I still sometimes make mistakes, but on the whole I've got that mob covered, even in heroics. How wrong I was. The first trap I was given I pulled with my distracting shot macro, same as always. It didn't even *blink*. The pala tank had used Avenging Shield and the mob I was meant to be trapping went straight to him.

Okay, so next time I'll hit it with an arcane shot first. So I do arcane shot, distracting shot macro, escape to take me out of combat. It goes into the trap, and somehow I pop it. And despite the inform that pops up in my chat window, I don't notice it. Okay, mistakes happen. Then the next mob I'm given to trap doesn't come to me, again. The next one is a caster, and I don't know, and because I've dropped my trap in advance I can't pick it up. And after that they just stopped asking me to trap. I felt like I wanted to die. I feel like everyone I raided with last night has me down as "that stupid huntard who can't trap", even though I've done heroics with a few of them and I *know* they know I can trap.

On Moroes I was asked to drop a trap between our priest and his shackle. I did. Then the priest moved, and failed shackle twice, and died because my trap timeout wasn't up. And I died on Little Red Riding Hood because the wolf caught me, and on Maiden because I heard "hug the wall" and not "move up to the first step once combat begins". But all this stuff I'm willing to put down to first-time jitters.

I had the hunter bug for virtually all of it - the one where you can't use auto shot, or use the escape key, or interact with objects, or feed your pet ... my cat ended up on red health and was losing loyalty for three hours. I had to turn off the audio alert for feedomatic because of the constant screaming. I have this bug *constantly*. There's nothing I can do about it, because I have it even if I don't use any of my macros, or kill command (both things that are hypothesised to cause it). It makes me want to fly to Paris and shoot Blizzard in the face. It makes me choke up with rage every time it happens, several times an hour, because of the loss of control.

When we were done, my boyfriend turned to me and said "We really need to get you a new computer". He said it made him sick to look at my screen and he didn't know how I could play. I *have* to play like it; I have no choice. We'd been planning to get me one, because I routinely got frozen at 1fps in busy places like AV and Shattrath and the stress was getting to me. Then I did a full reinstall and turned my object distance down to near, and it got a lot better (6-15fps). But in Kara all the old problems came back - in the ballroom, with ten people all doing their thing, my framerate dropped to 3fps. I couldn't find the target, or do anything, and just ended up standing there desperately trying to find something to fling arrows at. And that happened a bunch of times while we were clearing trash. It's not okay; I wouldn't raid with someone whose system was that awful. But we can't afford a new computer for me. We can't afford to drop several hundred pounds on a toy I don't need. I know we'd find the money somehow if we really wanted to, but it doesn't feel right to do so - not that I wouldn't love a new PC.

It wasn't just the computer, either - the pace we moved at didn't give me time to catch my breath and keep track of what was going on, and I could feel myself getting increasingly lost and confused and losing my focus throughout the evening.

I'm just sitting here finishing up my Skettis quests and crying, and feeling like yet another thing I really wanted is going to slip through my fingers. I've just got exalted with the Skyguard, something I've been working towards for six weeks. I'm halfway through revered with the Aldor and should be moving on to that. And now I feel like I want to leave WoW forever.

I'm new to the guild and I don't want to bring all this up and get a reputation as an emo or a drama queen. And I don't feel like I deserved the epics I got. I feel really, really ill with all of this, like I just want to lie down and not get up again, and yet if I don't go to the followup run on Saturday I'll be letting all of them down. And I know it will get better with practice, and that I can read up on how the hell to trap with a pala who outgears you - but my PC won't magically sprout more CPU and RAM with practice.

I should leave now, but then I'm just doing the same thing I always do and running away.