Hi, guys!
I’m Watermist, and I’ve been a long-time Warcraft fan. I grew up playing Warcraft 1 through 3, before getting into WoW in 2005 and never looking back.
I suppose you can describe me as a bit of an eclectic player – for the most part, I’ve dabbled in a wide variety of content throughout WoW’s history. The only areas which I have absolutely no experience in are rated BGs, arenas, and M+ runs.
The reason I play like this is because I am what I consider a “forced” casual player – I want to play more WoW (a lot more), but during the first two-thirds of my WoW experience, I was taking between 18 to 21 units (while also interning) for my Master’s, and then for the past one-third of my WoW experience, I’ve been working as a Special Education teacher.
This means I dedicate a lot of my time and energy to my work (I love my students! Zero regrets getting into this field)… I have to juggle seven grades’ worth of curriculums, across every subject, on top of managing between 8 to 15 IEPs each year.
This means I come home between 5 and 8 pm (after leaving at 7 am) completely wiped out. Many times, I would boot up WoW, click “log in,” and… then fall asleep at my keyboard!
Yes. Literally.
So, it’s not for a lack of desire!
Ever since I started working as a teacher, my WoW time has gone down by a little bit – not too much, but just enough that I’ve largely stopped doing PuG dungeons and raids. It’s a huge bummer, because I love running dungeons and raids. But alas, I have to save them for when I’m on long breaks from work.
So currently, I’m focusing on mostly “solo” activities in the game – transmog collection, pet collection, mount collection, on-and-off achievement points hunting.
I also give a fair amount of my time to helping out new players whenever I could in the Newcomer Chat.
Y’all, I love the Newcomer Chat so much.
So I just wanted to share my perspective as a WoW player who really likes WoW, and really wants to play more, but rarely has the time and energy to do so.
There’s also one more thing about me: I was born profoundly deaf in both ears! So, English is not my first language (I speak American Sign Language), and I teach deaf kids.
Here on the Community Council, you will most often find me chatting about the following: Accessibility for deaf players and disabled players, how to improve the new player experience, and how the latest WoW content feels to a “casual” player with limited time. I’ll also flitter around and hop into various topics of which I have some interest in (e.g., reputation grinding, mount collecting, class design – particularly Hunter – and so on).
Thank you all for having me!
PS: I gotta warn all of you. Sometimes I don’t quite manage to turn off my Teacher Persona. It’s not you, I promise!