The Slime Cat: A Tale of Failure and Success in World of Warcraft and in Life
This past week I was able to obtain the much-coveted but often-derided “Slime Cat” mount (affectionately named “Mr. Jigglesworth Sr.”) in World of Warcraft. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of real accomplishment in obtaining this rare in-game item, seeing as how this entire calendar year of 2022 has been a year of near-total failure for me—from a finalized divorce (a four-year process) to yet another job layoff (twice in as many years), a massively unsuccessful full-time job search with round after round of interviews but no job offers, menial tasks at the part-time job I took up for a six-month period of self-imposed personal and professional exile, and various other personal problems for which it is all-too-easy to blame myself and my own failings as a person and partner.
I suppose that there were other small successes in this year of failure, even if some of them stretch the meaning of the word “success” far beyond acceptable lexical boundaries. I did, after all, do a pretty darned good job cleaning toilets at my part-time retail job, a matter of familial pride given that my beloved mother is arguably the best housekeeper, with her own housekeeping business, this side of the Atlantic Ocean. And while my job as a part-time and usually mild-mannered philosophy instructor continues as it has for the past several years, I cannot identify anything really remarkable about that experience in this liminal year of failure and mediocrity.
Getting back to the Slime Cat mount, when it was announced that World of Warcraft would be offering this strange-but-lovable mount (a description I would happily accept as my own epitaph) for defeating raid bosses in three “fated” raids—Castle Nathria, Sanctum of Domination, and Sepulcher of the First Ones—on a difficulty level of normal or higher, before the release of the now-released Dragonflight expansion, I committed myself to putting in the work to complete all three raids and their respective bosses—31 bosses in total, I believe. This would be real work for me, as I am essentially a non-raider, a more casual player who enjoys the immersiveness of the in-game storylines and open-world quests, with a temperament not well-suited to the intensity of the hardcore raiding experience. Yet I was assured by in-game and real-life friends (is there any difference between the two modes of friendship anymore in these postmodern and hyperreal times?) that I could be successful at completing the raids with their help and with a real investment of time and effort.
What obstacles I had to overcome along the way to earning the Slime Cat mount! I had only previously completed a small portion of one of the raids—Sanctum of Domination—and only on LFR (Looking for Raid) difficulty, not on the “Normal” difficulty required for the Slime Cat mount. My main character’s item level (the average of the item levels of each of your equipped items—weapons, armor, and such) was also initially far too low. I, therefore, had trouble even getting accepted to a normal-difficulty raid group via the in-game Group Finder tool. So I began completing World Quests and defeating World Bosses in Zereth Mortis, the highest-level zone in the Shadowlands expansion, to increase my character’s item level. Little by little I found myself able to be accepted into raid party pickup groups (PUGs), sometimes by myself but often with my good friend Julia Thomsen, whom I have known since we were five years old and whom I recently recruited, along with her entire family, into playing World of Warcraft together, along with me and my family over here—and sometimes with my old in-game and IRL (in real life) friend Joe Pierce and/or with my newish in-game and online friend Avaryn/Marena (the world of Azeroth’s absolute best healer!).
Getting into a raid party for each of the three fated raids was only the first hurdle, however. Although I tried to contribute to the success of each boss fight, I really didn’t know the various boss fight mechanics, and my character’s DPS (damage per second) was often as pathetic as my own year-of-failure has been! The end result of this combination was often defeat after defeat, wipe after wipe, often taking several tries, sometimes in the same raid instance or party but oftentimes in completely different raid instances and parties from boss to boss. Yet because of the perseverance, I slowly began checking the bosses, one by one, off the list of the 31 bosses I would need to defeat, and the Slime Cat mount began to seem like a real possibility, thanks in no small part to my in-game friends and their willingness to group up and show the proverbial raiding ropes, often well into the night when I should have been sleeping or engaging in other, more pleasurable activities of the night.
Finally, a mere two days before the release of the Dragonflight expansion and the deadline to obtain the Slime Cat mount, I, along with an exceptionally coherent raid party assembled by chance in the Group Finder, defeated the last fated raid boss on my list, which was Guardian of the First Ones from Sanctum of Domination, a result of my extremely nonlinear-but-tenacious progress through the various raids and raid bosses. I immediately left the raid, summoned my hard-earned Slime Cat mount, and took myself over to Stormwind, one of the capital cities of the Alliance faction, to show off my Slime Cat to anyone who happened to notice or care.
Shortly after completing my Slime Cat journey, I messed my in-game friends something to the effect of, “I got it—the Slime Cat mount!—my one success in this year of failure.” And it occurred to me that this was quite literally if not entirely true. I have never experienced such an extended period of time with as many failures, or with as big of a hit to my self-confidence and seemingly impenetrable ego. Some might say, rightly or wrongly, that I needed to be brought down a peg or two anyway! But being filled with a poetic and literary sense of metaphor, I came to see that my tenacity and resilience (or my character’s tenacity and resilience—again, what’s the difference these days?) were metaphors for my own failures and for my own crumbling tenacity this past year.
At some point, for example, I must pick up the job search baton once again and sign myself up for even more rounds of job interviews in the “Group Finder” of the professional world—LinkedIn, Indeed, and other such job boards, in principle not really any different from the in-game Group Finder in World of Warcraft used to find a questing group, a dungeon or raid party, or future guild-mates. In fact, World of Warcraft in particular and MMORPGs in general are useful metaphors for many aspects of one’s career, from job-searching group finding to task-completion and project-management quest tracking. Most importantly, though, I’ve had to remind myself that I really do have the skills and tenacity to ensure my own future success at whatever endeavors to which I set my mind, heart, and soul. As my grandmother used to say, if you want to get something done, make a list! It worked when I was developing logic content at Aplia, and it worked for obtaining the Slime Cat mount, even when it seemed that an entire year might pass by with only failures and no successes to speak of—Slime Cat mounts and slimy retail toilets aside!
Speaking of slimy retail toilets, I’m reminded of a piece of practical wisdom from an old youth pastor of mine, Paul Sanchez: “If you want to get ahead, sometimes you have to clean toilets.” Although I have cleaned toilets and done janitorial work before, back in my Caffe Dolce days when I doubled as barista and janitor, it was quite literally true for me this year that in order to be successful once again, I would have to put in some grinding time cleaning toilets, just as I used to spend time grinding XP (experience points) killing tigers and panthers in Stranglethorn Vale (STV) back in Vanilla World of Warcraft, circa 2005, if I had any hope of obtaining max level at the time—when I should have been writing my dissertation instead!
Perhaps I should have been spending these past few weeks picking up the job search quest once again, despite a year’s worth of job-search raid party wipes. Honestly, though, I have needed the downtime to regather my strength after a year’s worth of failures and both personal and professional struggles. I needed an ale with the dwarves of Ironforge, needed to hunt with the elves outside Darnassus, needed to fight alongside the noble humans of Stormwind, needed to descend into the depravity of The Maw in the Shadowlands in order to appreciate soaring with the Dracthyr above the Dragon Isles. And, of course, I needed to find my footing once again in real life with its emerging but not-yet-complete sense of normalcy. I needed to remind myself that I can still be successful at something, even something as trivial as obtaining Mr. Jigglesworth Sr. in World of Warcraft, even when it seemed like life from here would be only failure with no more future successes in sight. I’m not yet ready to put myself out to pasture, though, not ready to feed the birds in the park with Nikola Tesla (a fascinating tale in its own right, of pigeons instead of Slime Cats, however) or to be banished to an insane asylum like Salieri in the film Amadeus—the self-styled “patron saint” of mediocrities everywhere.
So here’s a drink of in-game dwarven ale, and a pint of Guiness here in real life, a toast to future successes yet to come and the overcoming of past failures always knocking at the door like death knocking in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (da-da-da-daaaah!—also, coincidentally the letter “V” in Morse code, perhaps equally “V” for “victory”). I can’t help but feel a bit guilty, and perhaps decadent, for spending my time unemployed (even despite my teaching gig) on something as frivolous as obtaining a Slime Cat mount in World of Warcraft instead of beating my head again and again against the job-search wall. Yet I’ve had to remind myself that I have worked really, really hard up to this point in life, and I have achieved countless successes for which I am still extremely proud: getting my ham radio license when I was 13 years old; earning an Associate’s degree, then a Bachelor’s degree, then a Master’s degree before earning Ph.D. candidacy; developing a suite of successful online learning materials for logic and philosophy at Aplia/Cengage; creating genuinely creative learning experiences, online courses, and animated videos in my professional work as an instructional designer; and many other things I’ll pretend to be too humble to mention at the moment.
There will be more successes yet to come. In the meantime, though, I’m going to enjoy the holidays and bask in the faint green glow—reminiscent of the green light across the water in The Great Gatsby, simultaneously symbolizing love, money, and the American Dream—of my lone success of 2022, as I ride off into a virtual Azerothian sunset with my slimy new feline companion, Mr. Jigglesworth.
