Who YOU Callin' Casual?

There is a misconception floating around that decorators are casual players.

It's true that a lot of us aren't as interested in combat. Some of us may have never been on a raid before, and there are just as many of us who don't have capped level combat characters as there are those of us who do.

And yet, decorators tend to be some of the most hardcore players. Yes, you heard me correctly. Decorators tend to be some of the most hardcore players.

Let me repeat that in case you missed it.

Decorators tend to be some of the most hardcore players.

Not all of us raid. Not all of us roleplay. But all of us spend hours and hours and hours and hours lining things up just right. We go short on sleep to adjust a fireplace just where we want it. We craft, quest, raid, and writ endlessly to obtain the items we want for our homes. If we don't raid, we pay raiders for what we want. We farm tirelessly for materials during holidays--and EQ2 has a lot of holidays!

Decorators (from what I have observed) spend the most SC out of any other group of players. We buy houses. We buy furniture. We buy home expanders. We buy more houses. We buy more expanders. We buy character slots to host characters specifically for the names of house zones. My character list is full of them. Hello, Library, Town, Hallway, and Abode! We buy appearance armor not only for ourselves, but for mannequins to place in our homes, or to dress our guild hall guards with.

We spend anywhere from a few hours to a few months on a single zone in the game--the house zone we are working on. Have you ever heard a raider say, "Yeah, it took us weeks to down XYZ mob?" Guess what? It took a decorator months to get a house ready for publication, and a raider will likely only spend a few hours a week raiding. So their weeks turn out to be less than 24 hours of play (Yes, I know that they can spend longer than that getting a raid down, but for the most part, I'd say 24 hours is a safe average). To put that into perspective, I spent four hours working on the grand staircase in Blazewolf's hall. Four hours. On a staircase. And I'm fast at using the circle tool. I shudder to think of how long it would take anyone else.

Let's also consider the time to gather materials for a house. It's true that we have guild harvesters, a pack pony, and a goblin. But sometimes you need more. My dojo alone (the Homes and Tomes Credit Union) took 23 eucalyptus lumber and 30 brellium ore! It's a tiny little space used exclusively for holding special harvests and apprentices.

I took Jazabelle, grabbed a harvesting potion, and spent about three hours harvesting eucalyptus. Brellium took another three hours. That's six hours of harvesting just to obtain the materials for furniture for a tiny space (and I'll admit I came out of there with extra eucalyptus and brellium, but we can always use more rares in a crafting and decorating guild).

So the next time you think of a decorator as casual, think again. I've spent on average of 120 hours per house I build. That's a long time.

Decorating is hardcore.