The Last Straw?

I recently took a break from WoW after helping my guild raid team get to Ragnaros and snuff him out. Work had taken a turn for the busy, and when Skyrim came out I got sucked into Tamriel so hard I didn't really have time for Azeroth.

Every time I considered logging back into WoW, I found myself asking... "Why?". I had everything I really wanted from raiding, I had a stable full of alts I wasn't really keen on leveling, and the thought of enduring another horrific pick-up dungeon group filled me with disgust. And now they have pick-up RAID finders now. Why would I want to subject myself to 20 or so meter- and self-obsessed PUG twats filling the chat with various slurred versions of "You suck and I rock" over and over again just to make it to the gear level I needed to be at to raid effectively?

The answer, as I finally allowed myself to admit, was that I didn't.



Games for me are meant to be a fun escapism that also fulfills my desire to accomplish something. After I come home from work I don't want to sit on the couch and passively watch TV or a movie, I want to DO something that's fun.

What I think happened with WoW was I got to the point where I was accomplishing much more than I ever had before, but at the expense of genuine fun. Raiding with my guild can be fun, but to get to the "fun" part (downing bosses, getting loot) we were subjecting ourselves to pretty high levels of stress.

My real-life job on the assignment desk at a local TV station consists of assigning people to tasks and making sure they complete them by a set deadline. Why would I also want to be subjected to the exact same stressors when I'm gaming?

The last straw came earlier today. After nearly two months, I had logged back in to test the waters. My guild greeted me warmly, people asked when I would be raiding again, and I couldn't give them a straight answer. After a nice time catching up, I decided to hop into a quick PUG (ignoring the thing in the back of my head screaming NO, YOU FOOL!).

After a slur-filled slog through two bosses, I disconnected as they were going to kill the last boss. I frantically tried to log back in, and when I succeeded I found that they had kicked me from the group, which meant another half-hour wait for another dungeon group filled with anonymous haters only interested in feeling superior over their fellow gamers and killing things as fast as possible so they could cap Valor points by the end of the week.

I logged out in disgust, and honestly don't know where I'm going to go from here.