My Corner of the Interweb

Then there's the other side.

Mood: Excellent...sort of.
Music: Sixty-Five Thousand, Erasure
Game: A Tale In The Desert 3, Uno, Marble Blast, Gauntlet
Book: Nothing. Need a new book....
Watching: Nothing yet.
Weather: 75, sunny.

This morning, I was all set to raid in World of Warcraft. Positive attitude, looking forward to getting back into it. The patch came out...seemed like there was some good stuff that got added, was looking forward to trying some new stuff.

Then, about 2 hours into the raid, I basically got fed up with someone who was being a dick, was pretty much playing the "I'm in charge" card, and it caused me to just take a deep breath, and comment on it to some of the ijsmp fellas.

Thorn pretty much hit it on the head: If you're not enjoying it, leave.

So I did.

It was, in no uncertain terms, the last straw. And so I wrote a letter to our guildmaster, explaining that I was done raiding.

He wrote back a terse letter pretty much saying he's sorry, I'm good at what I do, and he personally enjoys me at the raids, but it's my choice. Which, in parlance, means "Yeah, seeya."

One thing I learned awhile ago, and I never really applied to playing a game, is that you can be really good at something you don't enjoy doing.

So while I was decompressing, it came to me that while I can be good at raiding, I don't necessarily enjoy it. I replaced the joy of playing with the joy of acquiring loot. And for a while, that sorta sufficed. I never really liked 40-man raids. I never have. I'm a small-party kinda guy. And I'm certainly not into doing the same thing over and over and over and over again...which is what WoW raiding is fundamentally about.

Because I place pretty high value on loyalty and duty and all that crazy stuff, I almost felt like I SHOULD raid, whether I was enjoying it or not, because folks needed me or wanted me there, or because I thought I could help, and I should make the effort to help.

When I had 60+ hours a week to game, it was no big deal, really. But now that I can only effectively raid on weekends, and I need my weekends to relax and do chores and such, I don't think I'm still willing to do something that just manages to irk me. I'd rather do things I want to do. Which means gaming, of course...but it doesn't mean standing around for 5 hours listening to morons in Ventrilo spout gibberish, and occasionally killing something that drops a piece of digital data for someone else.

I suppose, in a way, I should thank that guy for finally making me walk away from something that was more a chore and responsibility than fun.

Now, back to making my beef vegetable soup. It's gonna be good.

Posted by Glenn at June 24, 2006 07:05 PM