Why do I keep playing?
A member of our guild that I really liked left last night. He left because he didn’t feel like we were a guild. In other words, we didn’t do things as a guild and that was what he was looking for. And it’s true. We don’t, as a rule, do things as a guild, except for raiding and the occasional instance.
I certainly can’t speak for anyone else, but there are a couple of reasons I often just solo…The first is that I’m on an off time from everyone else. Most of my guild is on EST time, so the ones who do things together are often involved when I get on. And the ones that aren’t on EST tend to be predominantly on the west coast, so they start much later than I do. In either case, I can’t meet their times to do stuff with them if it isn’t previously scheduled (i.e. raids).
The second is a deeper malaise…Yeah, I want to get a bunch of 70s/80s and do all sorts of things. But, I’m getting kind of bored with WoW. I keep asking myself why I keep playing…And come up with answers that are deeply indicitive of other problems in my life. I keep playing because I don’t want to have to deal with troubled interpersonal relationships that I would have to do something about. I keep playing because it lets me escape how little I like my life and how much I fear making the changes I would have to make to like my life. I keep playing because I set goals, even though those goals are only important within the game. I keep playing because it gives me a lift where I would otherwise be lacking (I have a history of serious depression and WoW, for whatever reason, is a buffer against that right now). I keep playing because I’m sitting at the computer anyway.
All of these things point to issues that I need to confront but fear doing so because for all my dissatisfaction, I’m comfortable enough to make me a coward. I’m extremely risk averse as I age because I took so many risks when I was younger that simply didn’t work out. So, I guess, I need to start working on the rest of my life. However, at this time, I’m still going to keep playing WoW. Because I do need escape. And I still like parts of the game. Maybe I will play for the game itself again when WOTLK comes out. But I’ll probably be playing less. I don’t know how much less though.
