I started this blog only a few months ago, but I have been playing World of Warcraft for some time now. It started out about a 6 months to a year after release when I started playing, and when I was around level 30 with my Druid I quit the game for another 6 months. I’m not sure what made me stop playing, but I’m assuming it has something to do with questing between 20 and 40 with crap gear, a full quest-log, a resto spec and quitting a guild because of a stupid fight the guildmaster started against a fellow druid.
[deleted guild drama stories]
So every guild has it’s own kind of guild-drama that is either taking place in just the officers lounge or throughout the entire guild. There are a lot of reasons this could happen, and I’ve personally experienced 4 individual drama’s in my 1-2 years of playing. I’ve learned quite a lot from these experiences, but I wouldn’t complain if it never actually happened. Of course you learn things about yourself; what you shouldn’t have done or said, and what you should do if similar things happen. But it also learns you about how hard it gets eventually to be able to trust other people, or how gutted you will feel when people all of a sudden disappoint you at certain points in time.
Everyone makes mistakes, I make them all the time, but when someone does slip up and people get annoyed by each other, their real personality surfaces and there’s a good chance you’ll feel disappointed and angry about that. In the end, when you summarize and dissect paragraphs, lines, actions, feelings and analyze them, it all comes down to a few of these categories:
- Lack of communication.
- Lack of trust.
- Inability to compromise and a primal need to have things your way.
- Fear of change.
I’m not the expert on communication, and I often fail to communicate properly. But what I hardly ever do is make decisions that involve other players, without talking to them about it. If I have some feedback or comments to make on something, I try to do that up front, and not when it’s too late. Talking to each other is a crucial element of this game, and it is even more important in real life, but I’m guessing people still tend to live in a bubble behind their pc’s in some way or another.
Lack of trust. Some might say I myself lack trust towards other people, but I’d like to think otherwise. I’m a fairly good judge of character in both real life and in-game, but most of the time people aren’t really convinced of this, so I ended up saying “I told you so” a lot of times in 3 of these guilds (I wasn’t an officer or classleader in the first guild). I do however trust people enough to let them do their thing without interfering and calling them mad, and I try to let them do it the way they’re most comfortable with themselfs.
Inability to compromise is a huge thing I see so often in both real life and in-game, and it’s an absolute nuisance. Some people just do not stop arguing until they have things their own way, no matter how much explanation, reasoning and alternate solutions you may put forward. Everyone has this personality trait in some amount, including me. I’ve caused a lot of arguments because of this, I regret it, and I know it will happen sometime again. But I have also given up a lot of times on these kind of arguments, it drains my energy and leaves me empty, while the ones who kept going are the ones who either get their way with either a horrible thing or no change at all.
People fear change. I fear change to social environments, but I do not fear change in other areas. A common feeling you will get when joining a company or in guild, is that most people rather refine the ‘good old ways’ then introduce new things. New things carry a certain amount of risk, and it is often guessed that it’s never worth it. I find this a great misconception and feel it causes decline because of the lack of progress. There’s often very much potential, but people will hold on to that trusty old and rusty thing until the guild or company eventually bleeds to death.
I believe change is a good thing, and if there was no change, including all of the mistakes and pitfalls it might or might not bring, I’d find life incredibly boring. Even a compromised change can be worth it.
So now you’ve read this wall of text, you still might be like “what? what is he talking about?”. Well, it comes down to this. With all the great things, the really bad things, I am a genuine addicted player to World of Warcraft – and I’m thinking of quitting.
When is the time to make your decision… One more epic bought by getting exalted with Keepers of Time? Just one more boss? One more raid experience?
This game can practically go on forever, even when you’re now in raid guild that’s doing Black Temple, Sunwell will be up next year, WotlK will be there, and more and more people are joining the game. You make friends, you have fun, and before you know it you can write down your next guild-drama experience.
I put an extremely large amount of time and effort into this game, yet I feel stranded again. Progress in real life has stagnated to a very low level, and in-game it’s exactly the same. I feel at odds when thinking about not playing the game anymore, and about losing that Druid I put so much time into and had so much fun with.
How do you pick your moment? Is it now, next week, or next month? And while I decide and pick a moment, the clock is still ticking in real life, and the time I could’ve spend there remains lost.
Life is too short to not quit playing this game at some point in time…
