The Soloist

A truth hit home for me within the past couple weeks about how I play WoW.  I'm a solo player, plain and simple.  I thought changing guilds to one that was more active would change that.  It hasn't.  Sure, I'll run the occasional random with guildmates, but I'm content to just farm mats for my pally, and of late, go back and do quests I skipped.  I basically turned off the whole gearing up mindset. Instead, my philosophy to play how I want to play, which makes me ponder the future of my pally, but I'll get into that later.


My reasons for playing solo vary.  One is my mood.  Some days I log in, and just want to be left to my own devices, not paying attention to guild chat, etc.  Another is past group experiences.  While I don't get the "huntard" label from other players anymore, or other criticisms, the insults I received from other players in the past has left a bad taste in my mouth regarding players in the community. The next is I find there's plenty to do at level cap without having to group.  Leveling an alt, completing old quests for Loremaster, reputation rep grinds...  Solo WoW playing does not have to end at 80.


On the flip side, the only way to progress your character is to run five man instances and raids.  Instances are interesting and fun the first couple times you run them, but in order to get badges to upgrade gear, you have to run them over, and over, and over again.  After awhile it gets boring, and the incentive of badges isn't enough (for me at least), to run them daily.  I may run an instance or two a week, sometimes less depending on my mood.  I know a typical five man instance is quick. Outside of waiting 15 minutes in que, an instance normally doesn't take any longer than 20-30 min, but it's still not enough to get me to take that time out of whatever I was doing to run one.


Last week I did have my first taste of raiding, finally doing the weekly raid.  My friend who plays started a PUG group, and while I admit it I found it fun, it's not something I want to do consistently.  No doubt I'd probably suffer burn out if I did.


Currently, I've been leveling my pally.  Spent the past week leveling up his engineering and jewelcrafting, especially the JC, because he's at the point now where he can get armor he can socket gems to.  The pally is currently level 63.  When I first started playing it, I ran a decent amount of instances.  The last one I ran was Sunken Temple at lv. 47.  I'm enjoying the soloing experience as a retribution pally, but at 63, Northrend isn't too far away in the horizon, but I'll worry about that when I get to that point.  The prospect of running the same instances I've ran with my hunter a bunch of times already is NOT appealing.


Unfortunately, I had put myself into the mindset that I needed to keep up with the Joneses.  Had put myself in a competitive mindset.  Those are not good mindsets to have in a video game.  I've learned if someone who had a 1k lower gear score than I two weeks ago and now has a much higher GS, to let it go.  I don't know the details of how much they play, etc.  It got to the point where WoW just wasn't fun for me, so I had to be honest with myself and accept how I play the game.  Once I came to that realization, I embraced more fully the honest truth that I'm indeed a lone wolf in the world of Azeroth.

Feeling a Little Guilty

A quick background story...  It's the Culling of Stratholme instance, normal mode, via the LFG tool, four months ago. One of the party members is a druid from my server.  Much to the chagrin of the other party members, while clearing trash, he starts inquiring about my explorer tabard.  Once the instance is completed, he says he's going to add us to his friends list.  Okay. I add him as well.  I like adding people to my friends list for various reasons, though primarily social. 

I'm doing whatever I'm doing (probably a daily), when I get a whisper from him.  "Want to run VoA 25?"  At this point, I'm still in mostly blue gear with inappropriate stats.  Besides, from what I heard about getting a PUG raid together, just getting a party together can be time consuming.  Time which I didn't have.  I politely declined, and did so several more times.  One time he asked if I wanted to run heroic HoR.  Unfortunately, I can't because I have yet to complete the quest in PoS to unlock it (one day...one day).

The decline that sort of made me think of how I've been blowing this guy off came this past Saturday morning.  I just logged in for a few minutes to check auctions and do the cooking daily before I had breakfast.  As soon as I log in, I get a whisper "want to run normal ToC so I can farm a tanking weapon?".  I could have.  That instance isn't time consuming, and a trinket can possibly drop that I could use.  I just wanted to log in and out, and replied I was only going to be on for 5-10 minutes, which I was.

I felt a little guilty for blowing him off yet again. I also feel like I'm coming off as a jerk. Part of the problem is communication.  He probably assumed I had progressed from point A to B from when we ran CoS a few months back.  I should have been clear with him the first time he asked (which I eventually did), that I am still in the process of gearing up.  If a raid leader saw the gear I had back then, I probably would've been booted.  I also like to have some advance notice.  I admit I'm selfish with my time. Since my free time is spread out over various other hobbies and activities, I allocate time blocks to WoW, and try to keep my playtime confined to said blocks. 

Now I have to think of what I can do to appear helpful to said friend...