20/07/2020, 22:56
Illness, self pity and Warcraft
Having been off sick for three weeks now I'm again forced to think about routine and how enforced changes affect my behaviour and state of mind.
I wouldn't say I was wallowing in self pity but I have certainly been sat on the side dangling my feet in the water. My wife jokes if I'd like a ladder to get out of the hole I've dug myself into.
Unlike the last time I was off, I've tried to keep up to date with podcasts but I've also spent more time playing World of Warcraft with the rest of the family.
I tend to go through phases with WoW, when each new expansion is released I am excited to play the new content but, once I reach the new maximum level, this excitement is quick to dissipate.
There are two distinct aspects to #warcraft: the solo content in which you just complete the quests and level your character, and then the side where you join with others for more advanced content such as dungeons and raids.
(I'm deliberately leaving PvP - player versus player - out of the this as I've never been any good at it.)
Until recently, we had been part of a guild which would spend time together doing raids and trying to advance as far as we could go. This, unfortunately, broke up meaning that if you wanted to play this content you had to join PUGs (Pick Up Groups) to find enough people to play with.
Having played as a tank for years (the character that goes in first, takes all the damage and controls the encounter) I got frustrated with always being the one who was supposed to know everything, even on brand new content, and then getting blamed or kicked from the group when things didn't go right.
So I stopped raiding and even doing the smaller dungeons (designed for five players) focusing instead on just the solo content. But having been part of even a casual raiding guild meant that the solo side just wasn't enough.
While the solo side is okay and it's fun to follow each new storyline, WoW is an inherently social game - the second M in MMORPG stands for Multiplayer, after all. Settling for the solo content in this way (having spent many late nights with fellow guild members trying to complete just one more boss fight) is what causes the excitement to drop off so quickly.
The past week or so, however, we have been spending time as a group diving into the harder levels of dungeons and it's been enormous fun! So much though that we have renamed our small family guild and are looking to open it out to more members so that we can start raiding again.
Not only has this made playing WoW more enjoyable again but also served as a distraction from being ill and given me a much needed psychological boost so that I can towel off my feet and stop feeling quite so sorry for myself.
And they say playing video games is no good for you!
