The reason I picked up WoW over three years ago was to play with my then boyfriend, now fiance, as something to do together, despite the thousand miles apart. We were both gamers, so it made sense. It sure as hell made daily conversations easier, and while I can't exactly credit WoW as the "savior" of our relationship, saying that it was just a shared hobby doesn't do it justice either. WoW gave us the means to figure each other out, to test each others limits, and to learn to rely on each other despite not being in physical presence. There are other ways of doing all of that in a long distance relationship, sure, but WoW made it simple.
We didn't really do anything together besides raid and instance running - we couldn't level together because we have different play and leveling styles - but we did grow through the game together, learning tactics and struggling on the bosses. So considering how little of the game we actually played together, it's kinda silly to think that WoW has lost its purpose now that he can't raid.
The boy got The First Real Job. He wasn't sure he could do the raiding to 1 AM when he first got the job offer, but he became certain when he found out his hours were 6:30 AM to 3:30 PM with two hours overtime "encouraged", six days a week. He'll probably still play casually, but raiding is essentially done.
This leaves me in a sort of a dilemma. The boy not being online pretty much defeats the greater purpose of WoW for me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing, I love my friends online and mastering my class, but now I'm doing it alone, and strangely enough, that's a buzzkill. I'm not even 75 (five bubbles yet....) and I'm considering quiting the game. WTF am I supposed to think about that?
I'll wait it out, hit 80, see if it has any further appeal. I'm not going to lie: The "race to 80" was a turn off. I've been enjoying taking my time, leveling as I please. Not having a strict raiding schedule this past week has been rather nice. But peer-pressure to level quickly and start raiding again is rough. There is also some guild drama that I'm not exactly thrilled to deal with, but is expected as a raiding guild in a new expansion. We'll see. I've had this mid-life gamer's crisis before, it just takes time to determine the outcome.
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It was really weird for me when my boyfriend decided to "quit" the game a few months ago-- we'd always played together, we started playing the game together, and it was a group activity that could qualify as spending-time-together... when he decided to quit it was hard to juggle my WoW time (especially since by that time, I was blogging about it, so I wasn't about to quit even if I wanted to), and my boyfriend-time.
Somehow I managed to do okay and the boyfriend has come back to the game with WotLK.
I really feel for all the people talking about the pressure to hit 80. It makes me really glad that I got out of my big raiding guild and into a small familyish "we will raid eventually" guild just in time for the expansion. I am loving just taking things at my own pace so far.
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