Casual Raid Leader

As you saw in my post on noise amplification, that some times its very difficult to trace exactly what your pain points are.  Its also amazingly difficult for people to empathize with you if you don’t share with them.  Not that long ago I was pretty much convinced that I was going to have to leave my guild.  The noise in my head had grown to such a level that I was getting stressed out.  I couldn’t see the forest for the trees so to speak. 

It grew to the point that I stepped down as an officer.  I walked away from being the raid organizer and overall I just couldn’t handle the noise.  Its amazing when you sit back after the fact and have that hind sight that you can see how overwhelmed you were and just kind of view it with a distant sort of detachment.

For me though I really lost my way till I found a way to tune back in to what’s fun.

Isolation – Separation from Noise

If you feel overwhelmed by the noise around you, its probably time to build your own little isolation for a while.  For some that could mean, logging out, meeting some friends in real life and going to a movie.  For others it could mean just spending a few hours fishing.

While WoW is an MMO, theres nothing that says you have to play with people.  Some times its best if you keep that one alt that you only log into when you want a little peace and quiet.  That character that you pull out so nobody can find you.  I remember reading ages ago how Big Bear Butt and his wife used to keep some characters on the side just so they had somewhere to go and spend time alone.  Its not that you don’t like the people around you, but some times you just need to play and not worry about being the officer, or Guild Master, or Raid Organizer, or player.  Some times it just feels good to play.

There’s nothing wrong with turning on your /DND flag, flipping off Guild chat and just doing your own thing.  Run around, do some daily’s, kill some things and just have a good time. 

Detatchment – Removing the pain point

I have a confession to make.  As cool and collected as I can be most days, I have a very bad habit.  I’m what I like ot refer to as a stress storer.  A stress storer is basically someone who bottles up their stress until it gets to the point of going off in spectactular ways.  Oh I’m sure I’ve put on some amazing displays for people around me.  Its certainly not something I’d wish on anyone and some days I wouldn’t be surprised to hear someone say, “dude… you just scared the crap out of me.”

Now what’s the point you say?  Some times, stress just isn’t going to go away.  For me, I got really stressed over managing a relationship with our guild alliance.  It wasn’t that I was in charge of everything with the guild alliance, but I was in charge of managing the discussions related to raiding.  There was one particular personality there that just rubbed me raw.  It would take me one or two posts in a forum from this person to just drive me completely up the wall.  So much so that it seriously bled into my playing.

For your $15 a month, shouldn’t the game be fun?  If you’ve got a pain point that you can avoid, its probably best at least for a while to just completely avoid it.  In my case, after I went somewhat ballistic on this person, I just let my officer corps know, that it wasn’t a healthy relationship for me to be involved in, and that generally I couldn’t do the job.  Its not that I didn’t want to do the job.  Its just that for me, that one interaction would so overwhelm my play experience that it was easier to just walk away. 

In this instance it was probably the best thing I’d done in a while.  My stress level went to almost nothing after that one minor change.  I hadn’t realized (much like Joe’s foot wart) how much that one particular thing was bleeding stress into other aspects of the game.  Do I have other noise/stress points?  Yes, but comparatively instead of dreading thinking of what I can do next, I just move forward without stressing over it.

Pumping up the Volume – Boosting the signal

Some times to keep yourself moving the best thing you can do is just play to have fun.  Find the thing you love most, grab some friends and just mess around for a while.  If you love PVP, just go spend a day doing Wintergrasp and Battlegrounds and just play to have fun.  If you love working on wacky heroic achievements, then put together an insane group of friends and just go spend the day trying to get as many as you can.

Pumping up the volume is probably the simplest thing you can do.  It may not seem like it, but the trick to it is just spending time indulging in the aspect of the game you get most joy out of.  If people think you’re crazy spending the day fishing, then tell them to mind their own business.  For your $15 a month, you can spend it any way you chose.  Though if you find griefing people to be what you enjoy most, try aiming for some other server than Whisperwind k?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 8:08 am and is filed under Life Balance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.