Multi-player is not my enemy

It's taken me a long time to come to this conclusion.

When I first left WoW, it was because I couldn't stand to immerse myself in a world that reminded me of Cy. In the beginning it was because I couldn't bring myself to see him online on my real-id, not because he would talk to me - he wouldn't we were stuck in our lease and I was too stubborn to move out so if he wanted to talk to me all he had to do was approach me in the living room, but more because I couldn't yet bring myself to purge him from my life and therefore my list. In the following weeks I continued to stay offline because I could no longer force myself to play with other people. His endless criticism of my caliber as a player had become a nagging voice in my head, telling me that I wasn't good enough to play with other people.

The mere thought of entering dungeons or playing with other players caused me a great deal of anxiety. So, I simply avoided it.

I became a staunchly single player gamer.

I played the crap out of Assassin's creed 4, but did not platinum because I couldn't bring myself to play one round of multi-player, much less play enough to earn trophies.

I even played Payday 2 offline, because it was more fun for me to get mad at the AI than it was to potentially screw up someones heist.

So, when I started playing Diablo 3 again, I was firmly set on playing alone.

Let me just interject here and say that when J told me about the new patch several months ago, I was less than stocked. "How can they make a game that was brutally so un-fun, fun?" I asked. He doesn't play Blizzard games, so he couldn't tell me whether the patch had fixed the anti-fun that was Diablo 3. "Just try it" he said. Now, something like 2 or 3 months later, I finally did and I'm glad I gave it another chance.

I love the dynamic difficulty of the monsters. It's a way better system than tying the monster level to the difficulty setting and the quest you're on.

  

So, I downloaded the patch and logged on to my Demon Hunter, who was at the time level 55. I played on Normal for a little while, and eventually made my way up to Master difficulty after the former three difficulties proved to be too easy. Eventually, I thought for a lark just to try a public game.

It's been great. Everyone that I've partied with have been nice to me - or at least very quiet. Unlike WoW, Diablo was made to faceroll so I haven't had to deal with any co-ordination which was half of my problem (I was very much volentold to do a lot of mechanics and fill roles that I was absolutely not comfortable doing) but I'm finding it to be a positive, and frankly fun experience.

I've noticed the drops are a lot better. I've gotten a ton of legendaries, my favourite being "Pig Sticker" due to the random squeal noises that it makes.

In short, I'm rediscovering multi-player as a fun, and positive alternative to single player.

So... it's been a year.

It's been nearly a year since I signed in here and honestly, pretty much that long since I canceled my WoW subscription too. In retrospect, I wish I had posted a farewell or provided some notice that I would no longer be updating frequently, or as it turned out, at all.

I can't say that I've missed WoW all that much, the game as I knew it has been over for a long time and none of the friends that I played with originally still play save one, my father. That's not to say that the new friends I made along the way were lesser than the originals though they were fewer in number. Eventually, I went from playing with guildies\friends every night to being more of a loner and you don't get very far in MMO's as a loner. My home realm population dwindled and with the introduction of guild levels the small family guilds with tight knit raid teams that I loved became a thing of the past.

Over the years I've been in a number of raiding guilds with varied success - to me it was more about enjoying the people I played with rather than the internet points and imaginary prestige. At some point, I lost sight of that goal and got into some hardcore raiding with a boy I was seeing in real life.

Ultimately, it was the dissolution of that relationship that also ended my love affair with WoW. He sucked the fun out of my game and broke me down from a confident young woman who loved playing the game with other people and turned me into an anxious girl who didn't want to queue for raid finder out of fear of screwing things up.

It's been nearly a year since he broke me, and while my real life bounced back quickly, with the help of some of the best friends I have ever had, one of whom introduced me to a man who builds me up and has made me the happiest I have ever been, my online presence has never bounced back. I'm not really sure why that is, I suspect it has something to do with deeply my ex permeated my online life, but lately I've been missing this blog and while I'm not sure I'll ever go back to WoW I miss the friends I made here and on other blogs.

I make no promises, I don't know what I want this blog to be about if not solely about WoW. I still game just generally not online. Mostly, I wanted to put this out there - I've missed you and I'm thinking about getting back into this, whatever it is.

In the meantime I would like to try Hearthstone, so we'll see where that takes me.