Retiring from WoW

As some of you may have noticed, I haven't been online recently. This began with Blizzard managing to break my account - as many of you know I have five accounts, they're all linked to the same battle.net account, and I could get on the four newer ones no problem, but the account with my main, my 80 alts and my bank char was dead, and thus began an enforced two week absence.

During this two week period where Blizzard couldn't understand that the problem was on their side rather than mine (the place is full of genii, honestly, they just don't work in the accounts department) real life took a serious turn for the worse. My girlfriend was fell off her motorbike. The bike went headlong into a tree and she went head first into a car - thank god for helmets. She's out of hospital now but is unable to walk without my help and won't be able to get out of bed unassisted for a good few months yet, so seeing as there's only the two of us in the house I obviously can't really raid, it isn't fair on her. Even once she can walk again she won't be allowed to drive until about this time next year, so even then if she needs to go somewhere it'll still fall to me to get her there and back.

Anyhow, given that I'd logged on once in 6 weeks as of today, I decided to bite the bullet earlier on. My accounts are no longer active, and I won't be reactivating them. As those of you who I raided with are probably aware, I was rapidly losing interest in the game back in June and left to join Element - sadly under a bit of a cloud in the end, which wasn't what I wanted to happen, but you can't have everything. For a while it was what I was looking for and for the first month the progression was absolutely insane, but inevitably I hit a brick wall just like I did when I was raiding with you guys, and just like I'd done previously with Devils Rejects. It really wasn't the guild hitting a brick wall - it was me. I'm an impatient perfectionist, which is a terrible combination, and I was unfairly expecting every single person to at least be on a par with me for the full duration of every raid and be as annoyed with themselves at a tiny mistake as I get with myself and to never even think of making it again. And worse still, I was still making those mistakes. The only place where that's fair is in one of those top two or three guilds in the world, and I'm not willing to give up my job for WoW. I'm not good enough to get in anyway. I know both you guys and Element have since kicked on and made some serious progression again, but it was the weeks of wiping that, by my own ridiculously unfair standards, I felt were needless that got to me in the end. I wasn't really enjoying the game or even trying to play it the way it was meant to be played. I know that all sounds horribly elitist but unfortunately that's what WoW turned me into.

So the combination of real life going very badly all of a sudden and the realisation now that I've been out of the game for a while exactly what it is that I was looking for from WoW has persuaded me that MMOs are no longer what I should be doing with my life. I just can't hack the pressure that I put on myself and the expectation I unfairly put on everyone else, and I'm enjoying having a life back again. I've lost a load of weight and quit smoking, I'm eating healthily and going to the gym in the morning, I'm spending time with good friends I'd almost forgotten existed. I very much doubt I'll be logging on again, so those who want to keep in touch, if you've not already got me on Facebook or MSN, drop me a PM, I don't really want to post details on a forum that gets indexed by Google, it's just asking for trouble. Kat, Akh, Azumo, Bub, Phyll, Alt, Alecto, Luna and anyone else I've missed who I used to talk to a lot - don't be a stranger, I miss you all.

Always remember the good times and forget the bad ones - so spend all the time drunk, basically.