World of Warcraft Fatigue?

Well it finally happened! I never thought this day would come, but I actually reached a point where I left playing WoW for fun.

As stated before, the last week hadn't been the greatest. The Kara raid group I was in fell apart due to one person getting a burr under his saddle because the raid group took down Netherspite without him. Well shame on you for leaving and not coming back within the 30 minute break. They waited 90 minutes for you! I had to leave early that night and didn't get to go. Was I disappointed? Yes! But not their problem and I would never have expected them to hold the raid just for me.

Now there's an uncomfortable rift between all of us who didn't have it out, but are tied to one of the two who did. As such, it's made it difficult to try and fill in the gaps. We tried and were successful in taking down Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Curator, and Big Bad Wolf. We tried several times to take down Shade, but to no avail. I believe I can point the finger, but I won't here. I'll keep it to myself. The sad thing is this took all week to do. We did this in 3 hours the previous week.

Tonight along with the reset, we had planned on going to Kara again. We knew that our main tank wasn't going to be on very long, because Tuesday is one of his raiding nights with his guild. As Arathor is a Pacific Time Zone server and most of my friends are in the Eastern and Central time zones, this doesn't present too much of a problem. He helps out where he can. As such, we should have been able to get together to take down Attumen and probably Moroes. Well no one logged on. The tank called a buddy of his to whisper me that he had to work late. Didn't matter at that point because it was already too late to start and again no one was on.

So that probably set the tone for my night. I began to get frustrated looking forward to another week without a real Kara run. Without realizing it, I had changed my mindset.

I've always been an advocate of trying new things. I haven't cared about the enormous repair costs that I've had to dish out when we've wiped repeatedly. I couldn't have cared less because I was with friends and experiencing new things for the most part. That's all changed.

I'd like to compare Kara to a drug, but I've never seen anything more powerful than marijuana. So I can only imagine what a drug addict must feel like and Kara is what I compare it to. Karazhan is a great instance. The feel, the music, the atmosphere of the whole place entices you to explore. The bosses are challenging, but not impossible and the loot is fantastic for someone at my stage of the game. I've been lucky the past month in that I've gotten at least two pieces of gear every week. Most of it has been healing drops, but I've gotten a couple of off-spec tanking gear. I got sucked into the loot problem.

I call it a problem, because as the focus of the game becomes less on the socialization, the questing, the just having all around fun enjoying the many aspects of the game, loot begins to take center stage. I've seen this with a lot of others. I've refused to join a raiding guild because even running heroic instances with some people has been a test in patience, not because they weren't good, but because they were jerks.

The majority of raiders I've run into are elitist know-it-alls. They think they know every aspect of every spec of every class and know exactly what to tell you to do. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked "What's your healing at?" soon after a wipe, sending me the silent question as to why I suck? Well right now it's at 1860 unbuffed @$$hole!! I can buff it to 2000 and with other raid buffs it's higher than that. Is this great? I have no idea. I haven't been beyond Kara, but I know it's pretty good there.

Pally healing is completely different than Priest, Druid, or Shaman healing. I kick ass on the heal meters every time I go in a raid. I've often doubled the total heals of the priest and halved the over-heals. Is this because I'm better? No! It's because of the way Pallys heal. We spam Flash of Light. It costs me 180 mana to cast. At my current state it heals an average of 1500hp, but crits probably half the time for 2500hp. I regenerate mana during casting at a rate of 100mp5. If all I have to do is spam Flash of Light it never runs out!!! Holy Light will kill me. It heals for 4000hp on average and crits at 6500hp, but it costs me 840 mana!!

But I digress. We decided to run heroic Mechanar, which to be honest I've only ever tried once without getting far. Wipe after wipe, I grew more and more irritated only to have it compounded by the fact that the rogue we brought with us kept playing an off tank's role and having to heal him was a pain. Also when we wiped, which was often, he decided not to rez and fly back. I'll never understand that about Tempest Keep. You rez at full health. It's not that far. Healers don't have to use food to replenish their mana after rezzing and healing your lazy ass. You don't have to use food to replace your health or mana after rezzing. This isn't Coilfang people!

Anyway, after getting to the 4th boss and wiping for the third time I was done. I was so irritated and getting so angry about everything that I said I'm done, left the party, hearthed back to Shat, and logged right after saying in guild chat "I've made the game not fun for myself. Maybe after I've cooled down I'll be back tomorrow. Maybe not." Or something to that effect.

I've made the game about Kara. I've made the game about loot. I've forgotten what it means to play with the friends I've made. I've forgotten why I played in the first place. The adventure.