At a Crossroads

In case you're wondering why I haven't really written anything about Classic in a while, truth be told, I haven't really been playing much. I just log in once a day to check whether the fishing daily is Crocolisks in the City (I think the baby croc pets are cute, so sue me) and then I log out again.

For a while I was still running Karazhan with my guildies on Thursdays as well. Even if I didn't really feel like playing the rest of the week, that one event at least gave me a reason to log in and it was nice to still be social with my old raiding buddies on Discord after I'd demoted myself to non-raiding member. However, recently I had to sign off for two weeks, and when I returned I found that the Thursday Karazhan sign-up sheet had disappeared due to lack of interest. Now there's only the Sunday run left, which clashes with other obligations of mine.

I'm not sure where that leaves me with Classic to be honest. In some ways it feels like I've come full circle and am back to where I was at the start of OG Classic two years ago: being a social member in a guild where I don't really interact with people and just do my own thing. The main difference being that this time around I've got baggage, and it's hard not to feel a little melancholy comparing my situation in the guild now with the fun times I had as recently as half a year ago. (Has Classic BC really only been out for four months? Hot dang.)

There are still goals I could pursue, that I likely will pursue at some point, but at the moment I'm not really feeling it. I miss that innocence I had at the start of Classic, when I didn't care about anything but taking in the beauty of the virtual world around me and following whatever breadcrumbs the game laid out in front of me. Stepping down from raiding hasn't entirely rid my brain of some of the trappings that came with that activity, so that I log on to find three different addons screaming at me about how they need updating, or I end up looking at certain pieces of gear and feeling dissatisfied that I haven't upgraded them yet, even though it really doesn't matter now. (I'm still wearing my tier three helmet from Naxx...) It all just feels... tainted somehow. I honestly feel a little jealous when I read about something like Wilhelm tackling the Blood Furnace with his friends for the first time (in Classic) only this month, with not a care for anything else going on in the game.

At the moment I see three potential ways I can go from here: I can continue doing what I'm doing (as in, barely log in) and hope that I'll eventually settle into a new, casual routine that I'm content with. I could try to have a kind of clean break from where I'm now and focus my play on an area where I don't have the same emotional baggage (revisit my Hordies, roll a new character on a different server etc.). Or my time with Classic will come to an end for now.