I can say that I have had nearly exactly the same experience; I applied to a guild that was already clearing BT and was ramping for their foray into the Sunwell. I had just rolled a fresh and fantastic Elemental shaman and I was 70 for a hot minute. The rationale for me to have the ele shammy was really free lightning bolts. I was just completely enamored with the idea of free damage just happening because of the precise amount of awesome I was...
| BEHOLD! the "Majesty" of Shammy T6 kids! |
Now it helps that I am an above average video game player and I knew my class in and out. What my skill lacked elitistjerks (Binkenstein rules) cleared up for me along with a little help from my old friend Autohotkey.
So I started raiding and in the beginning the addiction to upgrades is blinding. When you are wearing gear that is holding you back and you get an upgrade and get the instant gratification of the graphical change along with the increased numerical representation in Recount it is a real buzz.
The challenge is that over the years you end up in these repetitive wipe festivals trying to progress on content that would simply break the will of lesser organizations. You feel buffered by your friends in the guild in these situations; but the reality is that it is painful, long, tedious hours staring down fight mechanics that feel like or are borderline impossible; hundreds and hundreds of wipes later you get into the rage of missed upgrades that massively.com refers to and feed off of that energy within your raiding organization.
What is more is that it is likely that you become "competitive" - that is to say that perhaps it turns out that your guild is competing to be in the top 100 guilds in the US or something to that effect. This meta-achievement is what continues to compel you to compete even though the joy in it is long gone...
It starts off fun and exciting but it quickly turns on you and before you know it you are compelled to do something you dont actually want to do.
Source: Massively.com
P.s. Yes - I realize I just revealed to you precious internet just how much of a complete and total nerd I am <3
2 comments:
I think this rings true for all games. Once it becomes a job, you just have to ask why the hell you're doing it.
I never formally raided in WoW(as we know I didn't play wow for long). But I did raid in Everquest for 6 years so I'm no sloutch, some being casual other times being in the guild that was top of the progression on the server.
I'm pretty sure Khezu still being in the top 100 monks on the server even though I haven't played for almost a year (besides just logging into him when the SOE network was down and they gave everyone a free month), speaks for its self. I did quit because it became a job just as the article states. It EQ you raid with 54 people, of 54 people I was doing up to 15% of the total raid damage on parses... I wasn't looking at any updates for a while and was just carrying new members in farming.
As interesting a game and the events/encounters it has can be it gets old the 50th time you kill the same boss.
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