Returning with my tail between my legs

"Well, well, well, look who it is" I hear you cry. *Hangs head sheepishly*

Yes folks, I'm back. Please let me explain - I hope a few of you have been through something similar and so can retain a little smidgen of sympathy for me.

I gave in, I started playing WoW again. How could I possibly continue to update a blog entitled "Life After WoW" when behind closed doors I was glued to my laptop three or four hours a night? I would have felt like such a fraud. I should have been honest with you all, please forgive me.

I decided if I started playing again and didn't raid, or do dungeons, join a guild, or have any kind of in-game social interaction of any kind, that I wouldn't get too sucked in, or feel that horrible sense of obligation to check in every day. I was wrong. Possibly I was even worse off this time because instead of socialising and making friends online, I was entering a trance-like state for hours at a time, whizzing through quests and power levelling about a hundred alts. I had this crazy idea that I could build a kind of "one woman guild", covering every profession with a level 85 alt of every class. How awesome and uber-powerful would I feel then? Not so much, it turned out.

I was investing all my spare time into playing WoW and I won't lie to you, I was really enjoying it. I actually played Alliance for the first time and even though I swore not to interact with anybody, I would occasionally buff or throw a heal at someone on the way past, and was pleasantly surprised to find people thanking me or returning the favour.

This interaction became a slippery slope however. For example, if I saw someone waiting to kill a named mob, I'd whisper "need some help?" little things like that. I hadn't had anyone throwing abuse at me and it made the game a rather jolly, pleasant place to be, like a little fantasy home from home.

That was until tonight. My NPC Scan went off in Mount Hyjal (this is an addon that automatically scans for rare mobs and a really exciting horn sound goes off when you find one!) I found some big elite rock elemental dude but someone had already tagged him and was already half downing him. But they seemed to be having trouble, so even though he was tagged, even though I would get NO LOOT, NO BENEFIT WHATSOEVER FROM KILLING HIM! I thought I would help the poor soul to get him down. So I jumped in with my kitty cat and starting slicing away at him. The other player yelled at me for stealing his kill and started hurling abuse at me. I explained that the mob was already tagged as his and I was just trying to help, but the abuse became worse and worse.

It may sound like a typical case of nerd rage and you may tell me to grow up and get over it (might I remind you all that I'm a 32 year old woman). But in my 6 months of solo play I have forgotten what all the rude WoW players are capable of. This isn't how people behave in normal society! I was shaking, I was really upset and logged out, paced around the room for a bit and decided this is not how anyone deserves to be treated as part of a stupid video game. So call me impulsive, but I unsubscribed and uninstalled the game again.

Until next time.

Please don't let there be a next time.