When is it time to take a break?

No, I am not taking a break as I don’t need ont at the moment. However, I have certainly been in the spot. I was reading my blogroll when I ran across MarriedIRL’s sad post about raiding and burnout. I used to raid in a guild on Malygos named Arcanum (Shout out). They are doing quite well in the progression and I believe they are the number one progression guild on that server now.

I left them to go play with my RL friend on another server. This is where I met (SHOUT OUT) Doomilias, BigRedkitty, Ozma, Triggy iggy iggy, Wisp, Brigin and many more of the now bloggin community. After some time there, the guild kind of crumpled due to various issues. I in my less than infinite, quite a bit less, wisdom decided to help out and start my own guild to begin leading the raids I had already had on farm status such as MC, BWL and AQ20/40.

I will not go into the guild leadership stuff. I don’t think I was particularly good at it so I will gloss over it.

I lead the guid into the Burning Crusade and leveled with everyone who decided to do the free server move with us. I leveled really hard and hit 70 in about month. I say really hard because it was for me at the time being a brad spanking new father. I had a couple of people hit 70 in the guild really quick (Hunters!! Imagine that >.<) and I think at one time we tried to do Shattered Halls with Warrior, 3 hunters and a shadow priest. Ya… that didn’t work out well but was fun none the less.

Then, the dark cloud began to form. This dark cloud really became ONE person. I am sure she knows who she is. /w after /w after /w about how no one liked her, how she was lonely (He husband was in the guild for god’s sake!!) how she wanted more responsibility, how no one wanted to play with her. It started to really stress me. I couldn’t log on without 2 hours of playing counselor. My wife started getting angry that I stressed over playing the game due to this person who was not by any means my wife.

I went through this for about 2 weeks when I realized I was playing the game from 6pm to 1am with at least 2-3 hours of BS thrown in. It got too much. I saw my son do something that I had never seen before. When I commented on it, my wife informed me that he had been doing it for quite a while now. I knew right then it was time to play less… way less. I posted on our guild site that I was taking some time off and that it would probably be extended. I left the guild in very capable hands and he really did not want the job but understood my reasons (Thanks BRK).

After about 4 months of great family time and many a lbs dropped later, I began wanting to play again without having the responsibility to play. I created a new warrior on a PvP server that I had some toons on and played very casually and the game is just as much fun. I have done Kara once, did Mags and Gruuls and have seen the inside of some cool places. Do I miss raiding? I sure do. I like the epic fights and all that goes into getting to them, but it is not something I can do right now.

If you need a break… take a break. If the game isn’t fun anymore… play something else.