WoW Burnout

I’m burning out.

No, really, I am. When I’m on Avierra, I’m tired of playing. My first impulse on a raid weekend is to log out, followed by a tiny voice reminding me that I’m missing out on two Emblems of Frost by not running the daily random, and it would be a real shame because all it would take is thirty minutes of my time.

Last weekend we had a little large bit of drama when our holy priest, irritated at someone who he didn’t care to name, hearthed out of the raid and ragelogged. Because he didn’t name names, I couldn’t act on anything. He hasn’t logged into any of his guilded toons since, although I suspect he may be on an unguilded 80 instead. He hasn’t guildquit either, which I’m grateful for.

For the past two months, we’ve run with three healers weekend after weekend – the same three healers. I’m one of them. We don’t have any others who log in on a regular basis.

So it’s a bit of an issue that we’re down to two regular healers, and I suspect that the other guy is as burned out as I am.

I’ve been playing on my rogue alt a lot more lately and my guildies have taken it to mean that I don’t want to be bothered with Guild leader stuff unless it’s urgent. They’re awesome like that. I have a few people who still bug me on Caret, but on the whole people back off when I’m on an alt.

So let’s talk about burnout.

The best solution for burnout is to do something else. I’ve done this before – I’ve taken a step back from WoW to do other things. My last WoW-break lasted all of four months and I really came back just to hang with my real life friends.

Which is pretty hard to do when you’re running a raiding Guild and filling a role that can’t easily be replaced.

I’m stepping back from WoW again – no raiding for the next couple of weeks (although I’ll be online this weekend) as I’ll be out of town.

I hope I still have a Guild to come back to.

Going Rogue

I have a confession to make: despite my no-alts policy, I’ve since levelled up my rogue.

After patch 3.3, levelling an alt is ridiculously easy. You can do a random daily instance for XP, some gold, and two Emblems of Triumph. Of course, the Emblems are fairly useless till you hit 80 (although you can convert them to Emblems of Heroism and buy Heirloom gear). I also noticed a bit of hanky-panky with rested XP: you used to only be able to earn rested XP for one and a half levels, but I levelled from 73 to 78 without once losing rested status. And two days of rested XP carried my character from 40% at level 79 to 80%, leading me to suspect that they also increased the rate at which we earn rested XP.

So Froufrou Caret transferred in from Bloodhoof to Nagrand and climbed up to 80 in around two weeks of irregular play. I played Caret on weeknights and Avierra on weekends. It hurt my gold farming but I really needed a break from my paladin.

Once I hit level 80, I started farming heroics. Despite what I’d been led to believe, the DPS queue for random heroics isn’t that bad – the longest I’ve had to wait for a random heroic is 20 minutes. Sometimes the heroic window pops right after I click on “Find a group.” And almost everyone has been nice, despite me being a fresh 80.

It might be me again, but I’ve noticed that in general, the asshats running randoms tend to be tanks. Or healers. I’ve yet to encounter a DPS I’ve wanted to votekick. I’ve even made quite a few friends on other servers.

Level 80 happened on Thursday night. I started unlocking the Argent Tournament dailies and the Sons of Hodir dailies immediately. I haven’t quite finished yet, but I should start work on the Knights of the Ebon Blade dailies soon as well.

And since then, I’ve:

• Acquired 2 pieces of T9 gear (chest and gloves),
• Gotten ilevel 200 epics in 4 slots besides,
• Gotten an ilevel 219 epic (thanks, Heroic Pit of Saron!),
• Run the weekly raid target with to a friendly PUG,
• Hit exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord, and
• Gotten level 80 weapons,

all in three days.

Playing Avierra is fun but I’m bored sick of doing the same things over and over again. I’m glad to have an alt I enjoy playing.