Disaffection

I have mixed feelings about the game right now. I'm still logging in, sure, but it's just not the same. I'm doing it for lack of anything better to do, joylessly, and largely without accomplishing much.

To some degree, it is a lack of any current goals for my main. Barley's just sitting around Dalaran of late, barely played. There are no factions I feel compelled to grind, no instances I am itching to run, and no rocks I feel that I need to dig up. Sure, there's a slew of things I could be doing. I could be working on Loremaster, or old world factions, or tournie tokens, or dungeons, but nothing catches my fancy right now.

Some of this distance is due to a sudden surge in guild membership. I'm probably the only person who would be more comfortable in a stagnant guild that can't sort out a 25-man than in a guild with designs on (and every likelihood of) beating everything the game can throw at them right now, but for me, the expansion and the shift back to 25's is doubly discouraging. I am not, as I have said many times before, a big fan of the larger raid format, and getting the extra bodies to prioritize these runs over the 10-man versions which I greatly enjoy leaves me with fewer opportunities to participate in the group content I most enjoy. But even when there are 10's on the calendar, the sudden surge in bodies to fill those slots, and hunter bodies in particular, makes it difficult for me to even do that much.

And this in particular is an annoyance to me.

My guild has about a half dozen raid-ready active hunters right now - the most active of which are an alt, three who have quit and rejoined, a pair of brand new members, and me. Only one member of this assortment has been a long-standing drama-free main-playing hunter. Sure, I am not a standing member of the raid teams for lack of compatible time, but when I am still the lowest on the selection list, particularly when I'm only asking to run one raid a week, the raid my guild cares the least about mind you, while the others have multiple nights and multiple opportunities, it's more than a little alienating. To be honest, I really just don't care much for or about my guild at the moment.

Having an alt doesn't help either, alts are distracting, sapping energy and time from your main's needs and endeavors.

So here I am, a bit adrift, bored with my main, ill at ease with my guild, side-tracked by an alt, and unsure what to do next.

What should I do next?

To borrow a phrase, I have been horde-curious for a while now. I've always had a nagging regret that I didn't roll a troll or tauren to begin with, and with the new faction change option available, it is possible to not only take up the banner of the other side, but to take an advanced character with me. It would be incredibly hard to remake Barls as the troll he has always wanted to be - having to regrind the entire argent tournament, losing my history and tangible accomplishments like that first mechanostrider I got the hard way just isn't right. I can gender-bend and rename that toon over and over, but I don't know that I can go that far.

But my druid? She's accomplished nothing, has no history, no ties. Would she look better as a big ol' bull tauren?

But what would that solve?

An alt is distracting enough, an alt on the other faction? I already have enough trouble with the complications of a second toon sapping my time, energy, and enjoyment, I have a deep suspicion that going horde would probably either kill the alt or send me screaming from WoW altogether.

I probably need to just go back to Barls, find a few short-term goals, and get back to basics. Forget my guild angst, shelf the alt grind, stop longing for Sen'Jin, and get back to the game that got me hooked in the first place.

We all know how often I do the rational thing, though...