As I logged onto World of Warcraft today, I was poked by someone who I had played with in Cataclysm. This particular Resto Druid was once one of our core members, but he quit WoW to focus on his girlfriend and his studies on university and I haven’t really seen him back online, untill about two to three months ago.
He wanted to raid with us, but unfortunately he came in around the time we cleared Heroic Archimonde and basically stopped raiding… And let the guild die altogether. Everytime I would log onto my account for my Garrison stuff I would see him online and would feel guilty about him coming back to a dead guild. There was not much I could do about it though, I have tried to keep this particular guild alive for a very long time by myself and can just not invest more time in it without completely burning myself out.

So anyway, our Druid poked me and told me he was thinking about leaving the guild to join another guild which was made up of his IRL friends. I was kind of surprised he had waited that long, but as he explained he felt like he wanted to share it with me and our guildmaster before actually departing. He thanked us for the fun times in Cataclysm and we exchanged Battle.net ID’s before wishing him the best in his new guild and him departing.
It has been a very long time since I saw someone actually be so polite and nice when leaving the guild. Most people nowadays leave their guilds or clans without a word at all, or leave bitter with a post of resentment. To have someone be friendly and thankful for the fun times the guild has brought him honestly feels like a breath of fresh air. I know not everyone in the World of Warcraft community is toxic, and that there are enough decent players out there. But to finally experience one of them again has been amazing and I’m truly sorry I couldn’t provide him with a better experience in the guild than I had done.

In turn this has gotten me thinking about my own behaviours in MMO’s. In World of Warcraft, and FFXIV for that matter, I’ve become such a veteran that running any dungeon has become routine. I only say hi at the start and then continue to run the dungeon in silence untill the end. I don’t really get involved with community/server driven stuff anymore and I don’t really organize much myself. This is partly because I don’t have the time to do it but I guess the biggest reason is that I feel I don’t really have anything to offer. In WoW the content lull is kind of big, and seeing as I main DPS again it’s very hard to find/make groups for stuff, especially if your friends aren’t around anymore. In FFXIV all of my high level/max level classes are DPS. I haven’t really pushed myself to level a tank or a healer and I really want to, so I’ve been steadily leveling my Astrologian so that I may take part in stuff easier and quicker. On Cactuar I have decided to level my Warrior so I can provide my Free Company there (Greysky Armada) with someone who can tank content for them, but also so that it may be easier to organize stuff on my own.
I’m also trying to be more chatty ingame. I notice that if I’m focused I barely talk and sometimes feel like I’m in an FC just for being in an FC. I know that FFXIV has it’s content lull aswell and people are a bit bored by it, but socializing can be done anytime, with or without content and I want to try my best to do this more and better.

So instead of hoping to be more active online, I hope to be more engaged online, be more social and make stuff happen more. That’s eventually what MMO’s are about no?