I’m a social person. I pride myself on being an extravert and enjoying the energy of other people around me. If I’m at home alone a lot I get depressed and I’m at my happiest when I’m in a big city surrounded by people and the buzz of city life. But sometimes I need some alone time. I’m not always super social. I’m not always looking for company of other people. Sometimes I just want to do my own thing without anyone else getting involved in it.
This is when I put my Battle.net as “show offline” or flee to my Au’Ra alt in FFXIV. Because I don’t want to talk to people. Because I don’t want my friends to “quick join” my dungeon queue. I just want to be left alone and do my own things without anyone interfering. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it’s because I’m so focused on getting something done that I can’t or don’t want to also be my usual entertaining self. Maybe it’s because even as an extravert I need to recharge my batteries a bit with some alone time.

When I was doing my Mage Tower challenges I’d often show up as offline to my friends. The whispers I tend to get were distracting me and I also didn’t really want to engage in any social chatter while trying to get these challenges done. I’ve done the same with finishing off the “Pride of Kul Tiras” questline on my Rogue. I went offline because I didn’t want to break my immersion into the quests and I certainly didn’t feel like ruining my queue times because people wanted to join when they saw me queue up for Waycrest Manor and Tol Dagor. Sometimes I just need to fly solo and that’s okay. I’ll be available another time.

It may sound weird to want to play solo in an MMO. Maybe it is. Maybe I should instead focus on playing some of my single player games when I feel like this where I know I won’t be bothered by anyone. But I like playing WoW and FFXIV and I like being able to do what I want on my own terms. Especially WoW is an excellent solo experience. Ofcourse for some stuff I may have to group up with strangers but I’ve never really had issues with that. Most of the chatter in random dungeons or in this expansion Island Expeditions is virtually non-existant. People don’t really talk and if they do it’s often only a “hello” or “goodbye”. It suits me fine. I can just focus on doing my own thing, which is get through the dungeon without dying while doing decent dps, and still get my goals done for the day. Sometimes I like to queue up with friends an have a ton of banter instead. And maybe sometimes I will choose to play that single player game and not be online for a while. This would also help me slowly plough through the enormous backlog of games that I have built up over the years. With the new WoW expansion settling in, and me probably spending less time on it over the coming few weeks, I may go into solo mode a bit more and play Octopath Traveler or a game on my PS4 again.

For now though I’m putting myself offline anytime I need some breathing space and will enjoy the game solo.