It's kind of funny, in a way. And every attempt I've made to cut this down has led to more explaining, so it's getting longer. I'm just gonna post it.
When we started 18 years ago we all sort of played alone and occasionally tried leveling together and there are "contracts" you enter when you are leveling together. No finishing a quest without your buddy. No out-stripping their level while they're not there by going somewhere else. Together is TOGETHER. When you have 3 characters and one of them is an occasional alt you don't mind letting them sit. Until you do. And then it's a constant drag to wait. Life happens. (Ask any group trying to organize regular Dungeons and Dragons groups, or any league... everyone starts to have conflicts and some of them seem pretty petty to the regulars who always show up.)
WELL... I blame the raid guilds. They leveled together to make it go faster because it was all about the dungeons and higher game content and getting the gear before progression could begin in the raid. Suddenly there was no "hey, what's in this little house over here?" No one ever went to the top of every hill to find out iif anything was there to see. It was just GO! GO! GO!
Then the game began to change a very short time after I started playing and I spent a LOT of years resisting the Classic nerd bros' assertion that Wrath "ruined the game." For one thing, if it's selling then it's clearly not ruined for everyone, just those who liked it another way. And yet... being able to queue for dungeons immediately out of the gate and not needing to actually "touch grass" or openly communicate what you're looking to do and how in the game (as the LFG chat channel required) has made for a totally different community with a broader sense of entitlement and even more hate at Blizzard for anything that limits the ability to level from 1 to 90 in 20 hours, as a friend of mine just did. Now I'm just not sure. The game is NOT ruined. And the nerd bro Classic heads don't make it any better than the race to the top and never touch the ground folks do.
Right now I have less time to play. My regular dates are with a friend who never got any of the early lessons and didn't retain the ones my friends and I imparted along the way. It's fine, WoW is full of casual players who never DID know the "contracts" or "social MMO ettiquette." Their play style is actually almost entirely opposite those early rules and contracts.
I play faster and still itemize better because once you've raided you never completely forget how to push that ilevel and those stats or optimize your build. You just don't. I'm also more compatible with the hardmode asshats and even the PvP set and I'll farm and get my gear in the ways we've insisted that Blizzard make them available to us. So things die much faster, in much tighter pulls (even when they're huge) and in a much more aggressive way than when my friend plays alone. There is ALWAYS a plan or a verbalization of some surprised sound and then silence or frantic out-loud instructions to myself as I go about clearing the accidental extra enemies.
And I play more graciously because of those old contracts and rules from the olden days. If we need 10 things I'll pick up 5 and wait for my friend to get their share because it feels more like playing together that way. I check the quest objective constantly to see which needs us to each get the items or will count no matter who collects it. And because I'm "gracious with a dash of passive aggressive" I'll say out loud, "Do these count for both? It does. So if it's sparkling click it." And if it doesn't I'll see if my friend can ALSO loot it or if we're on our own and I'll say THAT out loud. *sigh* I'll wait to solve puzzles together. I don't pick the herb or mine the mine or loot the chest until we're together and I don't fish up a whole pool if we're fishing together. I take my one or two fish and let them also fish from the pool. It's honestly just HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE.
HOW VERY OLD FASHIONED AND A LITTLE BIT DEMANDING OF ME TO EVEN THINK SUCH A THING, DON'T YOU THINK? LOL
One friend will run around the room grabbing shineys whether they count for both or not and will race away to the next room while I'm first killing everything pulled in one room then ripping ass around trying to collect my OWN collection of shiney things while my friend cusses and screams at the game because the things accidentally pulled in the other room do not have me to kill them while my friend gathers all the shiney things THERE.
When I play with another friend the experience is totally different and even more unfulfilling. They push so hard and fast that they never stop. Everything has been interacted with, completed or killed before you enter the room. And when I said something I was told I needed to be ok with them playing faster. It isn't the FASTER that's the problem. It's feeling played AT rather than WITH that is the problem. I HATE having to apologize for being slower or repeat requests to slow down.
I've had puzzles and quests I had to "solve" alone two months after everyone else has fucked off because they have been there and done that. Because I literally never saw them. And I'd watch the objective complete on my quest log and say, "What did you do? I didn't see that..." and they'd say something offhand like, "I clicked the thing?" In once case it meant go into a room, do a puzzle in the correct order and then open things along the way, and return to the start if you get anything wrong. I was furious to have had that particular quest complete for everyone if only done by one. And now I reflexively panic every single time it happens because I won't know until I'm there alone later in the days after they've stopped playing what a total pain in the ass it is going to be to complete whatever they did down the hall in another room from me.
Another friend told me my way of picking up all quests in a hub and then doing them and coming back and not doing one at a fucking time back and forth and back and forth and back and forth was me being bossy and rude. Their experience was apparently damaged by my method and I wasn't allowed to do it anymore. So I didn't. I left my level 61 warrior parked in the first quest hub of Outlands and never returned. IF the game didn't delete her, Gruffudd is still sitting there in the Inn. I just didn't have 10 more levels of always doing it the wrong way left in me after the first 60.
So... yeah. I'll play alone. My first play through of Forever will be headphones, game or music up and read and explore and NOT spending my time racing trying to get a chance to click on even one glowing or sparkling thing out of the 10 I'm required to get. Not flying through the content constantly saying, "I'll be right there." "I'm trying to catch up." "You know I don't have stealth/wings/leap like you do." It just starts to feel whiney or, gods of homeworld help me, demanding.
You see, while everyone fucked off and it was just my one friend and myself still in the game I started playing alone. I could clear 10 levels on an alt in a couple of afternoons. I know what's in all the side chambers of most of the dungeons and delves. I've seen "tips and tricks" to share that I'm not sure most of my friends even know exist (or care, if I'm honest with myself.) And I SMILED while I played, or laughed out loud while I called my character dirty names. I also got my main's iLevel up to the max I could achieve. I maxed my delve assistant. There wasn't any content that didn't involve LFG or LFR that gave me even a split second of pause.
I realized it was never me. I don't plod along. I'm not fucking bossy or demanding or entitled or any of those other things I've been feeling. I'm not so bad at the game that I'm being carried and I'm actually NOT BAD AT THE GAME. My friends are. Each in their own way, my friends aren't as good at this game as I am. Not as well rounded. Sure, one can plow through the content like their balls are on fire and they have to earn the water to put them out by being the first done. One will pull two extra camps of mobs and then fuck off to mine or pick up a shiney somewhere else while I fight or die to clean it all up. They'll solve the puzzle and get three rooms away or think it's normal to stealth through two full rooms of mobs and leave their companion to fight their way through because they can't stealth just because it's a class feature of the character they're playing. Too bad to be you. *sigh*
Frankly, I'm tired of racing with my ass on fire and my loot on the floor just because the tank gets a hard on when he can be at the boss while the rest of us are tangled in the stairs and labrythian hallways so far behind that the shit that is leashing off of him has started beating us to death on our way to try to catch up in literally 90% of LFG dungeons. If player kills were allowed in-faction I'd kill them myself while they were busy mitigating the damage from the expected directions and their healer is desperately trying to drink to regain mana between attacks they have to fight or die through alone. I can't. More's the pity, I suppose.
Alone.
Forever's first play through will be alone. I mean, of course I'll join to do dungeons or whatever. If I'm going to resent and hate the tank a little for tearing ass off through the dungeon like the end of the known universe is on our asses, it might as well be a friend, right? And otherwise I kind of need to remember that I'm not the problem in my own gaming. I don't hold myself back. I'm actually faster than something like 70% of players if the overall game statistics can be believed? I really want to enjoy this new world and see if it's for me.
And I have my doubts. Not enough will change from Classic that the nerd bros won't already have 10,000 little things we're supposed to have done before they'll let us do any content with them at the end. I'm used to that. I didn't start in Vanilla... by the time I got to the game those nerd bros and hardcore assholes were aleady "in charge." I still managed to make it to raiding and raid leader in Wrath in time for Naxxramas. On two servers, even. And one of them was a PvP server! *gasp* Yeah, take THAT to /Trade and find out what it doesn't buy you. LOL
Sadly, this will be Classic+ and... well... not being a nerd bro or hardcore asshole may out. Those Classic nerd bros will still have their "I've done this since Vanilla and if you don't do it [whatever way they say that is different from what other people say but still THEIR ONLY WAY] then you're doing it wrong and will hold us all back so you can't come with us." And because the hardcore assholes will be following every guide, watching every popular video on YouTube and taking notes or screen caps or making spreadsheets and will have a list of addon's or achievements and a required gear set or iLevel or whatever benchmark means you're 1337 or leet (gamer speak for elite.)
Azeroth is my favorite fucking world to escape to. I wasn't kidding when I said I was taught early to explore always and find all the coolest shit before anyone can tell you about them. These days the frickin' data mining and 500 "See it first here" YouTube and Twitch content creators make NOT finding out before you get there sort of the biggest challenge. You can just follow other players like ants in a trail up a hill or around a corner to "discover" the Easter Eggs they already know are there because they saw it online.
and yet... maybe... just maybe... on my own without them except when I have to deal with them... I can find a little bit of the play time that wooed me and made me a player forever. stranger shit has happened.
I mean, I'm still here, right? 18 years later. LOL
I'll just have to do it first alone. In a Massively Multi-player Online game.
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