Goodbye to raiding... for now

As I mentioned in my previous post, seeing exactly how much time I'd poured into WoW over the last few years certainly startled me a bit. 223 days - that's 5,352 hours! Obviously that's a very large number - but then again I'm not sure it's an overly unreasonable amount of time for an avid gamer like myself to spend "playing video games" over a 4-year period.
The only oddness of it, if anything, is that it was the same game for the entire 4 years instead of being spread across 10-15 different games in shorter bursts. But that just speaks to the quality, immersion and plain old "fun factor" of WoW really. The game was fun enough to keep me consistently entertained and coming back for 4 years - that's just amazing really.

So - for the last month or two I tried *only* playing WoW on TUE and THU nights with my raid group. It's been fun and we've actually starting getting a very nice momentum in Naxx (and OS). However, its become clear to me that the game is just not very fun (for me) if I don't have *any* solo time. I was going to try to add a 3rd night a week to do just that (get some solo WoW time in) but I just can't swing it w/my current RL schedule.

Another "writing on the wall" type thing I noticed as I stuck to my "raiding only" plan over past month or two was that I was logging on so little that my banker's mailbox had items being deleted from inactivity - and to my surprise... I didn't really care. I don't think I've lost anything super valuable yet - but the notion that I'm ok with ANY of my banker storage items being deleted is pretty telling given my past history with loving to hoard things on my banker(s).

Anyhow - having said all the above... I'm saying goodbye to raiding for the foreseeable future - so I've notified my raid leaders that I'll be officially bowing out of our group starting next week. :(

I'm sure they'll find someone to fill my slot so I'm not worried about that. The saddest thing about it for me isn't playing less of the game so much as the fact that I'll no longer have an extracurricular activity on TUE and THU nights anymore - having that interaction with other people my age was pretty nice since I'm otherwise stuck at home w/two kids under 3 at the moment. Plus it was really neat to be part of a team who was consistently doing better and better each run.

I actually contemplated leaving the game for good (including deleting all bank items, all characters etc) but after talking with some folks (some who still play, and others who don't) I decided not to be that extreme. So my characters and their bank items will remain in Azeroth for now at least - so this is not a "final goodbye" - at least not yet.

Thanks again to my raid group for letting me be a part of the team (even way back in the Karazhan days!). I hope to see you guys around from time to time - I may logon from time to time to play some solo (if I think I can handle it in small doses) so if you see me around say hi!

Here's a handful of folks who were in my raid group over last couple years - sorry to those I don't have avatars of! (Umbrial and Balmar specifically! :( Raiding was a neat way to get to know folks a bit more and I enjoyed raiding with all of you! It has been a pleasure guys (and gals)!