First and foremost, Final Fantasy XIV players – Do Not Panic. I haven’t abandoned my love of Eorzea, nor have I decided to stop working on the much delayed FFXIV: Endwalker Story Summary, but as the Endwalker expansion slows down and leaves a gap until Dawntrail breaks next summer, and the announcement of Chris Metzen’s glorious return as creative overlord and a trilogy of new expansions that promise to finally address some of the long standing lore questions of Warcraft…

Well, I figured it might not be the worst time to hop in and see what I’ve missed?

However, I might need to try to tackle this differently than before. You know, some retrospection goes a long way to figuring out what was wrong with how I burned out on the game for literal years.

• Don’t Worry About Min/Maxing Time: I don’t NEED to do everything as efficiently as possible. I don’t need to complete all my renown and reputation as quickly as I can. I can just focus on one thing at a time. To quote a wise Pandaren, “Slow down. Life is to be savored.”
• I don’t HAVE to do everything: Raids? Dungeons? Other people in general? Is there a reason to suffer unnecessary headaches? If there’s story in the raid, then the cutscenes will be online. A dungeon missed is something I can try to solo in the next expansion. Just do whatever sounds fun.
• Stay Away From the Discourse: MMO talk online may not be always “toxic” but it does skew to the negative and combative. Unless I’m looking for information, I’ve learned to just not read or engage with the discussions or theories because it always leaves me feeling worse about what normally would entertain me. This isn’t a WoW thing. FFXIV forums and players do the same.
• It’s NOT A JOB: I used to be a dedicated WoW Blogger once. But that was in college. When I had things like… plenty of free time. Will ‘OddCraft’ return? If I find something I want to write about, sure. But I’m not gonna actively seek out and force the process. If I stream playing any, it won’t be a regular thing.

These are my “rules” for myself to reinstall WoW. Just deciding to find ‘healthier’ gaming habits that would let me just play a game and enjoy it. I think the time away from WoW and playing FFXIV have changed my viewpoint on how MMOs can work in a productive day-to-day lifestyle without gumming up the mental works with anxiety and frustration.

I feel like the dev team at Blizzard is starting to get this too as WoW encroaches on being old enough to drink. The news of the more ‘alt friendly’ warband system coming fills me with hope that I can just enjoy the game without having to worry about who needs to do world quests for which reps, or how to organize everything so my characters can share resources. I can have rep-grindy alt, one gathering alt for all the gang, and just do what I feel like from day-to-day.

The Worldsoul Saga promises to hit a lot of my ‘Brain Juice Go Brr’ buttons, so I’m looking forward to it. But first I need to get caught up. And I do meet caught up. Despite being of the proper level and having Dragonflight installed, I haven’t started it yet. I still need to finish the Shadowlands campaigns. Why? Because I want to see what happens. It’s not efficient, but I do find it interesting. A solid reminder of why I started playing World of Warcraft in the first place – to wander & wonder.