Dying to Avoid Anxiety on #BlaugustReborn Day 6

Daily Ramble 9: Avoiding Anxiety, I Die Without Fighting

Do you have gaming anxiety? I certainly do sometimes…when I’m jumping back into a new League of Legends season and I’m in my qualifying series; when I’m starting up a new character and want to make sure I don’t make any mistakes in my build; when I’m taking my healer into a dungeon for the first time. But right now my anxiety stems from the Battle for Azeroth expansion and it’s something similar to what I’ve experienced every time a new expansion comes out for World of Warcraft.

Anxiety over Loading Up Warcraft

It’s been a while since I fired up World of Warcraft and though I’ve kept the game up to date with the patches and such, I just haven’t jumped in to play in quite a while. This has resulted in a bit of anxiety as I started the Battle.Net launcher this weekend. My main concern is I haven’t touched my Druid in probably a year and that also means I haven’t updated any of her addons. That, I suppose is my biggest issue…I’m gonna have to update all my addons for the new patch/expansion and that’s always a pain.

So I suppose a few good questions I’m gonna have to answer for myself and that I’m sure others are contemplating during these early days of #Blaugust are things like

• Which of the builds will I level up with in Battle for Azeroth – for me this is particularly interesting since I usually like playing as a healer and healers don’t level too well unless they’re running with a group through dungeons.
• Which addons are gonna be worthwhile in BfA – other than the standard damage meters and aggro trackers, do I want to load up elvUI again or try any of the HUDs or raid frames again?
• What’s the quickest way for me to level up to the 110 cap before BfA drops?

These and any other questions kinda require me to get into the game and start reacquainting myself with my Druid so I’m gonna have to get over this anxiety and jump in. But instead, I procrastinate and jump in to Secret World Legends instead.

Something Familiar

SWL has become my go-to game lately and whenever I want to quest around or explore I find myself here. Sure, I could check out some of the max level campaigning in Neverwinter Online but in SWL I’ve still got leveling to do. Perhaps when I hit 50 I’ll bounce between the two games but for now, I’m working my way through Blue Mountain.

One thing I find interesting in this game is that I’m still technically on the first main story quest – Dawning of an Endless Night and as far as I know I’ve still got a few major steps to go before I finish off it’s story. But not only is this still the first main quest, I’ve made it 4/5ths of the way to max level already. I suppose it’s mostly because of the way I game where I’m trying to get through every mission in the game, but I also usually try to play pretty safe. The other day, though, while I’was trying to be safe, I died (or was knocked out) multiple times.

The Orochi Group mission was really tough and while I didn’t have anything to fear from any of the creatures I encountered, I had to be somewhat stealthy while decoding complex puzzles at the same time. So while I was trying to figure out mathematical progression puzzles I had to avoid scanning drones that kept searching for intruders. When I didn’t figure things out fast enough I was zapped and had to start over again outside the Orochi camp… such a pain. Eventually I worked my way through things and completed the mission but I must have died 4–5 times.

But in getting through the mission, I reached level 40. It’s a small achievement but it moved me forward towards my goal of attaining max level and it made me feel good. So good, that I was up for switching over to WoW and starting to go through all my disabled addons to decide on what to keep and what to throw out. So in the end, I did move forward in WoW, I just needed to get there in a roundabout manner so that I was able to overcome my hangups with getting back into Warcraft.

I guess this is all just a bunch of rambling. I know the anxiety I feel about gaming and leveling and addons and such really doesn’t matter in the big picture of life but when my recreation can elicit such feelings and such avoidance it makes me think about how I handle not just my entertainment but also how I deal with situations in the real world. Perhaps I need to take a lesson from how I jumped in to Warcraft with both feet, after I reached level 40 in SWL, and apply that mentality in other areas of my life…achieve a small success somewhere, anywhere, and then jump into what was worrying me in the first place. Regardless, I’m done rambling for now.

#BlaugustReborn Day 4