The first couple of months of not playing WoW were easy. I had plenty of other stuff to do and I was able to focus on it quite nicely. I had fond memories of the game but I didn’t really miss it.

Then the Significant Other began playing again after a long absence, and it was making him act like someone who had just fallen madly in love with an old love again, and it was making me nostalgic, and Bad Things happen when Pike is Nostalgic.

It also turns out about this time that he revealed he was playing a ton of his alts. Newsflash: He never really played alts before, at least not to the extent that a lot of people do.

And suddenly playing with him sounded really fun, so of course I did the only sane thing to do and resub’d to WoW, although I did it in a terribly complex and convoluted way in order to ensure a couple of things.

See, what I wanted was to be able to play once every couple of days or so as a social activity with The Boy. Maybe five hours a week max. The definition of Super Casual with a capital S and capital C. I know myself well enough to know that if I unlocked my 80s I’d soon be back to where I was before in terms of WoW playing all the time, and I didn’t want that.

So, I didn’t resub to my main account. Rather, I resub’d to that side account I’d started on a whim for Recruit-a-Friend at some point last year. This account has three characters on it– no more, no less– none of which are close to level 80, and the only one I am really actively playing isn’t even close to level 60.

I am playing Super Casually, really logging in only to play with The Boy for 45 minutes or something, or to do something dumb like check the Auction House or work on tradeskills. I don’t have any heirlooms, I don’t have any access to gold/help from higher characters, I’m playing a class/spec combo that I had never touched before and it’s pretty much the most fun I’ve had in WoW in years. I’m happy with the way things have worked out.

No, I have no current plans to go back to Aspect of the Hare unless I actually “really” start playing again. I don’t know when that will be– I really don’t want to fall back into the trap of playing-all-the-time when I have so much other stuff that I am working on (and I’d like to think I’m doing pretty well with that– making good progress on the latest edit of my book, for example.) So in short this is going to have no bearing on my blogging or anything.

Why am I telling you this, then? Honesty, mostly. It would be super easy to be that blogger who “quits” and then plays a new anonymous character under-cover… and I have no doubt tons of people have done that. But eh, I don’t like keeping things from my friends, and you guys are my friends.

Also I figured I’d might as well pull a BRK and come full-circle…