@semiliterati

2 years ago

I'm bipolar, have PTSD, and combined, the two manifest some interesting super powers, like ultra-real night terrors for instance. In 2017, at the start of a three day weekend, I went from doing generally bad, to nearly unmanageable. Dealing with people wasn't really an option, and the idea of sleeping was out of the question, so I logged in to WoW. To occupy my mind, I set about pet farming. I didn't talk to anyone. No PvP. I just repeated a pattern over and over again until I'd get a drop, and move on to a different pet. I don't remember which one I got stuck on, but after 36 hours, nothing dropped. I was coming up on 50 hours of non-stop playing, and finally gave in to sleep, so I could function when I went back to work. After work, I discovered I was banned. They wouldn't tell me why, but I assumed they thought I had set up a bot. I poured out my conditions, but the responses only became more hostile. If you don't have either of my problems, it's not easy to understand what happens when they go rogue. It's pretty easy to write someone like me off, and just say, "Get a life, loser", but getting a life has nothing to do with it. Showing up in that life consistently would be like maintaining the same disposition immediately before, and after, you break a bone. If you were the only one who just broke a bone, it's kind of hard for everyone to relate to the sudden change in energy your bringing to the group. It's also kind of patronizing if they try. Being alone often feels better than anything else. WoW was a safety net. When I'm in a good place, I could go raid, tear around battle fields, manipulate the AH, or just chat with the guild. When I'm not good, I could log in, and distract myself, which occasionally means keeping myself from discovering what might be waiting for me if I fall asleep. I'm not really a gamer's gamer, and I haven't found any other games that could do for me, what WoW did. Neither condition is curable, and I don't respond to the known medications the way I'm supposed to. I was paying to play, banning me for playing, without considering why someone like me might occasionally stay logged in for really long stints, was pretty fucking cruel of Blizzard in my humble opinion.

44 |