Guild Wars: An Accurate Assessment of My Skills

Alright, so I'm at a crisis point. A moment of decision. I've been walking down one path for a while and I've come to a crossroads where I can head down one road or another. I could be speaking about a lot of things, but I'm talking about playing Guild Wars.

Simply put, I've been spending way too much time with the game and ignoring other things. So, my question is whether or not it's worth it.

To me, it would be if, of course, I was actually getting out as much as I'm putting into it. Now, what I'm sinking into the game is time and what I'd hope to draw from it is enjoyment. Not "fun" per se because there are definitely times when I won't be happy with things. But to have moments of thrilling victory you have to have the possibility of defeat - a game where I could win all the time wouldn't be much of a challenge and I'd never have any fun with that. So I'll laugh and I'll cry but if the time I spend on the game is returned as a sense of purpose then I'll have invested my time wisely.

Because I play these kind of games to get better. Whether that's earning more experience or fat loot or figuring out a new trick or whatever, I like to grow and develop while having that constant feeling of accomplishment. A new level, a new win in a match, a new build, something, anything new, something different, it's all a rush. A high, if you will, that compels me to keep going through the low valleys.

So, I've been dancing around this but there it is: To continue to play this game I have to feel like I'm getting better. More than that I have to feel like getting better is possible. In the past I've stopped playing - for a time - when I've run out of things to do. Either there were no more missions to run or no more skills to acquire or I'd hit the peak of my development somehow. PvE, PvP, whatever it is, I need something to aspire to. And if I can't reach it soon enough the frustration builds and I'm bouncing off to something else. I need mountains to climb, then, but I need hills, too, where I can look around and feel I'm getting somewhere.

Looking around, am I getting somewhere?

Well, yes. I am. I think, anyway. I'm no where near where I'd like to be. But where I'd like to be is sitting behind a monitor at the next world championships blinking at the screen in disbelief at the message telling me I've won. The crowd going crazy, my teammates starting to congratulate each other, people racing to their computers to type up reports about the brilliant match they've just seen. And me just taking a moment to consider the journey to that point. And appreciate it all. Oh, and I'd like an account full of characters with every item they'd ever need with a bank account hitting the gold cap. I'd like to think I'd be happy then. At the very least, I'd feel like I was ready for the next expansion to come out.

Oh, right, and I'd like a pony, too.

In other words, never going to happen. Because, simply put, I'm not that good or that dedicated. Even if I could spare the time to honing my skills to the razor's edge, the sad fact is they're not enough. Not to be the very best - which is what I'd be striving for because, after all, why settle for anything less? And the frustration I'd feel and the apathy I'd cultivate would spring from that gap between my abilities and my ambitions. I'd hit a wall at some point or another. And grow resentful about those who've managed to breeze past me. Because, damn them, they'd be better. Some how. Some way.

Because as much as I'd like to convince myself otherwise, I'm just not cut out to be a top 10 player. It takes more time, more effort, more talent, and even more money than I'm willing to put into things in order to get there. I'm too prone to flaking out. Or screwing things up whether it's on accident or purpose. And I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing and none of the confidence it would take to change that. Because to get to the absolutely highest level of competition I'd have to change who I am and I'm just not ready to do so. I might not like everything about myself but I do like some things. And those are things that I'd have to give up to play the game hours on end in order to compete. If I even have the raw ability it takes to do so. Which, if you ask me, I don't think I do.

I am, however, not completely awful. Probably not as good as I think I am. But not as bad as I'm afraid to be when my excuses of rust and inexperience are taken away. If I really worked at it, I think I could be a top 100 player. That's because it's a long way from the top 10 to the top 100. It's all pareto, again, and the inverse square law means while it's might seem like a struggle to climb out of the muck of the average it's relatively easy compared to climbing the cliff that takes you to the top. And, let's not kid ourselves, it is a climb and a big one. And since I'm not as quick or as smart as other people the way I'd get there would be through hard work. Learning, watching, studying what other people do so intuitively and figuring out how to do it myself. Burn time and effort playing on my strengths and using them to get better.

I could do it. But, again, I'm not sure I can stand putting that kind of effort into it all. Not for long anyway.

At the moment, though, I've reached the point where I'm fairly certain I really could get where I'm headed. If I had the time, of course, and I wasn't so exhausted. I was horrid when I started playing again but I've managed to claw myself back to the point where I'm not out of place in GvG or Tombs or whatever else. I've passed the easy part of my personal learning curve, in other words. And the only thing I'm lacking now is a lot of experience to internalize the nuances. That takes a lot of games under my belt, though. And not giving up in frustration at the slow and steady flow of things and the lack of noticeable progress. Because once my enthusiasm flags, then it's all over. Again.

So, I'm exactly where I thought I'd be. I think in order to spare myself another epic flameout I need to very carefully limit just how much time I'm going to spend playing in the coming days and weeks. No more than a couple hours a day. My impulse, after all, is to play as much as I can and get all those games out of the way as quickly as possible. But that's just going to leave me exhausted as the law of diminishing returns kicks in. So the plan is to keep myself interested by forcing myself to turn the program off and walk away from time to time. By the end of the month I should be ready to start looking around for a guild or a team to play with regularly. Until then I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing - playing around and refamiliarizing with the game. Maybe just a little bit less, though, by setting smaller goals to reach.