Things that make me Rage Quit

Confession time! I have felt anger to the point of quickly disconnecting or wishing I could hurl my keyboard right out the window with my mouse trailing after it. When my rage meter reaches about 98% I am already wishing bloody pixel murder on bosses, or muttering a chain of curses a sailor would shy away from saying in raid chat. All of that QQ drama due to either a bugged questline, losing epic loot, or because of an inept guild member. Come to think of it the potential list of irks can go on and on forever.

Personally, rage quitting doesn't necessarily mean never playing the game again. I have up and left MMOs for months only to come back to play again for another year. What it means to me is to actually get to the point of maddening frustration that the game isn't a game anymore but a serious chore. Recently, I have been doing small doses of rage quits that last from an hour to two days. I suppose it depends on what it is exactly that makes me so frustrated that determines how long I stay away from the game.

My latest rage quits have been on the following:

Bad Pick up groups: Nothing ticks me off more than grouping up with douchebags from Hell. Second on that train of fail are players that expect to be carried through an instance/raid when they do not put in any effort into their character at all. The 'go, go, go' types also make my blood pressure boil. Rawr!

Example: Currently in WoW there is an elemental invasion. If you help save a major city, a portal will open that takes you to battle new bosses. These bosses are on the same level as Icecrown Citadel heroic bosses with a bit of a 'oomph' and CC mechanics thrown into the fray. Some are easy and others are pretty nasty if not done properly. Unfortunately, I got a boss that had to be done proper and I also got a bad group of DPS..

Not only did they stand in bad stuff but the DPS couldn't do more than 500 dps on the boss. If you look at the screencap they thought I the healer, was the one tanking, and the tank, was the healer. When they stood in the killing goo on the ground that rapidly ripped off health I was blamed for intentionally letting them die(because of course I sign up to heal and not want to heal). The tank got blamed for not holding aggro proper(which he did and performed a marvelous job) and pulling too early. Add in a slew of abuse tossed our way(I cut that part out of the screencap because it's pretty NSFW) which led to a volatile situation that made me rage quit and leave the game for two days.

Inept Guild Members: I seem to have a love/hate relationship with my current Alliance guild. If you've read my past entries on g-drama you know that I have experienced a wide array of emotions with these guys. Sometimes I love them to bits and other times I want to smack their heads with a virtual newspaper. I have rage quit on them so many times I believe the term 'princess drama queen' has been applied to me. I don't mind it because it's true. I'm not afraid to let them know my displeasure when things go down the gutter. When a guildie makes a mistake for the sixth time in a row after being told how to do something proper? I will snap. If a guildie in ICC 25 man gear is outdsped by a healer in her ilevel 245 healing gear on a heroic raid boss? I will inwardly scream. Sure people make mistakes and no one is perfect. I want everyone to have fun! Yet there is no denying that constant wiping due to obvious mistakes that could be avoided is no fun at all.

Example: Lich King fight! We should have him down by now. Seriously, we should have him down but some guildies level of stupid is increasing. The phase with the valks and defile kick our arses every time. Our last attempt went far worse than normal. Phase one, we wiped due to people not moving out of the group to get the disease cleansed. They just stood still and let it jump to another person which jumped to another and then it instantly killed the third person on contact. Phase two, we lost people due to valks not being immediately slowed and dpsed down.  Our hunter also had aspect of the pack on and got us all dizzy. This made the MT not be able to pick up LK fast enough during the transition to phase two which led LK to one-hit a good portion of the raid. Same hunter also decided to feign death(the idiot level is high with this one) on a defile in the hopes it would simply disappear. Also, due to the many wipes our OT decided to rage quit in the middle of the raid. This then prompted another person to follow in his steps and then I decided to just call it quits for the weekend.

So is there an alternate solution to rage quitting? I'm sure there is but I actually recommend taking a long step back from the game regardless. When a person is calm then the decision making can commence. Do you stay? Do you continue banging your head with certain people? Is it worth the frustration? Should you look elsewhere for pixel entertainment? At least when a person is taking a break from a game then there is no chance to regret any rash decisions made on the threshold of anger. You'll feel that you had a good amount of time to make the right choice.

As for me? In the end, I honestly don't feel bad about leaving a game. I'll miss my friends and lament a bit about how much time I spent on it but that'll be all. If a game frustrates me to the point of not ever wanting to login again then I can avoid excess drama and take a chance to relax. At least, until I get over that intial frustration or find another MMO to play. In which case, I may very well repeat that same vicious cycle of rage quitting. Though I'm still sticking to World of Warcraft who knows if that next rage quit won't send me permanently packing to LotR...then again I just discovered the LotR F2P isn't all free. (twitches)RAWR!

Thanks for reading!