Same thing goes for alot in life. Throughout the years as i've played wow i've had people (RL friends and family) go 'oh you play, you have to go to X server to play with me'. Well, i think it did help with burnout, but I never really bonded with a community, i was always too busy 'playing' with my friends. More like leveling alone until they come along once in a blue moon.

So yeah i do kinda regret that. I also regret not balancing more in the early days (my guild insisted I raid and insisted that we raid until 3am. Wow has incredibly strong social pressure. Every single guild in the world that is serious at all about raiding has raid schedules. I'm a raid lead (or was), i know. It's imperiive to block out specific repeating times if you ever hope to form a raid team. But that meant that i could not please other people at the same time, mostly my wife, who would get insanely jealous that i would hang out with people (including women) who i never met and was having a good time.

Nowadays I have the same issue, but i basically told everyone that i have little interest and time for playing wow. I don't do end game. I'll play 'with' my close friend and wife once in a while (by which i mean be on at the same time). It's the least stressful thing we can do together (playing toons together is just too stressful for us). And now i am playing Rift and Dragon age and other games. It's quite liberating to not have so many people depend on me for so long. There is still some pressure but fun is fun and work is work, don't mix the two. If fun is feeling like work, you should stop having fun and start doing work. (If its going to be a burden for you, you might as well make it into a profession, or stop doing it).

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