Because sometimes we need reminding

Matthew over at WoW Insider made a good point, that many times it isn't the game that needs adjusting its our attitude.

I have a bad habit of logging on the game for no other reason than habit. Awesome news for Blizzard's profit margin. Horrible news for just about everything else.

By making a concerted effort not to try to do it all in the game, I feel like I'm playing a little less. But that is still most likely tons more than the average player. Average including players who probably wouldn't blog about WoW!

Looking back on my list of ways to avoid time sinks, let's see how I've done:

1) Play a needed class. As mentioned earlier I'm reaching a level where my tank isn't that desirable...for the instances I want to do..with the people I want to do it with. Perhaps I need to set my sights lower. The result is that I play less, but not in the way I wanted.

2) Focus on one role. To my chagrin, I've found druids need to obtain decent cat gear, even if they want to be tanks. While it would benefit me to do so, I don't plan on playing more than I have to in order to get dps gear. If it falls in the instances I'm tanking I'll just consider myself lucky.

3) Do not raid. I went back on this one. I am raiding Karazhan, but it is with a group of people who don't seem to care if you don't show up from one week to the next. This means you risk not getting to raid sometimes, but it also means if I don't feel up to raiding, I'm not going to get that subliminal pressure.

4) Do not pick up a crafting profession. I've stuck to this one. But I've really struggled with it. Some of the nicer items can be crafted. Then I think there are many items just as nice that don't require me to have a profession and since I'm not a hardcore raider do I really need 2 more points of this stat or that one????

5) Get loot through crafting, reputation and pvp. This has worked out very well for me. I've heard druid tanks have it easier than other tanks. So I'm marking this one in the fortunate column.

6) PvP marginally. I've found it easy to stick to this one. It doesn't help alliance's tendency toward losing streaks helps.

7) Grind reputations that only give rewards I can't easily get anywhere else. I did end up grinding for a mount (see #8), but the grind was very easy compared to Pre-BC grinds. I still have a few reps that I want to hit exalted with, but I'm in no hurry. SSO turned out to be extremely easy. So I'm free to do some older ones.

8) Give up on fun frivolities I'm not sure why I listed this one in the beginning, what is this game but a fun frivolity? I ended up getting a Talbuk and it was pretty painless. I did it with a friend so actually it was fun.

That's what it is all about.