So I’ve been playing a good bit of Guild Wars lately. My new character has about 24 hours under their belt and is level 60-ish. For most of that time I’ve been doing what I normally do: treating a MP game as if it were single player, albeit with more interesting NPC AI. (In other words, I treat other players as NPCs basically.)

I have pretty severe social anxiety which gets worse and worse the older I get. I’ve worked from home for 12 or 13 years now and since I work full time and my partner doesn’t, she is who runs the errands and goes shopping and stuff. I can go weeks without leaving the apartment complex and days without talking to anyone other than her and people at work. And the thing is, I’m pretty happy like this. Most people tend to bother me (or at least that’s what I tell myself) so I’m pretty happy being left alone, as a general rule.

I actually enjoy playing games with others as long as I don’t have to talk. That’s part of why I stuck with Fallout 76 so long. LOTS of public events but hardly anyone uses voice chat and there is no text chat. So virtually all communication is done via emotes.

So anyway Guild Wars 2, being a PC game, of course has text chat though maybe because I’m in the beginner areas, I don’t really see it used much. Once in a while someone shouts out some coded message about a train that I assume is telling everyone to come join a group to steamroll world bosses and such, but I don’t understand the lingo and anyway I’ve been too focused on the story for now to pay much attention.

Thursday night I found myself waiting for a mob to spawn with another character and we started to chat a bit while we waited. This was a MUCH higher level character and when they learned I was newly returned to Guild Wars 2 they started showing me their mounts and stuff, then asked me if I’d done any of the puzzles. While I’ve heard of the puzzles I didn’t know much about them and said as much. This person then took me under their wing and for the next hour, at least, they showed me a couple of puzzles, gave me a ton of tips on how movement and jumping works in GW2, rezzed me when I fell and teleported me along when I started getting frustrated. It was a lovely time and at some point they followed me and said they’d say “Hi” the next time they saw me. I followed them back, making us “Friends.”

I was so happy when I logged off. I’d actually had a conversation with someone I didn’t know, and had really enjoyed it.

Friday was the first day in a week I didn’t log into Guild Wars 2. Just didn’t feel like it, I told myself. But I knew the truth. I was really anxious that my new ‘friend’ would be online and would say “Hi” and possibly even want to show me more puzzles. Or just to talk, who knows? The possibility just caused my anxiety to go through the roof. As much as I’d enjoyed the hour I spent with them, I was anxious to get on with the story. But I also didn’t want to say “No thanks” to someone offering to teach me things. It seemed rude. So my solution was “Just don’t log in.”

Ridiculous, right? First of all I’m sure this person has much better things to do than drop everything and teach me how to jump around in the game. Second, I’m sure anyone would understand if I said “Thank you so much, but I’d really like to focus on the story tonight.” I feel like I should be more worried about “Will this person actually ever say hello” rather than “Oh, too much human contact… do not want.”

And this isn’t a one-time thing for me. Often when I get excited about an online game I decide “I need to find a guild to join.” Once I do, I stop playing because I don’t want to have to say “Hello” or “Goodbye” or in general talk to anyone. Heck I do the same thing on consoles, often toggling my account to show as offline so no one asks me to do anything. Even though on the rare instances where I DO join someone else in a game, I generally have a great time.

Anyway, back to the current situation and Guild Wars 2…

Eventually, quite late, I did finally log in and this person wasn’t even online, so how I would’ve handled it remains a mystery. But I’m really disappointed with myself for taking such a positive interaction and managing to turn it into a source of stress and worry. Not really sure how to “fix” this but my gut says “Just get out there and force yourself to talk to people more.” would be a good place to start. When I was younger I was VERY social and was out at clubs and bars all the time. Knew folk every where I went. Spent a few years as a bartender, spending hours chatting with the regulars while serving drinks. Then I was a magazine writer who was constantly going places and interviewing people, or spending all day on the phone chatting. And I LOVED that job.

So I know this isn’t, y’know, genetic. This is learned behavior. Or un-learned behavior, as the case may be. Maybe by kind of putting this out on the Internet it’ll give me an incentive to put my money where my mouth is and actually force myself to interact with people.