Breakfast Topic: Dodging guilt

I'm hardly a PvP fanatic. Occasionally I'll run into a battleground when I have extra time on my hands, usually after getting my two frost emblems for the day and wrapping up some daily quests. But often, I'll duck into a battleground and realize that there is no way we'll win; commonly, this is either Eye of the Storm or Isle of Conquest. There's no cooperation, one-quarter of the Alliance is doing just enough to avoid an AFK report, and the Horde seems to run with a Navy SEALS level of coordination. It would be perfectly justifiable to drop out and go do a few quick daily quests while I wait for the deserter debuff to go away.

My mouse hovers over the "leave battleground" button.

I want to click it.

I don't.

There's something about the Deserter debuff that just gets under my skin. I can't help but picture someone clicking my 'toon and seeing "Deserter" attached to my name. They think, "Well, now, that there's a coward!" Inside, I know that it's just as reasonable as dropping from a bad dungeon PUG (even more so, if I drop from a turtled AV). But then I think, "I'd be a deserter." I'd end up spending the next 15 minutes wandering around Netherstorm or Silithus, keeping clear of other players, contemplating rolling a warlock and other self-hating activities. So I stay and rack up another "L" on my personal record.

But it brings up the question: what do you put yourself through to avoid guilt in World of WarCraft?

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