What do you do when you're away from WoW?

Right now, thanks to an ongoing saga of computer failure, I'm currently on an enforced hiatus from World of Warcraft. Readers, this is not how I want things to be! I've barely touched patch 5.4, I'm missing Hallow's End and all its glorious experience boosts for my alts, and BlizzCon is just a couple of weeks away. The timing for mass electronic failure just could not have been worse.

Over the years that I've played WoW, my personal interest in the game has waxed and waned. I think this is probably pretty normal. We all go through phases where we want to play more than at other times. Maybe a person's interest is tied to the release of new content, or maybe it's tied to guild events, or maybe something else entirely. So it's not as if now is the first time I've been away from WoW for a while. What's unusual is that normally I'm away because I want to be, not because I've been forced to by circumstances beyond my control.

So, because I'm stuck not playing WoW when I wish I could be playing WoW, I'm immersing myself in the game in other ways. These include things like researching transmog gear, meticulously planning out new alts (including names, backstories, and leveling routes), wistfully reading my friends' accounts of guild raiding progress, and some text-based RP with friends. Thanks to these efforts, I'm managing just fine. I just hope my new monitor gets here quickly.

Have you ever been forced into an undesired WoW break thanks to forces beyond your control? What did you do, if anything, to keep yourself engaged with the game? Or did you take it as a sign and go dark for a while? Tell us all about it!