OK, I have a bit of a situation I'd like to discuss to see if I can get some enlightenment about it. Granted, asking for help on the internet is like asking Advice Dog for advice, but I digress...

I'm a fairly hardcore MMO player, and I have enjoyed WoW for several years. Typically, I've always played on my own with the intent of meeting other people online to play and enjoy the game. For the most part, this worked...for about the first half of my WoW experience. But near the end of Burning Crusade and the beginning of WotLK, I'm not sure what happened, but it seems every time I tried to find a group of people, it always ended badly.

This goes from raid leaders trying to enforce that WoW was more important than real life to guild leaders who were simply selfish and failed to go to raids they organized in lieu of higher level ones in a pug. Heck, it even happened to the point where I applied to a raiding guild, seemed to be a good fit, and before I could even get an invite, the guild disbanded due to internal strife. I took this as a sign meaning that perhaps it wasn't best to find a raiding guild...but nearly every other guild I've joined since has never been satisfying. I've never been able to forge bonds like I did pre-Wrath. Whether or not this is a consequence of WotLK can be up to debate, but that's not the issue here.

I've been playing and pugging through nearly all of 3.2 and 3.3, since I never really found a guild looking for rogues that I felt comfortable applying. Never really bothered me, so I just pugged and waited around for opening spots in Dalaron or otherwise. Just from pugging alone, I was able to get Trial of the Crusader 10 and 25 man, Secrets of Ulduar 25 man, and the first four bosses of ICC in both 10 and 25 man along with Festergut in 10 man.

So, I'm sitting on top of a roughly 5.5k GS (if that means anything to anyone, seems that's a polarizing fact to a lot of people...), and fairly comfortable with simply playing the game on my own time, finding random new people to play with, having a bit of smug satisfaction from topping DPS meters (/stroke), and so forth.

But my current situation has made it so that I cannot do this anymore without pissing someone off that I know in real life.

You see, as I was feeling a bit lonely from not being able to find a stable group of friends online (QQ, cry moar emo kid), good friends I've known for several years that I know outside of WoW (what a shock...) came back to the game. They geared up, hit 80, and asked me to join up on their server. And being the idiot I was, I accepted.

Now, why do I say that I'm an idiot? Because the main friend of mine who wanted me to come on his server now wants to start a serious business raiding guild.

I'm not talking about "lulz, we raid" and faff about while drinking over vent while downing a boss (this style of raiding I'm familiar with, and particularly enjoy most of the time...assuming people are actually trying still, since I'm probably the only sober one in vent, heh). No, I'm talking about the kind that wants to be recognized on the server for being awesome for playing a game that everyone else plays. Wow, big deal.

I kid, really. I do appreciate the big name raid guilds as they (arguably) challenge themselves by trying to get the first hard mode kill or making the first legendary weapon of a server. But...just because I appreciate it doesn't mean I actually want to be a part of it.

I'm a college student with a part time job that requires me to work on weeknights, making my times to raid typically haphazard at best. In addition, the last thing I want to do after being at school for nine hours (my schedule is fail) is jump into an instance with a focused mindset for progression while staying up for an additional four hours until one-two AM when I have to wake up at eight. At that point, I could care less about getting a realm first; I'd be more concerned about getting sleep or playing a fun, more entertaining thing or anything that doesn't require my absolute focus.

So, here I am. On a message board dedicated to WoW. Asking for help over a relationship issue with someone I quite frankly don't want to piss off for saying I'm quitting WoW, since said friend is border-line passive-aggressive. ...this totally isn't a recipe for disaster, right?

Now before you say "Well, if he gets angry with you for not wanting to do it, then he isn't your friend, right?", let me be perfectly clear: I know that. I like the guy, but I know pretty much no matter how I say it, it's going to probably end in the same fashion. The guy has a hard head determinism that rivals that of a high-action Japanese animé protagonist, so I can't dissuade him from doing what he wants to do like this.

Which brings me to why I'm here: have any of you had issues similar to this? If so, what can you suggest I can do let it off as gracefully as possible that I'm quitting WoW?