a relaxed state of high alertness?

I realised just how much I miss proper competitive gaming.

The thrill of knowing how good you are, as your eyes quickly scan the barrage of images and information scrolling across the screen, the Vent chatter coming thick and fast though your headset. The thrill of wanting to dominate and humiliate the opponent. The thrill of knowing there is a living breathing thinking mind behind the actions of your enemy, that can be predicted and manipulated.

Times like this my mind crosses a boundary. Hypersensitivity. Being balanced on a knife's edge. A relaxed state of high alertness. If you're too relaxed your response times drop. If you're too tense, your response times also drop - and you might react to false stimuli that you're not supposed to. Hence the slight shakes and twitches in my hands - it's like a tightly wound spring ready to pounce, yet I cannot afford to hold it together with tension or I risk holding it back when I need the quick response.

World of Warcraft is too slow paced for me. Never felt the need to ramp up my reaction and mental processing times, not even once. You only need to do so when facing human opponents, when split second reaction time matters : when you have to change tactics multiple times in a single fight, when you get the "oh shit" feeling of finding out the enemy team already knows how to counter your strategy.

I am very seriously considering quitting. >_<