Grinding Alone vs Growing Together

I have been heavily into card games lately.

Been grinding Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond and worked my way up to A rank and Diamond group. Still not tournament ready (ranked is already humbling enough 💀), but I’m improving.

Saw a lot of Grand Archive floating around too, so I hit the local shop and grabbed some physical copies. Mostly collecting for now, but finding people to actually play with would be dope. Unfortunately GA and Shadowverse don’t seem nearly as popular in the States compared to MTG, Lorcana, Pokémon, etc.

But here’s something I’ve realized after years of gaming:

Joining a guild or active community might be one of the biggest enjoyment multipliers in any game.

When I played BDO, half the fun wasn’t even the grind — it was hours in Discord calls, dueling, vibing, learning from cracked PvP players and lifeskillers.

I’m starting to feel that again with Shadowverse and Grand Archive. Since joining the main Discords and getting into a guild, I’ve been enjoying the game way more. In-house tournaments, 1v1s, feedback, discussion — it just hits different.

Playing solo? I burn out way faster.

When you can’t share cool builds, misplays, tech ideas, or hype pulls, it just feels quieter.

And when I move to Japan soon, I’m definitely going to try to get into local groups — digital and physical — even if I have to survive with zero Japanese at first.

Games are better when you’re not alone.

Also my RNG is cooked so I’ll just admire everyone else’s cute cards from a distance.