Wednesday night I logged into Star Wars the Old Republic after an absence of a nearly a week.  Looking at my quest log, it looked like I needed to head to Nar Shadda and start in there.  I noticed I had a couple of mails, and I vaguely remembered mailing a note to myself the week before.  I decided to check it before I headed out, this is how my message from me to me read:

Title: Memento 


First, head to fleet and spend all ur balmorra commendations. You have an OJ weapon that should make what u have look stupid if u max it out.  Then head to nar shadda for more leveling quests.

You will need to level ur biochem into the 100s b4 level 25 (but I suspect u'll remember that).

 It actually turned out to be a big help, I had completely forgotten I was sitting on a huge ass pile of Balmorra commendations.  Thirty minutes later, I headed to Nar Shadda with vastly upgraded gear.

Now, I find myself wondering...why the hell didn't I think to do this sooner?  The two biggest hurdles I always face when returning to a MMO I haven't played for a while are (1) I have no idea what I was working on, and (2) I can't remember my basic attack combos on whatever characters I used to play.  Yet in nearly all of these games, you can send yourself mail and it will sit there waiting for you until you open it.   

For example, I now really wish the last time I quit WoW I had sent myself something like this note on my Warlock:

Memento:


(1) Normal weak foe: 1,3,4
(2) Strong foe: 1, 2, shadow nookie (bar 2), 4
(3) panic buttons: wall of shadow (right bar, lower part), shadow selfhealgasm (just above wall of shadow)
(4) Crowd control: shadow giggles (bar two, far right)

Whenever Mist of Pandaria launches (I expect play it for a month or two and quit when I hit the new level cap, like every WoW expansion) I will undoubtedly fire up my Warlock and get smacked in the face by a wall of hotbars linked to abilities that I barely remember.  If only it had occurred to me to mail myself cliff notes before I quit playing last year, the transition back could be so much smoother.

Further, I tend to dabble in a lot of FtP MMOs.  When I go back after a long absence, I generally haven't got the foggiest clue where to start.  In some cases it's so bad that it's easier for me to just abandon my old mid-level characters and start over fresh.  The last time I played Allod's Online that's exactly what happened.  I had a level 22 Summoner, and found her so confusing that I ditched her and started over on a Paladin.  If only I had sent myself a few notes before I quite the first time, I might have actually been able to see some of the higher level areas the month or so I was playing.

I now actually feel a bit dumb that it never occurred to me to use in game mail as a post-it-note.  Am I the only one that hasn't been doing this?