I bought Diablo III a few weeks after the release. By the time I even began playing, everyone I knew was upwards of level 40. I went through the storyline, three times, and finally reached that endgame level 60. Only to realize I was woefully ill-prepared for Inferno difficulty. The only thing I could do was farm on Hell diff for better items to allow me to tackle Inferno.

I had literally no one to play with.

After what seemed like forever, I finally got myself enough good gear and a build to take on the Inferno monsters. A short while later, my interest got taken by other games and I dropped D3 for a while.

Loot 2.0 came up. I was ecstatic. There would no longer be any farming of the same stupid area everytime because it had a bit more loot than the others. I joined online games and went through bounties and rifts. I was happy! Then Season Mode came up.

I had just finished leveling a Crusader, and the thought of starting all over again didn't appeal to me. I skipped on the Season. Bad idea. EVERYONE went into season mode and I was left to do bounties by myself on my can-barely-handle-T2-solo Demon Hunter.

I had literally no one to play with.

"No problem!" said a few players. "We'll power-level you!" And sure enough, one hour later I was the happy owner of a shining new Level 70 Crusader. So that means I could play with the others, right? Right??

No.

I was stuck on Normal mode, farming for better loot. All over again. I couldn't solo T1, not with the powerleveling I'd been given. I depended entirely on other players to even survive Torment to begin with. Most of the games I saw in Season were nowhere less than T4. I could join in, if they were willing to carry me, but this means I didn't contribute anything to the party. I was just running behind, picking up loot and hoping I'd strike something good. But, more often than not, the games were full and the people were rushing for keys or some other specialized item. There was no place for me.

I still had literally no one to play with.

I'm doing Normal bounties and rifts, and I'm wondering just what the heck is wrong with me. I rush through bounties as quickly as I can, I do a rift now and then to get a change of pace, but it's a miracle of God if I find a legendary item that even approaches what I'm wearing at the moment. Meanwhile, I see popping up on clan chat people who have 250+ paragon levels who seem to find as many as five set items per run. Boom boom boom boom boom, five set items going up on clan chat at once, just like that. Some of them even solo T6 and destroy absolutely everything in their path just by looking at them.

I browsed around for communities/clans to play with but it seems most of them will only accept 'serious' players who are willing to farm upwards of three hours per day. I just plain don't have that kind of time on my hands.

I feel like I'm always playing catch up. That everytime I think I "got it", the "it" happens to change. I think I hit the goalpost only to find out the goalpost has moved since last time I saw it. I'm never in the crowd; I'm always the runt trailing behind and hoping to even make it out alive.

Did I get unlucky somewhere? Or did I bite off more than I could chew and all this time have been playing the wrong game without ever realizing it?