(Average+) Recovery of an MMO Junkie

Series in one sentence:  
I immediately become lesbian for some girl, just based on how their in-game avatar looks, but then I become straight for multiple men who say something nice to me in a grocery store.

Series in more sentences:
30 year old Moriko quits her stressful job to return to a nostalgic life of playing online RPGs, and is quick to feel charmed by the helpful stranger leading her through her new game of choice. But she's playing a male character and is pretending to be a university student, while her new friend is a female character who appears a bit too enamoured by her and the way she plays along in their digital romance.

When her personal life starts to demand more from her, Moriko discovers her new friend is an old friend from long ago, and is practically living around the corner.
 

It took me a few episodes to take the story and characters seriously, as the woman's reaction to everything that happens inside the game is extremely exaggerated. As someone who likes to play RPGs, I'm never sure if I'm supposed to relate to that kind of cartoony nonsense.
Alot of these online gaming animes have their characters act this way, I noticed.

I didn't understand the point of Moriko getting a boner over a pink, girly in-game character, but the outdoors scenes are what made me stay for the rest of the series. Moriko was pretty enjoyable when interacting with real life people. This is one of the more "realistic" RPG animes I've seen so far.
The romance plot was decently paced, though I will say that the ending left me unfulfilled. I always find it a bummer when characters go through so much and nobody hugs or kisses at the end of it. The series was very basic and tame in that sense.

Though my biggest complaint is that, despite the show being short and having a good focus in general, time was wasted on unnecessary characters and story lines. For example, the jokey guy Moriko dated for half a second, as for the episode where he joined the game, were events that the story could've done without. The latter bit was funny, but short, and didn't progress the story all that much.
The grocery guy who learned about Moriko's username also added less than expected.

I also don't understand why Moriko is the way she is. She acts like an abused dog, but nowhere in the anime was it made clear that people have been mean to her in the past. There was no reason given for her anti-social behaviour.
She had an overwhelming job, but she was good at it, and that's pretty much it.
It seems to me that the only reason she thinks she's worthless is because she likes to play video games all day and night and doesn't comb her hair, which she personally deems a problem, but when she goes outside, people aren't even unkind to her. It's revealed that men used to think she was pretty when she still showed herself.

What motivated her to give up on real people and real life, exactly?

There are only a few episodes. It's a quick watch with many satisfying moments, but if you don't like shows that feel like the bare bones of something greater, you might as well not check it out.