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WoW: It's over
I have this love/hate relationship with World of Warcraft, but i decided to quit yesterday, for good.
I love the massive world, the characters, the races, the dungeons, exploring and all that jazz. But at the end of the day some things got to me that i couldn't fail to ignore. The game is simply designed to keep you playing for as long as humanly possibly, of course that's how they make their money but it seems a bit wrong to me. I have just one character - a level 62 with a total playtime of 19 days, 18 hours. That's a total of 474 hours of game play, and i haven't even gotten to the maximum level yet. But the game was starting to lose it's appeal into the level 50's... endless grinding, rejigged versions of the same quests (Kill him, kill X amount of monsters, talk to him etc), the fantasy had been seemingly lost. I hate how reused the elements in the game are -The monsters are just re-skinned models used again in each area, only a few sets of buildings, the list goes on. In the end, i believe Scott is right.. bigger sets of numbers each time, it's really that simple. I think i would have enjoyed the game a lot more if it took, say, 100 hours to achieve your maximum level. So screw that crap, I'm going to buy some new DS games..!
Scrym, why don't you discuss this game in more detail on a Tuesday night? Get it out of your systems for good
Are any of you currently playing? Whats your general feelings about the game? (To players and non players)
I love the massive world, the characters, the races, the dungeons, exploring and all that jazz. But at the end of the day some things got to me that i couldn't fail to ignore. The game is simply designed to keep you playing for as long as humanly possibly, of course that's how they make their money but it seems a bit wrong to me. I have just one character - a level 62 with a total playtime of 19 days, 18 hours. That's a total of 474 hours of game play, and i haven't even gotten to the maximum level yet. But the game was starting to lose it's appeal into the level 50's... endless grinding, rejigged versions of the same quests (Kill him, kill X amount of monsters, talk to him etc), the fantasy had been seemingly lost. I hate how reused the elements in the game are -The monsters are just re-skinned models used again in each area, only a few sets of buildings, the list goes on. In the end, i believe Scott is right.. bigger sets of numbers each time, it's really that simple. I think i would have enjoyed the game a lot more if it took, say, 100 hours to achieve your maximum level. So screw that crap, I'm going to buy some new DS games..!
Scrym, why don't you discuss this game in more detail on a Tuesday night? Get it out of your systems for good
Are any of you currently playing? Whats your general feelings about the game? (To players and non players)
Comments
Otherwise your going to hear Scott and Rym go into the rant they've already used in past shows or check out the past threads on this played out topic.
1. 99% of the reason you play any video game is purely for the entertainment value and nothing else. From whence you derive said entertainment varies from person to person, but nonetheless you are playing the game to be entertained. Claiming otherwise is intellectually dishonest.
2. WoW is designed to give you tiny little rewards at calculated intervals to keep you playing as long as humanly possible, practically fostering an addiction to the game. It's no coincidence that there is a strong correlation between drug users and hardcore WoW players.
3. Despite #2, you can derive plenty of entertainment from WoW. If it's entertaining to you, play it; when it's more of a chore than fun, don't play it.
4. There are better games than WoW, so don't let it run your life. Play other good games too.
4a. In fact, don't let any game run your life. If you're playing too much, stop, go outside, and read a fucking book. Don't neglect the rest of your life for a game.
5. Play Portal. Right now. Then you can go back to playing WoW. But not until you've played Portal.
It's simple; I play when I want to, and I don't play when I don't. I really only want to play when I have RL friends who also want to play and have characters around my level. That sort of play has been the most satisfying for me. I'm unable and unwilling to do the same thing with a guild; the level of commitment is just way too much.
If you only hit 62, you certainly missed some of the game. But, more importantly, you may have missed out on what I think is the best part of the game: cooperative play. Like any online game, pick-up groups are pretty much crap, and guilds/clans are only good if you luck out and get in the right one at the right time. Barring that, your only other choice is a dedicated group of friends, with which you can do almost anything in the game (save the biggest raids). In my opinion, that's the best way to play.
Of course, the presence of such RL friends may lead you inexorably away from the game, so it's a catch-22.
If you've never tried a guild, I'd recommend you do so. If you've tried a few, and it wasn't your thing, then I totally understand leaving.
Oh, and, for the record, I've asked and challenged Rym multiple times to do a show on WoW. Despite their arguments and (barely) admitted ignorance of the issue, and their repeated assertation that they are not shit-talkers, they have yet to meet my challenge. Of course, I know how it will go--lord knows I've argued with these people before--and thus I doubt I'll change any minds, but maybe the listeners will find it entertaining.
Which is the point of all media, be it games, movies, or podcasts, is it not?
There is a lot I can say about WoW, from personal experience, but I'll try my best to summarize things. I've been playing WoW off and on for a few years. It was my first MMO, I immediately became addicted. I got into it because my previous boyfriend was playing it, and I was curious. I would play for hours upon hours a day, all weekend, pretty much whenever I had a free moment. I used WoW as an escape from the crappy relationship and living with my previous boyfriend. My health deteriorated greatly from just doing nothing but playing WoW and not watching what I ate or being physically active.
Around the beginning of last year, I took steps to correct my health, but I still played WoW. I was a guild officer, raid officer, and an extremely active member in a 150+ person guild. I've made a lot of good friends from playing the game, which there are quite a few that I still keep in contact on an almost day-to-day basis. My main character has over 110 days of playing time. Yeah, I know, it's a lot.
After becoming a hardcore raiding guild and being an officer, the game became more like work and babysitting retards. My relationship was pretty much near it's end. So in Summer '06, I took a long WoW break, left my boyfriend, lived on my own, and restarted my life again.
After taking a good break of playing WoW, I started playing again. I, unfortunately, got my new boyfriend into the game, however we still make time to do other things than play on PC's. We play casually. I'm in a guild that supports casual play as well as some raiding. I enjoy playing the game because I enjoy the people I play with. There are a lot of things I enjoy still about this game, but I swear to myself to not repeat the same mistakes I did in the past.
I can see a lot of valid points in how this game can be a waste of time, money, and effort, but I now play because it gives one more thing I get to do to spend time with my boyfriend, and I enjoy playing it. I enjoy being in a guild with some pretty awesome people and working together to accomplish a goal. There are some pretty funny pop culture references in-game, plus I've started getting into the lore, and am considering picking up some of the novels.
@TheWhaleShark
I promise to get Portal, after next paycheck! >.< I need money for Mario Galaxy first! But after listening to the podcast about it and reading the forum posts, this game sounds right up my alley.
Well, not you, exactly, you did come around. But I think it's safe to say you shouldn't play WoW (or do anything) if it negatively affects your health, and a video game makes a poor substitute for healthy real-life relationships. Of course, I've got nothing else to offer over such distance (not to mention time), but, it's an obvious statement.
What people need to remember is that: that was your story, not WoW's, not anyone else's. It's interesting because it's you, not because you represent something, or provide some sort of straw dummy to stab with pitchforks and set aflame.
Had a friend start getting into WoW after several warnings. I went to his house one day and tried it. I almost downloaded the 10 day demo to play with him, but I was able to repulse the urge.
The only problem is now I'm addicted to stinkin' Team Fortress 2! I even get bored with some of the levels and playing certain characters, but I think playing it has become more of a habit now.
Of those, Orange Box, Crysis, Quake Wars, Hellgate: London, and SimCity are all PC-only. The others are multi-platform. I have no doubt that a powerful PC would outperform all consoles (though it takes a lot of PC to beat the PS3), and would also meet my needs as a software developer.
Consoles are becoming more and more like computers. They are increasing in price, but they're gaining capabilities beyond game playing. Unfortunately, they're gaining some of the drawbacks, too: games and firmware need patching, you can run out of hard drive space, and more complex hardware means a much shorter lifespan.
To me, a lifetime computer enthusiast, that is inherent proof that the computer is superior. That sort of stupid posturing aside, the reality is that the best games are cross-platform, so you can use the platform of your choice.
My final advice on the PC is that it suits certain types of games better than consoles do, and those just happen to be my favorite games. Those are:
* RPGs (Western-style, like Baldur's Gate, not that there actually are any like that now)
* strategy games (less so simplistic Age of XYZ or Rise of ABC, and more so complex ones like Civilization and Europa Universalis)
* sim games (Maxis pretty much owns that one)
* MMORPGs (and any other game requiring a 102-key keyboard in addition to 50 icons on your HUD)
and of course...
* shooters
If you like fighting games, racing games, and platformers, consider a console. =P
If you're worried about addiction, I personally think it's easier to quit a shooter like TF2, since it's more "episodic" if you will. There's no long-term investment (barring any clan commitments or the incessant need to practice to improve one's skill), so you play until you're bored.
Remember: shoot the doctor!
But after this one week the game showed it's real face, boredom. Killing 30 wolfs for 4 teeth feels awkward and having to deal with idiots is just a pain in the ass. Always trying to find a group for an Instance or quest is boring and then having to do all on your own is boring and running around looking for somewhere to quest is boring.
I tried to like the game because in theory it should be really up my ally, talking to and meeting people from all over Europe, leveling up a character and having a world open for you right in front of your computer. But Blizzard in my opinion just fucked the whole thing up and I think the game is completely broken.
There is a bazillion realms and there is no way to play with someone on an other realm, just when the server isn't playable any more they are kind enough to switch over. Also that makes it really hard to find someone to play with. The quests are just an endless line of redoing the same stuff all over again and annoying you with dumb drop rates (I can see the damn animal has a teeth and claws, so why the fuck doesn't my character find even one of them, I mean, they just attacked him!)
Also the game is solely based around playing with other people, if it wasn't for the other players the game would finally be displayed as the money machine it is (when the servers are down because blizzard is updating or something else and you prepaid for 60 days and you didn't play for week they aren't kind enough to recognise that fact and expand the time you can play on their servers, if they did that I might still be playing, which should be at least one reason to do that additionally to just being fair). I might sound a bit demanding but I payed for that game, for the expansion set and two prepaid cards.
Btw I can't understand how you can get addicted to such a game? If you like hanging out with people chances are some of them live near you.
(one lvl 36 warrior, and five lvl 20-22 warlocks on different servers, playtime: first week all the time, then almost never)
I usually AM the doctor!! I think I do a good job as the doctor, but i may get in the way of my team mates sometimes. I'll get in front of the guy i'm healing as he's firing at enemies to ensure my butt is covered, or if an enemy is coming behind us. I'm kind of bored of being the doctor right now, but there aren't many doctors on the maps when you need them. I like being a soldier right now. I do pretty good at a soldier and demo man. I have a hard time as a spy and get bored being a sniper (I get impatient).
Things are a bit different compared to a few years ago for me. I'm still sociable. I like going out every now and then to hang out with friends, but I have become a homebody and just like relaxing at home either playing on the PC, console, or just hanging out with my boyfriend and watching a movie. I guess people change. There are times where I do wish to see some people more often, but things change, people move, get married, babies, whatever, that finding time to be able to hang out with old friends becomes challenging.
There are times where we do schedule big get-togethers like a BBQ & going to a baseball game in the summer, or having a monthly gaming or anime night. I have many fond memories of hanging out late at night with friends and doing whatever. I still make good memories for when we do hang out. But for now, I like just chillin' by myself and with my boyfriend. Less complicated when it comes to planning and less expensive. Basically, things change. :P
/life lesson ^^;;
I've actually been on TF2 servers where there are way too many engineers (4+ when we only need one or two). I'm really looking forward to some new maps, any word on when Valve plans to release them?
/hoping for another ctf_*
I too hope for new maps I've been playing TF2 since it came out in austria and already feel the need for new maps.
At that time grinding wasn't too bad, you were already at the top level so no more levelling or quests for me, the only grinding I needed to do was for resources for raids. This wasn't too hard, granted resources weren't exactly abundant, but it didn't take hours to get enough stuff if you knew where to go and what to do. WoW life wasn't to bad.
Then came the Burning crusade patch. I had already decided to cut back on WoW a lot for a girl I had met, so I wasn't going to be steaming up to level 70 any time soon.
This is when the shift in WoW came, from casual farming to maintain high end content attempts, to hard core grinding in order to progress. To access any high end content you had to farm for days, do massive long quest chains, grind mobs for reputation for days. It had become more of a job to get what was required to enjoy the game. On top of this Blizzard made the decision to lower the amount of people who could enter a high end dungeon. In the past raids were 40 man for high end content, so all guilds that wished to take part had over 40 members, this meant a variate in the people you played with, more of a community feeling while raiding, and meant that not every one's skill had to be 100%, there was tolerance for errors. But changing down to a lower amount of people per raid made things difficult and uncomfortable in many guilds, as now a guild with 60 or so members had to think about how they were going to handle the shift. Were they going to kick the "weaker" players? split into more than 1 raid team ? if so how was the split to be done so as not to make a "good" team and a "bad" team? It caused a lot of undue tension for something people were meant to be doing for fun.
Blizzard have realised some of their errors recently and have started removing some of the requirements to get into the high end content places so that more people could progress and enjoy the game without having to grind their lives away. They also plan on reducing the amount of xp needed for each level between 1 and 60, and increase the amount of xp earned from quests between 1 and 60.
But is it too little to late? They have already driven away lot of their customers, the game may have 8 million + gamers, but my experience of the game around the time of Burning Crusade release and the following months was that A LOT of the player base realised that the game was becoming to hard core to be fun any more and left. Checking my old guild forums I would say 30 to 40 % of the players who I raided with at 60 left the game never to return, and checking the unofficial realm forums I would say that number was an average across the board.
My name is clx, and I have been clean from official WoW for about a year.
During that time I lived my life, I fell in loved (which unfortunately didn't last due to her moving back to America) and experienced new and interesting things that I would have missed if I still played. I am glad I quit WoW, for now I can look back on it and see what the game was truly like, as some one mentioned before, I played it because parts were fun, but I also hated it at the same time.