I bought Rift and I have a sub for that game, but I also kept my sub to WoW. I still havent maxed my gear out yet, only 343 item level. So that keeps me going back. I am a level 85 Orc Hunter.
My Sons did that test thing for a few months. Bought it for 20.00. They are having a blast. They made some 85 alliance rogues, maxed all their gear, then they sneak in Orgimmar and gank. I watched them and it was funny as hell. No guards around.
I tried it when it was released and periodically over the years friends have convinced me to try it again. I think in total I have tried it 4 times, not since cataclysm though. Never once have I played it for more then a week, and it always seemed overly easy, linear, and boring. Plus I hate the cartoony look of it, it just irks me even thoughI played and loved the Warcraft series for years prior.
The first time I played it I had no idea what I was doing but I was able to solo more then halfway to max in matter of 3 days while working a full time job all by myself without ever talking to anyone and every other time it just go easier. That shouldn't be possible in an MMO, and it sickens me everytime I play a new game that implements a lot of the mechanics and feel that WoW has. Back in the day new MMO experiences were just that new, not one felt like any other I had played, now devs copy tons of things WoW does and are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Meaning players complain when new games are too similiar to WoW and then conversely complain when they don't have features that they deam necessary since it was in WoW and if it's not in the new game they'd be lost.
Too easy now.. got into it again a couple of weeks ago, started a new character and found it way too easy to level. Seems the whole focus now is get to max level as fast as possible so you can do endgame with everyone else. Enjoying the new look to a lot of the old zones, but other than that it is the same old game just a lot easier.
Been there since launch and still playing today, but to be fair i really have no major 'feelings' about it one way or the other, it is a form of entertainment that i pay for every month and play as and when i feel like it.
I have opinions on what the devs do, some positive, some negative. Generally i still enjoy the game as it stands now and have no starry eyed views about past versions, because they are in the past. I guess when i get to the point where i don't enjoy playing anymore i will just unsub and move on to something else.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Every once in a while I jump back in WoW for about a month. The graphics are just too dated and another game is out there that took the WoW game, gave it a graphics update, and brought it up to date: Rift.
Sorry Blizzard, but you will no longer milk $$$ from people with dated graphics and gameplay. Looking forward to your next MMORPG.
Milking people is right! It is no longer a game but a giant commerical to get people to buy more wow crap.
Every once in a while I jump back in WoW for about a month. The graphics are just too dated and another game is out there that took the WoW game, gave it a graphics update, and brought it up to date: Rift.
Sorry Blizzard, but you will no longer milk $$$ from people with dated graphics and gameplay. Looking forward to your next MMORPG.
Milking people is right! It is no longer a game but a giant commerical to get people to buy more wow crap.
...and as with any commercial it is up to you as a consumer whether you buy into the product or not. It is a strange phenomenon about wow that so many people will take the time out to drop into forums, BB's etc and moan about them advertising, selling items in their shop and generally making money! If you don't like what it is or what you think it represents then don't buy into it and don't play it, is it any more difficult than that.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Vanilla WoW was something special, it will be missed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5QFvMuO-8Q Every once in a while I jump back in WoW for about a month. The graphics are just too dated and another game is out there that took the WoW game, gave it a graphics update, and brought it up to date: Rift. Sorry Blizzard, but you will no longer milk $$$ from people with dated graphics and gameplay. Looking forward to your next MMORPG.
Milking people is right! It is no longer a game but a giant commerical to get people to buy more wow crap.
...and as with any commercial it is up to you as a consumer whether you buy into the product or not. It is a strange phenomenon about wow that so many people will take the time out to drop into forums, BB's etc and moan about them advertising, selling items in their shop and generally making money! If you don't like what it is or what you think it represents then don't buy into it and don't play it, is it any more difficult than that.
While I do not disagree with what you are saying, my point is simply I am not impressed with the way Wow has turned to nickel and dime it's player base. If I am already paying a subscription fee which is supposed to go for the development of the game then, why should I pay again for all of the bells and whistles that I already paid for? If I am paying for a subscription, I do not want to see commercials and advertisement because I already paid for the privileged of playing the game. In other words, I am not going to give Blizzard money to see their commercials.
This was partially the reason why I stopped going to the movies. Why should I pay to see a film if I have to sit through commercials in which I could have stayed home and watched TV for free. Then too, if people do not take the time to moan as you put it, then how would blizzard know what upsets people? The other way is to vote with our dollars, by as you suggested and many have already done and that is by leaving the game.
I loved it back during vanilla. Liked it substantially less after BC. I forced myself to finish WotLK. I didn't even bother buying Cata.
Reasons:
The average age of the population seemed to keep decreasing.
The content was made less grindy (good) at the expense of challenge (bad).
The game seems incapable of giving me goals that don't involve gear.
Flying mounts destroyed the sense of scale in the world and the thrill of exploration.
While making dungeons faster was nice, they went too far with it. They essentially reduced dungeons to mini-games.
Dungeon Finder needs to die in a fire, be resurrected, then thrown in a black hole and divided by zero so that hopefully developers in the future who even consider implementing something like it immediately suffer a brain implosion.
I used to really enjoy WoW. I don't any longer, and we're not talking burnout here. When WoW transitioned to emphasis on phased questing, endless endgame raids/heroics, and gear snobs they killed it for me. It's just not the same game now.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
I voted Burnt Out From It. I can still play from time to time, but I don't really think it's worth the money. I've been burnt out from it since TBC ended. I loved TBC, it was just the greatest thing for me. Wrath sounded so cool and epic, the whole Arthas storyline is my favourite, and Arthas is my favourite villain, but Blizz screwed Wrath up in every possible way, I was very disappointed. By the time Cata hit, I really had nothing left for WoW. Got a single char to 85, but didn't really bother with the grind wheel again.
People are always talking about how great Vanilla was, while it's quite obvious that a big portion of what you remember are just the good memories. There was quite a few things with Vanilla that was horrible to say the least, so it wasn't always green trees and birds chirping.
I agree though, I enjoyed Vanilla a lot. I have tons of memories from Vanilla, tons and tons. Though I'm not sure I'd like to go back, I'd prefer it to just be what it currently is - a good memory.
One thing I do miss though is TBC, in my opinion(keyword), the best expansion WoW has ever seen.
I played Cata, I enjoyed it, though it wasn't much more than that. It kept me interested for about 1-2 months before I left. I can say that I already miss the release day, I had such an amazing experience in Vashj'ir. Good god, the best zone any MMO as ever seen to date. Period. (Blizzard, I'll be damned if you don't give us another underwater-themed zone come next exp) I'm too burned out on WoW, it's classes, everything basically. So PvE didn't interest me at all. The last few weeks I spent with my friends PvPing in BGs, I had quite fun trying out my old(first) Vanilla class again, but it wasn't enough to keep me playing.
After, I went back to my regular (s)trolling the forums for upcoming MMO's and other interesting titles.
I quit in February after playing since 2004. I just couldn't do it anymore.
It's a great game and I can look back on it fondly. My reasons for leaving are a combination of not liking new changes/ I simply don't have time for it anymore/ I want to try new games.
I personally think it started to die when they added battle grounds, who else loved PVP world fights more than scripted set pvp battles.
For me , those Tarren Mill fights were the highlight of the game, for the simple reason they were random, you would be sitting in your city and then a call would go out, "Guys tons of horde slaying at taren" and then loads of alliance would flood over and the next 2 3 sometimes 5 or 6 hours of gameplay would be this running pitch battle between these two close towns.
The reason this worked was the players simply had fun, imagined controlling the town after wrecking it and there was no stupid game mechanics getting in the way and ruyining the fun.
After that came battle grounds, -1 point, then arenas, then drop to 25 and 10 man more death, then the expansions and more crap with free or almost free epics, the game simply got easier and easier to the point that playing simply didnt feel rewarding any more.
I know their Badge Sets are not as good as the raid versions, but for most people there simply wasnt enough of a gap or differece between them for it to be all that important. yeah badge set woohoo, NOW WHAT!. I could raid for a few extra stat points and go through all that head ache or just idle.
IDLE>!
The only way I would ever go back to wow now, would be if they added item loss on death, player housing and guild castles and meaningfull pvp.
not this endless item tredmill that those sad players have now, the worst thing is that most new wow players simply do not know what they are missing, they think thats what an mmo is meant to be like which sadly is driving mmo's in that direction.
Every once in a while I jump back in WoW for about a month. The graphics are just too dated and another game is out there that took the WoW game, gave it a graphics update, and brought it up to date: Rift.
Sorry Blizzard, but you will no longer milk $$$ from people with dated graphics and gameplay. Looking forward to your next MMORPG.
Milking people is right! It is no longer a game but a giant commerical to get people to buy more wow crap.
...and as with any commercial it is up to you as a consumer whether you buy into the product or not. It is a strange phenomenon about wow that so many people will take the time out to drop into forums, BB's etc and moan about them advertising, selling items in their shop and generally making money! If you don't like what it is or what you think it represents then don't buy into it and don't play it, is it any more difficult than that.
While I do not disagree with what you are saying, my point is simply I am not impressed with the way Wow has turned to nickel and dime it's player base. If I am already paying a subscription fee which is supposed to go for the development of the game then, why should I pay again for all of the bells and whistles that I already paid for? If I am paying for a subscription, I do not want to see commercials and advertisement because I already paid for the privileged of playing the game. In other words, I am not going to give Blizzard money to see their commercials. This was partially the reason why I stopped going to the movies. Why should I pay to see a film if I have to sit through commercials in which I could have stayed home and watched TV for free. Then too, if people do not take the time to moan as you put it, then how would blizzard know what upsets people? The other way is to vote with our dollars, by as you suggested and many have already done and that is by leaving the game.
My point is more the fact that there is no facet in life these days where you are not being advertised to in one way or another, whether it is just walking down the street and seeing billboards or watching your team play whatever sport with the sponsers names on their shirts. Whether you know it or not in most cases these days you are being sold to left right and centre, so why should Blizzard be any different?
You mention not going to the cinema because of the commercials, but if you watch it on TV it is only 'free' to watch due to advertising (unless on the BBC in the UK, but we have to pay for that directly anyway). Even when you are watching your favourite 'free' TV series the chances are that you are being advertised to through product placement at the very least.
The bottom line is that Activision/Blizzard run a business and sell products as part of that business, it is then up to us as consumers to decide whether those products are worth our hard earned cash or not.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
After hardcore raiding all the way throughout TBC (which was the best time to be had in WoW, 2007-2008), beating all the content and having lots of fun with my guild friends, be it by raiding Black Temple, Hyjal and Sunwell Plateau, be it by going with our alts through heroics and Karazhan, I just got bored and burned out.
I mean, after the sore realization that my hard-earned Gronnstalker Armor could only take me so far into the levelling content of WotLK, I gave up. No, it wasn't just because of that, but also because progression (non-achievement) content was easy to the point of boredom, which meant that the only time you could have any real fun was when you played, say, blind and with one hand tied behind your back. Yeah, I'm talking about achievement runs through raid content, in order to earn titles and mounts.
In my opinion, what royally screwed WoW over was the lack of naturally challenging content - content that challenged players just by existing. I never really considered hard modes real content - because they aren't. A different color pallete of the same armor, with better armor and green text slapped on the tooltip is not worth the many hours of repetitively grinding the same content, over and over and over.
While I do agree that allowing everyone to see the content the devs worked hard to make is cool, Blizzard opted to pay for it in a way that alienates a great deal of players, right down to their philosophy of "bring the player, not the class". I believe a better idea is "bring the players AND the classes". I mean, halfway during my guild's trudge through Black Temple, we found ourselves with only one Hunter - me. And I just happened to be one of the best ones on the server. The outcome? Although I was bound by "duty" not to miss a single raid night, the guild grew fond of having me, I grew fond of my folks, and the guild progressed, all things considered.
Alright, I give up. I'm probably spouting bull and talking out of my backside. You can blame it on the booze. My conclusion, however, is that BC was the best time to be in WoW, and I got badly burned out shortly after WotLK came out. To the point where I didn't even buy the latest expansion.
Every once in a while I jump back in WoW for about a month. The graphics are just too dated and another game is out there that took the WoW game, gave it a graphics update, and brought it up to date: Rift.
Sorry Blizzard, but you will no longer milk $$$ from people with dated graphics and gameplay. Looking forward to your next MMORPG.
Milking people is right! It is no longer a game but a giant commerical to get people to buy more wow crap.
...and as with any commercial it is up to you as a consumer whether you buy into the product or not. It is a strange phenomenon about wow that so many people will take the time out to drop into forums, BB's etc and moan about them advertising, selling items in their shop and generally making money! If you don't like what it is or what you think it represents then don't buy into it and don't play it, is it any more difficult than that.
While I do not disagree with what you are saying, my point is simply I am not impressed with the way Wow has turned to nickel and dime it's player base. If I am already paying a subscription fee which is supposed to go for the development of the game then, why should I pay again for all of the bells and whistles that I already paid for? If I am paying for a subscription, I do not want to see commercials and advertisement because I already paid for the privileged of playing the game. In other words, I am not going to give Blizzard money to see their commercials. This was partially the reason why I stopped going to the movies. Why should I pay to see a film if I have to sit through commercials in which I could have stayed home and watched TV for free. Then too, if people do not take the time to moan as you put it, then how would blizzard know what upsets people? The other way is to vote with our dollars, by as you suggested and many have already done and that is by leaving the game.
My point is more the fact that there is no facet in life these days where you are not being advertised to in one way or another, whether it is just walking down the street and seeing billboards or watching your team play whatever sport with the sponsers names on their shirts. Whether you know it or not in most cases these days you are being sold to left right and centre, so why should Blizzard be any different?
unlike the advertising on the street, I am not paying money to see that. At least for those paying a subscription blizzard should give those people an option to turn off the advertisments.
You mention not going to the cinema because of the commercials, but if you watch it on TV it is only 'free' to watch due to advertising (unless on the BBC in the UK, but we have to pay for that directly anyway). Even when you are watching your favourite 'free' TV series the chances are that you are being advertised to through product placement at the very least.
I just won't pay money to watch someone's commercial. There is the difference.
The bottom line is that Activision/Blizzard run a business and sell products as part of that business, it is then up to us as consumers to decide whether those products are worth our hard earned cash or not.
True enough! If I fail to be impressed by thier product I won't buy it. If I do not support a companies policy I won't give them my dollars.
Moreless just for the money I spent on it to find out I did not like it lol. Bought it when it released, along with extra time, and only put in maybe a week or two in total (work, gf, and overall lack of interest).
Played it for a bit with a group of friends (on a free server) when Burning Crusade came out (we got that expansion for free too.. >.< ), but only for about a month, still did not feel it was worthwhile.
it still has 11 million players. even if it drops to 100k next year they still made money. Raid in WoW and the game is not easy. A lot of peeps will never admit it but they hate it cuz they played for too long, or, like whiners they hated how they couldn't make the game cater to them.
I can play it from time to time. A few things killed it for me though.
-Clunky vehicle mechanics implemented into PvP -BiS gear was becoming obsolete far too frequently. It went from having to upgrade twice a year to every other month. -Dungeon finder and BG que form anywhere. Couldve made most of the gameworld just loading screen jpegs from that point on. -I dont mind phasing for specific quests, but whole zones were phased to giant quest chains. You wouldnt even see 1/10th of the people in your zone just because they were phased onto different parts of the same chain. I remember grouping with friends and going into zones and they would vanish because they were on a different number in the chain than me. -Crafting professions became 100% self serving. People chose crafting profs based on what types of personal buffs their character would get.
Its not the WoW I learned to love in Vanilla and TBC era. WotLK was ok, Ulduar was awesome for example. But man, the drastic changes made me quit the game in the end. I played the game since beta really, its a shame the game is so different today. Some would say they improved the game, in my opinion they changed it. Change =/= improvement.
They just pissed lava all over the game, shaked the world a bit for destruction and then called it ''Cataclysm''.
Haven't played the game in a year. I probably won't reactivate seeing the state the game is in. Jesus, those Goblins want to make me puke.
Blizzard should have improved the things that we came to love. But instead they drasticly changed it to cater to a bigger audience. I'm just so glad it backfired a little, because even those new generation wow kiddies do not like whats happening to the game, go figure. Most blind fanboys will say otherwise, but deep down they know better.
Look at the quality of for example Karazhan, Black Temple, Sunwell, Ulduar. Now look at Ragequit of the Emolands in the upcoming patch. Quality has suffered, its obvious they do not have the same investment in the game.
Comments
I wish I could pick multiple options, because 6 of those fit how I feel about WoW now-a-days.
I bought Rift and I have a sub for that game, but I also kept my sub to WoW. I still havent maxed my gear out yet, only 343 item level. So that keeps me going back. I am a level 85 Orc Hunter.
My Sons did that test thing for a few months. Bought it for 20.00. They are having a blast. They made some 85 alliance rogues, maxed all their gear, then they sneak in Orgimmar and gank. I watched them and it was funny as hell. No guards around.
I tried it when it was released and periodically over the years friends have convinced me to try it again. I think in total I have tried it 4 times, not since cataclysm though. Never once have I played it for more then a week, and it always seemed overly easy, linear, and boring. Plus I hate the cartoony look of it, it just irks me even thoughI played and loved the Warcraft series for years prior.
The first time I played it I had no idea what I was doing but I was able to solo more then halfway to max in matter of 3 days while working a full time job all by myself without ever talking to anyone and every other time it just go easier. That shouldn't be possible in an MMO, and it sickens me everytime I play a new game that implements a lot of the mechanics and feel that WoW has. Back in the day new MMO experiences were just that new, not one felt like any other I had played, now devs copy tons of things WoW does and are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Meaning players complain when new games are too similiar to WoW and then conversely complain when they don't have features that they deam necessary since it was in WoW and if it's not in the new game they'd be lost.
Too easy now.. got into it again a couple of weeks ago, started a new character and found it way too easy to level. Seems the whole focus now is get to max level as fast as possible so you can do endgame with everyone else. Enjoying the new look to a lot of the old zones, but other than that it is the same old game just a lot easier.
Been there since launch and still playing today, but to be fair i really have no major 'feelings' about it one way or the other, it is a form of entertainment that i pay for every month and play as and when i feel like it.
I have opinions on what the devs do, some positive, some negative. Generally i still enjoy the game as it stands now and have no starry eyed views about past versions, because they are in the past. I guess when i get to the point where i don't enjoy playing anymore i will just unsub and move on to something else.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Milking people is right! It is no longer a game but a giant commerical to get people to buy more wow crap.
...and as with any commercial it is up to you as a consumer whether you buy into the product or not. It is a strange phenomenon about wow that so many people will take the time out to drop into forums, BB's etc and moan about them advertising, selling items in their shop and generally making money! If you don't like what it is or what you think it represents then don't buy into it and don't play it, is it any more difficult than that.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Milking people is right! It is no longer a game but a giant commerical to get people to buy more wow crap.
...and as with any commercial it is up to you as a consumer whether you buy into the product or not. It is a strange phenomenon about wow that so many people will take the time out to drop into forums, BB's etc and moan about them advertising, selling items in their shop and generally making money! If you don't like what it is or what you think it represents then don't buy into it and don't play it, is it any more difficult than that.
This was partially the reason why I stopped going to the movies. Why should I pay to see a film if I have to sit through commercials in which I could have stayed home and watched TV for free. Then too, if people do not take the time to moan as you put it, then how would blizzard know what upsets people? The other way is to vote with our dollars, by as you suggested and many have already done and that is by leaving the game.
I loved it back during vanilla. Liked it substantially less after BC. I forced myself to finish WotLK. I didn't even bother buying Cata.
Reasons:
The average age of the population seemed to keep decreasing.
The content was made less grindy (good) at the expense of challenge (bad).
The game seems incapable of giving me goals that don't involve gear.
Flying mounts destroyed the sense of scale in the world and the thrill of exploration.
While making dungeons faster was nice, they went too far with it. They essentially reduced dungeons to mini-games.
Dungeon Finder needs to die in a fire, be resurrected, then thrown in a black hole and divided by zero so that hopefully developers in the future who even consider implementing something like it immediately suffer a brain implosion.
They turned a world into a lobby game.
I used to really enjoy WoW. I don't any longer, and we're not talking burnout here. When WoW transitioned to emphasis on phased questing, endless endgame raids/heroics, and gear snobs they killed it for me. It's just not the same game now.
I voted Burnt Out From It. I can still play from time to time, but I don't really think it's worth the money. I've been burnt out from it since TBC ended. I loved TBC, it was just the greatest thing for me. Wrath sounded so cool and epic, the whole Arthas storyline is my favourite, and Arthas is my favourite villain, but Blizz screwed Wrath up in every possible way, I was very disappointed. By the time Cata hit, I really had nothing left for WoW. Got a single char to 85, but didn't really bother with the grind wheel again.
People are always talking about how great Vanilla was, while it's quite obvious that a big portion of what you remember are just the good memories. There was quite a few things with Vanilla that was horrible to say the least, so it wasn't always green trees and birds chirping.
I agree though, I enjoyed Vanilla a lot. I have tons of memories from Vanilla, tons and tons. Though I'm not sure I'd like to go back, I'd prefer it to just be what it currently is - a good memory.
One thing I do miss though is TBC, in my opinion(keyword), the best expansion WoW has ever seen.
I played Cata, I enjoyed it, though it wasn't much more than that. It kept me interested for about 1-2 months before I left. I can say that I already miss the release day, I had such an amazing experience in Vashj'ir. Good god, the best zone any MMO as ever seen to date. Period. (Blizzard, I'll be damned if you don't give us another underwater-themed zone come next exp) I'm too burned out on WoW, it's classes, everything basically. So PvE didn't interest me at all. The last few weeks I spent with my friends PvPing in BGs, I had quite fun trying out my old(first) Vanilla class again, but it wasn't enough to keep me playing.
After, I went back to my regular (s)trolling the forums for upcoming MMO's and other interesting titles.
Tweet at me - Visit my website
I loved WoW during 2004-2006, but Kotick has since then completely obliterated all fun there was to be had in this game with grind.
I quit in February after playing since 2004. I just couldn't do it anymore.
It's a great game and I can look back on it fondly. My reasons for leaving are a combination of not liking new changes/ I simply don't have time for it anymore/ I want to try new games.
I personally think it started to die when they added battle grounds, who else loved PVP world fights more than scripted set pvp battles.
For me , those Tarren Mill fights were the highlight of the game, for the simple reason they were random, you would be sitting in your city and then a call would go out, "Guys tons of horde slaying at taren" and then loads of alliance would flood over and the next 2 3 sometimes 5 or 6 hours of gameplay would be this running pitch battle between these two close towns.
The reason this worked was the players simply had fun, imagined controlling the town after wrecking it and there was no stupid game mechanics getting in the way and ruyining the fun.
After that came battle grounds, -1 point, then arenas, then drop to 25 and 10 man more death, then the expansions and more crap with free or almost free epics, the game simply got easier and easier to the point that playing simply didnt feel rewarding any more.
I know their Badge Sets are not as good as the raid versions, but for most people there simply wasnt enough of a gap or differece between them for it to be all that important. yeah badge set woohoo, NOW WHAT!. I could raid for a few extra stat points and go through all that head ache or just idle.
IDLE>!
The only way I would ever go back to wow now, would be if they added item loss on death, player housing and guild castles and meaningfull pvp.
not this endless item tredmill that those sad players have now, the worst thing is that most new wow players simply do not know what they are missing, they think thats what an mmo is meant to be like which sadly is driving mmo's in that direction.
My point is more the fact that there is no facet in life these days where you are not being advertised to in one way or another, whether it is just walking down the street and seeing billboards or watching your team play whatever sport with the sponsers names on their shirts. Whether you know it or not in most cases these days you are being sold to left right and centre, so why should Blizzard be any different?
You mention not going to the cinema because of the commercials, but if you watch it on TV it is only 'free' to watch due to advertising (unless on the BBC in the UK, but we have to pay for that directly anyway). Even when you are watching your favourite 'free' TV series the chances are that you are being advertised to through product placement at the very least.
The bottom line is that Activision/Blizzard run a business and sell products as part of that business, it is then up to us as consumers to decide whether those products are worth our hard earned cash or not.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I am totally burned out on wow and the game offers little challenge now and yet somehow i still think its the greatest mmo ever made...
Lets hope that GW2 or TSW can be a wow killer, or at least put some grease on WoWs industry wide stranglehold..
Playing GW2..
After hardcore raiding all the way throughout TBC (which was the best time to be had in WoW, 2007-2008), beating all the content and having lots of fun with my guild friends, be it by raiding Black Temple, Hyjal and Sunwell Plateau, be it by going with our alts through heroics and Karazhan, I just got bored and burned out.
I mean, after the sore realization that my hard-earned Gronnstalker Armor could only take me so far into the levelling content of WotLK, I gave up. No, it wasn't just because of that, but also because progression (non-achievement) content was easy to the point of boredom, which meant that the only time you could have any real fun was when you played, say, blind and with one hand tied behind your back. Yeah, I'm talking about achievement runs through raid content, in order to earn titles and mounts.
In my opinion, what royally screwed WoW over was the lack of naturally challenging content - content that challenged players just by existing. I never really considered hard modes real content - because they aren't. A different color pallete of the same armor, with better armor and green text slapped on the tooltip is not worth the many hours of repetitively grinding the same content, over and over and over.
While I do agree that allowing everyone to see the content the devs worked hard to make is cool, Blizzard opted to pay for it in a way that alienates a great deal of players, right down to their philosophy of "bring the player, not the class". I believe a better idea is "bring the players AND the classes". I mean, halfway during my guild's trudge through Black Temple, we found ourselves with only one Hunter - me. And I just happened to be one of the best ones on the server. The outcome? Although I was bound by "duty" not to miss a single raid night, the guild grew fond of having me, I grew fond of my folks, and the guild progressed, all things considered.
Alright, I give up. I'm probably spouting bull and talking out of my backside. You can blame it on the booze. My conclusion, however, is that BC was the best time to be in WoW, and I got badly burned out shortly after WotLK came out. To the point where I didn't even buy the latest expansion.
Hate it
Moreless just for the money I spent on it to find out I did not like it lol. Bought it when it released, along with extra time, and only put in maybe a week or two in total (work, gf, and overall lack of interest).
Played it for a bit with a group of friends (on a free server) when Burning Crusade came out (we got that expansion for free too.. >.< ), but only for about a month, still did not feel it was worthwhile.
it still has 11 million players. even if it drops to 100k next year they still made money. Raid in WoW and the game is not easy. A lot of peeps will never admit it but they hate it cuz they played for too long, or, like whiners they hated how they couldn't make the game cater to them.
I can play it from time to time. A few things killed it for me though.
-Clunky vehicle mechanics implemented into PvP
-BiS gear was becoming obsolete far too frequently. It went from having to upgrade twice a year to every other month.
-Dungeon finder and BG que form anywhere. Couldve made most of the gameworld just loading screen jpegs from that point on.
-I dont mind phasing for specific quests, but whole zones were phased to giant quest chains. You wouldnt even see 1/10th of the people in your zone just because they were phased onto different parts of the same chain. I remember grouping with friends and going into zones and they would vanish because they were on a different number in the chain than me.
-Crafting professions became 100% self serving. People chose crafting profs based on what types of personal buffs their character would get.
All I can say is its home. It will always be home. When I leave I miss it. When I come back its only a visit but I enjoy my visit.
I just have to deal with the fact that i'll always keep visiting it. I think I've come to except it. Now I'm at peace with it. ahem
Its not the WoW I learned to love in Vanilla and TBC era. WotLK was ok, Ulduar was awesome for example. But man, the drastic changes made me quit the game in the end. I played the game since beta really, its a shame the game is so different today. Some would say they improved the game, in my opinion they changed it. Change =/= improvement.
They just pissed lava all over the game, shaked the world a bit for destruction and then called it ''Cataclysm''.
Haven't played the game in a year. I probably won't reactivate seeing the state the game is in. Jesus, those Goblins want to make me puke.
Blizzard should have improved the things that we came to love. But instead they drasticly changed it to cater to a bigger audience. I'm just so glad it backfired a little, because even those new generation wow kiddies do not like whats happening to the game, go figure. Most blind fanboys will say otherwise, but deep down they know better.
Look at the quality of for example Karazhan, Black Temple, Sunwell, Ulduar. Now look at Ragequit of the Emolands in the upcoming patch. Quality has suffered, its obvious they do not have the same investment in the game.
QFT