Goodbye WoW!
Last night, I rather abruptly cancelled my World of Warcraft account. While in many ways, this was influenced heavily by Bunky, I have to admit that it is probably for the best. While I was still enjoying the game, I think I could see a bit of the end of the road, especially with the new content provided in the expansion.
The main thing I’m sure I’ll miss from WoW is the great social interaction with my OOM guildmates. Partying with Octos, Molridia, Penda, Faalena, and Truflight was highly entertaining, and we had some great conversations over Vent. Hopefully they will be able to progress to bigger and better content, and I have to admit to feeling a bit bad for taking my level 70 priest out of the mix. I had been playing my current characters for about a year or more, and so I had grown attached to them (especially to Rozamystica and Sariana).
With that said, WoW was definitely taking up too much of my free time. I played mostly for the social aspects of the game, as grinding really doesn’t hold that much appeal to me. This is one of the reasons why Guild Wars was so great; after you hit the easy-to-obtain level 20 cap and got a good set of gear, every other upgrade was almost entirely aesthetic. I can easily say I was not looking forward to grinding a whole bunch of reputation with the many factions in Outlands, and news that Blizzard was planning to release an expansion roughly every year ensured that this cycle would continue.
To be fair, this is not solely a problem with WoW, but rather of the whole MMORPG genre. While I do love the MMORPG genre, the time sink of these games leads me to believe I should avoid them in the future. It simply takes way too much time to gear out your character to ensure you can participate in the best content (frequently only available at endgame). Games like Guild Wars and Battlefield 2 were definitely more effective at letting me group up with friends and compete effectively without too much grinding. BF2 was actually especially good at this, with the numerous bugs that caused players to use only the starting kits when spawning; all that point farming out the door!
So what will I be doing with much of my free time? The last few days have been intensely boring, with no real computer to speak of (the laptop is rather slow, and I don’t like to hog Bunky’s computer). When my new computer arrives, I’ll probably be doing a lot more anime-watching. Although the last few months have been pretty devoid of quality series, I know the time spent on WoW was really impacting the quality of the Sea Slugs! Anime Blog. I’d like to pick up more series than usual and restore some of the sheen that was lost during my time in WoW. I’m also hoping that I might do a bit more drawing now, but that is never a guaranteed conclusion.
Tags: world of warcraft
By Catnipped, 3/29/2007 @ 12:41 pm
AH well, you had a good run. I am sure pretty soon the next big thing will come along again before you get too much immersed in the anime world. I rather missed playing and talking with everyone as well
By Velius, 3/29/2007 @ 12:49 pm
Take care, I really will miss our conversations…although usually it was nothing but wacky chatter. I posted this on the other blog as well, but is this the complete end of computer gaming for you?
By Kabitzin, 3/29/2007 @ 2:02 pm
At the very least, it is an end to MMO-type gaming. The time sink required is just too much nowadays. It’s interesting that the most fun out of these games is typically just derived from chatting. I mean, even whateverDRAWgame is super fun when we use teamspeak/vent.
And before you say anything, yes, Velius is definitely drawing a bug of some sort.
By Velius, 3/29/2007 @ 2:25 pm
iSketch actually sounds pretty fun. Doesn’t Bunky also enjoy it as well. Maybe we can get some iSketch going? Here’s my bug: __\/__> Notice the incredibly detailed wings and stinger, how can you not tell?
By Kabitzin, 3/29/2007 @ 2:58 pm
Bunky only enjoys games when she is winning.
Also, that wasn’t a bug, it was a feature.
By justin, 3/29/2007 @ 3:30 pm
If you won’t emo, I will
After all Blizzard uses that tactic with the peon crying. I almost didn’t cancel that time see that poor, green, lil peon cry.
My heavens… how can an image almost make me not cancel!
Anyhow, I sympathize with your outlook as you explained it since I felt the same way during FFXI and back in 2006 with WoW. I know you have some tasks slotted coming up. We’ll talk about what kind of vegetable goodness we want to do. Maybe can get Octos to create an iSketch channel
By Kabitzin, 3/29/2007 @ 3:32 pm
AHAHAHAHA I felt bad for that peon and then I clubbed him in the head and told him to get back to work!!!!
By Ender, 3/29/2007 @ 8:53 pm
Hopefully some game will come along and fill the “pick-up-and-play” void. I was looking at both Rainbow Six Vegas and Supreme Commander (both very good games), but the hardware requirements are a bit hefty…
By justin, 3/30/2007 @ 12:49 am
I like both of those choices Ender, but like you said the requirements. I’d go for Vegas even though I’d have to buy a new video card for it, since we all are comfortable at FPS games.
That being said, C&C 3 is out and it runs pretty well even on lower end machines. It fun anyhow just for the videos.
By Ender, 3/30/2007 @ 1:50 am
Not to worry, I’ll just play everything in 640 x 480 resolution!
By Kabitzin, 3/30/2007 @ 8:30 am
On your cell phone?