Originally posted by Sibcoe

Hi everyone -

I wanted to share a show I did about coming back to WoW and what the game is really about.  I have been enjoying it and hope you ejoy hearing my thoughts on why "no one ever really quits WoW."

 

No One Quits WoW

Are you playing WoW, did you come back for MOP, are you having fun?

 

Cheers 0/

 

I played WOW in beta - tried the first week. I left and have not been back.

a) there are people who know what this game can / has to offer and 

b) there are people who played it because other people play it, to be part of the hype

a) hardly leaves. agreed.

b) thinks the LFR tool is everything, and after completing it they think  their game is done :)

I tend to come back after each expansion.

So yeah, I'm playing it once again. Last time, this time, I swear! Honest!

Heh...

Originally posted by BizkitNL

I tend to come back after each expansion.

So yeah, I'm playing it once again. Last time, this time, I swear! Honest!

Heh...

The battlegrounds were the only thing that kept me playing as long as I did...about 2 years.

Can't see the video because I'm at work and not supposed to be on these forums in the first place, so won't comment on it.

On my personal story, I played WoW since sometime around late vanilla up to WotLK after they introduced the Lich King raid. I played a LOT during that time (with a slight couple months hiatus during TBC to play Age of Conan), but left after most of my friends had left the game.

I actually think sometimes about going back, specially when Blizzard has those sales, since I was on euro servers because that's where my friends were playing, if I ever came back I'd prefer to be on US servers so I don't have to deal with the different timezones, but the more I think of it, the more I realized that what I miss isn't the game itself, but the fun times I had with my friends there. Actually, people say they wanted vanilla servers, I'd say I wanted TBC servers, but because it's when we were raiding Karazhan in a very laid back, casual way in a weekly basis (actually until our guild leader died).

I did install the 20 levels version sometime ago, even if it was just to remember some old times and see how had the starter areas changed after Cata... I played for a couple hours or so with different characters, I just wasn't feeling the fun on it, so I quitted for the day, and didn't really feel like logging in again since then. Of the original groups of friends that were playing WoW, I don't think any of them are still playing, I was one of the last ones to quit and we haven't been back since.

I personally played on and off (about 70% on, 30% off) from vanilla through near the end of WotlK (just after the Lich King encounter was finally released, not whatever filler raid came after that.)  I was always a competitive raider and part of guilds that would compete for server firsts.  But there just came a point where it suddenly felt futile.  Tier after tier would come and go, and we'd work to collect all the new BIS gear again, only to have it quickly become old junk gear again.  I just got to the point where I didn't have anything to prove on an individual level, got no rush from downing new encounters anymore because they just weren't as impressive as many of my past accomplishments, and the gear rewards no longer felt satisfying.  At the end of my days, I spent more time walking around in 8/8 tier 2 (druid stormrage), complete with the old ZG leg and head enchants, than I did with any newly acquired gear.  

Basically, I was utterly burnt out, as the common phase goes.  And many years later, i feel just as burnt out now as I did then.  So I don't think a break is the remedy.  I couldn't imagine going through that cycle again, in WoW at least.  In some new game that provides fresh new PvE challenges, perhaps.  But not with WoW-style combat anymore.   

Quit WoW a week after cataclysm release, i've played on some vanilla servers since then, not for too long though.

The game is old and slowly fading away; it's still the biggest MMO in the industry, but fact is that WoW has been in a slow decline over the last few years in terms of staff working on the game, sales numbers and active players. 

Was an awesome game though, can't help but miss it from time to time.

Originally posted by Diemos
Played WoW since 2005 to Cata. Tried MoP and left after 2 weeks. There are so many great games that are different innovative and mostly with no sub playing WoW now feels like youre taking a step back in the genre. Worst part is WoW players seem to not realize they've been playing the exact same game for al.out 9 years now.

To be fair I think most mmo players have played the exact same thing for 9 years. There really hasn't been much innovation in the genre, and what we have seen has been skin deep.  

My annual pass ran out in Jan. and I hadn't really played it much since Late Nov.I don't see myself ever going back,to me they ruined the game with the Cata expansion.Playing alts as much as I like to do,the original world was great imo.The fact they changed most of the 1-60 zones and put you in the express lane to 60,just turned me off of the the game.

Even tried MOP but the magic is just gone.Had a blast during Wotlk,but post Cata is nothing special and there's simply many other game's that I like better now.

Originally posted by m0lly
started back in 2003-04 with beta and still playing it, on and off just like you said, playing too much needs break and then go back. these peaople who say i played 1 year and then quit are not really mmo gamers , they just want to be but really they just want to play single players games, also people who said i quit after vanilla i quit after burning crusade. thats just so last season phrase it can stop already. there was nothing wrong with lich king expansion. the lore is stil lthere and mostly , you play because of lore not because of game itself.

Not that being a mmorpg player is any privilege or high status

MMOs gameplay pales in comparison to single player gameplay, the only thing that mmos got is the social interaction: sense of community, guilds, pvp etc..

Successfully evaded two expansions thus far.

Is it like alcoholism, you're never "cured", even if you're not on the sauce at the moment?

I tried WoW when it was released and then again later, when it was huge, to see what all the fuss was about. Never understood the appeal though.

But then again I am an old school MMO player with favourites like Asheron's Call 1 and Ultima Online. WoW just felt way on-the-rails and easy/casual to keep me interested.

Originally posted by Shadoed

Originally posted by Dihoru

World of Warcraft if it had been launched earlier would've likely ended up like Everquest, good profit but mediocre overall, circumstances and pure dumb luck on the part of the publisher meant it became the game of the first global generation of PC gamers to have near unrestricted access to the internet. That is all. Innovation-wise the true success story of that generation which is a game which is still growing and still very much alive is EVE-Online, if the devs play their cards right that game will outlive any other game out there (they could easily squeeze another decade of life from it but if they start expanding wormhole space and 0.0 again all bets are truly off as to how long it could last).

Would have to pretty much disagree with most of that last paragraph, i don't think you can attribute 'dumb luck' to what Blizzard have done with WoW or any of their other successes, but if you go down that road you could also say that EvE was damned lucky that EA killed Earth & Beyond which left those players starved for a space bound MMO.

Played Eve for quiet a while, had two accounts in there for several months and enjoyed the gate wars with other corps in 0.0, planning mining ops with my corp friends and building my ravens to pilot them into battle, but when people talk of games with a long grind that is always the one that comes to mind for me. I have never known any other game that was such a time sink as that one. I returned to it recently and even after all of the updates, it is still essentially the same game that i used to enjoy, but again still the same three reasons i would never return full time;

1 - Training is just designed to keep you there as long as possible

2 - Only 1 meaningful character per account

3 - Time sink, if you can't dedicate sevarl hours per session there is little point playing

I can take your point of them being able to keep the game running for many years to come as they have built a sustainable model, but i don't think that it will ever become a mainstream game for the reasons above, the niche subject of the game and the few large corporations that now in all reality run it.

Fixed class system, ~12 solar systems to play in, fixed ways to gain experience for each class... yeah I am sure if that was still around EVE woulda had issues...

1 - training only requires an active account and if you really can't wait you can legally buy characters for in-game isk;

2 - again, you can train one and buy 2 more.

3 - grinding in EVE is asset based not skill based, it is a far more cerebral game than other games including E&B.

I can't really say there's another game like EVE around, maybe Repopulation or Perpetuum will be/are similar but neither of them have space game elements to the depths of EVE so in truth only one company really rules the roost in that niche and that's CCP but don't worry Dust 514 is out and World of Darkness (which by what I've heard is gonna be... Vampire: The Masquerade Online with sandbox elements in the Carbon engine) is on the horizon ^^ so CCP games will stop being so niche fairly shortly, Hell EVE's niche has started expanding because the noob experience has been... curved in terms of masochism required to survive it.

I played World of Warcraft for 6.5 years, starting in May 2005 after quitting Star Wars Galaxies when the infamous Combat Upgrade / Wookies expansion was unleashed.

I played until about a year after the launch of Cataclysm (an expansion I hated, it basically was the last nail in the coffin of my stay with WoW). I grew increasingly disillusioned with the things the devs were doing, particularly the actions of Ghostcrawler and his attitude.

After quitting World of Warcraft, I've read articles about the game, witnessed the launch of the panda expansion from a distance, but had absolutely NO desire to return the the game. WoW just no longer feels like the game I loved during the vanilla / Burning Crusade / Wrath of the Lich King days.

I'm now happily playing the Secret World.

Originally posted by Sibcoe

No One Quits WoW

Are you playing WoW, did you come back for MOP, are you having fun?

I just noticed this on the front page and laughed, so I thought that I would pop in here and comment:

I played WoW for about 6 months after it came out, leveled 2 characters to 60 (the max at the time), and quit.

BO-RING!

Seriously, how many, "collect 15 Dragon toe-nail clippings" quests can you stand? Interestingly enough, that has become my initial test of whether a new MMO is worth playing: Are the quests just excuses to go kill stuff to loot random nonsense that you would never use in a million years otherwise?

I then proceeded to play Dungeons & Dragons Online for almost 6 years, until they "upgraded" it to be just another WoW clone last fall.

Currently looking for a game that doesn't want to be WoW when it grows up.