If you are an ex warcraft player what was the thing ( or things ) that made you finally give up Warcraft ? 

When they turned it into a MMO.

I played since the beta. After 4 years of playing I had gotten real tired of it. In addition most of my online friends who had played WoW had quit. It was just time to walk away from the game. Unlike a lot of ex players (apparently from the forums) I am not bitter or have any ill will toward the game. It was a good game and I enjoyed my time playing it, it was just way overplayed for me.

Raiding was boring, 5-man progression was too short (almost nonexistant), and WOTLK offered little in the way of challenge.

All it'd take to bribe me back would be extensive 5-man progression with progressively harder dungeons providing progressively better loot.  But even then, with 4+ years into the game the mechanics are a bit too familiar at this point and I'm interested in seeing other gameplay formulas now.

Agreed with just getting bored.  None of the new content seemed new.  The gear grind was annoying.  I either had to be in the best guilds or not bother playing since I think that they ruined PvP back when they made it cross-server.

Good game but if you've played it for a while you've played it enough.

Same as everyone else, just got bored. WoW is a good game, it's just past its fun factor for me.

I hit the level cap back around the release of Burning Crusade. I just said to myself, "You know, I barely log in anymore except to be with my guildies on occassion. Let me try this Warhammer stuff that is coming soon." Played that and now I swing from MMO to MMO. I'll be resubbing to LOTRO at the end of September though as I truly miss that game.

I played for 3 years, and eventually several things in BC turned me off.

1. The lore has slowly been screwed since the begining, starting with undead joining horde and just getting more and more contradictory and scrambled till it might as well not exist. (Cataclysm merely enforces this)

2. Once end game is reached you were forced into large raids... and then you had to repeat the raid for the next 6 months before having the equipment possible to get into the next raid. (this may be slightly different in WTLK)

3. PvP was repetitive. ( although many games have similar problems)

4. Low level gameplay was ignored ( i believe this is now being fixed)

5. When I found I could just press keys and still come out top dps without looking at the screen (does anyone really need a brain for this?)

6.Because items will always be the most important part of WoW, not skill (although it does help).

Not enough content.

Blizzard = milking the cow.

I played WoW on (and occasionally off) since the final open beta. Its been almost 5 years now with two breaks. During these five years I ramped up my play time to over 40 hours a week and managed to get six characters over Level 73 (3 to L80). Then my wife told me our marriage was dead and within a few days I woke up to the terrible realization that I had let WoW  destroy my life.

I've been trying to rebuild since that black week. First thing I swore I would never let any game take over my life like that again.

WoW is a good game, as a game but - oh my god - why did I let it become such a huge part of my life? If I could go back in time I'd throw WoW out the window and never let myself play it. Sadly, there is no reset option in real-life. No restore to a previous saved state.

I blame myself, its not Blizzard's fault for making such an engrossing game. But no game has ever controlled my life like that before, not UO, EQ, AC, DAoC... From now on, single-player only games for me. And more moderation. At the time I thought I WAS being moderate in my play. Other people spent way more time than me on raids and guild activities. But in reality, I was off the deep end on time spent in game :-(

- A very sad ex-WoW player.

I left WoW during season 3. I came to the realization that  I was only staying for my friends... Who were slowly leaving the game themselves. When AoC was nearing it's launch I logged on one more itme to find something fun to keep me in, but no. Log in, do arena, log out. Log in, farm, log out. The game world was no longer a world, rather it was a treadmill strung together by a cache of safe haven instances.

Originally posted by Rakhir

I played WoW on (and occasionally off) since the final open beta. Its been almost 5 years now with two breaks. During these five years I ramped up my play time to over 40 hours a week and managed to get six characters over Level 73 (3 to L80). Then my wife told me our marriage was dead and within a few days I woke up to the terrible realization that I had let WoW  destroy my life.

I've been trying to rebuild since that black week. First thing I swore I would never let any game take over my life like that again.

WoW is a good game, as a game but - oh my god - why did I let it become such a huge part of my life? If I could go back in time I'd throw WoW out the window and never let myself play it. Sadly, there is no reset option in real-life. No restore to a previous saved state.

I blame myself, its not Blizzard's fault for making such an engrossing game. But no game has ever controlled my life like that before, not UO, EQ, AC, DAoC... From now on, single-player only games for me. And more moderation. At the time I thought I WAS being moderate in my play. Other people spent way more time than me on raids and guild activities. But in reality, I was off the deep end on time spent in game :-(

- A very sad ex-WoW player.

Sorry to hear that Rakhir, all the best in your future.

For me, ive temporary quit also due ro boredom, and most likely will go back once cata is launch. To see the new world, and how blizz gona make my toon progress after level 85...

It got to the place where i was only logging in to see what friends were doing. Would log in, say hello and do some BG and log out. Got into LOTRO and EQ2 but alas those are wearing thin as well.

For me, it was the Ahn Qarij event (yes, I quit a while ago). I had just hit 60 and was looking forward to taking part in the event, especially after gathering materials for what seemed like weeks. But as I tried to go to the AQ staging area, a number of the server's uber guilds had basically staked out the zone and were doing their best to drive away anyone else due to lag. Now, I was a bit undergeared, but I hadn't expected a lot of the nasty tells of "GTFO" or "this is our guild's event and I'm going to report you" from the top guild players. Worst experience I've had in any game event. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, considering that my friendly casual guild had merged with a  hardcore raider guild and I never seemed to get enough honor PVPing casually to make it out of the lowbie battleground ranks.

I am thinking about coming back as it seems the game now at least has a lot of fun things you can do casually.

Originally posted by grandpagamer

It got to the place where i was only logging in to see what friends were doing. Would log in, say hello and do some BG and log out. Got into LOTRO and EQ2 but alas those are wearing thin as well.

ditto

my first quit was when i found out they were doing away with 40 man content. It basically destroyed my guild and at least half the guilds on my server. I was with them from molten core all the way to naxx and we enjoyed the fact that we had beaten most all the content before patch nerfs. It was hard, and we had fun overcomming it. About half our guild was casual I think had we been more hardcore we could have been the top guild of the server, but we were pretty pleased with top 3.

I came back several months after TBC was released due to a lack of other stuff to play, it was okay, but the raids never felt the same. I really loved the large group dynamic, and the only people who said that most the people on the raid didnt have to know how to play.... never beat the content before nerfs.

all the raiding was simply easier, the pvp gear was made to be as good as if not better than much of the raiding gear..... hell i made a tankadin and had to pvp in order to have a proper pve tanking weapon, it sucked so i quit.

i want to come back for the next x-pac, but its pointless, what i loved about WoW is gone, im one of the few who i guess really did love raiding.

Hitting level 70 and realizing my only choices for continuing game play were rerolling or giving up all my free time for raiding.  Buh bye, theme-park.

Worthless PVP and same raids over and over  and it being gear dependint

I've quit more than once. The first time I quit was the monotony of raiding the same instances again, and how much time was required to repeat this.

Second time was the same deal.

Third time I got Wrath of the Lich King but got frustrated with leveling in Outland and quit.

I recently resubbed as a reaction to the anti-twinking measures, only to find out the regular twinks had been replaced by heirloom toons. Getting two-shotted by people with massive gear advantage isn't my idea of fun, so my sub expired a couple weeks back.

I tried out Aion beta with the intention of getting the game if it I liked it enough, and possibly resubbing to WoW and just level to 80 as fast as possible (and completely avoid BGs, perhaps with the exception of fast AV leveling if that still works) and try out the new content if I didn't like Aion, and it looks like I might resub to WoW again. Or possibly I'll give EQ2 a shot, but in my experience the thing that drives me back to WoW is that it seems the only MMO where movement and combat feels somewhat smooth.

The cookie cut aspect of the game eventually drove me away, knowing that no matter what I did, if I wanted to be successful in raiding and PvP I had to spec my class in a certain way and use certain gear/items to achieve those goals, no room for uniqueness.