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Denver, 7:08 PM
Sat Nov 28
27 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/26/09
Of course Blizzard makes their money based on people paying the subscription bill every month, but I think they are still making some positive steps to make the game at least a little bit less of a time-drain. It will still take forever and a day to get all the really elite gear and experience the cutting-edge raid and arena scene, but now it is much easier for a casual player to make their way to the substantial endgame in a short time.
11/26/09
One day, I decided that I had enough, and uninstalled.
Nothing against the game itself, or it's players. In fact, I met quite a few nice, generous, well-grounded folks in my tenure as a rogue.
However, I could no longer justify spending the amount of time that was required to really play the game and get, what I felt, was my money's worth. College, other games to play, art to make, jobs to do. I just simply couldn't continue with the time-sink that is WoW any longer.
11/26/09
They talk about casual players but at the rate they dump content if you don't at least try to keep up at some pace you are left so far behind it's ridiculous, PvP or PvE wise. It's a double edged sword the rate they come out with content.
I really laugh at people who played to level 15, or even just 30, and said the game sucked. They really didn't experience the game. To me that's like loading Super Mario Bros 1, running into the first monster and saying the game was garbage and quitting.
11/26/09
The reason I dont play, and, this is my opinion, I know a ton of people that enjoy it, the reason is, I find it to be incredibly fucking boring.
Seriously, I cant play it, there was a time when I could play mmo's I played UO, Runescape, FFXI, Silkroad, Rose, and up to level 8 WoW, recently I tried WAR and COH as well but I couldnt get into them.
The only MMO type game I could stand playing these days would be a new PSO, but to me, theyre so god damn boring.
11/25/09
My roommate in college last year had a boyfriend who played WoW religiously too. He only got to see his girl for a couple days every two-three weeks...and he would spend much of his time with her playing that game. It makes me really sad when I think of it now, because she is a wonderful girl. How could a guy ever think to neglect his girl in favor of a game?
I tried playing WoW once before. Just the demo. There didn't seem to be an experience there that I wanted. I went for about 3 hours before giving up.
Mind you, I've found that generally I've lost a lot of interest in gaming recently. I find the random craziness of life a lot funner. Plus real life has more boobs.
11/25/09
I have a couple friends who spend a lot of time playing, and I just don't get it. I've watched them both play. They just go into some PvP server, put on some shitty metal music, sit back, and cast "Damage over time" spells on other players whilst running around in circles and healing themselves.
I DON'T UNDERSTAND. I guess I'm just not one for giving a shit about leveling up in video games. I also never could understand it when one of the same friends kept on PRESTIGING IN CALL OF DUTY 4!!! WHY!?!??!?!
He would always complain afterward about losing all of his perks and weapons. I don't understand the mentality!
11/25/09
I have a friend or two whose reason d'etre revolves around playing one multiplayer shooter or another at the expense of everything else. They sponge off their parents, make half-hearted efforts to find work, schedule what little temporary work they find entirely around "game night(s)" and focus entirely on the games to the exclusion of hanging out with real friends or just doing stuff that doesn't involve playing those goddamn games (like growing up and digging themselves out of the holes they dug).
I also got my head talked off about how difficult it is to manage clans and all the personal lives of their virtual friends, and the social aspects of these games (whatever they may be, I just see my own online opponents as robots to avoid or destroy in what little time I spend on multiplayer games), and I just find it irritating.
I hate WoW, I hate what it does to people, and I hate what it brings out in people. I can't help but associate the game with socially-retarded shut-ins and unmotivated layabouts adrift in some crappy fantasy world, and I'm not too keen on anything else resembling WoW either.
11/25/09
This!
11/25/09
11/25/09
11/25/09
Why does it work? Because it's simple, it's accessible, nothing is overtly "broken," and yet there is a significant bit of skill to be had.
I quit for two reasons. First, after hundreds of hours spent in game I had pretty much exhausted everything significant there was to do. The quests and mechanics that were "new" played more like mini-games, which is fine but not sufficiently engaging. But what really did it for me was the game's constant trending towards rewarding time and build over skill (especially with the arena and, of course, the introduction of resilience).
That being said, I think it's in the best interest of anyone who ever wants to design, review, or even play traditional games to give WoW a proper go. If you're a gamer, of course you can simply not play it if you don't like it. But as someone who is part of the industry in any way, you really shouldn't be without the experience.
I would dare to say that mastering WoW is more valuable to a designer/critic than a college degree. You don't have to like the game, you just have to understand it. To know not just what makes it popular or what you hear in passing, but what makes it truly tick -- from the numbers and graphics to the art style and classes.
11/26/09
I don't even know what to say to that. Mind boggling
11/26/09
This is not to say that WoW is more valuable than college for a doctor or a lawyer. But if your intent is to be a designer/developer or a journalist and you can already read and write, it might just be.
11/25/09
I can't conceive having enough time to play WOW, my other games and have a social life, so I don't play WOW.
11/25/09
My primary reason is that the game is played on a computer, a device which constantly foils my attempts to simply do normal tasks without breaking.
My secondary reason is that end game requires far too much squeezing to get the smallest amount of juice from it. Until then, it's great though.
That's why the bulk of WoW players hit the level cap, then shortly after cancel their accounts.
11/25/09
Then promptly dropped it when I figured out that in 5 hours I barely did anything.
So I said fuck it, go go D2 if I ever wanted to something like this. There is grind in that, but it's all close by and fast.
11/25/09
I started in Ragnarok Online when they were running a free beta - I never thought I'd pay to subscribe to a game, but it's amazing how a free trial can change that. Paying around $15 per month, it turned out to be a far better buy than most games for me - the client was free, and for $15 a month, I'd get so much more play out of it than most $60-80 games that I would buy, dig a way into, then put on the shelf to collect dust. I probably paid them a few hundred dollars by the end of it, but I always got my money's worth.
My Ragnarok guild mostly quit to play FFXI, but I didn't follow. The game soon got boring without them, and I quit too.
I tried the beta of Ryzom and was violently disgusted that a game could be so bad. Maybe they fixed it by the final release, but it was pretty shocking.
I played Lineage 2 for a month or so. It looked great, it played well, but there was just no magic for me. Also, towns were HUUUUGE and empty. Some dungeons were impossible to complete because Chinese corporate gold farmer mafias would camp the dungeons and kill anyone who tried to come into their territory.
I played a bit of PSO: Blue Burst, having never played PSO before. Wow, it was great - except everything seemed to happen in reconfigurations of the same dungeon, and there was only one boss to fight no matter how many missions I did. Also, I only knew one person who played. I can see how it would have been an excellent game back in the day though. It positively dripped Sega style, and I feel like there must be more dungeons/bosses or something just hidden behind some undocumented feature or mission trigger.
I played Eve Online for a while - upgraded to a paid account because I needed industrial class ships. Not having a human body made the game surprisingly cold and impersonal; even though there was chat, there were no emotes. Most games had a whole pallete, but I guess without a face you don't need facial expressions. It was also soulsuckingly boring for me, but I knew there was something wrong when I got into the habit of playing a handheld while waiting for my ship to go somewhere or mine a rock.
Eventually I tried WoW to catch up to my old MMO-hopping Ragnarok guild. They were way beyond my level though. Then they started new characters when blood elves came out, and as I went from level 12 to 21 they went from 5-65, so I really didn't see them anyway despite being in the same guild. Mostly in terms of gameplay, it felt like Lineage 2 to me, but the graphics and art were like an assault on my senses. The biggest reason I got out was just that every environment I went to was so ugly and I couldn't spend that much time in a place like that.
11/25/09
I stopped playing for a number of reasons. I think some of it what that I hated the direction Blizzard has taken the game with each expansion. I think the game focuses too much on pvp and competitive gaming.
The general community of the game as bad as xbox live.
Finally I think I simply grew out of the game and spending hours trying to get some item or really anything that will be irrelevant when the next expansion is released.
11/25/09
If people actually thought about it sensibly they'd realise that to get 50 cents worth of value from a game you probably don't even need to spend 30 minutes a day (there is a caveat to this however, which I'll go into below).
Reasons to quit WoW are far more numerous. Depending on what you like to do, it is simply not always possible to play in small bursts. Questing, Arena and tradeskills are fine, but finding a dungeon group, running a raid or going to a battleground all take far longer.
There's also the fact that if you're not playing with friends or a guild, the game is completely different and very lonely. There's no getting around the fact that there is a lot of repetition involved in levelling no matter how engaging Blizzard try and make some quests, and grouping with strangers is less fun at best, incredibly frustrating at worst. This is why I'm so on-again-off-again with WoW - a lot of my friends who initially played have stopped, and I'm not the sort who easily makes friends online.
For people who've played an MMO before, there's also not that magic there that keeps you hooked. It's a very different experience to any other kind of game I've played, but if you've done it before then you won't have that sense of awe that takes you through the first, technically dull levels. This is also a factor with WoW's own expansions - the sense that you've seen it before can set in after a while.
Something that's interesting in one of the above comments is the idea of WoW as having a niche audience. You wouldn't have thought it with an 11 million strong playerbase, but its something I agree with. You need to have a particular escapist mindset to play the game, and while a lot of gamers have that to a certain extent many have it worse than others.
With games themselves being such a great form of instant gratification, its no wonder that some people choose to overindulge. It's a shame that so many adults seem unwilling to play it though - I know I was a dumb kid for playing too much and getting worse grades than I could have, but its sad that people post-university still don't think they have the self-control to try it.
(I love talking about WoW probably more than I enjoy playing it!)
11/25/09
WoW is like a marriage. You can't just jump in and play; you need to build and nurture the relationship to get the most out of it.
Thing is, I'm a games slut. I play as many as I can when they're hip and young, then leave them quietly in the morning and never call on them again.
So you see, we're just not made for each other.
And although I might go back for a quickie now and then, or hit up WoW's younger sisters (I'm currently seeing Champions Online but we're on rocky ground already) I know it's only a matter of time before something else takes my interest.