It's the End of the World (no.4)

Well it’s been a week since I quit World of Warcraft – so what of the aftermath?

Truth be told, I’d actually quit weeks earlier. You see, I was part of group with two other friends where’d we meet twice week and do quests. Then one of us decided he’d had enough so he left. And in doing so the group more or less disintegrated. Suddenly everything looked different and I was a lot less enthusiastic about visiting this world called Azeroth. In a classic tripod fashion, when one leaves the others crumble in their wake .And thus I didn’t feel like playing World of Warcraft anymore.

Weeks prior to this event, however, my view of World of Warcraft has been in a state of decline. Whilst World of Wacraft may have been exciting at first it was only through the progression of time that the enthusiasm slowly eroded away.
Don’t get me wrong: World of Warcraft has been fun to play and great on a sociable level but to me there a number of factors that come across as a deal breaker. I don’t like the repetitious nature of the game (seriously: how many times have the Blood Elves been granted admission into the Horde?!), I hate the grind, I’m finding not much left to see having travelled from one end of Azeroth to the other, I’m seeing similarities in both Alliance and Horde quests, I’ve reached the realization that I’ve done the same quests several times, It occurred to me that once you hit level 60 things start getting dull, I’m not too fond of coughing up fifteen bucks a month and I’m particularly irate with the abolishment of the talent trees with Mists of Pandaria. All of these reasons are reason enough to quit and all I needed was a catalyst: And one came with the afore-mentioned group disbanding.

And then there’s this blog. Those who’ve been following my blog will note that I’ve been playing World of Warcraft a lot this year – even to the point of playing exclusively as the other games in my collection have been gathering dust. In addition, I’ve been talking about World of Warcraft a lot in this blog – even to the point where it’s taken up the big text in the subject cloud on the right panel - a sign, if any, that it may be a good time to shut up about it. Indeed, the lack of World of Warcraft-related posts in recent weeks may have been something of a clue I was already in the process of moving on.
When I started this blog back in 2010, I had no plan in mind – However it only took a month before one emerged: I made a post listing my Hall of Shame. And suddenly I found a purpose for this blog: To play all the games I’d left unfinished and document my progress as I went. However this mission has been derailed this year with me sinking so many hours World of Warcraft. Now I don’t want to think about how many hours I’ve invested in World of Warcraft but it does draw attention to how big a time commitment a MMORPGer is. And suddenly playing a MMORPGer now seems like a counteractive move when I have so many games left unfinished.

Ultimately though, playing World of Warcraft has been my first stab at a MMORPGer (I’ll never stop using that term: why stop saying that’s so much fun to say?). So what do I think of it? Well I have enjoyed it: It was great doing quests with other people and there was a lot to be gleamed form a social level – indeed, as mentioned earlier, going on your own suddenly seems a whole lot different. Will I try again? Well in a way yes –True it is inexcusable of me to take up something that demands a lot of time when I have so many gems uncompleted but I really enjoyed romping through so many quests as a part of a group. So much so, I will admit to miss it and am interested to get back to it sometime. In the meantime though I've being going back to the Xbox and enjoying it - needless to say it will be a long time before I commit to a time-thief that is a MMORPGe. 
But when that day comes, who’s going to step up to the plate? Guild Wars 2? The Elder Scrolls Online (when it comes)? Well whoever it is, it won’t be for a while yet. Not while my Hall of Shame continues to exist anyway…

Times they are a-changin'

As Mists of Panderia rumbles ever so closer, the latest patch of WoW is let loose. Some changes have been made, no doubt to keep in line with the latest expansion, and to be honest? I do not like some of them. Granted such a response is atypical of a system that is in command of thousands upon thousands of users but some of the changes made are jarring and, in most cases, come across as unnecessary.

The biggest two changes for me are the Talent Trees and the glyphs. With the talent trees have disappeared – in its place is a far simpler system of selecting one particular skill every so often and other skills being implemented into the character class. Funny thing is, I actually sat down and plotted out a plan for my characters to take with their respective talent trees. Funnily enough such effort now feels redundant.

And the glyph system! I really enjoyed the glyphs but now the Prime glyphs have been dropped and all of the glyphs have had dramatic changes to their effects. Again this is cause for redundancy: I’ve spent a lot of time and money on obtaining certain glyphs for certain characters. I even had one of my characters, Naesandra, to make glyphs for an entire guild. It took a lot of hard effort on both accounts but now it seems it was all for nothing.

I’m not sure why these changes have come about. The glyphs and the talents trees were working just fine the way they were and Blizzard come across as trying to fix something that wasn’t broken in the first place. Indeed, it has been stated that WoW’s numbers have dropped dramatically and the once untouchable game is now looking like it’s running out of juice. Thus one would think Blizzard are trying to stay ahead of some potentially stiff completion (Guild Wars 2 anyone?). Granted I do understand the necessity of staying ahead of the competition in such a cut-throat business but why change that which didn’t need it? Why not fix something that was actually broken? I can think of several quests in the other expansions that were utter rubbish and could’ve well dome with some fixing.

But I think the biggest slap in the face was, for me, putting a lot of hard effort into this game and it ultimately didn’t matter one damn thing. I once made mention that I felt cheated by Blizzard by the ending of Starcraft but that’s nothing compared to this. Why, one would think that Blizzard are deliberately going out of their way to get people to hate them – which is never a good business model.

Still this patch does represent one more drastic change in a line of many in WoW’s evolution. Why, I started playing WoW with Cataclysm and have grown accustomed to the system that was presented within such a context. Therefore I can only wonder what WoW would’ve looked like in its original incarnation.….