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I've played WoW for 3-1/2 years. But in the past 3 months or so my play time has dropped off significantly. Why? Burnout would be my first guess, the realization of the futility of it all, is another guess.
For the first 2 years or so, I made and leveled my 80 Dwarf Hunter, and after my hunter got up around level 30 or so, I started making other characters. One of each class, eventually. Some do certain things better than others.
But my hunter was often accused of being a "huntard", and yeah, I did dumb things sometimes.
After I reached level 70, then level 80 after WotLK came out, I began noticing changes. More and more often, people didn't want to group up for mid level raids and dungeons, they only wanted to get to 70 or 80 (WotLK) and do end game stuff. Yes, the end game stuff is good, but there's lots to do when leveling.
Like the thrill and analysis of certain situations, such as being a level 32 hunter, knowing you can take out 2 level 35 mobs in one fight, but there's a 34 and 2 35s over there, and I need to go there, and I'm not quite sure I can handle it, and no one is answering my messages for assistance....
Stuff like that.
Now I've got 3 80s. A mildly geared hunter, a decently geared holy pally healer, and a mildly geared 80 warrior tank. And it always seems like people LOVE to charge into the newest hardest instances, which is fine, but they get pickier and pickier about your gear. I know that when taking a PUG group it's always harder, but they take it too far.
The Gear Score mod has been THE single most damaging piece of software to the game of WoW. Because people only see your number, and they fail to recognize experience. I've tried to get into many raids on my pally and hunter, only to be refused because someone else thought my gear score was too low. Even on my pally healer, when they were advertising for healers, yet they wouldn't let me join! Do you know how frustrating that is?
Eventually I got a 10 man ICC group to let my 80 holy pally heal the run. The end result was that I was out-healing a shaman and priest who were 900 and 1400 higher in gear score than me. I got compliments on how well my 4488 GS pally did in healing. I said thanks, and made a real point of telling the group how they must ignore gear score and focus on experience. Because without skills, gear score means NOTHING!
Then you've got these idiots who bail on the group after 1 wipe. It may be on the first boss or the last, but a small mistake is made, the group wipes, and 1 or 2 just bail. I hate that.
I used to be in a good raiding guild, but after a while, the guild leader didn't like my opinions anymore (can you imagine that?) and I got booted.
Now when I want to go with a group for a run to get gear, they pull out their Gear Score mod, and say my gear isn't good enough. I say yes, I'm doing this raid to get better gear. They say no, go get better gear FIRST then come do the raid. I say NO, I'm in 200-226 gear, I want to skip all the 232 and 245 and 251 gear and just do this raid and get some 264 pieces and save myself a lot of time and effort. Instead of taking the gear one step at a time I want to fast forward to the newest best gear. No one seems to share my point of view on this.
Then you have the problem of new expansions coming out. Say for example that you DO have all the top end gear, you've done all the highest level raids, etc. You're pretty much all geared out.
THEN, a new expansion comes out. INSTANTLY, your high end new gear is transformed into barely acceptable gear, and if everyone in your raid is geared as well as you, you can barely squeak through some of the boss fights. The guild I used to heal for loved to do what they called "raid progression". I called it "run in and wipe 54 times and spend hundreds of gold on repair bills for no significant gain".
My plan became to do the runs a month or so later, when everyone else had done it a bunch of times and figured out the details, and then they could pretty much carry me through while I DPS'd or healed them, and I'd get better gear with far fewer wipes.
I remember doing Naxx, raid healing it. I was pretty darn good at it too. Then Ulduar came out and everyone was like "Naxx? What's Naxx? Forget Naxx! Let's go do Ulduar!!!!!". It was an instant change. One day Naxx was cool, the next day, it was old news. As was my gear.
When's the last time you went to Shattrath city, or anywhere in Outlands for that matter? It used to be EVERYTHING. Now Shattrath is a ghost town. Really. You ding 58, go to Outlands, level to 68, and head out to Northrend now.
So what's the plan? Go to many raids, eventually win enough rolls and wipe enough times to get geared up, then 3 months later a new expansion or a new raid encounter comes out, and you have to start all over? Nah, I've had enough of that.
And what about the number of players playing WoW? Blizzard used to announce it all the time when a new milestone was reached. 7 million, 8, 9, 10, 10.5, 11, 11.5 million, etc. It's been about 1-1/2 years since they hit 11.5 million, and I haven't heard a new announcement since then. Could it be that more and more people are like me, and have gotten tired of the BS, and are getting burned out and not playing as much anymore?
Could be.
I've had fun learning the Starcraft game, first with a couple weeks of practice in the original game, then in the SC2 Beta. It's a different type of challenge. The game is pretty well balanced, so it's not some super geared raid boss beating me, it's me against someone else, and my own skills make the difference. Plus, Starcraft is popular enough that I could eventually enter tournaments and play in competition if I get good enough. The only way that can happen in WoW is in arenas, and I don't have the patience for that. Plus I never liked arenas much, I used them to get gear for a while and that was that. Instead of having friends help me I'd just pay someone to help me get my 10 games a week and wait for the points to add up.
That's what I think. WoW had its time and it was good, but it's pretty much over with for me. I'll get the new Cataclysm expansion and level my 3 80s to 85, but not in as hardcore a way as I used to.
Edited by SCREAMER69, 12 June 2010 - 12:51 AM.
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