Why I quit playing WoW.
(Note: The post below will quite possibly offend you if you have played Wow, and it's even more likely to do so if you still do. Rest assured that this does not apply to everyone, and that if certain things seem to, you may be very much better at balancing life / WoW issues than most.)
Several months ago, at any rate.
I look back on my time playing it, and yeah, it was fun. I won't deny it... but where did the fun come from? Was it being sent halfway around the world to kill 500 copies of the same enemy over and over in the hopes of getting 5 gizzards from the species I just wiped out so that I could take them back to the murderous asshole who sent me out in the first place, just to have him send me out again to wipe out yet another unsuspecting species?
No. Grinding fucking sucks. It's like paying your job for the privilege of working. Not to mention that there is no satisfaction to be gleaned from taking down Dire Wolf no. 498. Or 362, for that matter.
Was it the dungeons? Certainly, there's a good time to be had in getting together with a group of friends and tackling a finely honed, strategically-demanding, ultimately satisfying, gives-you-bragging-rights-with-all-your-nerdy-friends dungeon...
... that is, if you don't work 2nd shift, and want to devote the slavish, life-sucking amount of time to the game that it takes to acquire the needed materials to get the aesthetically pleasing, kick-ass armor that will allow you to survive these dungeons in the first place, and want to run the same dungeons over and over and OVER again in the hopes of getting even more aesthetically pleasing-er, kick-ass-er-er armor that will allow you to survive doing the same fucking thing in the next dungeon up, etc. etc. etc. FUCKING etc.
This all assuming that you can tolerate putting up with people that have been doing this longer than you and will quite literally reach through the computer screen and rip out your spleen should you heal the wrong person, cast the wrong spell at the wrong time, cast the right spell at the wrong time, cast the wrong spell at the right time(?), or DON'T STAY AWAY FROM THE FUCKING WHELPS (sorta inside joke, if you don't get it, you're already ahead of a lot of people. Be proud.)
Is it the story?
WoW has an interesting story. Er, stories, rather. They (Blizzard, makers of WoW) have a habit of shoehorning in hackneyed explanations for alterations to dogma whenever it suits their needs, player anger and consistency be damned. Besides that, though, there is a somewhat interesting, if tired story, to be had if you really feel like diving into it. Problem is, unless you're wanting to do the dungeon-crawling thing I described above, you're only ever going to see the periphery of it. Most of the time, you're just going to be running jerk-off quests for the above-mentioned types who don't mind genocide so long as it gets 'em their soup. (Unless, of course, you want to go out and buy all the nifty supplemental WoW stuff, like action figures, comic books, the TCG, the novelettes, etc., in which case... you'll still be lost.)
In the end, you're just doing the same thing for different bastards. Brains for this guy, rebel head for this guy, scales for this woman, treasure that's surrounded by, and inevitably requires the death of, some group of poor bastards just trying to get by...
....
Really, it's just the people. I have friends that play that I enjoy playing with. I've met some intensely cool people while playing. Being in a guild, in particular the guild I was in for a good deal of my playing time, made what otherwise by all rights would have been a miserably dull time into a fun one.
Will I ever go back? I dunno. It's doubtful. I'm kind of glad to have that particular money-sucking monkey off my back. But I think about doing it from time to time... who knows, maybe if I kill enough wolves, I can get a nice armor set for noobs to ooh-and-ah over in the middle of town...
Several months ago, at any rate.
I look back on my time playing it, and yeah, it was fun. I won't deny it... but where did the fun come from? Was it being sent halfway around the world to kill 500 copies of the same enemy over and over in the hopes of getting 5 gizzards from the species I just wiped out so that I could take them back to the murderous asshole who sent me out in the first place, just to have him send me out again to wipe out yet another unsuspecting species?
No. Grinding fucking sucks. It's like paying your job for the privilege of working. Not to mention that there is no satisfaction to be gleaned from taking down Dire Wolf no. 498. Or 362, for that matter.
Was it the dungeons? Certainly, there's a good time to be had in getting together with a group of friends and tackling a finely honed, strategically-demanding, ultimately satisfying, gives-you-bragging-rights-with-all-your-nerdy-friends dungeon...
... that is, if you don't work 2nd shift, and want to devote the slavish, life-sucking amount of time to the game that it takes to acquire the needed materials to get the aesthetically pleasing, kick-ass armor that will allow you to survive these dungeons in the first place, and want to run the same dungeons over and over and OVER again in the hopes of getting even more aesthetically pleasing-er, kick-ass-er-er armor that will allow you to survive doing the same fucking thing in the next dungeon up, etc. etc. etc. FUCKING etc.
This all assuming that you can tolerate putting up with people that have been doing this longer than you and will quite literally reach through the computer screen and rip out your spleen should you heal the wrong person, cast the wrong spell at the wrong time, cast the right spell at the wrong time, cast the wrong spell at the right time(?), or DON'T STAY AWAY FROM THE FUCKING WHELPS (sorta inside joke, if you don't get it, you're already ahead of a lot of people. Be proud.)
Is it the story?
WoW has an interesting story. Er, stories, rather. They (Blizzard, makers of WoW) have a habit of shoehorning in hackneyed explanations for alterations to dogma whenever it suits their needs, player anger and consistency be damned. Besides that, though, there is a somewhat interesting, if tired story, to be had if you really feel like diving into it. Problem is, unless you're wanting to do the dungeon-crawling thing I described above, you're only ever going to see the periphery of it. Most of the time, you're just going to be running jerk-off quests for the above-mentioned types who don't mind genocide so long as it gets 'em their soup. (Unless, of course, you want to go out and buy all the nifty supplemental WoW stuff, like action figures, comic books, the TCG, the novelettes, etc., in which case... you'll still be lost.)
In the end, you're just doing the same thing for different bastards. Brains for this guy, rebel head for this guy, scales for this woman, treasure that's surrounded by, and inevitably requires the death of, some group of poor bastards just trying to get by...
....
Really, it's just the people. I have friends that play that I enjoy playing with. I've met some intensely cool people while playing. Being in a guild, in particular the guild I was in for a good deal of my playing time, made what otherwise by all rights would have been a miserably dull time into a fun one.
Will I ever go back? I dunno. It's doubtful. I'm kind of glad to have that particular money-sucking monkey off my back. But I think about doing it from time to time... who knows, maybe if I kill enough wolves, I can get a nice armor set for noobs to ooh-and-ah over in the middle of town...