Painting myself into a corner

I logged onto WoW last night, since I've already plateaued in CoX.

My current state in CoX isn't a surprise or disappointment. I knew I'd only get so much out of it before having to look elsewhere again. There are several areas of play to keep you busy in CoX, but none of them will hold me much longer:

I leveled relatively fast due to AE. I wasn't expecting a long, drawn-out leveling experience. I knew what to expect as far as missions, although I have to say I enjoyed the newer missions better. When I title this post "painting myself into a corner" I really wasn't refering to this but it does apply. AE is a really fast way of leveling, so much so that I don't believe I'd enjoy leveling another CoX character the "old" way. After sailing to America by boat once, if you were given the option to take a sonic jet, which would you choose for your subsequent visits overseas?

Task forces are a series of missions that can only be completed by the 8 people you started with. I did the Croatoa task force, one I was really looking forward to, only to find I'm still not sure what everyone was ga-ga over. It took much longer than I expected or liked it to. I have zero interest in spending hours doing a task force, if I wanted to do that I'd be raiding in WoW. So after doing some of the fastest ones (Katie Hannon, Numina and Lady Grey) we did the latter in 30 minutes or something and I had never been there before, I knew I was done with task forces.

Speaking of raids, I participated in CoX's form of a raid. They used to have one called Hami raid (you fight a big jello mold called Hamidon). I didn't bother doing that one again. But the new one (to me) is called RWZ - Rikti War Zone raid. You speed around tearing down Pylons that keep up a shield that protects the Rikti war ship. (If I'm not explaining the details right, it doesn't really matter.) Once all the pylons are down, you fight through waves of Rikti (*the* enemy in Cox) until, from what I can tell, they build the shield back up and the raid is suddenly over. I cannot imagine doing that more than two times just because I'm bored.

Another thing new to me was Invention Origins (IOs) and sets. These are enhancements you gather materials for and create (CoX's version of crafting). You can get materials as drops, purchase a grab bag of them from AE tickets, or purchase them from Wentworth's (Auction House). It bugged me a little that in order to craft not only did you have to be at a workbench, that's expected, but you had to zone either to your Supergroup base or the "University" building. Imagine each time you wanted to make a copper bar you had to zone into an instance. For someone who used to run from anvil to AH and back several times, the CoX way is bloated. Also the idea of earning the influence (gold) to purchase necessary IOs, not only do you need the materials you need the recipe for the specific IOs. Imagine having to purchase a recipe for a Frostweave bag each time you wanted to make one. The grind I saw ahead of me wasn't appealing. Like I said about WoW, I guess I'm the one changing, not the games.

I had my most fun teaming (grouping) with players. Constant advice given on the CoX forums is to find a supergroup. I fell into and actively sought out several supergroups for my various alts, none of them had more than 4 players on at one time. One Supergroup I'm in I never saw anyone after they invited me. And its not like I'm playing at some weird time. I can't say for sure, but it felt like I was either waiting or searching or trying to build my own team, more than I played on one. And I chose one of the highest populated servers. Maybe you can blame this on AE, but that complaint only goes so far.

That leaves PvP (Nope) and badge hunting (achievements). I didn't want to fall into the trap of badge-hunting, so unless there is something I'm missing out of that list, re-visit of CoX is coming to a close.

So with that, I logged back on to WoW last night. I clicked on each of my characters and could not bring myself to choose one I wanted to play. The title of my post is the feeling that I couldn't create a new character because I feel like if I'm going to play I should be on my max level character doing achievements. And I didn't feel like doing achievements on my max level character. I've painted myself into a corner and it was all my doing. Since I didn't feel right creating or playing on an alt, and I didn't feel up to jumping back onto my main, I logged off again, without ever entering Azeroth. Sigh.