"See you next week"

People post "I'm quitting!" and the usual response is "Can I have ur stuf?" but also a common response is "See you next week".

I've known several people in my guild who posted what sounded like definitive goodbyes only to pop up again months later. I'm not talking about the ones who decided to take a break for the summer, but the ones who say "It's been great knowing everyone and I'll never forget the fun we had".

I thought about this as I found myself unwilling to actually delete my characters even though I plan on quitting for good.

If that's my plan why do I need to hold on to my characters...just in case? I also want to get rid of most of my banked materials and gold, yet I want to hold on to a few things....just in case.

I don't even really want to come back for WotLK, so why can't I do a mass mailing of all my stuff to friend and do a youtube delete?

Is it because I'll realize I really miss wow and end up re-subscribing a week later?

No, I think it is because I just want to hold on to something I've spent so much time with -- as virtual as the thing may be. I would have bought a Figure Print if it weren't for having to win a drawing for it and also because the quality of the Figure Print is a bit lacking not to mention sometimes gifts are burdens (link to Penny Arcade here).

It is weird thinking about not wanting to lose ownership of my virtual loot. I've heard of people selling their accounts with legendaries on it and here I sit unwilling to part with my characters who were never at the pinnacle of any area of WoW be it PvE or PvP.

I rationalize it by saying I wouldn't get much if I tried to sell my account anyway and if I delete my characters I could always get a GM to restore everything.

So when my subscription expires my characters will still be there waiting for me, whether my break is a week or a month or a year.

Now or later

Maybe I just had a bad evening of play, but I'm toying with the idea of quitting before my actual cancellation is up.

I'll probably feel better when I get a chance to sleep on it. Goodnight internets.

One thing I won't miss about WoW...

Penny Arcade "summed" it up quite nicely here.

No more mmorpgs for me?

I received a reminder about buying Age of Conan. I finally unsubscribed to the "newsletter" because I have no plans to ever subscribe.

The main reason is most likely the fact my computer can't run the game, but another reason is I think mmorpgs and me maybe aren't the best fit anymore. At least not to the extent I've played a few.

I don't strive to be the very best, but I do like attempting to do lots of things in the game. I feel like you can't do a lot of things without spending a lot of time. And, like many WoW players realize (some much sooner than 4 years later), a lot of that time can be better spent elsewhere.

I'm quitting mmorpgs while circumstances make it easy to do so. Given my compulsive nature for mmorpgs, I'm lucky my pc won't run AoC well, Wrath of the Lich King nor Warhammer have mentioned any plans of releasing any time soon.

I'm setting my sights on some single player games with 40 hours of play or something like that. Something that will give me a sense of completion that is fleeting in WoW.

Fire Festival

I participated in some of the events like Lord Ahune mostly at the request of guildmates (our series of runs yielded the enchant and elemental pet but no scythe). But fortunately I don't feel excited or compelled to farm 350 blossoms to purchase something.

Believe me, last year I would have.

But for how long?

I canceled my WoW account today.

Well I have a recurring subscription so I have over a month left of play.

I don't plan on quitting immediately and if I end up having unexpected fun before my time is up I'll resubscribe.

My reason I gave Blizzard was "I play too much." And it is true.

Back when I was having a blast playing WoW I didn't care that I played a lot. I'm having a little fun now, but not enough to justify how much time I put into it.

Raid guild disbands

I'm curious about why the top raiding guilds are disbanding now instead of before Sunwell was released.

Maybe they had been holding out to see what would happen?

Just sticking a post here to look at later.

List revisited

It's only been little over a month since I last looked at this list. But looking at it now and then could help me stay on track check off list.

1) Play a needed class. I haven't grouped for an instance in weeks. You just don't need three tanks and sometimes you don't even need two. I'd probably have more luck as resto. But I simply refuse to go that route. If I end up trying out resto out of curiosity fine. But I'm not going to respec a role I don't want to play just to instance places I've already been for loot I already have. Downside? I miss the social aspect.

2) Focus on one role. I stuck to this and was lucky to get cat gear while all the while focusing on bear gear. Unfortunately even though I found myself doing anywhere from #1-3 dmg while in cat, I wouldn't get slotted if there was already tanks around (see #1). I'm just a tiny bit bitter about this. But I'm satisfied enough with my situation that I'm not going to respec resto and start trying to amass healing gear.

3) Do not raid. I've done a few of the short 25-mans. But I'm hardly raiding at all. Which is fine with me (see #1 and #2).

4) Do not pick up a crafting profession. I've stuck with this one, but I'm feeling the pull to go backwards. I'm trying to keep it in my mind that I'd rather not take up a crafting profession until the expansion when Inscriptions are introduced.

5) Get loot through crafting, reputation and pvp. Still working on this. I could always make a goal to get all of the badge loot. But the idea of grinding all those badges hasn't been appealing. I've gotten one expensive piece so far. So I have an idea how long it takes.

6) PvP marginally. No new battlegrounds makes this easy to stick to. Even with arenas I'm surprised more pvpers aren't complaining this.

7) Grind reputations that only give rewards I can't easily get anywhere else. I didn't stick to this. I've been grinding other reps.

Check off list

I came across another blogger who had a list of New Year's resolutions and it reminded me of the list I made a while back.

There is so much to do in WoW it is easy to lose track. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But having set goals is a good thing if you find yourself wandering aimlessly in the land of Azeroth.

I was going to make a check off list (things to do before the expansion) but I quickly changed my mind. I don't want to find myself grinding toward an unknown date.

I do plan on revisiting my personal list from time to time so I've added it to the side.

AoC classes - no surprises?

I decided to sneak a peak over at the Age of Conan class forums.

Keep in mind this is a HIGHLY scientific study (please note sarcasm):

The Assassin forum, which sounds like a rogue to me, is the most popular.

Followed by Ranger, which I assume are similar to hunters.

The least popular class forum is Priest of Mitra (uhm like priests?).

And a little less popular are Conqueror, which from what I could tell are tanks.

No surprises there, the most popular classes are dps and least are healer/tanks.

I know many players enjoy playing healers and tanks. I'm one of them.

But will there every be an MMORPG that breaks away from having healer/tank classes?

Age of Conan - the $300 game

I mentioned earlier that with my system I wouldn't be able to play AoC. I went on to talk about how excited and hopeful the new AoC blogs sounded and listed a few fan sites.

Well already one of them has found out they can't run the game either with their system.

Call me a wanna-be-gamer, but when I purchase a game I don't necessarily want to have to buy new video cards and ram and the like.

Everyone likes reporting gloom and doom but honestly that cannot sit well for AoC.

From another world...of warcraft

Just a second ago I was over at Blessing of Kings discussing raid schedules.

Someone mentioned they had quit their 5-6 night a week raid for a "guild that only raids 4 nighs a week and 4 hours a night."

only

ONLY????

Although I've done it myself in the past, all of a sudden this sounded like something completely foreign to me!

It was like listening to a player from another world.

My guild's website, which has become more of the raid guild's forum now, is less frequented by me. I'm not raiding so I don't care about sign up sheets and who's in line for what and strategies.

I like keeping track of world first boss kills, but even the race wasn't really a race with gates along the way and several of the best guilds disbanding.

And while it was cool to hear about the new legendary bow, it's extremely hard to get excited about new raid loot. Given my decreased level of participation, I'll never access it.

Maybe I'm coming full circle, back to being the player who didn't know what a raid was and listening to players talk about it like it was some other planet with a totally different culture.

Blog activity level

I get a disappointed when I click on a blog only to find out it hasn't been active in a year.

It is bound to happen, especially with niche gaming blogs because it's common for people to quit playing the game and moving on to a new one.

I'm going to try to add the last time a blog was updated on my blogroll or maybe a type of activity level (defunct, low, moderate, high).

Kil'jaeden kil'led.

The last boss in Sunwell Plateau instance was defeated over the Memorial Day weekend.

So what's that? 2 months from the first boss to the last including the gate pacing stopgaps.

Illidan was first downed on June of 2007. 8 months or so of no content for players at this level and now they've finished the new stuff.

The good news is, if you believe the rumors of the November release date for Wrath of the Lich King, there will only be 5 or 6 months of farming this time around.

Is it Time to Quit Raiding?

I finally quit raiding by choice and by force although I don't have an exact date when it officially happened. It was a tough decision because I like raiding. Matticus came across a questionnaire that could have been helpful to me a while ago.

Here are the questions and my answers (mixed with how I would have answered them in the past and how I'd answer them now):

1. What are the goals I have for this game? Have I achieved what I set out to do? See content the majority of players don't get to see. When I first heard about raids it seemed like this elite thing to do. Once I got involved I realized that was true and even more so.

2. Am I even interested in raiding anymore? Yes, when I was trying to quit I was still interested I just couldn't put up with the schedule anymore. I eventually grew to be less interested, but I wasn't like that at first.

3. Am I getting personal satisfaction from raiding? Yes, I enjoyed learning fights and finally beating bosses.

4. How many raids have I attended in the last 60 days? How many mandatory raids have I missed? I can't think of a time I ever missed a raid that I said I would attend. I had over 90% attendance and even raided when I was asked to on the nights I had scheduled off (which led to one of the nails in my raiding coffin).

5. Do I have the time to dedicate myself to raiding so that I don’t hinder the progress that is being made by them? Like #4 when I raided I dedicated myself to it. I didn't even like the idea of cutting back my days of raiding just to continue raiding because that's not really dedication in my book.

6. Am I satisfied with how raiding is being handled? Meh, what's not to like.

7. Are my contributions being noted or appreciated? As a healer it's hard to say, you're always wanted. I guess being chosen over other healers is being noted and appreciated so I'd say yes.

8. Did I give this guild’s raid groups enough time to stabilize and progress?

9. Where does this Guild expect to be in raiding a month from now? 6 months from now? A year from now? Yes they are still raiding, even more hardcore than in the beginning.

10. Do I have conflicts with the leadership that cannot be resolved in a way I’m satisfied with? No conflicts related with raiding.

11. Will I still be raiding in 6 months or will real life activities take over? (School, work, etc.) I couldn't see myself still raiding and I didn't.

12. Is this guild dying? No, on the contrary this guild has become more of a raid guild with each passing boss kill.

13. Am I getting tired from raiding? Is it sapping my energy and cutting into my life responsibilities? YES. YES and Yes. This one question was really the only question that needed to be asked in my case.

14. Am I an asset to this Guild’s raid? You're kidding right? I'm a healer.

15. Could I be doing anything else other than raiding right now?Yes. This was one of my main problems with raiding. If you have any other responsibilities in life and you decide to raid, you pretty much can only raid. Because it requires time outside raiding to support it.

16. How will my departure affect the guild? Will they survive without my presence? As many long-time raiders quickly and sadly realize after quitting, raids survive without you. There may be a rough week or so as they try to replace you. But as soon as they do, you are less remembered than Garr's loot table.

I'm purple! Shouldn't I be happy?

I can still remember where I got my first epic. A world drop. I remember a guild mate told me to sell it because he could craft me better. But it was epic....EPIC!

So I equipped it and happily used it. I remember other players actually asking me about it. I still have it although I've long since quit playing that character. Epics were really rare back then.

Fast forward to this year, where I finally decide to level an alt I'd had for almost 2 years to max. Within 2 months of hitting 70 I find myself wearing mostly all epics and as a druid this is in cat and bear form. And this is from me playing the least amount I've ever played since starting back in 2004. Yet this is by no means a record of some sort nor an exceptional feat.

You are able to craft your own epics with relative ease now and you can get "welfare epics" from badges and pvp. Not to mention epics from faction grinding. You can get a full set of epics without ever setting foot in an instance.

Epics are common now and less meaningful. Heck even legendaries almost seem common now - our guild recently asked some of the raid members to list items they wanted and the rogues wrote down Warglaives like they drop every day.

So it's no surprise that I log on to my character dripped in the color of royalty and feel like I haven't really accomplished much. My character is much beefier and deadlier than any character I've ever had probably. But I have no stories to tell about how I ran Stratholme 100 times for Beaststalker pants, because there were no alternatives better. No tales about how I pvped my way to a rank 10 Lieutenant Commander's Leather Helm, because that separated the men from the boys.

I don't miss those days, but I kinda wish there was a happy medium. Where things take some effort to get, but don't sap your life energy out of you. This is as hard to do as balancing classes for pvp. Everyone's level of effort is different. What seems like easy grinding to me may make someone else say I don't have a life. What seems like a monumental effort to me, may make the next person think I'm casual.

Either way, what I've done felt really easy and leaves me a little unfulfilled. I try to think what my first character with her epic sword she was so proud of would think about my spoiled alt brat.

Making up things to do

The other day I found myself making a list of "new" things to do that would give me a reason to log on more. Along the lines of "grind for an azure whelping". Making the list turned out to be more fun than actually attempting to do any of it.

I'm doing some 10-man raiding here and there. Lucky for me there is a wait list, so I don't always get in. Lucky I say because I don't want to find myself raiding 3 or 4 times a week again.

So I look at having to find things to do as a good thing. I'm more inclined to not log on at all. WoW is weaning me off WoW.

I know without checking that I don't have the machine needed to run Age of Conan. So I'm not going to bother with it. Once again fortunate for me.

I am curious how I got to this point. I've done several hundred things ad naseum in WoW, why is it now that I'm bored with it when I wasn't before?

Games n' Blogs

I started my WoW blog after I had leveled my second character to 60 (then the max). Never had a game been so much a part of my life, so it obviously never occurred to me to blog about it but it fit. I had actually started the blog as I was weaning myself off of raiding.

Many of the WoW blogs I read have players taking breaks, saying goodbye to WoW, but more often coming back. Many blogs are about their adventures in the game, links to loot, disgruntlement, fun and boredom.

It made me wonder why other people start blogs about their gaming experiences. And also how innocent blogs must start out when games are still fresh and new.

So that sent me searching for blogs about Age of Conan, the closest new MMORPG on the horizon. The first blog seems like a company sponsored advertisement fansite. I finally found a few that seems to be a legitimate fan fansites.

Of course it is too soon for these bloggers to have that much to say. But I wish them well as they begin their love affair with a new game. I miss that feeling.

Gimme Gimme more

A link I used to visit so much I put it on my side bar but hadn't visited much recently. So I was surprised to see a goodbye to WoW, for now from Relmstein.

Well not too surprised. While it appears that his reasons for taking a break are because he primarily pvps and without Season 4 (which I imagine is more of the same of Season 3 which was more of the same of Season 2 which is...yeah you get the picture) to look forward to.

Playing different players is more dynamic and new "content" in its own right. And talk about return on investment! Create an empty room, put a pillar or bridge or moat in it has got to be the lowest development cost ever! That players enjoy it so much has got to be a happy surprise for Blizzard.

But exactly how many seasons of the same will pvpers put up with? Pillars aside, there really isn't anything new introduced to arena play.

And as someone mentioned (can't remember where I read this) arena really takes the massively multiplayer out of WoW.

I remember someone saying they didn't need an epic mount because all they did was log on, get summoned into a 25-man instance, raid, and log off. I imagine the same can be said for a lot of people who hang out in Shattrath or Nagrand or Stormwind or wherever a battlemaster is and log on with their 4 other friends, arena, and log off.

And with the tournament server you don't even have to spend time leveling!

Even if they release the date of Season 4 I expect more WoW players to start asking for more. Blizzard needs to start delivering more content faster. It is it's own worst enemy. Being a fun game you play a lot thus you run out of things to do faster.


I hit exalted with Shattered Sun Offensive, ran Magister's Terrace several times and now all that is left is to do the same on alts??? Bleh.

I personally haven't left it for another game, but I am playing LotrO alongside it just because WoW isn't giving me anything new to do. I feel like I need to take breaks from it so that when I come back to doing the same ol' thing it's not so stale.

LotRO re-visited.

I subbed to Lord of the Rings Online again.

Unlike suspected, my characters were still there.

And unlike I promised myself, I picked another healer character - a minstrel.

After reading all classes solo fair in LotRO so this time around I figured what they hey. I hadn't leveled any of the characters very far at all the first time around. Yet I still wanted to try something different and a minstrel was left.

I quickly reached level 10 due to being familiar with all the quests in the hobbit starter area and noticed I unlocked Monster Play. Monster Play is where Free People "Freeps" (any hobbits and elves, etc level 40-50) fight "Creeps" (automatically max level orc kind, wargs, etc.)

I admit my blog is on the pessimistic side due to MMORPG grind burnout, and I really wanted to enjoy it (who doesn't pick a game to have fun in it!) but I have to remain honest and say Monster Play got old quickly. Actually working together with a group to take back keeps was great fun, but when I realized I needed to do 250 quests to get maps (think portals to all the bunkers in Alterac Valley) to really enjoy PvMP (Player vs. Monster Player) my enthusiasm sank like a stone. And a lot of this activity is PvE. On top of that repetitive PvE. As a creep, imagine logging on inside AV and never being able to leave. You are always in AV and the only way you improve your character is to do AV quests and kill horde who may not always join your battleground.

I liked finding out what it was about. But it's like doing a series of quests, having fun figuring them all out then someone saying - okay do that same thing 100 more times.

As I said the saving grace is how LotRO players, at least the world I play on, actually work together to defend or take back keeps. But this organization is due to a small, small player base. Once again, to put it in perspective, remember how Alterac Valley used to be before cross-realm battlegrounds. You see the same names on each evening, but in the vent I've joined for example, you already hear rumblings of jumping ship for Age of Conan.

I'll continue to play it simply because I need something besides WoW to play in order to keep it fresh. When I get tired of LotrO after a week, I can go back to WoW and so on. Not an optimal solution, but I really don't see any alternatives.