So I Might Quit WoW

Cafe Society
1

I just canceled my subscription to World of Warcraft last night. My account is still paid up until July, so I’ve got plenty of time to change my mind. Maybe I will change my mind. But lately I’ve just been annoyed by a few things, and I’m curious if other Dopers agree.

There are three major reasons why I’m currently planning to let my account expire:

Lack of Solo Endgame
I’m a solo player by nature. I have grouped to do some quests. I’ve even been to Upper Black Rock Spire a couple times, and Scholomance and Stratholme a few times each. I’ve run various parts of Dire Maul a few times, too. The first time through each of them it was kind of fun, but they got old really, really quick.

I’ve technically been part of a 40-person Raid, but that was in defense of Tarren Mill. That was damn fun. I have never been to Molten Core or anything like that though.

Basically, my philosophy is this: If I have to schedule an appointment to play a game, it isn’t really a game at all. It’s a sport, or a job, or something else. But not a game. This rules out raiding.

There’s very, very little for my level 60 Druid to do. I could farm reputation, but that’s pretty much the definition of boring. I could play in one of the Battlegrounds - if I didn’t have a strong dislike of being one- or two-shotted by someone decked out in Epic gear. I can do a bunch of quests, many far below my level, but I don’t get anything worthwhile out of it. I don’t gain any experience. Any items I gain will typically be vendor trash. Money from quests is generally a pittance. Worst of all, the quests I haven’t done yet are often below my level and provide no challenge, or at my level and impossible to solo. (Not to mention all the quests that involve raiding.)

I’d like some way to advance my character’s stats or abilities, even just a little tiny bit, that can be done solo and doesn’t involve months of grinding to gain reputation. I’ve got some ideas for how it could be done. No doubt others have even better ideas. But I don’t think it will be done.

I’ve been leveling some alts. In fact, 8 alts. (Levels 45, 34, 27, 21, 18, 14, 10, and 3. :)) That’s certainly a bit of fun - each class is different enough that I have to learn new techniques and strategies, even when doing the same quests I’ve already done with my main character. It will inevitably get old after a while, though. And when my alts start reaching 60, it’ll be the same thing all over again.

Blizzard’s Silly Gay Rule
It’s difficult to justify giving $12 a month to a company that bans recruitment for “GLBT friendly” guilds. The explanation? Doing so might make others harass that guild. This is blaming the victim at its finest. Er, worst. Well, you know what I mean. Not to mention that chat in the game is absolutely full of “tahts so gey” and the like, which apparantly isn’t a problem. Anyway, I understand why Blizzard might take that stance as a business decision. They’ll just have to accept that I’m leery of supporting them.

So … Where ARE Hero Classes, Anyway?
More generally, where are all the things that were advertised? Control of towers, graveyards and maybe even entire towns? Hero classes, whatever they are? Rough equivalence of “casual” and “hardcore” gear?* I’ll grant that they’ve had “world events”, as promised. Well, at least one world event. And that one sucks for a non-Raider. Granted, I’ve made about 30G just from a few stacks of [Thick Leather] and [Mageweave Bandages]; but gouging people at the Auction House shouldn’t be the only entertainment I get out of a “world event”.

*Lead designer of WoW:
THEN:
January 2004 -
“We want the game to be friendly to power gamers as well as casual gamers. Power gamers won’t be able to acquire that über-artifact that lets them level mountains, but they might be able to get a sword of the same power that’s available to a casual gamer – only theirs bursts into flames when it’s used.”
NOW:
January 2006
“Q. Why not just let casual players get rewards comparable to those from raids?
A. It would be almost impossible for us to do, and this is a philosophical decision.”

Petty Whine
The game has been out for a year. They still haven’t fixed the bug that causes the music to blare at high volume when you Alt+Tab into the game!

Does anyone else feel the same way about any of this? Maybe this is just a momentary feeling of fatigue from the game and it’ll pass and I’ll love it again. However, I may just let my account expire and then wait until the expansion comes out to see what all that brings.

2

That’s how I feel, too, so i’m also waiting for the expansion.

3

I don’t have any of those problems, but I can imagine your position.

I just had to comment that having to schedule to play doesn’t make it a job. It’s no different than anything you do in real life when you have to meet up with your friends. If you’re all meeting up at 9pm on Friday to go to a bar, that doesn’t make bar-hopping a sport.

A different game might be better for you, but for at least a couple of issues you raised it seems like you’ll have a better experience simply by moving to a server with more mature players, joining a guild, and making friends.

4

That’s a good point. I probably should have worded things differently. As to your example, I can always head to the bar on my own. The bartender isn’t going to refuse to serve me because I don’t have 39 friends with me. I can experience the the “bar content” solo, if I choose, or in a group. If I had to make an appointment for the bar and then arrive with a group (probably containing numerous strangers) and if I left my group they would be angry with me because they would likely not be able to continue drinking without me, or if one of them left I would likely not be able to continue drinking, and they expected me back there at the same time next week and the week after that so that they could eventually get their [Beer Goggles], then, well … It’s not a sport, nor a job, but I think it falls into my “something else” category. It certainly wouldn’t be what I consider to be entertaining.

Hopefully that makes some kind of sense. I dunno. Maybe I shouldn’t attempt extended analogies at 6:20 AM. :stuck_out_tongue:

Well, immaturity I can deal with. I can always ignore it if I have to. I just assumed from the start that there would be a constant background immaturity in WoW. I suspect it’s probably the same on every server.

My two higher level characters are members of guilds. I honestly don’t even know if these guilds do guild raids. I’ve never been invited to one. (Not by my guilds, anyway. I was invited to Molten Core by a stranger. I said, “Sure, I’ve never been there,” thinking it would be neat to at least see the place. Then they asked, “Wait, you’re attuned right?” I had to ask what that meant, which elicted a short explanation and a “kthxbye”.) There are usually about three or four people in the guild on when I play (between roughly 2 AM to 5 AM).

But the truth is I don’t want to make friends or join a guild in order to continue playing the game. Meeting more people, or joining a better guild, will probably not make me suddenly enjoy raiding. Even groups of five are noticably less fun for me than a group of two or three. And grouping with any number is almost never as fun as solo. The only reason I might do MC would be to at least see the dang thing. But if it’s at all like UBRS, etc., then I’ll be given the great priviledge of watching the main tank actually do something while I spam heals and decurses, with the occassional Cure Poison thrown in for spice.

5

I enjoy soloing more than grouping, but I was lucky enough to join a guild that, while not totally made up of mature players, almost all the officers are fairly adult about things.

From what I’ve been told by people, most MMO’s are much harder to solo than WoW. The upcoming DnD MMORPG is designed so that, according to some of the beta testers on another board I belong to, it is virtually impossible to do any but the beginning quests without a group. Almost every place in the game is instanced.

If you don’t like grouping at all, I doubt that the expansion is going to help you much. If you don’t mind doing 5 and 10 man instances, then it will.

I’ve never even heard of the bug you mentioned…

6

There was an article in the New York Times this weekend about this very thing. Well, it seemed like this very thing. I don’t know the game well enough, but it was World of Warcraft and had to do with solo vs. group stuff. Close enough for me.

Link.

7

I hear ya.

I, too, like to solo the most. That said, I’ve had a ton of fun in 5-person instances (NOT raids.) Last night, for example - we took a priest, hunter, druid, warrior, and mage and 5-manned Scholo. We had to think about the strategy we were using, and in one case - the second to last boss - we wiped once, rezzed, rethought the strategy and tried something slightly different and voila, dead boss. It was a blast!

Was it more of a hassle than just logging on and soloing? Yeah, it was. It took about 30 minutes to get the group together. But once we were assembled and started going, it was way more fun than soloing.

Also, a big part of the game for me is that I do have a couple friends (game friends, I’ve never met them in real life) who I play with a lot. I know their habits, I know when they’re likely to be on, and I can loosely schedule stuff with them. Even when the game itself might not be fun (like if you get a really bad group together) we can giggle at the dumb tank (or whatever) in tells and it’s generally fun.

I realize that coming up with a couple people to play with isn’t easy - but hey, we have a big base of WoW players here on the SDMB. I’m on Killrogg - maybe there’s someone on your server?

8

Oh, I had a question while reading that article the other day. Realize I’ve never even SEEN this game.

Let’s say I get 40 people together to attack some dragon. Let’s say you get 40 people together to attack the same dragon.

What if we show up at the same time? Does the game kind of keep “parallel” universes going or what? Why can multiple groups kill the same dragon?

Also, can you kill each other?

Also, what happens if you die? Do you go back to level 1?

9

I quit back in oh, last May, I think. I had gotten WoW when it came out, leveled to 60, and then was like… OK, now what? The raiding game is a boring rehash of EQ, and I didn’t like raiding/the endgame back in that game. I was in a guild (on some PvP server, I forget which one now) that did Molten Core, Onyxia and UBRS (all that was out at the time), and I went on runs of each. The first time through a raid is kinda interesting, but by the time you reach your 20th UBRS run you really start to question the fun factor involved. And I like PvP (and it was the primary reason I bought WoW), but WoW’s implementation of it left me cold, and rather bored.

Anyway, after that I feel like WoW is a decent game to play in a diablo-ish way; do some quests, level a character to the max once, get some items, see the sights… but once you’ve done that, there’s pretty much all there is to it, unless you’re a hardcore raider/grinder, or you really enjoy leveling alts.

In fairness, that’s the way I’ve felt about most MMORPGs I’ve played. I don’t think I’ve lasted in any of them for over 10 months at a time, 'cause I play them, burn through them, and then get bored and quit. But even by that standard, WoW was a disappointment to me. The game is pretty, and some of the quests are fun, but I don’t think it lived up to the hype at all. Personally I had more fun in CoH.

10

Yes, they’re called instances. Each instance is private for your group.

Yes, you can kill people on the enemy side (Horde vs. Alliance). Depending on the server, you can do it practically anywhere or only when you’re in the mood for it.

Nope, you just go to a graveyard as a ghost and have to run back to your body. Or you can resurrect at the graveyard, but it costs you a little in the degradation of your gear.

I quit in October. Once I reached 60 with my main (NE Hunter), I couldn’t maintain interest very much longer. I have no interest in raiding either. I’ll probably get back in when the expansion comes out and play until I reach lvl 70.

11

Wow, seems like you don’t have much experience with MMORPGs?

If you’ve ever done a more traditional type of role-playing game, ala D&D or a pen-paper type RPG, then you’ve got the basic concept. However the world is much larger with way more players and the focus is more on the combat aspects than the “role playing” aspects.

EQ was very close to the traditional MUDs, which were fairly close to core old-school RPGs in the D&D mold as far as combat was resolved (dice rolls) and in general roleplaying was a big part of the MUDs. With the transition to a graphical world with EQ (or really UO, but EQ is really sort of the first pioneer to really hit gold) the focus on roleplaying dropped as the player base expanded rapidly beyond traditional “role players” and started to encompass “gamers” who are more interested in blowing stuff up and killing things.

  1. If you both show up at the same time, well, the first raid to get the first amount of damage done to the dragon has the mob flagged as “theirs” and when it dies they get to loot it.

In WoW most of this is resolved via “instancing” while most of the world is interconnected and you can see your fellow players running about, when you enter an “instanced dungeon” you enter a version of a given dungeon that is only open to you and your party/raid. While you’re in your version of this dungeon killing away, 500 other parties could be in their respective versions of the dungeon killing away as well, and you’d never know it.

There are major “outside” bosses that are being put in. There are some special, big time dragons that are on the outside and aren’t instanced, and on some servers it is a problem with some guilds being able to kill them over and over and other guilds not being able to as much, but it’s not even 1/1000th of the problem it was in EQ.

  1. You can kill each other. If it’s a pvp server you can kill people from the other alliance anytime they’re in your territory or you’re in contested territory. If they’re in their territory they can’t be killed by you or attacked in any way, unless they attack you first thus getting themselves “flagged.”

On non-pvp servers no one can kill anyone unless it is consensual on both sides in that you have to be “pvp flagged” meaning you’re eligible to be attacked in pvp combat. Once you go flagged you’re flagged for five minutes after your last combat action (to prevent people flagging/unflagging abusively.)

There are battlegrounds which are basically battlefields in which teams of players from different alliances battle one another to try and accomplish certain goals.

  1. If you die you become a ghost, appearing at the nearest grave yard. To become corporeal again you have to run to the place you died and “resurrect.” You don’t lose your level and the only penalty is the time it takes to get back to your corpse and the damage your equipment suffers from the death (this can be repaired at a smith’s in-town.)
12

I’m on Frostwolf, a PvP server. My guild has finally gotten big enough to do the Molten Core. I find that while I can’t stand PUGs (pick up groups), guild runs are much better. The only problem I find in MC is the time it takes. Because we’re just starting, it’s taking a long time learning what we have to do. We haven’t managed to kill a boss yet, but we are getting quicker at fighting through the molten giants, flamelords, Lava Surgers, Core Hounds, and whatever else we come upon to get to the first boss. The first time we did MC as a guild-only run, it took us 5 hours to get almost to the first boss. This past Friday, it took us only 2 hours to get to him. We can still see where we need to improve our tactics to speed us up even more.

Luckily, just fighting and killing the “trash mobs” in MC, we’ve gotten 4 or 5 epics. I’m the highest Priest in DKP (Dragon Kill Points) now… so the next Priest only epic to fall will go to me!!! Bwahahaha!!

13

CoH is getting mayhem missions to Blow Stuff Up Real Good. Woo!

If you want one last gasp with WoW, ever try hooking up with a huge guild alliance? Like the Penny Arcaders?

14

I used to play EQ, and now I play DAoC. My DA guild has gotten huge because of all the people returning from WoW. They all had the same reasons: nothing to do when you get to 60 except go on high end raids, and they miss the PvP.

There’s just a huge rush in conquering an enemy realm, destroying their keeps, and hearing the lamentations of their women. No wonder our ancestors fought each other so much.

15

Go play Guild Wars. You will like it.

And it’s cheaper.

:smiley:

16

WoW is dead to me. I renewed my account again recently, and only logged on a few times in the month that I was back. The game has just lost all fun.

17

I played a druid to level 39 on a PvE server with some SDMB folks, but only one or two people from the guild were ever on when I played, and I got to a point where I couldn’t really solo anything anymore. So, I moved to Azgalor, a PvP server where my husband plays with a bunch of high school and college friends and rolled a Warlock–they’re a really active, really friendly, and very helpful guild, and I find that the game is a whole lot more fun with a vocal and interactive group to run with. We do instance runs, and while I might run MC/BWL once or twice, I really mostly just enjoy the questing aspect of the game. Instance runs are fun if you go with the right group, but I can’t imagine running the same instance twenty or thirty times, like Mr. Armadillo has with MC.
I imagine now that I’ve recently hit 60, I’ll run endgame instances enough to complete the epic gear set, and the expansion will probably keep me entertained for a while longer… then I’ll probably roll an alt, or roll a horde character. At least by rolling horde I’ll get what amounts to a whole different game, as far as the quest sets go. I do agree that the endgame offers diminishing returns.

18

Well, as far as I know, WoW doesn’t purge characters (at least not frequently), so there’s no harm in dropping it for a while to try something else. If you decide to go back, you can just reactivate your account.

If you want to try something lighter and more solo-friendly, have you tried City of Heroes/City of Villains? Of the two, Villains looks better and is getting more goodies currently, because it’s newer…you just have to be interested in playing a bad guy. My impression is that it’s much more solo-friendly than WoW (or most other MMORPGs), and the next patch to go live will make it more so. Archvillain/Hero class enemies (uber-bosses designed to be unsoloable) are being changed so that they spawn as the much weaker Elite Boss class for soloers and small teams. When this goes live, all the regular mission content will be soloable for pretty much anybody. (Some optional content like task forces and trials will still require teams, and the Hamidon raid needs at least 60 or 70 people.)

As an example, I took my empathy defender (the closest equivalent is probably a priest–buffs, healing, some control, and arguably the lowest damage in the game) on a mission against an archvillain on the test server this week. Since I was solo, he scaled down to an Elite Boss, and I was able to solo him. It was a significant challenge, but definitely possible.

On the downside, there’s not much to do at the level cap except run task forces and such that you skipped, and doing the Hami raid (which is a much more casual affair than most other MMO raids I’ve seen–it takes about an hour, and everyone who hits the Hamidon gets the reward when he is defeated). Also, there have been some very heavy nerfs in the last couple of updates, and no one is quite as powerful as they once were, so you may hear a lot of grousing about the good ol’ days.

They may run a promotion with free trials around Valentine’s Day, and the Dopers who play usually offer passes here. Keep an eye out for them.

19

I had considered trying WoW but after hearing that higher level quests require groups and how hard it is to find a group, I that the City of _____ universe is enough for me. The team at Cryptic Studios is making CoX even friendlier to those of us who mainly solo by way of having an Archvillain (or Superpowered Hero for the Villain side) spawn according difficulty level and team size.

20

"I decided that…"Gotta pay more attention when composing posts.