I’ve let my WOW subscription lapse and I’m on the fence about starting over. I’m not sure if I should rejoin. If I do I’d start over but I’m not 100% certain I want to rejoin a game where I have to pay monthly.
Well… what did you enjoy doing when you played? What would you enjoy doing if you started again?
Solo questing and leveling is arguably better than ever. Raiding is a bit more “meh” now, although you can do some without being super skilled or geared now. Doing small-group stuff is both more accessible and also more frustrating.
All-in-all, I’d actually probably say “no” even though I’m an active player.
I did enjoy the solo play and the radon groups but as I got up in level I don’t think I was that good in groups. I was never part of a raid group and didn’t go for PVP
Then it actually may be right in your wheel-house. They made the solo questing much better. And that seems to be where the majority of their effort is going these days.
If you’re not interested in a monthly fee, there are plenty of free-to-play MMPORGs to choose from if you’re not married to WoW you might want to consider. It would involve learning a new game, however. Although depending on how long you’ve been out of WoW that might seem like a new game too.
No.
I actively raid and pvp, I largely agree with Jas. How long ago did you let your subscription lapse?
Leveling and questing in Cataclysm is as good or better than it’s ever been. If that’s something you enjoy, it may be worth resubscribing for.
If you enjoy raiding, the current content, Dragon Soul, is pretty poor and unpolished. So if you’re into any amount of higher end raiding, particular Heroics, its not really all that interesting. However, if you were never all that much into raiding, they introduced Raid Finder which is essentially Easy Mode raiding and you can simply queue for it like you would BGs or Dungeons. I personally found it so easy as to be boring and frustrating with people rolling on loot they don’t have use for or auto-attack AFKing. However, for people that can’t commit to any sort of raiding schedule or want to try some easier raiding that haven’t done it before, they seem to love it. So, for raiding, if you ever did any 10s or 25s before the most recent patch and enjoyed it, I wouldn’t bother, but if you never did and want to try it, you may find it somewhat interesting.
For PVP, things were better balanced in previous patches and, barring large differences in skill, it seems like if you come up against the wrong comp, you’re pretty much boned. Especially if you’re coming back from a hiatus, you’ll be far enough behind in gear that it may not be worth it. RBGs are still a lot of fun though. But if you gave it up before, you don’t really have anything new to look for, so not really worth coming back for.
So, sadly, unless you’ve been around the whole time, I’d say you may be better off waiting and seeing how MoP pans out and decide whether that will be worth coming back for or not.
May I suggest LOTRO? (Lord of the Rings Online)
It’s free to play up to about level 65; completely supports Solo players and is pretty friendly (the PvP is entirely separate to the main story.)
No. Because if you have to pay every month, you’ll feel obligated to play every month, and it will suck up time from other things you could be doing.
Try Guild Wars or a non-monthly-pay option instead.
I think that totally depends on the person. I play more than I should, no doubt, but never because “I paid for it”. The $15 (or whatever) is just not an issue - hell, it’s less than me and the wife going to the movies.
That’s not to say WoW isn’t crazily addictive - it absolutely is. I just don’t think the “pay-to-play” model is the cause of the addiction.
Blaster Master is right on about the quality of the newest raid tier. Although that cuts both ways, in your situation. It’s extremely possible for you to get to max level, run random heroics for a day or two, and then kill a version of the final boss of the expansion. That was not really possible before.
It wasn’t possible in Vanilla and BC because of how gearing went, you pretty much had to clear previous raids to get the gear to do the next one, but in Wrath, certainly as the ICC buff got higher, I constantly saw PUGs form on my server doing full clears, often with several heroics.
Sadly, my account was hacked the first week of 4.3, so I missed the last part of normal progressions and we didn’t kill him the first week because of that. I ended up getting my first Deathwing kill on LFR so I’d at least have some experience with the fight when we worked on it the next week while my raid had spent a few hours working on him. I went into the fight not having even read anything, and we still one-shot it. I’ve only run LFR a few times since I never really needed any loot from it, but I’ve only ever seen wipes when people deliberately screw it up (not DPSing the right target because they’re lazy or pushing DPS, tanks/healers not bothering with CDs, people ignoring mechanics because they’re overgeared and overwhelming the undergeared people, etc.). So, sure, you can see the end boss of the expansion die, but without actually putting in any amount of effort, it’s very unsatisfying, at least for me.