Thursday 8 June 2017

I quit WoW (again)

I quit WoW again. Haven't we all at some point? What's different this time around was that I quit even though I was having fun.

That may sound strange, and believe me, it was strange for me as well. After all, isn't the point of gaming to have fun?

You said it, Xal'atath

Allow me to provide some context.

I had subscribed to WoW for a year, as in, two 6-month subscriptions. This was in preparation for Legion, since I expected I wouldn't be able to put it down. I was completely wrong about that assumption, for two months into the new expansion, I was bored. Perhaps a reader could tell, based on my "play more than one MMO" post. I just wasn't into it.

Legion, as most will know, was the first time WoW introduced a non-linear leveling system, where one can level anywhere they wanted to, since the content would scale to your level. This was great up until I hit level 110, where I found myself dying quite a bit. I can only speculate that the scaled content was meant for a better geared level 110, or a stronger class; the power level of mobs vastly differed from 109 to 110. Whatever it was, I was dying. Dying was boring. Killing one mob at a time was boring. I hated it.

That was, until a few of my buddies got together and ran some Heroic dungeons with me. That's right, I couldn't even do Heroic because I had to grind for gear in regular dungeons and I sucked too much. But, once I got the gear, I could finally finish questing! Multi-mob kills! It was a great feeling.

I was chugging and grinding happily along, but what made me decide to cancel my subscription was a little quest  called "Soul Prism of the Illidari." Before the 7.2 patch, you had to collect 80 Lingering Soul Fragments, which were only dropped from the last boss of a dungeon, and you could only collect 10 per week.

Around the beginning of that quest for me, I saw the trailer for the Middle Earth: Shadow of War game and thought "Boy, that sure looks like fun." I realized that I wasn't having that any more with WoW, so I canceled. Collecting 80 of those things were just stopping me from enjoying the content that I wanted.

With 2 months left in my WoW subscription, I decided to make the most of it and continue playing. I would grind those Lingering Soul Fragments! Biting the bullet, I played on. As if on cue, barely a day after I canceled my sub, I got my first Legendary - [Zeks Exterminatus]. Are you kidding me, Blizz?

I was, of course, very happy. My ilvl skyrocketed at that point. I was now comfortable enough to do my own Mythic+ dungeons. Did you know that completing a Mythic+2 gave you TWO Lingering Soul Fragments at the end of the dungeon? I didn't! I was now easily filling my quota of 10 fragments a week.

It dawned on me shortly after, that maybe, just maybe, I was having fun. I resigned to the feeling quickly, and about a week later patch 7.2 came out. I had joined a guild and shortly after I realized that the requirement dropped from 80 Lingering Soul Fragments down to 40. It was finished! I was prepared!

And that's how I quit WoW, enjoying myself on Discord with my guildmates playing around in Mythic+ Dungeons. Will I return? Of course I will! Just not anytime soon.

What have I done with my time in between then and this blog post? I completed Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, which I bought on Steam one thousand years ago and obviously never played. Afterwards, I completed the For Honor campaign. I wanted to get these single-player games out of my system, essentially making those purchases worthwhile. It was fun, in fact, it was a lot of fun.

To get my MMO fix, I bought into Black Desert Online. I've always wanted to try it, but what was stopping me was that it wasn't on Steam. Not even a week after I purchased BDO, it was announced that it would be releasing on Steam. Go figure my luck, right?

I'm currently playing The Lord of the Rings Online and loving every second of it. The game is absolutely gorgeous and the quests are written so well.



I've obviously stopped blogging. Can you tell? Those damn single-player games...

Truthfully, I miss being in an MMO community. I've been a week into LOTRO and am waiting for the right time to join a guild (I'm just playing BDO super casually.)

MMOs are a lot more fun on Discord, and that was what I learned most from my WoW experience. Discord has changed the way PC games are played. I think I'll write about that next.

Till then, enjoy!