Poll: Escaping WoW

[joeychuckles]

After playing for the better part of two years, i recently patted all my little level 70's and 80's goodbye and canceled my WoW subscription. For me the decision came when i realized it was once again 3:00 am and i was once again slaughtering X amount of Vrykul and thought, "Hey, isn't this pretty much the exact same thing i was doing at level one?" But in leaving the game, i was struck not only with a sense of somehow "failing," but also a tremendous amount of guilt at abandoning my characters. This seems unhealthy somehow. How have other people felt when canceling subscription game accounts? What finally made you decide to leave?

 

[EvilMaggot]

i quit WoW 8-9 months back... knowing they would ruin the game with the new expansion pack lol... kidding... just werent fun anymore..

 

[squirrelman42]

I also would like to add a vote to option 1. Even if I do quit WoW I could never sell my account. I have quit three times, but I love it too much.

 

[Ranooth]

My friend welcome back to decent gaming. Its quite ironic, i was in exactly the same shoes as you about a 1 and a half ago. I had full armour, full rep and just ended up doing the same old crap over and over again. Sure i couldv done PVP but i didn't want to go up against people that have every single fucking button on both their keyboards keybinded to five million attacks.

I did feel guilty about leaving my guild behind, i had made new friends and strengthened my friendship with existing ones (they kind got me playing in the first place). But i realised that if they were truly my mates they wouldn't care if i played or not (and i was right!). You haven't failed, you had fun (or at least killed some time) and should now be looking for your next adventure with gaming.

 

[Abedeus]

Wait, what escaping?

Also, question in poll and OP are different.

 

[RheynbowDash]

as a former WoW-er, it was sad when i had to abandon my 70 Gnome Mage, but i felt it was for the best, so i took him out back to the wood shed and put him down.....

a sad day for gnomes...

 

[joeychuckles]

*"Also, question in poll and OP are different."


Ah, yes - poll was more to satisfy my curiosity about why people stick around in these things.

 

[VGKoopa]

Community, but then I ran out of money and was forced to bid farewell to my community bros.

Not much lost, I got tired of WoW around level 52 or so as a Rogue and I hated to restart as a new Char.

 

[Finnboghi]

as a former WoW-er, it was sad when i had to abandon my 70 Gnome Mage, but i felt it was for the best, so i took him out back to the wood shed and put him down.....

a sad day for gnomes...

I lol'd.

Anyway.

I had to quit because I didn't have enough time to play. Then I discovered the magic of private servers, allowing me to go months without logging on.

It was hard to leave, but I was expecting to come back. Now I'm a pseudo-addict again.

P.S. Night Elves are sexy.

 

[KillCraze]

I've been playing WoW for something like 4 years now.
I've nursed my characters since level 1 and could not leave them.

When I started I started due to having a unhealthy liking to the Warcraft game series and when the MMORPG came out I thought it was heaven on earth, or at least heaven on windows...

I've had my moments when I've not bothered playing it for a month or so but I've never cancelled subscription (because i pay it by 6 months thereby saving a few bob) but also I have always gone back to it and found that I still find it as fun as when I played it day 1.

You get your chars to max level, you get them geared up and you chat to your lovely guild friends and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
For me WoW is a feel good game. Something to escape to when, its more a social network and a game than just another game.

The sense of community (though of course there are many A holes on the game) is extremely fulfilling.

I'm also one of those people who actually enjoy questing, choosing to go different areas, explore the beautiful scenery and follow the story of the game every time I make a new character.

Recently I have also joined an RP server at a friends request. To which at first I was dubious.
However I now love Role Play. I love thinking of back stories and personalities for my character and making it walk around as if its some... hmm... lets take my orc warrior for example.
He walks around pretending to be a war chief, pissing off blood elves as he thinks he is superior just because his axe is bigger than the blood elves overly large genitalia which noticeably dangles from their foreheads.

WoW is an MMORPG... MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLEPLAYING GAME!
All these words are important, you cannot play it alone, that defeats the object of the existance of other players and would be rather dull, roleplaying, because you take a role and hopefully stick to it, and game... because its supposed to be fun!

I hate how people start the game, play 10 levels and go "oh its shit"
It's because you've experienced like 0.00000001% of the games total content.

But yeah, my reason I guess is due to character attachment, sense of community and the immersion in the fantasy world.

The latter being because I have started reading lore on wowwiki and have fallen in love all over again.

Anyway, rant over. This was way longer than intended.

~KC

 

[geizr]

I had also given up WoW some 7-8 months ago, after playing the game for about 3 1/2 years. After about 6 months of being free from WoW, I fell into Warhammer Online for about a month and half, and I've just recently quit that, too. The basic problem for me is that I get too hooked into MMOs and start seriously neglecting my life. It's just the way my personality works, and it's a problem I don't have with any other type of game. The conclusion is that I've had to make the decision to avoid MMOs all together.

 

[joeychuckles]

I had also given up WoW some 7-8 months ago, after playing the game for about 3 1/2 years. After about 6 months of being free from WoW, I fell into Warhammer Online for about a month and half, and I've just recently quit that, too. The basic problem for me is that I get too hooked into MMOs and start seriously neglecting my life. It's just the way my personality works, and it's a problem I don't have with any other type of game. The conclusion is that I've had to make the decision to avoid MMOs all together.

I have the same problem - I'm returning to the world of having friends over for multiplayer console gaming. Nothing like having a cold one and headshotting zombies with friends.

 

[Nivag the Owl]

I quit when I realised I hated it with a passion. And by that, I mean when I was one PvP rank away from the top then they changed the honour system and lazily deleted everything rather then find a logical way to convert it.

 

[the no name man]

whenever i play i game like WoW i usually liked playing with friends so i never really got that hooked to any MMO

 

[Russel1]

i read somewhere that 80% of wow addicts play because they have social issues.
theres nothing wrong with playing it because you think its a fun game (it has its moments)
i mean the people who use it as a longterm way to escape reality (its a popular source of so called "addicts" because of its extended gameplay and social aspect). that cant be healthy.
if there is a problem in your life, playing a game to distract yourself from it is not a long term solution. if people feel they fall into this category, they can accept they have a problem and work on their addiction. finding out WHY you are addicted is important if you are trying to quit. becoming obsessive with your character is another

 

[McNinja]

I "quit" when I got bored. I rarely had any time to do any instances, let alone raid for 3 hours. And whenever I could raid/do an instance I never got anything. Items would drop, but one got ninja'd (and it pissed me off), and others would be awarded to others who had dkp or w/e that was. So I was forced to grind random janx for money, and I just got bored and stopped. Canceled my acct, gave my 70 to my bro who still plays the game, and stopped caring.

Also, "quit" because I still occasionally play on private servers, just when I have nothing better to do.

EDIT: In response to the post above, I am usually reserved and tend not to talk much to anyone except people I know well. I had more social issues in the game than in real life. My brother who still plays usually only plays with his friends he goes to school with. Whenever he's not hanging out with them, he's on WoW with them.

 

[Uszi]

As lame as it sounds, I don't understand how people in non-RP servers have any fun.

Not to spoil the surprise, but eventually all of you WoW Players will take a second and consider your WoW playing from the outside perspective: not the inside perspective, where you're fighting dragons and flying on Gryphons, but the outside perspective, wear you sit at your computer and click you mouse and key board for 8 hours without pause. You're realization that you might as well be sitting there playing with Microsoft Excel becomes complete when you reach the end game, and you start doing the calculations to figure out if the half point of extra strength will increase your DPS more than some % chance to hit on another item.

The only way to alleviate the one dimensionality and spread sheet quality, I would think, would be to play with some close friends and RP your character. But then you might as well be table top gaming and not spending $15 a month. Plus you don't need to wait a month for the Dungeon Master to patch enemies out of the game.

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For me, I'm not into roll playing, so the fix I stated above did not apply. Once the freshness of the game wore off and the fairly reasonable back story to your questing dies completely in the level 40 range, I typically quit whatever character I was playing and started a new one. You can only do this so many times, and so WoW had nothing left for me and I quit.

 

[Cerebrium]

This is relevant to me. I quit about a week ago, because I realised that it was just not fun anymore. I've went back to FPSs (I bought the Unreal pack on Steam ) and I do not regret it at all.

 

[The_Prophet]

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