silasbufu said:
I did play; untill I reached level 6..and left because I almost cried of boredom.
You got gored in less than 20 minutes? I don't begrudge you for this opinion, but the game held my interest the first time for about 10 - 15 hours, which, when the game launched, was the point that the carrots started being placed progressively further away and I ran out of interest in the core mechanics.
I personally played the game on three occasions. The first, was in late 2005 after I returned from my first deployment. I rolled a warrior and had a bit of fun but stopped playing after a month. The second time, I tried again but stopped after a week or so. In that time I tried playing as both a Paladin and a Mage. Neither really held my interest. The third time was shortly after the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. The key reason I had failed to take interest the first two times is I never really got to play the game with other people and I had nothing to shoot for other than get to the next weapon/level/item. This time a large group of my friends had taken up the game and pestered me for months to play. The dramatically reduced leveling curve certainly helped me along, as did the promise of joining my friends on grand adventures, but most importantly, I had a few friends perfectly willing to take time out of their own grind for glory to help me along. As such, I was generally as well equipped as a Rogue of my level could be.
The first big carrot that kept me moving was the promise of trying out a Death Knight. I had, during my previous attempts to play the game, tried every class and determined none of them really felt compelling. This time around, I decided to try the one class that seemed the most fun to play alone - the rogue. The road to level 55 took several real life days of playing and took place over several months but the progress was rapid enough that I rarely felt bored by the whole ordeal. When I finally unlocked the ability to play as a DK, I jumped into the class and the sudden shift in game mechanics proved refreshing enough to drag me along for another two days of gameplay. This was enough to bring me into spitting distance of the end game (level 73).
At this point, my friends had been playing wow for something like 7 months and had reached the end of what they could do with their main's for the time being. Some of them tried re-rolling a different class but they quickly grew bored and left. Others just wandered away and promised to return at the next major expansion. As my list of allies for glorious future battles was rapidly whittled away I resolved to continue through to the end. Everyone had spent months telling me that the best part of the game was at the end and I didn't want to back away after grinding my way through the garbage for so long. Unfortunately, it was at this moment that my account was hacked.
It took a few days of negotiations with blizzard (including more than one multi-hour call) to resolve the problem and I was once again given access to my account. The process soured my opinion of the game to a degree and I didn't immedeately start playing again. When I did try to play again, I found that the hacker/spammer had used a short duration GTC to play with my identity and this had expired. I couldn't be bothered to resolve the issue. Before I could be bothered to overcome this obstacle, I built a new computer and since then have not bothered to start the download of the client again. Without a group of friends to join in the game, I feel little reason to return - there are plenty of other MMO's I can play that are still shiny and fresh that don't have any of my friends in them.
If there were people I knew in the game I'd be willing to return. I've played many MMO's since the genre came into being, and I would generally consider WoW to be the best of them. It's easier than most of the PVE focused games and I don't consider this a flaw - Everquest I and II are full of archaic design decisions that seem to imply designers are working against the concept of my having any fun. Progress is rapid in most ways and the classes generally possess a unique feel (within the confines of the game), meaning there is probably a class that meets your expectations of what you want to accomplish. There are games that do a better job of telling a compelling story or have better core mechanics, but the two have never co-existed in a single game. Likewise, WoW is perfectly competent at PVP as well. While I certainly enjoyed the PVP in games like Warhammer or Eve more, Warhammer suffers from the problem of "everybody of a given class is the same" (to an extent obviously, but one can assume a protection build of a tank is going to be equipped more or less exactly the same as another of equal level), and Eve suffers from a devestating death penalty. To be fair, it is the penalty that makes PVP in Eve exciting, but considering how swiftly death can be visited upon you no matter how well equipped, you're generally compelled to fly cheaply fit in the biggest and most mobile gang you can amass.
Of course, it took three attempts at playing the game to truly recognize how good WoW was. I do resent WoW to an extent, because it's continued domination of the MMO landscape has ensured the bulk of games created since it's release have generally just been WoW with a slightly different focus.
