World Of Warcraft...Anyone Else Just *Over* It?

[Evilsausage]

Yup WoW is dead to me, tried WoD and at best it was decent during the levling to 100. After that i got bored.
Seen it all before, hasn't really been any inovation. It has pretty much changed for the worse in many cases.

I wont be going back and it feels good knowing so because its a hell of a time stealer.

 

[DanielBrown]

Yep, same here. Vanilla player and a former WoW addict. WoD was enough to hold my attention for 1 ½ week, then I just couldn't be arsed anymore. As soon as I hit 100 and did the raids I had no desire to log in again and no class felt intresting enough to drag as an alt to 100.

 

[VanQ]

Don't feel that way at all. A lot of the complaints here seem to be "didn't bother with raiding" or "did LFR and it was boring." Well, no shit you're over it then. There may be a lot to do in WoW, but raiding is where Blizz puts all their attention these days. And the current tier is one of the best in a long time. Normal is challenging. Heroic is hard. Mythic is tough as nails.

I log in to raid and to do my garrison stuff daily and that's really about it, sure, but I'll be damned if the 12-15hrs a week I spend raiding isn't worth the $10 a month in my opinion.

 

[happyninja42]

I was over the game after the Burning Crusade expansion. Which is kind of funny, since Wrath of the Lich King was the kind of expansion that is right in my sweet spot. An entire set of content about killing undead and destroying the Lich King? Why yes sir, please take my money, I will sign up wherever!! But, I just, couldn't care for the game anymore. So I ended my subscription before it even came out, and never went back. I don't miss it at all really, and probably never will.

 

[RJ 17]

(Ragnaros...worst Heroic fight ever)

Ah, but you missed out on the days when he was a right-proper Raid boss! By crowning achievement in WoW was getting to be the "hero" of my guild as the sole survivor the first time we took down Ragnaros. Literally killed him with the last few ticks of a Curse of Agony from my Undead Warlock while running away from the last of his little mini fire elemental bastards...then my Ventrillo went absolutely nuts.

And now for my general experience story:

I was with WoW since Day 1 of Vanilla. I absolutely craved WC lore and after WCIII and FT, I was desperate to get some more. I was hoping for a new RTS, but instead I got an MMO. It was the first, only, and last MMO that I ever played. I tried out a number of classes but fell in love with the Warlock class due to it's strong ability to solo thanks to it's Void Walker aka Blue Berry aka Kirby aka Shadow Monster of Immortality. Eventually I found myself in a raid guild that was already quite well established. My "Trial Run" with them was through Blackwing Lair and good god, every boss in that raid that COULD drop a warlock set-piece DID drop a warlock set-piece. All of the guild's warlocks were already suited up, so they all went to me! And I wasn't even an official member of the guild yet! WOO-HOO!

I had an absolute blast playing through Vanilla and was looking forward to BC. When BC finally launched I felt suddenly disheartened...all the raid-gear that I had put countless hours into acquiring (not the stuff I got from my trial-run ) I now found was VASTLY inferior to green quest rewards. Sooooooo it kinda took all those hours of raiding that I had done in Vanilla and said "You just wasted all that time and you'll never get it back! *insert Nelson laugh followed by Trollface*"

Oh well, I was still in my guild and still having a decent enough time playing it, so I continued onward, repeating the cycle of getting up to max level and going on raids with the guild to get teh lewtz. I played BC all the way to the end. Then WotLK appeared on the horizon and I started having flashbacks to what it was like when BC came out. Inevitably all the gear I had raided for would become absolutely worthless within the first zone or two of the new expansion and I just could no longer justify paying a monthly subscription to do it all over again. Add to it the fact that I went on vacation for 3 days with my family and when I came back the guild that I had spent so much time with apparently suffered a MAJOR drama-based shitstorm and completely disbanded with most of the other members now hating each other and...well I figured that was as good a sign as any to call it quits.

I definitely had a great time while I was with it, but could go no further than the 2nd expansion as it would all be the Same Shit, Different Setting.

One of my favorite stories to tell happened in a battleground in Vanilla. Don't even know if it's still around, but the BG was Arathi Basin, the objective of which was to hold onto as many of five possible locations as you could for as long as possible. One such location was at a mine accessible to both sides by going down hill/ramp from your side's spawn point. I was an undead warlock and was using my trusty Fel Hound - as per usual for PvP - and went straight for the mine at the beginning of the match. The only opposition was a Night Elf hunter. We tussled for a bit, but I came out on top.

Since I was the only one down there, I started requesting some back-up...but no one ever came. As soon as the hunter respawned, he came back down for a rematch...this time I absolute trounced him. Again I call out for back-up because by now the enemy has to know that I'm alone down there. And again, no one comes. And again, the hunter comes back down for another go...same result.

Rinse and repeat this story for 4 more occassions, meaning I've now killed the same hunter in a 1v1 7 times in a row. On the 8th time he comes down and stops at the bottom of his side's ramp, still on his mount. I'm just standing by the flag. We stare at each other for a few moments. I /wave at him. He turns around and runs back up his ramp, and I almost die laughing at the silliness of it all.

Finally - right before our side won the match - I got the reinforcements I had been requesting the entire time. 4 allies come on down to the mine just in time to help me face off against the hunter and a few of his allies. We end up holding the flag and taking the win.

 

[Yuuki]

I felt EXACTLY the same way - until I got into a raiding guild. The initial gear slog can be brutal and overall this is definitely the most challenging expansion for a long time.

But if you want to really enjoy the PvE side of the game (because PvP is a joke), you absolutely NEED to be in a guild and on a raiding schedule. Valor tokens are gone so you can't just buy gear from vendors....and what most vendors offer is garbage and not worth bothering with.

LFR and group finder will get you nowhere and only result in frustration. Here's the thing though, once you get your gear up to "par" you may be able to sustain yourself through the expansion by just tagging along with PuG/guild runs + buying BoE's from AH. I'm trying this out for myself and will see how it goes.

The best thing that happened with raiding is raid-size scaling i.e. any number of people between 10 and 25 will work as long as the proportion of tank/healer/dps is maintained. So guilds and pugs have become extremely flexible at inviting geared people if they can pull their weight.

 

[sanquin]

Same here. The whole game started feeling like a routine. A routine I now had to pay attention to because of challenging instances. For, as you said, less gain. I haven't touched the game in months now, and I don't really miss it either. And if I do get the MMORPG itch, there are plenty of f2p games I can play for a month or two without getting bored.

 

[Starbird]

Don't feel that way at all. A lot of the complaints here seem to be "didn't bother with raiding" or "did LFR and it was boring." Well, no shit you're over it then. There may be a lot to do in WoW, but raiding is where Blizz puts all their attention these days. And the current tier is one of the best in a long time. Normal is challenging. Heroic is hard. Mythic is tough as nails.

I log in to raid and to do my garrison stuff daily and that's really about it, sure, but I'll be damned if the 12-15hrs a week I spend raiding isn't worth the $10 a month in my opinion.

I think this is the problem right here to be honest.

For me, good does not equal 'hard'. Good equals fun.


When I had a lot of free time to dedicate to raiding, hard was fun. In MOP LFR was fun because it was just challenging enough to keep me interested as a tank but easy enough that I could log on, do my runs and log off in a reasonable amount of time.

WOD destroyed that. Now LFR is faceroll difficulty, and the items are both deliberately terrible looking and poorly itemized in a shameless attempt to shame me into doing 'real' raids. However, especially as a tank, my options are:

- Slog through endless finder groups, 90% of which either want me to be already fully geared in items from the content *after* the content I'm trying to access or want me to have already completed it. Those that don't have these requirements are either someone trying to 'sell' someone a carry (and forcing others to do it) or straight up scams (change loot rules before final boss, kick anyone who complains, sell lockout).

- Find a guild. Which on my server is either a closeknit 10man guild who are never looking for a tank, a horrible guild that even I (who am not am amazing player) get frustrated at who cannot down a wing boss in Normal or a hardcore guild that wants me there 4 nights a week.

Basically, it's no longer a game made to accommodate me.

 

[Starbird]

I felt EXACTLY the same way - until I got into a raiding guild. The initial gear slog can be brutal and overall this is definitely the most challenging expansion for a long time.

But if you want to really enjoy the PvE side of the game (because PvP is a joke), you absolutely NEED to be in a guild and on a raiding schedule. Valor tokens are gone so you can't just buy gear from vendors....and what most vendors offer is garbage and not worth bothering with.

LFR and group finder will get you nowhere and only result in frustration. Here's the thing though, once you get your gear up to "par" you may be able to sustain yourself through the expansion by just tagging along with PuG/guild runs + buying BoE's from AH. I'm trying this out for myself and will see how it goes.

The best thing that happened with raiding is raid-size scaling i.e. any number of people between 10 and 25 will work as long as the proportion of tank/healer/dps is maintained. So guilds and pugs have become extremely flexible at inviting geared people if they can pull their weight.

That's the thing. Blizzard go from one end of the scale to the other. In MOP they catered to casual players like me. Note: not *bad* players - while I am not top100 material by any means I raided some of the hardest content of the game with the top guild on the server (albeit on my crappy server) in Wrath and Cata. However due to my job I simply cannot commit blocks of time regularly 2-4 days a week due to my ever shifting lesson schedule. MOP was wonderful in this regard. LFR was long enough (and with randoms often challenging enough) to keep me entertained but I could do it when I wanted.

Now the sheer logistical investment to get into endgame content is not a barrier I can realistically overcome.

 

[DocJ]

I am surprisingly still having a lot of fun. I started playing a while back, in the BC days because my mom was big on the game back then, as were my brothers. I have never not really had fun in any of the expansions. I always found there was something I liked to do.

 

[ffronw]

I think the MMO genre as a whole is mostly done. If the major failure of several multi-million dollar projects over the last 10 years or so is any gage of the industry...its simply not viable. Every game that promises to do things differently...doesn't. Or if it does..it doesn't actually engage the prospective player culture in a way that makes the game stand on its own.

In the last five years alone there have been more fail at launch MMO's than I think I can actually accurately recount...but a lot of big money went into the development of these titles and the retention of all of them doesn't really seem to indicate profitability in any respect.

I think a lot of the problems with MMOs can be traced back to the success of World of Warcraft. It became so big, so quickly, that everyone else wanted to get in on that action. That led to a lot of MMOs that were very close to WoW in terms of design, which made for a weird cycle that I have watched repeat itself over and over. New MMO comes out. Players flock to it. After the first, "free" month is over, everyone goes back to WoW. Why? Because they realize that the new game isn't all that different, and they've already put years of work into their WoW account, so why walk away from that for something that isn't different in any appreciable way?

Add in the fact that Blizzard has shown a penchant for incorporating features that show up in other MMOs, and you can understand why this happens.

The recent rise of the Free to Pay economy MMO is a direct indication that the genre is no longer a "premium" product industry.

I still think that there's a place for a subscription MMO. The key is that it's going to have to offer alternatives as well. Everyone consumes games differently, and catering to those differences with multiple options is something MMOs have to embrace. Sure, you can have a subscription; just make sure there's a way to play for free, or at least play for a while for free. Offer in-game ways to pay for time, or other options. Whatever you can do to give people a way to engage with your game, you need to do.

Overall...I can't say I don't continue to get the itch to play an MMO, but then I realize there is really nothing worth playing other than perhaps World of Warcraft and I'm bored to the teeth of Azeroth and have been for many years.

That itch is the reason I think there's still hope for the genre. It just needs someone to make something really fresh.

MMO's are probably going to need to just give up the ghost, in my opinion. You can only throw so much money into a black hole before you financially and creatively bankrupt an entire genre and...I think we're well past that now.[/quote]

I may be in the minority on this one, but I still believe the MMO is a viable genre. It just needs someone to come along and move it forward. For better or worse, the genre hasn't really made any major advances since 2004. That's the reason it feels stagnant: It is.

 

[Starbird]

I may be in the minority on this one, but I still believe the MMO is a viable genre. It just needs someone to come along and move it forward. For better or worse, the genre hasn't really made any major advances since 2004. That's the reason it feels stagnant: It is.

This may sound strange but the only way that MMOs are ever going to move forward is for WoW to go away somehow (haha, not likely ). There have been some really innovative games in the genre. DC Universe Online, despite a rocky start is *really* good. Challenging, mechanically complex and expansive. However it never really took off, both because it's made by SOE (ugh) and because people have invested so much time and money into WoW.

 

[MonsterCrit]

I hit that point a few years back. The problem WoW has ius that they have been over simplifying the system, I mean Talents are pretty much a linear thing now... and honestly, all they've done is tacked what amounts to an extra aisle. More of the same with bigger numbers.


This is bog standard for all MMO's of course. Add to that that when you add up $10 a month and look at places like Steam and Gog< you could buy an entirely new game every month for that much and have fun. Heck on a sale you can buy 4-8 games for that much each giving a different experience and scratching a different itch.

For me the turning point came when I realized I wasn't play so much because I wanted to or was enjoying it, I was playing it out of habitual routine. Didn't help that the community itself can be a turn off. If you didn't get into it with a group of friends it's hard to find any friends to share your interests with in the game so it more becomes a very drawn out and unengaging single player game.

Worse for Blizzard, once you stop it's hard to want to get back into the habit because the game that got you into the habit.. isn't there anymore...

It didn't have to be like that... nope, but I can also see why they chose that path and honestly cannot fault them. They should have probably done more like what they did in Cata where the entry level areas changed so there was more reason to go back and see things again.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I'm totally over WoW. But you know what's really sad? That game has somehow killed my interest in fantasy gaming. Sci Fi games I'm still cool with, but anything with wizards and such, I hate with a passion. I would like to know why.

 

[EbonBehelit]

Warlords of Draenor is strange: it's probably the best expansion since Wrath, and yet I've never cared less about the game as I do now. I haven't logged in since over 2 months ago.

I reckon it's because Ashran, the one thing that I was really looking forward to as a PvPer, turned out to be a complete unmitigated disaster.

At this rate, I may not even log in until near the end of the expansion, and that'll be solely to buy a few Challenge Mode carries.

 

[VanQ]

I think the MMO genre as a whole is mostly done. If the major failure of several multi-million dollar projects over the last 10 years or so is any gage of the industry...its simply not viable. Every game that promises to do things differently...doesn't. Or if it does..it doesn't actually engage the prospective player culture in a way that makes the game stand on its own.

In the last five years alone there have been more fail at launch MMO's than I think I can actually accurately recount...but a lot of big money went into the development of these titles and the retention of all of them doesn't really seem to indicate profitability in any respect.

I think a lot of the problems with MMOs can be traced back to the success of World of Warcraft. It became so big, so quickly, that everyone else wanted to get in on that action. That led to a lot of MMOs that were very close to WoW in terms of design, which made for a weird cycle that I have watched repeat itself over and over. New MMO comes out. Players flock to it. After the first, "free" month is over, everyone goes back to WoW. Why? Because they realize that the new game isn't all that different, and they've already put years of work into their WoW account, so why walk away from that for something that isn't different in any appreciable way?

Add in the fact that Blizzard has shown a penchant for incorporating features that show up in other MMOs, and you can understand why this happens.

The recent rise of the Free to Pay economy MMO is a direct indication that the genre is no longer a "premium" product industry.

I still think that there's a place for a subscription MMO. The key is that it's going to have to offer alternatives as well. Everyone consumes games differently, and catering to those differences with multiple options is something MMOs have to embrace. Sure, you can have a subscription; just make sure there's a way to play for free, or at least play for a while for free. Offer in-game ways to pay for time, or other options. Whatever you can do to give people a way to engage with your game, you need to do.

Overall...I can't say I don't continue to get the itch to play an MMO, but then I realize there is really nothing worth playing other than perhaps World of Warcraft and I'm bored to the teeth of Azeroth and have been for many years.

That itch is the reason I think there's still hope for the genre. It just needs someone to make something really fresh.

MMO's are probably going to need to just give up the ghost, in my opinion. You can only throw so much money into a black hole before you financially and creatively bankrupt an entire genre and...I think we're well past that now.

I may be in the minority on this one, but I still believe the MMO is a viable genre. It just needs someone to come along and move it forward. For better or worse, the genre hasn't really made any major advances since 2004. That's the reason it feels stagnant: It is.

VR will be the kick in the ass that the MMO genre needs to innovate again. Until World of Warcraft 2 is released for Vive and Oculuis Rift. But we can enjoy what will come of it until then.


Link Start!

Edit: I still believe that MMOs are the genre of games that have more potential than any other. The reason for that is the way they center around the human element. And VR will only amplify that. I look forward to the first VR MMO.

 

[LetalisK]

I'm more or less over it, I guess? I mean I still like hearing some of the changes happening to the game and played WoD for a few months, but I just don't have the time to invest in it anymore. I do like that the Alliance got their shit together in PuG pvp for this expansion.

 

[Demetirus]

I've been out of WoW since mid-MOP. I think for me, it was mostly due to finding the game not fun any more for various reasons, most of all being that my raid guild fell apart. We weren't heavy raiders, never pushing for more than the normal mode raids at most (sometimes even being quite happy to do LFR with just a few of us and whatever randoms filled in) but eventually it turned into just me and maybe one other being online whenever I logged in. The other person being my father. I couldn't bring myself to leave the guild as I didn't want to abandon my dad, who to this day loves the game and the guild, but... there just wasn't anything else for me without even the semblance of doing raids or dungeons with friends.

I've since moved on to FFXIV with some good friends on a fairly populated server and haven't looked back.

I think in the end, it wasn't entirely the game that I stopped liking. It was what I was doing in/with it that wasn't any fun any more. Thinking back, I probably could have tried to change my approach or even just my goals, but it was easier to just move on. This worked out for me on more than a few levels, honestly.