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

[Starbird]

I've been an on and off again WoW player for...wow, ages now. Not a Vanilla player, but have been consistantly playing since BC at some level of progression. I came back to MOP after burning out in Cata (Ragnaros...worst Heroic fight ever) and loved it to bits as a casual. Cool gear from LFR, tons to see and do and a really appealing world to explore.

I was quite stoked for WOD actually. But after loading it up and getting past the admittedly great introduction sequence, I found myself just not feeling it. My rogue was squishier than I had experienced in years and the leveling zones being so packed with 'aggro 2 and die' mobs that questing became a tedious slog.

So I decided to get my DK up to snuff, got to max level very easily and started tanking. Instances - well designed. Garrisons - cool idea. But...I don't know. It just felt like I was doing the same thing as I had always done, but now expending more effort for less gain. The cool gear from LFR was replaced with deliberately bland 'noob' gear and the group finder, as I predicted, was filled with elitism, trolling and general obnoxiousness.

About a week later I had burned out - the fastest I ever have in a new expansion - and I honestly can't see myself going back. Maybe at the end of the expansion I guess to just see everything in LFR.

Anyone else feel the same way?

Capcha: All growns up. Yeah, that may be the problem right there.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'm super tired of it at the moment, but I got plenty of value out of the expansion.

There will come a time, though, that the game has just worn itself out. It's been 10 years. That the expansions are still best selling titles is somewhat mind boggling. I'm not sure I can think of another title that has enjoyed that kind of longevity.

 

[Aetera]

I felt that way during the end of Cata/beginning of MoP to the point that I stopped playing for about a year. I'm enjoying WoD, though. I actually just came here to pass the time until maintenance finishes up so I can play again, haha.

I definitely feel you on the rogue thing, though. I tried playing my 90 rogue and she did feel extraordinarily squishy. I've been leveling my feral druid instead. Similar play style, what with stealth and combo points and everything, but great survivability and more fun IMO.

 

[Somekindofgold]

When the biggest features being thrown around for 6.1 included selfies and twitter integration I realized my time with WoW was over, I just couldnt make excuses for why I still played anymore. So I cancelled my sub and left it all behind, havent looked back since.

I then tried Wildstar for a bit, that lasted a couple of weeks, maybe I'm just done with MMO's in general.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I then tried Wildstar for a bit, that lasted a couple of weeks, maybe I'm just done with MMO's in general.

Nah. Wildstar was just bad.

 

[Fappy]

I feel pretty much the same way. I came back for a couple months when WoD launched and enjoyed garrisons for awhile... then it just felt like a stressful chore. I'm just tired of treadmills.

 

[Evonisia]

Funny thing is that I predicted the setting and story of WoD to be a pandering thing for RTS/"Classic" (*vomits*) players. I didn't expect the gameplay to be as dull or the questing to be as fucking tedious. I don't even feel motivated to do dungeons, and the constant Orc wanking was already irritating, now it's insufferable. It's just a filler expansion, but they could have at least made this filler expansion worth a damn.

I have roleplaying, that saved the bad opening of Mists of Pandaria for me. But you know what? At least Mists of Pandaria wasn't a fan-service bullshit factory. I wish that it would forever go down in history as the amazingly kicked down expansion because people didn't like the aesthetic choices, but alas it won't.

 

[Rattja]

I hear ya.

I share a similar story, though I skipped MoP. But it actually wasn't until I tried WoD that I really understood what the problem was. Sure it was fun at first, learning about all the new stuff, gearing up, exploring and all that stuff. Once past that.. well.. there is really nothing.

Another thing I realized was that it's not really a problem I have with WoW in particular, as it is more MMOs as a whole in their current state.

When I first started playing these types of games it was a really social thing, it had to be because there were no mechanics in place to team you up with anyone. Wanted to do something you could not solo? Well go out there and meet people.
It could take a long time just to make a 5 man group, and while you were looking for people you simply had a chat with those you had. This way friendships were naturally forged.
That part of MMOs seem to be almost completely gone.
Sure you can find people, or a nice guild or something, but the majority of the players do not have the same mentality anymore.
It's sad, but also a bit funny, because all these things that helps you find people also make you care less about those you find because you can just find someone else whenever you want.

I don't know, it just feels like I could just as well play with bots most of the time. In random groups people hardly ever say anything more than "hi" if even that. The whole reason to play a game with a lot of people seem kinda lost actually.

That's at least how I feel about it.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I've played World of WarCraft fairly consistently since it launched, only stopping briefly three times (once during WotLK when Ulduar launched because I got stuck on a City of Heroes nostalgia binge, once at the end of WotLK for about a month because my computer's motherboard got fried, and one last time a little bit after Firelands launched during Cataclysm and that lasted up until MoP was released). Notably, even when I wasn't playing I still had an active subscription though.

I recently cancelled my subscription for the first time.

This expansion just seems... rushed. They took out flying, supposedly so that we'd enjoy the zones. I'm not convinced. If you use Avianna's Feather to launch yourself up in the air, you can see that they simply just didn't finish the zones. They don't want you to fly because they don't want you to see that they rushed it out the door for a holiday release. Besides, if they let you fly, you'd see how incredibly tiny the new zones are.

Then there's the garrison. I liked it at first, but then the cracks started to show. It's practically required for you to work on it to advance into end-game content and crafting, and you have to do the whole process with every single character. The follower missions are nothing but Facebook game bullshit timesinks. Crafting has been completely and utterly gutted of everything that made it fun in the past with its arbitrary time limits on gathering materials and arbitrary limits on how many crafted pieces of gear you can equip from all professions combined. There's no reason to ever go out into the world anymore, since I can gather any materials I need to craft right from my own garrison. I also don't need to venture out into the city anymore now that I can get an auction house and bank there too. On the rare occasions where I do venture outside, the whole world feels like a ghost town, even with cross-realm zones and combined realms, because everyone else is in their garrisons too.

The dungeons and heroics are completely pointless other than daily missions (which themselves are pointless after getting the unique items from them) and getting you started on your legendary quest. The gear from them is garbage, and easily surpassed by crafted gear, follower mission gear, and LFR gear. LFR is a fucking joke now too. Back in MoP it seemed to strike a decent balance where PuGs could accomplish them, but they weren't a total cakewalk. Now they're a total cakewalk (I healed one of them on my Resto Druid just hitting Wild Growth occasionally, with probably 75% of my attention diverted to a nearby TV playing Guardians of the Galaxy - I still topped the charts and there were zero deaths from start to finish).

What really kinda pushed me over the edge into cancelling was their ideas toward class balancing. It seemed like they were choosing what to buff and what to nerf via dart board. There's no real rhyme or reason to any of it. You've got tanks churning out insane damage, pure DPS classes barely scraping by, healers having their toolkits cut down so harshly it's practically a one-button game for them now. The whole thing is a mess.

Then there's the lack of content. You can get through the questing, even playing casually, in a week or two. There really aren't very many dungeons/raids to do. There's PVP, I guess? I don't PVP, admittedly. When the community asks for more content, Bliz tells us it's on the way... only to postpone it so that they can work on Twitter integration and fuckin' selfies? LAAAAAAAAME.

During MoP I fell in love with my Elemental Shaman while taking a break from healing. It was the first time I ever really enjoyed playing a DPS character in the entire game's lifetime. When partied with similarly geared and skilled pure DPS classes I didn't typically top the charts, but I was usually right on their heels (and often made them /envy my completely sustainable 800k+ DPS during multi-target with Chain Lightning spam so intense it made me look like a Sith Lord). Overall, Elemental Shaman was in a pretty decent place. Then some idiot at Blizzard decided that as a "master of the elements," the earth element was underrepresented in Elemental's toolkit since no one was using Earthquake. Why was no one using Earthquake? Because it sucked. Long cast time that didn't fit into any rotations, long cooldown so that you couldn't recast it if the tank moved, the damage was considered physical and as such reduced by armor... it was just trash. Rather than fixing its problems, Blizzard instead decided to force Elemental Shamans into using it by tying it to the damage output of our other spells and making it a major part of our Mastery (which is otherwise ripped off from Frost Mage, because they took our original Mastery that made us kinda unique and gave it to everyone). So now Elemental does shit for damage, and has to use a crappy ability that no one freaking likes just to attain that shitty damage. They took a class that felt right, and dragged it through the mud to the point where to me it felt completely unplayable.

Yeah... fuck WoD. The questing and Easter Egg hunting were fun for a week, and then it was all downhill from there. It's been fun, Bliz. But all good things come to an end.

/SteamVented
/RantOver

 

[Gdek]

I still enjoy the raiding quite a bit, and with a decent guild with nice people, the raids are still a lot of fun and quite challenging. I do think the game is diminished with every expansion however. Meaningless fluff is added, complexity and challenge are removed. Classes today are a shadow of what they once were. Casters especially were devastated by the ability pruning in WoD. Questing and soloing with a caster class makes me feel like I am playing half a class, lacking all of the tools that I really need to make combat fun and interesting. Tradeskills are in the sorriest shape I have ever seen them.

 

[DoPo]

Anyone else feel the same way?

I played vanilla. Blizzard announced the first expansion - I was looking forward to it. Blizzard announced the blood elves joining the Horde - I had some objections but was still pretty stoked on the new Alliance race. Blizzard announced the draenei, their interdimensional ship, how the blood elves managed to steal the powers of goodness, and how the draenei were special snowlfake shamans.

I wasn't looking forward to the expansion any more.

I didn't find the game fun any more.

I gradually stopped playing within about a couple of weeks.

 

[Flammablezeus]

I don't like a lot of decisions that Blizzard made to simplify and streamline things over the years, taking out a lot of what really made it an MMO and replacing it with what seems more like a lobby system. I came back for Warlords of Draenor but it had simply gotten even worse. The garrisons make it feel closer to a Facebook game than an MMO now at end-game.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I take WoW in short bursts these days but I never truly tire of it. I just mitigate my usage to experiencing new content, then taking a few months off in the interim until something interesting and new comes along.
I'm not as dedicated a player as I once was, have become much more casual in my 10 year run. But I still enjoy the game overall. I've just got other things to do as well and must balance time against them.

 

[The Madman]

Nah, probably not. I haven't been playing the game seriously since Burning Crusade and only casually raided during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion before almost giving up playing entirely, but even so it's not a game I could see myself completely abandoning anytime soon.

I did quit playing between Cataclysm and Warlords of Draenor, for about 2 years I didn't touch the game, but a few months before Wod came out I re-subbed again and have been enjoying playing the game casually ever since. Some people even in this very topic complain that WOW's too casual these days, but as someone who only plays casually anymore that suits me just fine. There's just such a wealth of content to enjoy that even without raiding or pvp I'm rarely at a loss for anything to do anymore, plus something about the world of Azeroth just feels so nice and homey these days. It's like an old pair of shoes, a bit ugly and smelly but so damned comfortable I'll probably never throw them out till the day comes they're just outright unwearable anymore.

Knowing the way it's gone in the past I expect I'll probably let my sub go in a few months and give up WOW till the next expansion, but I can't see myself giving it up entirely anytime soon. If nothing else I enjoy keeping up a casual knowledge of what's going on in the story, silly as it might be it's always entertaining.

Spoiler: I mean just watch this latest cinematic they just put out.

 

[Starbird]

I still enjoy the raiding quite a bit, and with a decent guild with nice people, the raids are still a lot of fun and quite challenging. I do think the game is diminished with every expansion however. Meaningless fluff is added, complexity and challenge are removed. Classes today are a shadow of what they once were. Casters especially were devastated by the ability pruning in WoD. Questing and soloing with a caster class makes me feel like I am playing half a class, lacking all of the tools that I really need to make combat fun and interesting. Tradeskills are in the sorriest shape I have ever seen them.

Mm. If I had a raidguild I would probably enjoy it more - however I simply don't have regular 'block' time to dedicate to progression raiding, don't really have the patience to deal with casualcore guilds and their constant turnover or carrying of less productive members and with LFR gutted there really isn't much for me to do.

Again, I'll probably be back for the middle of the final tier, get my lore fix over a month or so and then head elsewhere.

 

[SoreWristed]

I was very much into WoW some time ago. I started playing halfway into BC and ran around starry eyed and gleefully quested during the WotLK expansion. I even raided pretty heavily back then.

But it all changed when the fire nation attacked...

When cata launched, it started steadily going downward for me, but I stayed around until MoP launched. I took my first break then and started again in the end of MoP's lifespan because I got nostalgic I guess?

WoD launched and I cancelled my sub in the first week.

Somehow it doesn't feel the same anymore. Looking back I feel like my primary joy was levelling, as is evident by my 14 characters at various levels. Not counting bank/auction alts. You would get incentivised to run through a questing area in it's fullest because it would give you relevant loot and an actual mini storyline. I felt like I was the guy that ended the blight in Duskwood. I felt the guy that solved shit. But whenever a new expansion hit, levelling became easier and faster. So you needed to be interested enough to actually finish a questing area, and you wouldn't get any actual rewards for it, since you got better loot from pressing the instaloot button (LFG). They skipped most of the joy for me, you ran around an area doing five quests into a line and left for a better one. Heirlooms, while I had nearly every single one of them, completely negated the use of the few pieces of relevant loot you did find. You'd basically feel constantly overpowered, while vanilla, BC and WotLK for a moment, made you need other people to complete the hard quests. Now it's mostly doable to power through 3-man quests that are essentially 5 levels above you.

I never got the point of private servers hosting vanilla wow, but being a bit more grown up, I can see the point in that now...

 

[ffronw]

Anyone else feel the same way?

I don't know. I keep thinking I'm over it, but then I keep going back and playing more. I left after WotLK, but came back for Cata. Quit again, Came back for Pandaria. Took a break, came back for Draenor.

The one consolation I have is that I'm getting less serious about it each time. I haven't done any raiding in Draenor, and only a few heroics.

It's like trying to quit smoking. You have a lot of false starts until it finally sticks.

The other thing that keeps me around is that it's one of the games that my wife and I can easily play together, and she really enjoys it. That's a major point in its favor.

 

[Pr0]

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.

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

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.

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.

 

[Garewolf]

I played Vanilla WoW, and enjoyed it. I was vaguely excited for BC when it was announced and launched. They say that WoW hit its full stride with BC, but in hindsight, I would say it was really in that sweet spot during the opening of AQ events. BC, for me, was the rock on which the wave finally broke.I was no longer as compelled by the world, the story, or the end game. Every expansion since then has been preceded by a watering down of the content, flavor, factions, races and classes.
I recently created a free to play character, to see if my hypothesis was accurate.
Sadly, the watering down of the classes has become far worse than I even imagined.
It's a pity.
Although I have been an Expansion Tourist since BC, I have been hesitant to write off WoW. The over simplified character progression was the Death Knell of my time with WoW.
Adios, WoW. You were a great game once.

 

[sneakypenguin]

I quit for the first time since end of BC. PVP has been destroyed, tanks that can match your dps and their heals are insane. Classes aren't balanced at all. Trashran is one ofthe worst instances of PVP i've ever seen I now have to spend 2-3 hours at just the right server time to cap on my conquest... Yeah thats fun I love struggling to put together a group and pray horde isn't zerging the events and ally isn't dicking around on the road all for one arena match worth of conq.

Plus my main the elemental shaman is beyond broke in pvp. Everything is a long cast time and hits like a wet noodle, universally considered a joke in pvp, new patch here's a new animation on earthquake.......