Retiring

When I created this blog to separate my regular posts and game posts, I thought there would be loads of events to discuss beside SL.  But as it turned out, I decided to retire my WoW account and soon, my Warhammer account.

I still enjoy WoW and always will.  But I had a few insights in the past few months that couldn't be ignored.  The first was regarding game changes to classes and to professions.  And I watched with horror as many player suggestions/protests were ignored and not even addressed by game developers.  This happened regularly with game changes whether they had an effect on my characters or not.  Another aspect that gave me pause was that game developers across the board (WoW and not) let slip their real opinions about the people who pay them money for their games.  They think we are stupid, easy marks to be fleeced for subscription fees.  They equate their games with addiction and seek to discover new ways to keep the addiction running or hook new people into addiction.  The attitudes that these games foster have a very real "Lord of the Flies" feel.  In which mob justice mayhem ruled among players which upset and disgusted me.  Last and not least, my helm experience.  You see that helm on my main?  It took me numerous dungeon runs to get that digital piece of crap.  The first few runs were fun then it quickly turned into a something akin to slavery.  I realized that this helm experience would be repeated with every new piece I would want.  And it wouldn't end with basics but just get worse with each new quest.  All of this was floating around in my mind, when I finally decided to leave.

But all of this was apparent ever since I began to play these games.  Why the break now?  I don't know.  It just took time before I said enough was enough.

I have good memories of WoW.  I liked the quest stories and the cartoon artwork.  Occasionally I would meet another relaxed player who wasn't strung out.  They were good people with which to share the game.  I loved the story buildup to the release of the "Wrath of the Lich King" expansion.  The pets, little non combat companions, were fun and whimsical.  I loved collecting them.  All of this, I liked but it isn't enough to keep me paying a monthly fee.

Technically my subscription ends this Wednesday but I decided to turn today into my last.  Mainly because I feared that I would have a loss of willpower and fall back into the game treadmill.  So what did I do for my last hour of gameplay?  Not much.  It turned out, that with the exception of high level raiding, I did it all.  There wasn't anything new or uncommon for me to complete.  So I made a few frostweave bags for a friend, did some old dailies and one dungeon.

The Forge of Souls dungeon is still a relatively new dungeon from the latest game patch.  I wasn't that familiar with it since I only played it twice.  But there was an armor piece I wanted so I thought I would give it a go one last time.  However I goofed with the LFG system.  What I needed was on the regular run but instead I picked Heroic (hard level).  Everyone in my group was so over geared in play armor that I didn't even notice that the level was set to Heroic.  So I was mighty surprised to the see the achievement badge pop up on the screen after the run.  Afterwards, I thought that I would try for a regular run in the same instance.  But then decided that the mistake and the surprise achievement was a good way to end the game.

So the end was a high note and I was on top.