No More Wow

I wanted to type this up, but I wasn’t sure where to put it. If you’re not a gamer or not interested in me writing a “letter” to people who will never read it, feel free to skip along. 🙂

Dear Blizzard Game Developers:

I’ve canceled my subscription to your game for the foreseeable future for the first time in 10 years. I put it on hold on at least two previous occasions, but I always knew that I’d be returning. This time, I doubt I will.

This game has become an utter bore. As the days unfold to the final cancellation of my subscription (16 days as of this writing) I suddenly became nostalgic and created a new character like I first had when I began playing in 2007. Yes, believe it or not, despite not keeping the character, I do recall my first was a gnome mage. I wanted to just play from the beginning as I did when I was first introduced to the game by a friend.

The more I’ve played at this starter level, the more I see the ways in which I dislike the game. When I first started playing, it was a bit of a challenge to level. You spent real time in a zone, moving around, opening the map to its fullest. I think it was my second character was a night elf and I was questing in Darkshore. There was a quest which required me to swim down to the bottom of the ocean (near the shore) and pick up some items. I was so frustrated because it seemed like I’d run out of breath before I could get even one of the items. I avoided water quests for a long time after that. It was finally changed.

My favorite low-level zone has always been Duskwood and I remember having to be on the look-out and avoid Stitches as he wandered from Raven Hill to Darkshire for a quest. It was fun trying to avoid him because he’d inevitably one-shot you. Same with the Forsaken Courier and her merry band of elite bodyguards in Arathi Highlands as they traveled from Go’Shek Farm to Stromgarde Keep.

I’m no elite player, but even I can see that giving away the farm for the lower level players – including being able to just buy a high level character – takes away from the learning process. It was fun to take time in zones. To be in each area for more than a handful of quests. It should be challenging when you’re leveling up so that when you reach the highest level of your class, you can enjoy that hard work in the ease of the higher level end game stuff. Hard work rewards learning and ease of play at the end. Easy work rewards nothing but complaints and boots from LFG and LFRs for dungeons and raids. How can you adequately play a class when you’ve breezed through learning little to nothing? It was also more fun leveling lock-picking with a rogue than having that handed to you. I liked being needed in dungeons to unlock another player’s box even if I didn’t win it. While the ease of leveling my mage currently might be due in part to having a few heirloom pieces of armor, I’m also quite sure that the health points of most mobs have been lowered. Especially when I found recently that I could knock out a mob five levels above me with one spell. The only time I’ve died so far with this character is when I leaped off a cliff that was higher than I realized.

I know nothing of what I say will matter to you. You still have millions of players. I’m not sure why I even bothered typing this, except to give myself peace of mind. Thing is, I’m not a gamer. I’m not leaving World of Warcraft to go play another game. There’s nothing else that’s sparked my interest like World of Warcraft has. I’ve never considered myself a gamer. I played some stuff as a kid, but my hand/eye coordination went out the window and I moved on. Still, for 10 years I’ve loved WoW, but I’ve lost that lovin’ feeling. And it’s definitely gone, gone, gone.

Thanks for the memories.