David B. Calhoun’s Blog

So I quit World of Warcraft. Again.

I’ve had a sort of love-hate relationship with the game. At times I spent way too much time on it, improving my character and such, and wondering in awe if people really actually spent MORE time than I did playing. They do, of course, because there were always people with better gear than me.

Anyhow, I started playing shortly after the game came out. The game was released in November 2004, and I finally picked it up in January 2005, and was always struggling to catch up to my friends who had started it before I did. I kept playing until sometime mid-2006, when I devoted myself full-time to work and school, and writing my Philosophy Thesis.

When the expansion, Burning Crusade, was released in January 2007, I picked up a copy and played it for about a month before realizing that it was really just more of the same stuff. Go here, get this quest, kill 80 boars, bring this guy back the head of so-and-so. There WERE a few new and fun quest types, like one where you had to throw down bombs from a gryphon rider. But for the most part it was just more of the same stuff. So I quit sometime in February.

Come January 2008 and, after not having played for a year, I start thinking about how fun it would be to play again. One of my friends had even logged back in so he could get his character up to the level cap, level 70. I spent the next month or so trying to finally get to level 70 (I had quit at level 65). Most of the quests and instances were the same stuff as before, just rehashed and given a different name. I do admit that there were a couple of pretty different and fun quests. There was this one quest that stands out in my mind right now - it was one where you somehow transform into a squirrel so you can sneak into this ogre camp and taint their beer kegs. I kid you not! The best part about it was that you could actually STEALTH. It was hilarious to see the squirrel go into stealth mode. You even had the ability to distract your enemies with a “Throw Acorn” spell. I remember messing around in “squirrel mode” around this one Alliance character for a while, just for the heck of it, because it was so fun.

Anyhow, I digress! The thing is, once I got to level 70 last week, the same old level cap wall hit me. Unless I had ridiculous amounts of time to spend in dungeons or PvP (player versus player) matches, I really didn’t stand a chance against everyone else. So I PvPed in the old, familiar, and boring PvP battlegrounds for a while, got some decent stuff, and then realized that I wasn’t really enjoying myself. It was just becoming another grind. And to top it off, when Blizzard supposedly releases their expansion this year, all this effort will become worthless.

So basically what I’m trying to say is, the best part of the game is leveling up. The worst part of the game is when you hit the level cap.

Also, it wasn’t fun leveling up from 65 to 70, because for the most part my friends weren’t logged on. There had been a time when we all got on Skype and quested and did instances and had a good time, but gone are those days!

I’ve also become annoyed with the player base, which is another terrible part of the game. Most everyone on there is out for their good, or the good of their guild, and nothing more. And there is a large group of people who don’t think twice about using exploits and cheating to get ahead. “It’s all part of life”, they say to try to justify it.

In WoW, there is NO honor.

When I used to play Red Baron 3D, a WWI combat flight sim, after a dogfight each player would salute each other. In World of Warcraft, after you’re killed by your opponent, they spit on you.

That about sums it up.

Last night I took off all my hard-earned gear and sold what I could of it. What I couldn’t sell I destroyed. I sold/destroyed everything in my bags and everything in my bank. I completely destroyed everything I worked hard to earn up to that point, then gave all my gold to my guild. I did the same with my level 60 alternate character.

Somewhere there is a naked troll rogue and a naked undead priest having coffee together.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 7:06 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.