Retiring from WOW (Really)

Happy fourth of July to all of my American friends, hope you are still enjoying your long weekend!

This week came and went pretty fast, but there was a topic that stuck on my mind and wanted to share with you this week.

I have always been a fan of Role Playing Games. Ever since I knew of their existence, I have been an avid player of very good and very bad games. To me, there is not nothing better than to actually become the hero of the story, of being addressed by the NPC’s and to be able to save the world/princess or whatever it was that needed to be saved. But then, something happened in my life that changed the way I viewed and played RPG’s forever: I discovered World of Warcraft. WOW is an MMO, a Massive Multiplayer Online experience like no other. Four years ago I paid for my first account of WOW and, well, it did change my life, both in a good and a bad way.

I leveled a Druid named Pentholas (a continuation of a pen and paper character) and, even before I knew what the term meant, I leveled him mainly as a feral Druid, with a few touches of a Balance Druid. Real life friends began to play the game as well, and before we knew it, we each had our main toons ready for the expansion that was Wrath of the Lich King (I still played relevant content of the Burning Crusades, but I was not a part of any raid). I was a part of a very social, very active, very dysfunctional guild called The Vay of Elune and was even promoted to Officer status. To be honest, at that time I had no idea of what I was supposed to do both in the guild and in the game. I had not really understood the dynamics of what the game entailed in its unusual and challenging end game content. So, me and friends decided that is was time to move from a social into a raiding guild. I had one of the worst experiences of my life as a gamer in one of these guilds, and was about to leave the game when we were approached by another guild, Fallen Angels, an awesome guild run by Glint and Buns, and thus my journey into madness had begun. Don’t get me wrong, the guild and its members became a second family to me, and it was about this time that I really learned to play the Feral Druid toon and its complex rotation, but it just became too much, too much time spent on the game, farming, playing with the mechanics of my spec, and raiding at 11 pm Mexico City time.

After all was said and done, I was burnt out, having troubles at work and at home, and thus came my first separation of the game. I had never enjoyed the game more and I never enjoyed it more since those months were me and my real life friends (ironic that you have to make the distinction between you real life friends and your virtual ones), because of the time we spent on vent, or Skype, or simply building a lasting bond that I still miss today. Suffice to say, the call of the game was too strong for me to resist and I relapsed into two more stints playing the game.

In the first one I changed server so that I could raid at a decent time for me, 7 pm, so that I could release my raid fury over the period of time I had allotted for playing the game. It was good, I finally raided all I wanted to raid, I finally got into a guild that was a hardcore raiding guild, I finally had the chance to raid end game content in all of its difficulties and I even had one my best friends, in real life, along for the ride. But, as things got easier in terms of what I wanted, they also got repetitive and bland. The game, after numerous patches and in-game changes and tweaking the mechanics, had lost some appeal to me because the Feral Druid rotation was not as complex as it once had been, and, to be honest, once you had all the epics the toon needed, it was not a real challenge anymore. So, on the day that I was supposed to kill the Lich King, I decided to quit, and quit I did.

Cataclysm came out in December of 2010, and I decided to give it a try, leveling Pentholas to 85 in more than a week (which already showed my lack of enthusiasm over the game) and decided to take it slow. I just did not want to raid or even do dungeons for that matter, because the game was broke. Dungeon queues were ridiculous and if you were not part of a decently sized guild, there was no chance in hell that you PUG a raid. NONE. So I just played around making money, leveling toons and simply being disappointed by the lack of new content. I left the game after only three or four months, with no regrets and no lingering sensation that I wanted to be back to it…someday.

Last week, the new 4.2 patch came out and with it, Blizzard is now offering, instead of their traditional 10 day trial, a 20 level try, that is, you can level a character to level 20 for free (with tons of limitations), but still, an attempt to lure new players to their thinning ranks. If the community was horrible when I left it, how bad would it become with these new additions? So, for the first time since I began to play WOW, I can honestly say that I am retired for good. I miss raids, dungeons, leveling grinding, yes. I miss all of those things. But I miss being part of a guild with my friends even more. So, I wont come back, because there is nothing there for me to do, and there are exciting new MMOs that have caught my eye.

In one of WOW rehab stints, I purchased Guild Wars and have now began to play it in earnest, and I have to say that I enjoy the community much more than WOW and the playing experience, the ability to advance playing alone has been great so far, so I will be playing this one a whole lot more. I will buy Guild Wars 2 so I will let you know how I am doing over there as I progress. Right now, I have a level 10 Necromancer/Monk and a level 11 Monk/Elementalist.

Now, I want to play Star Wars: The Old Republic. I want to play it now! I want to play it because, well, er…I want to be Jedi. I want to be a Jedi so bad that I am willing to play a Healer toon in order to play a Jedi! But to be honest with you all, I just want to play because my friends are going to play the game and that will make it even better. For those that believe that playing these types of games alienate you from your loved ones, well, they do if you allow the game to dictate what you want to with your time, but if you take your time to plan out what you want to do with it, it will bring you closer to the friends that are already playing it.

What are you guys going to do? Are you planning on playing SWOR? Guild Wars 2? Are there other MMOs out there that have caught your eye?

Series

This week I will finish Game of Thrones if it is the last thing I could do, because I have to get past the hurdle of seeing what I already know is going to happen. (See? NO spoilers there!) I just can’t stomach the thought of loosing characters, again! I mean, once in the book is enough for me! (Oh, and the characters that I do want to get rid of and knowing that they will remain…ughh!)

Books

I have finished the 5 books of Joe Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy and world, and I just loved each book. The Trilogy is fun, fast-paced, bloody, splattered with intrigue and mystery, and filled with warm, cold and real and complex characters. The stand alone books are juts a treat, because although you know they are set in the same universe, and they do have some characters that were part of the trilogy, they just stand out on their own, with their own pace, their own back stories and their own unforgettable cast of characters. I fell in love with Monza and against my better judgment, I tended to side with Calder.

I am now reading Danse Macabre, Book 14 of the Anita Blake Series and I am also reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.
The Sword of truth is on hiatus, AGAIN!

Writing

Well, last week I finished the overview for my novel and began with the first attempts at the chapters, but I did not go past the Prologue. I am having such a difficult time of shedding the narrator hat off my head. Last week was also mired with a lot of family engagements that made it difficult for me to get into any sort of rhythm. I am a creature of habit and if I have to change some of my ritual, well, it just does not work. Hopefully this week will be better.

I will also begin to write the overview of a second novel I want to write about my other literary love: Vampires. I have already written most of the world in which they live in, but I need to get into the details of the story. Hopefully these minor details will not take too long to iron out.

I will also try to finish the short story I am writing for the contest. The story is very close to being ready, but I have, in all honestly, neglected it for far too long.

Well, I hope everyone has a great week! I will see you all next week!