Wednesday, October 22, 2008

World of Warcraft

So I think I've officially stopped playing World of Warcraft (WoW). I canceled my subscription the other day, for the second time (I resubscribed a while back, just cause I really wanted to play and see some people, but after three days, didn't touch the game). The cool thing is that Blizzard, which is the company who created WoW and maintains the servers, will keep my characters and their many different records for all of time, hoping that one day I will return to the world of Azeroth.

Truth be told, I will. WoW is too fun of a game not to play. The only bad part is that is can getting tiring playing the same old stuff over and over again. So what do I do? I quit it for a while. Now I know that I have a lot of obsessions that I rotate, but eventually some of them will dissapate. Want an example? Geocaching. It's been nearly a year or so. Granted, now it's getting colder and gas prices are lowering and I have been wanting to go outside more often for a while now, I don't think I'll be getting back into the hobby too soon. Will WoW follow this same path? Hmmm...

I've got a PS3 now, so anytime that I'm not hanging out with friends or doing work or random other things, I'll probably be playing on it. Why would I want to go back to WoW when I can play all the cool games for the PS3? Granted, I say that now, and 6 months from now I may be bored enough to go back to WoW.

Some people may also think that instead of hanging out with them I'll be at home, playing the PS3. Now, while this may sometimes be the case, it will not be the majority of the time. Why you ask? What's the difference from when I played WoW instead of hanging out with friends and playing the PS3? There's one HUGE difference: Mostly, the PS3 are single-player, not reliant on huge number of players to have events and scheduled meetings and happenings. Since WoW is a MMORPG, (Multi-Massive Online Role Playing Game), when you play it, you reliant on others to do certain awesome things within the game. What does that matter? I can pause the PS3. I can turn it off.

With WoW, I had to let other friends of mine know that I wasn't going to be available to play with them on certain nights because I was doing other stuff. That's fine, but when they really want you to go with them through this really awesome higher-level place to advance your character (and you care about that kind of thing), you go. Whenever they schedule it. Which usually cuts off some hang out time. In short, you can't get away as easily on WoW, when with the PS3, you can.

The only way you can get away from WoW is to stop playing (obviously). Yet since you're not interacting with just AI, but also with other humans over the intrawebs, you hurt their feelings too when you no longer show up to play. I know, I know, you're thinking, "But these are your real friends! You can reach out and touch them! You'd choose internet friends over them?" And my answer is that it's situational. When they've helped me out in getting further in the game, I have to help them back out, or even just be around them for the heck of it. It's like an unwritten rule. I think it's called common courtesy or something. Besides, I see most of my friends at church stuff anyway.

The only reason that I wrote that last paragraph was to say this: I'm leaving WoW officially. I haven't really been playing at all since July (maybe a total of 5 hours). As of now, I don't really plan on going back anytime soon. I know that I may be tempted when Wrath of the Lich King comes out, but then again, not really, cause it's the same thing, just to level 80. I don't think I will. I have too much fun hanging with friends instead. And when no one is wanting to hang out, or I don't want to hang out, I'll play my PS3.

The only part about this that sucks is the fact that I'm hurting some people who I used to play with all time by not showing up. They're probably used to me not being there by now, but I know they miss me. I sit next to one of them ever Sunday in the Orchestra Pit. Don never rags me about not being around, cause, as he puts it, "I know you're young and you have a life, so go live it." But every now and then, he'll tell me how much he does miss me. And how much Shawn misses me. Shawn is a guy from Canada who I played the game with more than Don. He and I leveled our characters up from 15 or so to 70 (about five or six months worth of playing a good bit each week). So I feel for them. Maybe one day I'll come back to play again. I see Don at church, but I don't see Shawn, obviously. Pray for him, please. He isn't a believer.




So yeah, Goodbye for now, WoW! Hello $15 more each month!

2 comments:

Jamie said...

That was the longest thing I have ever read about World of Warcraft. I am proud of myself for sticking it out.

Kristi said...

I agree with Jamie. I read all of it. But that's probably just because I was pseudo-mentioned and I wanted to know how it ended. I must say I'm happy about this.