Warcraft....Is it still worth playing?

I will try and keep this short.

This month marks 5 years since I started playing WoW. I enjoyed BC and WotLK but a few weeks before Cata was released I was getting upset with most of the changes Blizzard was making to the game. It was mostly regarding talents and abilities. I played Cata for the first 15 days or so and decided not to renew my account because I felt it didn't have the same WoW feel to it that got me to be a loyal player in the first place. For the last week I have been getting the urge to reactivate my account. Today I spent a lot of time reading over some forums only to find that more and more people are getting increasingly frustrated with how Blizzard is changing the game (some good, mostly bad).

I have 8 level 80's and have grown (in a way) attached to my characters. It is hard to let them go. I know it's ultimately my choice to play again, but I just wanted to get some opinions from others. Maybe someone has similar or opposing thoughts to help me make a decision. I know a lot of my friends have stopped playing and others are saying this is the end of WoW. Is it still worth $15 a month? Should I get over the changes and try to enjoy myself like I once did? What say you?|||Quote:








Should I get over the changes and try to enjoy myself like I once did?




I didn't. Thing is, I never actually witnessed them ingame, as the reports outside of it were giving me enough reasons to why it can't be good.

On the other hand, a stubborn fool who finally lost the one toy they liked the most, like myself, probably isn't the first person you should be listening to with this.|||This question is just so subjective that it is impossible to answer for you. I myself think WoW is still giving me value for my money, and I enjoy it a lot. I even think Cataclysm brought a whole new level of refreshment to the game, and a lot of old quest zones have been revamped with awesome quest lines.

Most of the time posts like this are largely based on hear-say ("they say it isn't so good anymore", paraphrased) and a lot of times, hear-say is confused with actual, objective information.|||I just don't see WoW dying. I'm not sure what they are basing their "end of WoW" opinions on. It's certainly not due to lack of subscriptions.

I've seen games much smaller than WoW go through serious downturns, like Everquest, to where I thought they would die, and yet they're still going pretty strong. They've been through several server consolidations, and yet they've also just released their 17th expansion. A lot of people left the game when Sony released Star Wars, and then Everquest II, and then Vanguard, but there is still a healthy enough population that they're still actively developing for the game. WoW's got a lot, lot more people on it than that and they're still opening servers, not consolidating them.

There is also a tendency among humans to generalize a personal experience to everyone -- the "if I feel this way, so much everyone else" fallacy. People quit games all the time. Sometimes they come back; sometimes they don't. Just don't fall into the herd mentality that if people you know are leaving the game that you should leave too.

I went through a burnout at the end of WOTLK, but I'm back playing actively. Any activity done a lot over a long period of time is going to go through phases where you need to take a break from it. It might be gaming, or knitting, or golf, or cycling, or whatever floats your personal boat. Do something for a long time and it will lose its luster, maybe permanently, maybe temporarily. Hard to know. Just because you know some people who are starting into a burnout period doesn't mean that you have to follow their lead.

As far as game changes go, people are going to like some changes and not like others, and those who don't like game changes are going to whine the loudest. Just look at sites that cater to opinions about something ... people are much, much less likely to express a positive opinion than a negative one. If people like something, they tend to stay quietly satisfied. If people don't like something, the Internet gives them a grand opportunity to let EVERYONE know about it.

WoW is not a static game; it's a dynamic, changing world. If Blizzard stopped making changes, people would complain that the game isn't moving forward.

But any change they make -- ANY change -- is going to piss some people off. And those people are going to be the most vocal about it. If you've been playing the game for five years, you should know this by now. You need to decide whether a change is good or bad for YOU. The good news is that if it's a truly bad change, and not just something that will be fine once you've adapted to it, then Blizzard will probably fix it. Some people are more adaptable than others. The talent tree changes were a great example of this -- they were huge and many people had to learn how to re-play their classes. But once you get used to them, mostly the changes weren't as dramatic as they seemed at first. There were some classes and specs that changed a lot, but mostly people have adapted. It's just that some like learning the One True Way of doing something, and if Blizzard suddenly pulls out the rug from that one, they're going to be mad, even if it turns out the changes were actually good ones.

Nobody can decide for you whether you should reactivate your account. Don't worry what other people are saying. $15 just isn't that much money to test the waters for a few weeks. You can always cancel again.|||I left the game 2 years ago -- not because I was burned out or anything, just because life changes came up and required my full attention (got married, had a baby girl, etc). Now I'm back in the game, and it is so different, it is like a whole new, fresh experience for me. I was attached to my characters too... however my account got compromised, and while I could recover some things (like the gear my characters had), I lost a lot more. So... I started over, from scratch. Completely new characters on completely new servers. I've left my old characters still around for posterity's sake, but a fresh, new take on WoW, with fresh, new characters, has made the experience all the more enjoyable.

I think it is definitely worth my $15 a month. But, that is, as snowieken said, a very subjective statement... and purely based on my own personal enjoyment of the game.|||I used to be consumed but have cut back to only a few hours a week. It's difficult to balance, but now with two jobs, school and a demanding girlfriend who insists I pay some attention to her I have had to prioritize!|||Quote:








I used to be consumed but have cut back to only a few hours a week. It's difficult to balance, but now with two jobs, school and a demanding girlfriend who insists I pay some attention to her I have had to prioritize!




Job, school, wife, and daughter for me :)|||Well i quit for over 5 month now, i'm feeling great. If you play but you don't enjoy it so much i think you should quit.

A little bit on my background and how i quit. I started to play WoW in 2006, just for fun and because I was looking for a way to escape the daily problems. Before I know it, I develop a compulsive behavior for WoW, which last for almost 4 years.

During this time my social life became a mess, some of my friends left me because I stopped going out with them, I wouldn’t answer the phone so I could lie to them that I didn’t hear the phone, I lie them about my screening time – all of this because I wanted to play WoW all day long). My girlfriend left me because I couldn’t stop playing, I was thinking always about WoW, about doing raids, leveling alts, helping others to get good gear.

Before I realise my health started to suffer too, headaches, wrist pain, back pain, poor eye sight and many others problems were something usual now. My friends were trying to help me showing me how I changed 360 degree (I lost weight, I was tired, I was angry when the servers were down) but i was too blind to see the truth and I started lying myself that I can stop whenever I want.

Reality was different, I had developed a compulsive behavior; playing 8 hours per day during weekdays and 12-18 during week-ends, thinking about WoW all the day, this behavior was soon taking his toll.

One day, because I was so tired I blacked out; I end up in the hospital where I had spoken with a doctor who told me I had to stop before something even bad happened. So I started looking for ways to quit WoW (will power never got any result for me, I try to replace WoW with something else yet an inner voice was telling me to go play).

While browsing the web for solution, I came over this site (www.escapewow.com), which I had to admit seemed kind of strange, but at least I found a lots of my “symptoms”. So I decide to try it.

It took 3 days of listening this hypnotherapy session before I realise that WoW is a virtual world and I can have more fun in the real life, I liked a lot because it required no effort from me, not like when I try to quit simply using will power. I simply relaxed and listen to it daily. It worked like magic with my brain and so helped my body to recover. Hypnosis made my body relax, rest and regenerate in the most efficient way. I was soon feeling a different man; I had a lust for life once more. I got back my self confidence; you know that inner voice that is keeping you from achieving success (no matter what success means to you – money, a girlfriend, a good job).

Since then I get to spent a lot of time with my friends, I go out a lot, I even brought a rc helicopter and I have a lot of fun with it. My health got better, no more headaches, wrist pain and red eyes. And because my self confidence has increased I got a raise at work. My social life improved a lot.

I still play some games from time to time, but not more than a couple of hours per week. Because i have a lot of fun with my friends i don't need to play as much as I used to.

That’s why, if you feel you have something in common with my story I urge you to visit this site: www.escapewow.com|||While I think you are blatantly advertising that rubbish website, I decided to keep the link alive for discussion, and I'm sorry to say, comedy purposes.

If you are truly so addicted that it is taking over your entire life - if and only if, because a lot of WoW players are thrown in the same corner - I don't believe a few online hypnotherapy sessions is what you need.|||I think that WoW is changing and it was, still is and would be worth p(l)aying.