Last of the Warcraft

When I last time wrote of WoW, I was thinking of playing it to the 20th level. However, as there was a discount, I ended up picking up the vanilla account, which gave me extra 30 days. I thought, hell, maybe that's a good deal. Maybe I'll even manage to push it to level 50. Of those 30 days, I've probably played a week or so. But then again, I did push my Orc rogue to level 35.

My level 35 rogue.

The thing is, I already knew that WoW really wasn't a game for me. But, just like many other people, I'm a sucker for a good deal.  So I bought it,  played it for a couple of hours once or twice a week. Got bored during sessions and forgot for days I had it, until I just didn't have anything more pressing to do, played again and got bored.

It really doesn't matter what level your character is on. The basics of the game don't change. sure, there are some cute missions sprinkled here and there, which are something else than just basic kill or fetch tasks, but the problem is that those different kinds of quests are buried under an avalanche of boring grind quests.

A girl and her warg. Or a wolf.

And not so surprisingly, that grinding is a big part of why I don't find WoW enjoyable. In the end, what you do most of the time, you just run all around, or ride with a mount, far too big game area, fighting monsters with a boring combat system. You get XP and try to level up so you can go somewhere else and do the same thing all over again.

Of course, you could do dungeons, but those I just didn't find very enjoyable at all. In contrast to the main game, the difficulty level really ramps up on those and you should have far better equipment, loads of healing items at your disposal and probably a team of other players with you when entering them.

I still have about a week left on my vanilla time. I think I might still play a couple of hours worth. I might even manage to go up a level or two. But after that, my run with WoW is over.  As I've said, WoW just isn't my thing.

After play sessions, I kind of feel like that horn-headed thing looks like.

 I do see the appeal of it though. On the basis, WoW is a pretty simple game. It's one of those easy to pick up games. I won't say it's hard to master, as it isn't really the kind of a game that would require you to master it. It just requires you to play it.

It feeds new missions to you from a conveyor belt. It manages to create an illusion that you always have something to do. New quests pop up here and there, old quests lead you to new locations, where you get new quests. There are loads of things to collect. A lot of environments to see and a huge variety of different kinds of monsters to kill.

Simply put, it has content, a lot of it. Personally, I'd prefer quality over quantity, but for a game like WoW the quantity is far more important. It's meant to be a game that gives a point to your wandering, no matter how mundane that point would be.

I've gotten bored with WoW far faster than many other people have. It still has a player base counted in millions. It's not as big as it was years ago when it had over 10 million active players but on the scale of MMORPG's it still probably is the king of the hill. Out of many other MMORPG's it's one of the few that has managed to remain subscription-based, whereas others have gone free to play. But with its slowly dwindling player base, how long will it still go on? How long can it really attract new players, when there's a lot of different MMORPG's out there battling for the hearts and souls of players.

For a MMORPG that is over a decade old, it has done well. But when is it time to let go? And when it finally does, is it because of some other title or because Blizzard finally publishes a WoW 2.

Palm trees and an ocean on the horizon. I think this is a good spot to end things.