I’m not even sure I actually want to play WoW again (or any MMO for that matter). But every time they announce a new expansion or raid, I feel a faint pull somewhere in the recesses of my soul. Perhaps for the game or, more likely, for the attached nostalgia of a simpler time, wrapped up in great memories I had playing that game for so many years.
It’s natural, I suppose; I played a lot of WoW in its hey day. From the beta on through Wrath of the Lich King where my raiding and commitment to the game reached its peak. I made a lot of friends there and a lot of great memories. I then fizzled out during the course of Cataclysm, beginning to jump around to other MMOs looking to recapture a feeling none of them could match in the end. A short reunion tour in Legion back in 2016 was the last time my wife and I fired up the ol’ accounts.
These days I have no interest in the sort of demands an MMO makes on your time. WoW may be advertising an “increased respect for players time” in the new expansion, but I’m not sure I’m falling for that.
And yet none of that quiets the distant siren’s song inside me, tempting me towards a shore that my rational brain knows I can never return to.
Oh my god, this absolutely this:
“But every time they announce a new expansion or raid, I feel a faint pull somewhere in the recesses of my soul. Perhaps for the game or, more likely, for the attached nostalgia of a simpler time, wrapped up in great memories I had playing that game for so many years.”
I feel the exact same every single time they get out a new expansion! lol.
Every damn time. 😛
Warcraft never changes 😉
I see what you did there.
I’ve been tempted to return to Lord of the Rings Online more than once. One time it was actually enough to reinstall it. But then I loaded up my character and saw I had no inventory space and remembered it was because my premium account wasn’t active (which halves your backpack space) and all those monetary and time cost reminders revived themselves in my brain.
Maybe one day. If my kid wants to play with me.
Me too! WOW had me for several years– hours spent every evening in raids where I usually didn’t get anything good. That hope of a legendary item. Dealing with toxic guild leadership. I finally used all my raid points to outbid everybody on an awesome wizard staff (I was a druid) and then quit the game to the complaints of: “The druid got that?? He doesn’t even need it! What the hell??” Yet, even after all these years, I still feel the pull. WOW is evil.
Meh – MMOs suck anyway.
I wouldn’t say they all suck, especially if you haven’t played a lot of them. But I have yet to find one that is fun. I tried several times to find a good MMO, but they all have interfaces that are so bad, that they make Dwarf Fortress look well designed. And they all have gameplay that’s so grindy and monotonous, that they make Animal Crossing look exciting. The thing is though, I like Dwarf Fortress and Animal Crossing. So obviously I don’t mind terrible interfaces, and grindy and monotonous gameplay. But all of the MMOs I’ve tried, just take… Read more »
“I have yet to find one that is fun”
I rest my case 😀
what is fun to others isnt necessarily fun to you, you’ll learn when you grow up.
> you instead have combat similar to the Devil May Cry games? Instant improvement, done
Have you looked at Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis? That has a pretty dynamic and positional battle system.
there are so many differents mmo for so many different playstyles… wow is one, tera another, bdo, guild wars 2, warframe (not really a mmo but not that far), etc. And they are very differents from eachothers.
Also, the fact you dont like them doesnt make them bad. And that part about the auto-attack is just plain bullshit to me, wtf are you talking about?
When it comes to why MMOs don’t have action combat: They do. Quite a few do, actually. New World, Lost Ark, TERA, Warframe, Wayfarer, all the side scrolling ones like Maplestory, for a few examples. Main issue with them is that action combat makes lag far far more noticeable, and many MMOs actually have a fair bit of lag at all times, its just not that noticeable with tab targeting combat. Plus I think that all the good that comes from action combat tends to be directly opposed to a large part of what draws people into MMOs. A lot… Read more »
Not always. A good example of this would be: Every time corporations go to war, Eve’s servers starts crying.
This is why instanced dungeons are everywhere. And why, despite all the promises, I’d think Star Citizen will have problems with scaling in the future because as far as I understand things, they don’t have instanced anything AND action combat.
For star citizen to actually have scaling issues, enough people will need to still be alive when it actually launches.
IMO, and this is dating me, EverQuest was the best MMO.
I honestly tried WoW, but just didn’t like it.
They were good in their time, but after a while they are all the same.
100% agree. i was major into MMO a decade ago but they simply not aged well for todays modern gamer market.
while I can understand you dont love that kind of game, just saying “it sucks” makes you sound like you’re an edgy 14 yo.
I totally understand what you mean. I still remember the first time I entered a city in classic. Someone was riding past just when I came to the gates and someone else flew past me on the airline. I first thought it was scripted and only realized that that were all players when I entered the city and saw what feels like hundreds of players running around inside. MMOs where something really special back then. Even though I mostly played solo, I still miss WoW every once in a while, like a good recovered addict. All the good memories… Once… Read more »
and my Axe!
Inspecting the HTML of the page, I see an img with an empty src, so I expect it to fail in every browser
I recently got back into WoW with some workmates, if the two of you did get back into WoW even casually, maybe it would be cool to resurrect ZeGuild…
And Opera.
And vivaldi
And Netscape Navigator.
And wget
and my axe
and my bow
and your brother
What is WRONG with you!
You’re the best big brother, I could have ever asked for
I had a lot of fun with WoW but the grind was always an issue for me. Mainly that there was a lot of end game stuff, that you couldn’t do until you maxed out, which meant you had to grind out the levels to get to it. I would have liked to enjoy the leveling process and I did, but I always felt like I was missing out on stuff.
I started a bit later than my friend group. I never caught up with them and could never play with them. The grind really sucked.
I’ve played WoW almost as long Tim, and I have to say that I sort of believe them with the whole “respect for player’s time” thing. They’ve realized that their core focus group has aged and has responsibilities now, and they’re reacting to that. Dragonflight is very much like that. Getting to cap is a breeze, the story is charming and engaging but not overbearing, and if you just want to chill and fly around gathering materials you can, or if you just fancy experiencing the raids without dedicating three nights a week to do it, there’s raid finder. The… Read more »
I played WoW for 7 years, but many of those years were with me trying to cope with severe depression and the daily rhythm of the game kinda helped somewhat. As things got better, I just completely lost my interest in the monotony and the static world; one could say that the attraction to it just vanished in thin air like a fart in the wind. These days, if I think about any MMO, my mind just goes to WoW and the tedium of repeating the same thing over and over and how nothing you do in that game really… Read more »
Same for me, using Opera in my PC on Windows 10. Considering how this happened a couple strips ago as well, and some people found a mistake in the code, it seems to be a general issue.
I’m good as long as they don’t send me free (real(vs limited characters) ) play time
It’s not the games that you miss, but your life from back in the day.
That’s why even if you come back to the game, the itch doesn’t get scratched. You can only be young and naive once.
Well I don’t know about you but what would keep me engaged is refined gameplay, and I’m not even talking about subjective me-likey-that-exotic-thing but things that are obviously bad design. For example: In Classic professions had numerous overpriced, yet useless items to craft, like such with only resistance bonus and nothing else, while lacking useful ones, like shield crafting being impossible for blacksmiths. There was also no working effort and reward concept: There were many cases were you could get blatantly better items through simple quests compared to much harder ones. World drops existed with entirely bad stats, for example:… Read more »
Honestly I’m 100% with this guy. Its not that the game isn’t good anymore (Dragonflight was a freakin’ blast,) but its that a lot of the people who played it in high school are almost 40 now and hitting the age of a midlife crisis.
They don’t want Vanilla WoW (or Wrath, or whatever) back. They want it to be 2004 again.
… given the state of things for a lot of the world I can’t really say I blame ’em. o_o
I’ve never even TOUCHED WoW and this hits so close to home.
Sophomore in college. Awesome girlfriend who things were going pretty good with. Blissfully ignorant of the fact that the shoebox of a room I was sharing with someone and the laughable classes that would do nothing for me would be something I was paying for twenty years later. I was off on my own; I had instant ramen, a car built in 1994, and a brand new PS2 that I bought with my minimum-wage job, and I felt like I had it all.
If that were true, you’d think Classic would’ve fizzled out quickly, once people got over their nostalgia. Yet it’s done more for WoW’s sub count than any of the new expansions and now it’s even doing popular spin-offs like Hardcore and SoD.
The reality is that the original version was just better. It had a simplicity to it that is hard to recapture and the game design choices weren’t focused around milking the customer dry, but on making the game make sense and be enjoyable.
When I finally decided to play some classic WotLK that itch definitely got scratched for me again. But it only lasted a few months rather than the entire 2 years it originally did. ^^;;
I never got into WoW because I was already on my own version of this journey with Anarchy Online. Every MMO I tried after that felt off. Lack of community, cookie cutter progression lines.
After 15 years, it was impossible to commit that kind of time investment to get back to where I was in that old game. Hands down, the community is the addiction, the game is just the excuse.
AO used to feel like a chatroom with a game attached to it. I haven’t really seen such community in other online games since then…
I remember i spent more time getting buffs and chainging implants than playing the game… and i played A LOT!
Still the first lvl 220 Neutral Atrox shade – before it was cool to be atrox!
speak for yourself ^^
Stop giving your attention to Blizzard. At least wait until that cocksucker Kotick is finally replaced by someone from Microsoft.
Right, as Microsoft’s trackrecord is so much better.
Gamers are the just about the most hypocritical hobbyist on this planet. The hivemind told you to dislike this guy and company, so you just ignore all the crap lierally every other game company and chief does until you are told to hate them too.
Bah. Just play a game you like, and not the ones you don’t. If you arbirtarily go about making judgement calls about one of them you only make yourself look silly.
You’re making a lot of assumptions based on one statement from someone you don’t know…
I played from Vanilla all the way through BFA. Not the entire 2 years for each expansion, as I often took breaks, but I’ve played them all. I completely lost interest a bit before Shadowlands. But they still managed to suck me back in for a few months with Dragonflight. I just cancelled my subscription again as I found I had kinda stopped playing again. But both that (mostly) classic WotLK feeling + retail casual leveling and doing heroics on retail was fun again for a bit. WoW is a beast that you can never fully get rid of once… Read more »
This is pretty timely – I’ve seen bits and pieces about new content for Star Wars: The Old Republic that is sorely tempting me to dip my toe back in the water…
Don’t give in! He only wants you for your money! LOL
I did play WoW somewhat, but for me my poison of choice was Eve Online… I kicked that about 10 years ago but… even today I sometimes wonder if my character is still somewhere in 0.0, stranded in enemy territory. and what happened to the carrier, tac cruiser and interceptors…
It is easy to get into the mindset that you have to do a ton of the grind when you play an MMO when that’s been your experience in the past. You don’t have to. You can absolutely just play what you want to and then stop. I’ve been playing a few different ones over the past few years, and there’s tons of grinds I could be doing, and which old me would 100% have thrown myself headfirst into. But I don’t have time today, so I just don’t do them. Sure, I could grind M+ endlessly for the absolute… Read more »
Wow is an absolute mess: They had all the addons with different approaches but never managed to refine their game with all the experiences from these. Instead they gutted their MMORPG from almost all of the MMO and RPG aspects and then decided to herd players into the content they wanted them to play instead of offering a variety of good contents, leaving it to the players to try what’s fun to them. They ruined the story, abandoned certain aspects of the game that some players valued but they didn’t view as relevant and forgot lessons of the past multiple… Read more »
Just when I thought I was off the hook… They pull me back in
I know that feeling. I finally broke free of WoW this year. I tried Dragonflight and I recognise it as one of the best WoW’s expansions… but I also recognise that I no longer enjoy the gameplay and reward structure of WoW. Still, the announcement made me consider going back. At least for the story… But I also know that enjoying WoW for the story is hard. Important stories are far between dozens of “kill 10 bears” quests, gated behind weeks of reputation grinds or locked behind raids or M+ only dungeons. WoW should have a “casual” mode where we… Read more »
Good lord it’s like you’re in my head controlling me, right down to coming back for a brief stint in Legion where I did get to max level and start low end raiding. The problem I had was it was just…so…grindy on everything. Want to level your relic weapon? Go grind through your LIMITED 10 daily quests to get 1-2 more points or spend hours scouring a map for random spawns. Want to level your rep with a new faction? GUESS WHAT?!?!? Shared 10 Daily quest limit. Pick one, cause you’re only going to be doing that one for a… Read more »
A lot of games make me feel like this. I feel that same tug on my soul every time a new Call of Duty comes out. Played so much of it as a kid and a teenager with my friends, spending endless nights playing TDM or zombies. Now every year I watch as Warzone and the live service model for the game slowly corrupts and fucks over every single aspect I used to love. Gone are the days when the campaigns told complete stories that would be continued in sequels. Now you have to watch and pay attention to all… Read more »
can someone tell me what is ment by 1-5 player endgame content? cause i might get back into wow if i dont have to deal with raids anymore to get good gear
They are making a new set of end game named Delves, which are kinda like seamless instanced (some what randomised) ‘dungeons’ which will allow for 1 – 5 people and be the first time that you can get the higher mythic gear outside of raids. The Warcraft youtube channel covers it in one of the videos of what’s to come. They are also unlocking Flight paths and a bunch of other stuff account wide. So once you’ve done it.. you’re entire account has it rather than having to go do it for every single alt. Hope that helps some the… Read more »
this pic is 100% me. i used to be a major serious, and dare i say toxic, raider for eons but these days ive moved on and have too much else i would rather spend time on.
Were you ever addicted, like actually for real addicted? This sounds real similar to the type of feelings addicts get and from what I’ve been personally told, they never go away.
No, it was just an activity my wife and I enjoyed together with our friends before we had kids when all of our evenings were entirely free to do with as we pleased.
I felt the same, played since the opening of the US servers (despite being EU Based), made a tonne of friends, had a blast, played it all up till.. Mists of Pandaria? and after that i’d come back at the beginning of an expac, play it till the end of the starting content, then come back for a patch cycle or two towards the end. Dragonflight i played the closed beta for a few hours, reported a few bugs, thought ‘that was cool’ and didn’t think anymore of it, i’m counting it as the first time i’ve not jumped in… Read more »
Same. I walked away from WoW 4 1/2 years ago, having played since open beta, and some time off in 2008 due to lack of money. I bought shadowlands at half price, played for 2 days, this was last year (?) and uninstalled it and walked away. I do feel pulling for WOTLK classic, i really liked the phasing feature in Icecrown, but i have no time for it anymore. I am curious about the story being played out, but again, no time
I ran a WoW server for about a year, while I did love the game, I spent SO much time coding and debugging, I barely got to play. I added in the first 4 expansions, and got bogged down with work and coding that and additions players kept bugging me for. When the server tower fried, I gave up. I was doing it all for free because of my love for the game, nothing else. I had cancer at the time (I wasn’t diagnosed with it yet) and I simply didn’t have the money to keep it going.
This…. sooo me right at the moment so nails everything that I’ve been feeling since the announcement and I’ve been watching the wife on Dragon Isles.. and I”m like…. *whimper*
Wrath of the Lich King almost made me drop out of college. I had been playing so much since the beta and it just took over my life. I’m in the same boat, WWAAAAAAAY too scared to go back to it.
I recently got a PS5 but, because of the time demands that I’m not willing to sacrifice other aspects of my life for, it’s probably going to sit for a year or two. (I only got it because I don’t want to be throwing elbows down the road for the current model and I hadn’t had time to convince myself that I can live without Mortal Kombat 1). I’ve reflected that, in some ways, it’d be nice if SWTOR went under because I could then shift the time to all the other games that I mean to eventually get to.… Read more »
Wow!
Co-op is the only way I would play with others online ever again.
exact same, I’m too old for competitive pvp.
Nostalgia will get ya
For me it was like that with Diablo2, played it A LOT for some years. 5-digit hours lot. I always hope Blizzard can do it again but every Diablo game since then has been ok at best but rarely for more than a few hours. Path of Exile came closest to capture that time again
As usual I will play it, level one or 2 alt, never raid, farm old content, and delete the game 6months later. Then repeat.
friend of mine got me to come back to help her with dragonflight. that they have a dragon race thats powered by the various flight magics didnt hurt. im loving how the story is going since it finally stopped being about pvp, queen even declared she wont tolerate it on the isles. the new stuff that really gets me was the warlock tank. i was one of the ones abusing the hell out of it in pandaria and while im sad its not a main game thing, that doesnt mean it wont be soon enough. the funny thing was me… Read more »
Don’t resist, come back… It’s… pleeeaaasant here…
(Screams can be heard in the background)
Join us Tim. owo
JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIN US. OwO
You can be a smol foxperson now. They’re adorable. owo
I can’t play online games because later I cannot sleep. I always fear that once I fell asleep, someone will hack my character account and steal my stuff. One time I even logged it at 3am to see if everything is ok.
The only MMO that respects your time is FFXIV. I wish more of them did.
tell me you didnt play a lot of mmo without telling me.
Try the trial version, with family, see if your kids like it. If not, conscience clear. If yes, Family dungeon/raiding time!
I had that passion for WoW once. It accompanied me through me teens, I played that game for 13 years. But my passion slowly died as they made worse and worse decisions, forced me out of the game bit by bit. When the scandals happened at Blizz I knew I needed to turn my back on that company; and so I did. I am happily playing other games now and when I look back to see what’s going on I see the same old dumpster fire with a new circle of stones around it. The occasional beautiful spark flitting across… Read more »
i mean, ffxiv is out there
I still visit mmo-champion every now and then to see news on wow, I haven’t played in 6 or 7 years, but I still feel nostalgic about it, not so long ago I learned one my of my friends plays, and it brought back the want to play as I thought it would be a fun activity to do with my friend. They refused to tell me the faction and server they play, because they didn’t want me coming back to the game, its an addiction, don’t do this to yourself. I know they are looking out for me, but… Read more »