When I graduated from school 3 years ago I thought I had my life together. I had done well in my program and there was always work for a biology major. Boldly I stepped from the podium, diploma in hand, ready to face a bright new world of opportunity. But it was not to be. While I was getting my degree, the U.S. economy had tanked and climbing out of that academic cocoon was like opening the door of a fallout shelter to see the wreckage left by the bombs. What was once confidence on the faces of my cohorts became the haggard pinch of desperation. Work was beyond scarce, it was virtually nonexistent, and experienced technicians that used to be invaluable to their companies scrambled like rats for any job that hit the market, shutting out any possibility of employment for new blood. Being a new graduate was a complete dead end - I was screwed.

Stuck at home, I tried to make the most of the situation but it was hard. I can’t stand being idle and with San Francisco weather being what it is, I started threatening that I would paint the walls of our rented apartment with pink polka dots just so they would stop matching the dreary white fog outside. Concerned about my mental health, Bob did what any World of Warcraft player would do to help a friend in need.

He got me into WoW: Wrath of the Lich King.

It was slow going at first. Bob had played religiously during the Vanilla days so after a period of mindless questing we started to run into people he knew. Suddenly I, the recent failure, trapped at home out of fear of spending money, could socially interact with people. Soon we had a guild built up entirely of friends. Our mission? “Hopefully kill the Lich King before the Cataclysm expansion drops.” Our motto? “Drink to make it hard.”

There was Maltheus - A sadistic rogue with a pregnant wife. Atsah - A hunter with a retarded pet bear named Harold that would always get us killed. Drusus - A mage with a busy work schedule. Natsuma - A healing druid with a veritable zoo squawking and barking away in the background. Holtberg - A healing paladin (played by Bob’s brother) that would get completely wasted during raids but still somehow manage to keep Vigo, our tank warrior, alive. Finally, there was Praznaga, our guild leader who spent most of his time trying to herd us together like a pack of cats. If you picture the inhabitants of a primitive, rowdy bar from a Conan: The Barbarian movie, that was us. Surprisingly, the combination worked well and we kicked ass.

I started logging on more often, just to shoot the shit or work on some minor task. It happened gradually, but this rather casual gamer learned how to actually play. You see, Bob is an MMO power player. He reads blogs, looks up patches before they launch, and researches websites for builds in order to have the most powerful character possible. Elitistjerks became my source for inspiration, the rest was up to skill, and given that I was unemployed, I had plenty of time to practice THAT.

So Usagaijin (You’s-a-gaijin), a troll hunter who’s companion was a Durotar pig because it annoyed all the other hunters, became the highest DPS in our guild. I was asked advice on my build, my rotations, my gemming and my pet. I would get in chest-beating competitions with other DPS classes during dungeons and even in massive raids with multiple guilds, I would still end up near the top of the charts. When we finally got a Ventrilo server, I will never forget the shock in their unified voices when they found out I was a female.

Then things changed. We lost our previous guild leader and with the new one came a massive overhaul. Our new mission? “Become the greatest guild on the server.” Our new motto? “Guys, this is serious.” Drinking during raids was discouraged (which our tank aggressively defied) and unnecessary talking amongst ourselves or arguing with the raid leader was not allowed. Raiding had become a job where I was expected to perform my best every time Usa walked into a dungeon. As a veteran guild member, I was expected to raise a second character to star status, raid now 2 or 3 times a week and log on every night to help gear out the newbies.

Within a few short months the core guild had collapsed and with the loss of our friends came disinterest in the game. A few months later, Bob and I canceled our subscriptions. We tried a few other MMO’s - Rift, Guild Wars, and Everquest to name a few - but nothing stuck, and we realized that the only part of the experience that had been fun was the social aspect.

These days, MMO’s are losing popularity. Even Blizzard’s Goliath WoW has been hemorrhaging players and as there hasn’t been any significant rise in the number of subscribers to other titles, it’s difficult to tell where these players are going. So I would like to pose to you, dear reader, what are your stories? If you played an MMO, why did you quit or why do you still play? What interested you in playing in the first place?

Comments

  • Avatar
    Xalgar
    11 years, 8 months ago

    I used to be a big PVP player in WoW as a Gnome Mage.

    But constantly seeing the flavor of the month rotate and rotate got too annoying, not to mention Blizzard giving EVERY single class a way to remove crowd controls which took away from the puppet master aspect of the class.

    The core game itself got boring as well and the general community is dog shit. None of the guilds I joined really stuck and like you said, raiding was a chore. Raiding, to me, feels like I'm playing an interactive calculator than playing and enjoying a game. When I was up at 3am looking at dps spreadsheets, I realized that I'm not having fun and should quit.

  • Avatar
    Seisan
    11 years, 8 months ago

    I think the main problem with MMO's lies in the fact there's just too damn many of them. MMO players nowadays like to stick to one MMO for a month or two then jump ship and find a new one to play to repeat the cycle. The market has become so saturated with MMOs all doing the exact same thing just with a new coat of paint that this is the only way most MMO players can keep themselves entertained. Which, of course, leads to MMOs crashing within 6 months of launch and is probably the main reason why we have yet to see another sub based MMO reach WoW's numbers.

    As for me personally, I've never been an ADD MMO gamer so the few MMOs I have played, I left for legitimate reasons. I got into my first MMO, WoW, around Burning Crusade because all of my friends played it at the time and, since we all hung out at a locally owned gaming/hobby shop, we could actually sit down at a couple tables and talk face to face rather than at home over Skype or IMs. This is probably the main reason why I stuck with WoW for two years. It didn't take long for me to become quickly bored with WoW and, if it wasn't for the social interaction, I would have dropped it within that first month rather than two years later. Naturally, the thing that stopped me playing, was more and more of my friends getting out of the game and the few who still did joined an actual raiding guild and I followed their example. And it was at that point WoW became even more of a chore than I already saw it as. Not even my friends could keep me in the game at that point and I cancelled my sub.

    The only other MMOs I really devoted any amount of time to were LotR: Online and SWToR. LotR I jumped into basically as a way to waste time until SWToR launched and I did enjoy it enough for the four months I played. The interesting thing that caught me off guard though was the player base and its lack of social interaction. Guilds in LotR:O wont pm a guildless person for recruitment, instead they'll just drop a guild invite and hope they accept. I have never agreed with guilds who adopt that kind of policy and so remained guldless for a few weeks before I was finally PMed by someone and we actually had a discussion about joining a guild. This guild was full of a bunch of fun loving people who were more than happy to help out low level players and just goof off. I would probably have played the game longer, but Turbine makes you pay for access to each questing area after about level 40 so I ran out of content to do and decided to leave.

    And then we come to SWToR. Of course, the hype machine was kicked into overdrive for this game and I naturally found myself drawn in. I still play SWToR and enjoy it to this day and no its not just because "HURR DURR STAR WARS FANBOY". I legitimately enjoy a lot of the game's content and features. Yes, there has been questionable design choices, but its nothing that can drastically detract from the overall experience. And it actually isn't the social aspect that keeps me playing

  • Avatar
    roughplague
    11 years, 8 months ago

    Lovely story, disappointed with the lack of ponies though

  • Avatar
    sammonoske
    11 years, 8 months ago

    I just recently stopped playing WoW. If 2 months is still recent. I was a "veteran" WoW player, playing since release, but not Beta. For most of Vanilla I did nothing but PvP. Working to get Grand Marshal status. I fell short once I needed to get serious with my school work.

    Stopped playing for a while and hadn't realized The Burning Crusade had released. I got back in and started Tanking, and Tanking I did up until I stopped playing for the last time. I had gone through several guilds, yet migrating from guild to guild with a group of players I ended up raiding with for years.

    Jumping to the end of Cataclysm, my role was starting to take it's tole. Burn out and the frustration of the guild bleeding players was setting in. Until one day the guild just quietly disbanded and everyone went their own ways. Many whom are no longer playing. I played the MoP beta and got to level 89 but I found myself unable to stomach one more level. I couldn't continue. I didn't want to play anymore. The Cataclysm was at an end and so was my interest to play.

    For a while I was kicking myself for falling for the Annual Pass, but it wasn't until my debit card expired, Blizzard can no longer bill me and I let my account be frozen. It wont bother me the least bit when Diablo 3 is pulled from my account.

  • Avatar
    Meltdown
    11 years, 8 months ago

    I've been playing WoW for 5 1/2 years now and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. I first started with an RL friend of mine (Let's call him Andy) at the time, and after eventually getting my rogue to 70, all I did was BG PvP with him. That lasted until WotLK where shortly after hitting 80, we took free transfers off of Mannoroth (because holy shit lag, Blizzard hadn't upgraded all the Day 1 servers yet and Mannoroth was nigh unplayable during peak hours) and that was the best decision I ever made. Being on this new server with Andy (who is a bit of a guild hopper) we kept going from guild to guild looking for one that fits what we (I'd realize later, what HE) wanted. We found a guild with a silly name (Eats Horde? Really?) and stuck around for a bit. It's these people that we started doing raids with to try and get good weapons to PvP with (path of least resistance and whatnot) and I started to enjoy raiding. This guild's main 10-man group was looking for consistent backups to have for when Ulduar hit, and since I was leveling a Shaman at the time I readily put myself out there. Eventually I started raiding with these group of strangers and I realized that I didn't enjoy playing WoW with Andy, who would rage and get angry if shit wasn't going right in BG's (A fact I overlooked for the longest time.) It was only because I enjoyed the atmosphere of this raiding group that I realized where My passion in playing WoW is. They want to kill bosses. They want to kill bosses on Heroic mode. They do NOT give a shit if we fail horribly. The mood is always light, we always shoot the shit and poke fun at each other. It's fantastic.

    I've been with my guild for 3+ years now, and of the original 10-man raiding team when I joined them, 6 (including myself) have been raiding the entire time, with the other slots being emptied and filled because of RL issues like school or work schedules or want to get away from WoW. Those that have raided with us still play other games with the group, and they have stuck around to be friends with all of us. Some have come back from long hiatuses to rejoin our conquest. Most of the group is located in California, so they have yearly week-long meetups with the centerpiece being SDCC with people traveling from Wisconsin, Texas, Maryland and even Toronto Canada ( I have sadly not been able to make any of these yet). Some people have even become roommates based of knowing each other from this game. We've been through or trails and our kinship has been tested (Fucking. Heroic. Sindragosa.) but we have always prevailed and stuck together.

    I do still enjoy the act of playing WoW. I do not play it with an obsession, nor do I play in any fashion where it feels like a chore (if it any aspect gets to that point, I just don't do it.) I very much enjoy raiding still. I very much enjoy my Dwarf Shaman (female of course.) At this point though, the thing I enjoy most is my guild. No, my family.

  • Avatar
    Nosferuz
    11 years, 8 months ago

    I did Everquest 2 maybe a few months before Vanilla launched and quit after a solid 4 to 5 years of playing and I have to agree that the only thing that kept me from tossing my giant over-sized monitor through the window from my second-story window was the social interactions between friends and guild mates, whether through healthy one-upping or the ever encouraged greed that was raiding for uber phat lewts. It was fun, but alas without friends and the awkward sort that you find solace in, there's no point in the gaming. Not that I don't miss them of course...

  • Avatar
    AdjacentKitten
    11 years, 8 months ago

    Never found myself a huge fan of MMORPGs in the first place, seeing as I was more of an RTS fan coming in straight out of WarCraft 3. It never stuck because it was just so different from what I knew from the series before, but I did play for a while. Long enough to realize it was going to die eventually. But everything dies. It just so happens that this one took a little bit of time to get there.

  • Avatar
    Adam Skoufis
    11 years, 8 months ago

    I had first started playing on a private server, back in TBC, but it was only casually. I played a warlock, but soon got bored and switched to a mage. After a few years, I switched to "real" WoW under the pressure of my friends, and played for about a month back in 2011. I got to 85 on a mage, had some good times, but never really did anything worthwhile. Then I started playing again in March of this year, for another month. I did some raids with my guild, and some PvP here and there, nothing serious, but once again, I didn't feel like I was getting enough out of the game as I was putting in. I knew Pandaria was due out later this year, and I didn't to ruin my school year, so I quit.

    WoW was fun, to say the least. Do I miss it? Yes. Can I survive without it? Yes. Will I ever play again? Maybe.

  • Avatar
    Zladko
    11 years, 8 months ago

    Man, the last time I played an MMO was bacl in high school, and it was only for a couple of months. It was Silkroad I believe, around 2005-2006. Never played them religiously or anything like that, I can moderate my drugs very well.

  • Avatar
    PrincessVannah
    11 years, 8 months ago

    Yet another great article, Tara. You are rapidly becoming one of my favorites.

  • Avatar
    Castor
    11 years, 8 months ago

    Great article.

    I stopped playing about 5 months ago,

    Have developed a pretty massive fan base in the Mage PvP community having released films on warcraftmovies.com, my Youtube channel is on my name too.

    For a good while, I'd say a year a two, I only played for motivation of movie making, but its recently become too much, the game isn't going in a direction that I see is good and all my friends are leaving too. The PvP community as a whole has slowly died. And yet I still can't find another MMO with such an engaging PvP aspect...