As of today, my WoW account, which has been active for four years and 11 months, has expired.
As of when I quit playing, which was about two months ago, I'd accumulated about 346 days played, meaning 8304 hours, or about four full-time work years.
Aside from playing a lot more Starcraft 2, this has given me more time to get my social life back, as well as learn to improve my cooking and get more sleep.
I'll miss my friends from WoW, but at the moment I do not really miss the game.
I just did the same. Been playing since release. I made a lot of great friends on there that I will try to keep in contact with. I was the same, loved the people, hated the game.
Welcome back! I've been playing since vanilla and quit when sc2 came out... I agree as I do not miss the game at all...I really don't like what blizzard did with end game raiding in WotLK and cata. Leaving the friendships is the hardest, but its ok, convince them all to play sc2 with you =)
Lysenko you should keep in touch with them through skype and messengers even e-mail and face book. No reason to leave friends behind because you play different games.
On March 25 2011 04:37 Laggy wrote: Lysenko you should keep in touch with them through skype and messengers even e-mail and face book. No reason to leave friends behind because you play different games.
I stopped playing recently as well.. the constant grinding of heroics and raids and upgrading gear just gets too repetitive and boring... got to a point where doing dailies felt more like a job then playing a game..
also I hate having to rely on others to do well in a game... going back to single player RPG's when I get that itch.. been playing BG 2 and Mass Effect 2 instead recently.. and of course SC2=p
There really isn't anything in WoW worth playing anymore. Most people still do because, like you said, their online friends are there and that's the only way you interant with them.
Get their contact info, get their gamertags for consoles, or steam account, etc, so you aren't just limited to seeing these people through Blizzard games. I spent last 4th of July with 10 friends, only 3 of which I had actually known personally before, it was great.
High five man, did the same 2 months ago, subscription expired on the 7th. Working out great for me .
WoW is slowly dying now anyway, a lot of people are quitting. A lot of my friends and family who were playing the game have quit in the past few months, so I had no one to play with anyway.
It's great that you quit and don't miss the game. It would have sucked if you quit and still wanted to play. However don't leave ur friends because they play wow and u dont.
On March 25 2011 04:35 Zeri wrote: Welcome back! I've been playing since vanilla and quit when sc2 came out... I agree as I do not miss the game at all...I really don't like what blizzard did with end game raiding in WotLK and cata. Leaving the friendships is the hardest, but its ok, convince them all to play sc2 with you =)
Congrats on quitting, hope you don't succumb to it again down the line though... I've quit WoW about four times before actually being done with it. As my friend put it... "Yeah, you just play it for a few months to get your fix and then you're good for a while."
I've played off and on since release, I recently wondered why I still played. My account expires early April, and I played maybe 10 hours a week if that. It's the social aspect that kept me so long, I've made friends and deactivating my account meant not speaking with them anymore. I think that's the real hook to that game.
When I quit WoW I regularly hung out on my guild's vent and still participated on the forums. What inevitably happened was that they began to disdain me because I still spent large amounts of time on the computer, just not playing WoW(no doubt due to the massive void that quitting created in my daily routine.) Eventually, the void was filled with many things that I discovered or re-discovered after quitting.
Any particular reason that you quit? For me I just said "enough is enough" one day; one guildie cited his reason for being on less that it was more of a job feeling than fun. Once that happens it's time to move on. I had only reached 100 days played, but mind you this was when MC/BWL/Ony were the only raids in existence.
I'm definitely staying in touch with friends from WoW, through all of the means people mentioned.
The guild I'd been in, and of which I'd been an officer, had struggled to keep a 25-person raid going when Cataclysm raiding started, because the incentive for people to apply to 25-person raiding guilds had gone away. In Wrath, we'd had a constant stream of applicants, but in Cataclysm all you could hear in our application forum were crickets.
So, we went ahead with two 10 person runs, with some difficulty, and finally stresses coming from that caused a few people to leave the guild. Once the guild was on a single 10-person run that was chronically oversubscribed, I realized that I wasn't really needed to keep things going, so I decided to take a break.
Shortly after I took my break, the GM and his wife (who have become RL friends of mine) decided to wrap things up. The guild is now an alt guild, they transferred to another server, and everyone else has moved on, mostly happily, to more guilds that are trying to keep 25-man runs going.
I keep in touch with my friends who still play through RealID, our old guild website is still up and people stop in to post, and I am connected on Facebook with my better friends. The personal difficulties that we had over our guild problems are totally water under the bridge. The guild dissolving pretty much eliminated any urge I might have had to go back. So, all's well that ends well.
Edit: Many of my ex-guildmates have moved on to playing Rift. They seem to be having fun, but it just seems like more of the same to me.
WoW is a great game but takes up so much of your time. Not only that but to get the most of it you gotta be a raider since there aint that much to do outside raids. The problem with raiding is that you have to show up at certain hours every week. If people dont show up on schedule you cant keep a guild going so people have to schedule their online time unlike starcraft 2 and most other games where noone is dependant on you. And quite honestly too many raiders spend way way to much time on that game, I cant beleive I used to do so myself, raiding up to 5 days a week.
Quitting WoW is going to make you feel a lot more free even if you spend the same amount of time by the computer. The fact that you can just shut it down whenever you feel like it is such a relief.
I just spend my WoW days alone the last times ive played. All my old guildies from Vanilla are gone (When I was a hardcore player) and people today seem kinda stupid on the game. Whenever I go on I just farm shit that I want like Pets/Mounts/Old weapons (like Sulfuras XD) Just got the Twilight drake mount from an inpromtu OS run where I paid the winner 5k for it. My char mostly runs around in Vanilla 60 teir 2 armor (love ten storms) and just been doing archaeology mostly in cata after I hit 85 but I don't play much because as people have said its the social aspect of the game and I haven't had that since Vanilla so I just play like a month then off until something cool and new draws me back
Side note, isn't the direction that Blizz is taking WoW more directed at raiding NOT taking as much time? When you see PUG groups forming at pretty regular intervals for raids I would think it really doesn't take much time (as compared to vanilla).
I'm so much happier off WoW. I quit a year and some change ago, after playing since release.
I will say though, that WoW was a great way to find some fucking awesome people. People I met years ago in my Vanilla days...levelling up my awesome level 20 paladin and just bumping into some guys that were on the same group quest I was on...I still chat with them on a daily basis. Hell, I met my girlfriend via a guild get together (we agreed that if it was all there at the meet up, we'd get serious) and despite having some issues recently - totally not WoW related at all, so don't go there. - I have met probably some of the best friends I've made on that game over the years.
The nice thing about quitting WoW is like...holy shit the day feels like it goes by so much slower. I feel way more productive, I feel like I am doing more things, able to enjoy more things...with WoW you end up with tunnel vision. Wake up - work/school - WoW - Sleep - Repeat.
Now it's like Wake up - Work - Do whatever the hell I want for hours on end - Sleep. It just feels so free. I don't like to pressure people to leave WoW - I won't make my girlfriend stop, but I think as long as you don't...like, if you don't find anything to fill your time with, and you just sit around and thing about being on WoW, you're gonna get sucked back in. Find some new hobbies to fill in your time instead of WoW and you'll not go back and your life will be alot better in the long run. :D
On March 25 2011 04:32 Lysenko wrote:...meaning 8304 hours, or about four full-time work years.
wow! I never played WOW and probably missed out on some fun experiences, but those #'s scare me. Sounds like an addicting game. I imagine you're a "normal" WOW player too? Meaning the amount of time you spent playing is pretty common?
On March 25 2011 04:32 Lysenko wrote:...meaning 8304 hours, or about four full-time work years.
wow! I never played WOW and probably missed out on some fun experiences, but those #'s scare me. Sounds like an addicting game. I imagine you're a "normal" WOW player too? Meaning the amount of time you spent playing is pretty common?
On March 25 2011 09:37 Torenhire wrote: I'm so much happier off WoW. I quit a year and some change ago, after playing since release.
I will say though, that WoW was a great way to find some fucking awesome people. People I met years ago in my Vanilla days...levelling up my awesome level 20 paladin and just bumping into some guys that were on the same group quest I was on...I still chat with them on a daily basis. Hell, I met my girlfriend via a guild get together (we agreed that if it was all there at the meet up, we'd get serious) and despite having some issues recently - totally not WoW related at all, so don't go there. - I have met probably some of the best friends I've made on that game over the years.
The nice thing about quitting WoW is like...holy shit the day feels like it goes by so much slower. I feel way more productive, I feel like I am doing more things, able to enjoy more things...with WoW you end up with tunnel vision. Wake up - work/school - WoW - Sleep - Repeat.
Now it's like Wake up - Work - Do whatever the hell I want for hours on end - Sleep. It just feels so free. I don't like to pressure people to leave WoW - I won't make my girlfriend stop, but I think as long as you don't...like, if you don't find anything to fill your time with, and you just sit around and thing about being on WoW, you're gonna get sucked back in. Find some new hobbies to fill in your time instead of WoW and you'll not go back and your life will be alot better in the long run. :D
this is what is fucking me up right now, the last paragraph specifically
i enjoyed wake up - school - wow - repeat.
i quit wow because i got bored, and after i quit the day feels slow. i'm just browsing tl all day instead of playing wow. i think i'm one of the only people in the world that quit wow because it got boring and not out of frustration or because it was taking over my life. when i quit wow i was like FUCK i quit wow, now i have nothing to do.
i'm so unmotivated when it comes to personal hobbies/things i want to spend my time on when i'm alone. you're going to have to beat me up if you want me to actually accomplish something on my spare time. if it doesn't reward me soon then i just won't do it lol, that's basically why I don't work out and read and learn something/pursue a hobby.
i always found being decked out in raid gear and having lots of gold to be something really nice to have. but the amount of time you need to put into it just doesn't make it worth while.
On March 25 2011 09:37 Slaughter wrote: Side note, isn't the direction that Blizz is taking WoW more directed at raiding NOT taking as much time? When you see PUG groups forming at pretty regular intervals for raids I would think it really doesn't take much time (as compared to vanilla).
Prep time outside of raids is much, much less. However, raiding itself requires a commitment. Typically, the guild I was in would spend about three hours a night, a few nights a week, on progression raiding, but the thing is that spending that amount of time in the game keeps people focused on all the other things they want to achieve, so people log on for plenty of extra hours as well.
The time commitment isn't really comparable to vanilla raiding, though.
On March 25 2011 04:32 Lysenko wrote:...meaning 8304 hours, or about four full-time work years.
wow! I never played WOW and probably missed out on some fun experiences, but those #'s scare me. Sounds like an addicting game. I imagine you're a "normal" WOW player too? Meaning the amount of time you spent playing is pretty common?
Honestly it was probably at the high end. I started playing in 2006 a couple months before I had an eight-month break from work. (I'd planned to take a few months off, but I chose not to return to my job and finding a new one was a lot more difficult than I'd expected.)
Anyway, I spent enormous time and effort on the game during those eight months, and it dropped significantly once I went back to work. For the last year or so, I've been playing more like 10 hours per week.
Good for you man! Stay off that Warcrack! I've quit it multiple times myself. You mentioned you don't have many hobbies, and that makes you really prone to going back. I know exactly what you mean with something now being rewarded in the short-term and thus making it difficult to keep up. That's partly why WoW is so addicting - you get all these rewards (though meaningless) at regular intervals just for spending time doing simple tasks. It's essentially a game of "spend an hour pressing these buttons, get a small reward, and rarely a bigger reward. Repeat."
For me, I'm concentrating on what I want to do with my long-term career - programming, web development, and databasing. After I experienced some dead end jobs, I realized I would never enjoy my life like that. Think about things you've always wanted to learn and experience, and concentrate on one at a time. Look up more information on it, talk with others interested in it, join communities that share these interests, etc.
@Shawster, I quit WoW because it was boring. None of the instances are hard anymore. I played with Catalyst on Feathermoon and miss the days of bashing my face over and over again against Naxx40 Sapph. Getting the server first for Sapph and KT was so satisfying...there's nothing since that has had that same feeling of accomplishment, save Sunwell. And even that wasn't as bad.
(that and I hate holy power...I don't care if it's OP one-button-win-all whatever the fuck, I hate it. Stupid addition to my class...and I will never roll another character, I've played my pally since vanilla release. )
I didn't quit WoW because I was unable to have a life outside of it. I work full time, I would go out (when work allowed..I work some crazy hours) and all that fun stuff. I'm just saying that since I stopped playing I've noticed that I've just got a...less boring view of life? I don't know how to describe it. I'm not like... "Oh man WoW is gone FINALLY WOOT" it's more like...look at all this stuff I've missed out on because I've been tunneled into WoW all this time. I loved WoW. Not only was it a fun game, my gf played it too, so it was something we could do together. I just felt like it was too overwhelming with my other hobbies and since stepping away I've just enjoyed doing more things, I guess.
I quit WoW a few times actually. I had a 60 during vanilla that raided then I quit. BC came out I leveled to 70, then made another character and got him to 70 and raided; then I quit again. WotLK came out so I started playing for the third time, made a new character and leveled to 80, raided, then quit.
I haven't played since then but I might start up for the fourth time. The thing I don't like is that the game just gets easier and easier every patch and expansion and it's rediculous. The PvP also seems less fun, which is the main reason why I started playing WoW. I have the urge to start playing again with my friend thought, who occasionally brings his laptop over my house and plays when he stays the night.
The game isn't really that addicting (maybe just not for me?), I don't know why people can't just refrain from playing. It's pretty easy to have a social life and a job while you're into WoW, especially if you're in school because you get a lot of social interaction there. I tended to get bored after playing for a long time, it feels like there's not much left to do.
Raiding isn't necessarily monotonically getting easier -- in Cataclysm, raiding started out pretty rough, then there were nerfs, which has been the pattern for the entire game. The hardest heroic modes are still pretty difficult, and that's where the real challenge is for people who are into that kind of thing. I can't really be bothered at this point.
BTW I never said I didn't have many hobbies! :D Just have more time for them now that I'm out of WoW.
On March 25 2011 20:24 Lysenko wrote: Raiding isn't necessarily monotonically getting easier -- in Cataclysm, raiding started out pretty rough, then there were nerfs, which has been the pattern for the entire game. The hardest heroic modes are still pretty difficult, and that's where the real challenge is for people who are into that kind of thing. I can't really be bothered at this point.
BTW I never said I didn't have many hobbies! :D Just have more time for them now that I'm out of WoW.
The part I hated about raids were you had to rely on 9+ other people to not screw up to MAYBE get a relevant drop that MAYBE is an improvement and then MAYBE win the item. And how much did that item really help you out in the end? Doing the same fight for three hours without making a mistake but others wiping the raid was beyond frustrating.
About hobbies, I apologize I mistakenly assumed one of the responders here mentioning problems with not having motivation or other hobbies was you.
I played for three years, got five gladiator titles and one rank 1 title, ended up being the best player of my class on my server with the best gear score pretty much every season. I look back at that now and realize how fucking stupid I was to invest that much time into something so useless. My GPA was around 2.8-3.2 as I was playing WoW and skyrocketed to 3.8-4.0 when I started playing less and eventually quit.
I felt REALLY bad when I quit. I was pretty much on the verge of depression because I was leaving all my e-buddies behind. I realized it wasn't so bad when I switched to SC2 because of real ID and skype from time to time, and the real life improvements after quitting are completely worth it.
WoW is the worst possible game to get into as a competitive player. You end up being better than everyone for a few months, then you're back down to the level with casuals that are playing 30 min a day or raiding one hour a week. So, you end up spending even more time getting to the top and the cycle starts over after six months. If I could restart my life, I would stay the hell away from WoW. It's identical to being on a drug.
On March 26 2011 04:20 proot wrote: I played for three years, got five gladiator titles and one rank 1 title, ended up being the best player of my class on my server with the best gear score pretty much every season. I look back at that now and realize how fucking stupid I was to invest that much time into something so useless. My GPA was around 2.8-3.2 as I was playing WoW and skyrocketed to 3.8-4.0 when I started playing less and eventually quit.
I felt REALLY bad when I quit. I was pretty much on the verge of depression because I was leaving all my e-buddies behind. I realized it wasn't so bad when I switched to SC2 because of real ID and skype from time to time, and the real life improvements after quitting are completely worth it.
WoW is the worst possible game to get into as a competitive player. You end up being better than everyone for a few months, then you're back down to the level with casuals that are playing 30 min a day or raiding one hour a week. So, you end up spending even more time getting to the top and the cycle starts over after six months. If I could restart my life, I would stay the hell away from WoW. It's identical to being on a drug.
Wow you totally are like ME LOL. As of late my GPA in Uni is 3.24, and before I was averaging 3.8's. I guess I should quit for my 3rd and 4th years
On March 26 2011 04:20 proot wrote: I played for three years, got five gladiator titles and one rank 1 title, ended up being the best player of my class on my server with the best gear score pretty much every season. I look back at that now and realize how fucking stupid I was to invest that much time into something so useless. My GPA was around 2.8-3.2 as I was playing WoW and skyrocketed to 3.8-4.0 when I started playing less and eventually quit.
I felt REALLY bad when I quit. I was pretty much on the verge of depression because I was leaving all my e-buddies behind. I realized it wasn't so bad when I switched to SC2 because of real ID and skype from time to time, and the real life improvements after quitting are completely worth it.
WoW is the worst possible game to get into as a competitive player. You end up being better than everyone for a few months, then you're back down to the level with casuals that are playing 30 min a day or raiding one hour a week. So, you end up spending even more time getting to the top and the cycle starts over after six months. If I could restart my life, I would stay the hell away from WoW. It's identical to being on a drug.
^^ the truth there. I also wish I never started playing.
I certainly relate to the negativity some of you feel about the game. On balance, I feel that my time spent playing was a great experience -- I was lucky enough to meet some really interesting people, found and run a guild that was successful for a time, and experience the raiding game (which was not that easy to get into when I started.) That said, I really feel like there's not much new to experience. I'll probably level up again when there's a new expansion, but I don't plan to raid again.
I quit roughly 4 or 5 months before Cataclysm was released and I don't regret it for a second. I had about 200 hours on my warrior, and about 50 each on my Druid and Hunter. WoW almost took over my life for those 4 years I played, so giving it up along with the monthly fee is an amazing feeling. I do miss my friends but I know it isn't worth being convinced to come back.
Yeah, I just quit last week myself, and picked back up SC2. One of the hardest things has been finding friends to play with in SC2. With WOW just throw up a /2 lf guild, but finding people in starcraft has proved much more difficult. :/
On March 27 2011 12:00 Shettle wrote: Yeah, I just quit last week myself, and picked back up SC2. One of the hardest things has been finding friends to play with in SC2. With WOW just throw up a /2 lf guild, but finding people in starcraft has proved much more difficult. :/
Hang out here enough, check the practice partners thread, we'll get you hooked up
haha yeah WoW ruined me in University. I was more focused on Molten Core/BWL/AQ40/NAXX40 raids (prior to Burning Crusade) than studying for my Biology exams. So my parents stopped paying for my University tuition fees and I went into the Air Force. WoW was my GF. Now I'm almost 24 in a serious relationship and I embrace the title "casual" player.
WoW was definitely good times, but I am definitely glad that the grind is over. It becomes too repetitive after a while. Starcraft 2 you can play a game and be happy after just one match, but in WoW it felt like I didn't accomplish something if I wasn't on the computer for at least 2 hours lolz
PS: I did meet a guild member in Seoul though. It was totally random... We met up and had dinner and ice cream together. He taught me some Korean haha. First and only time I met a person from a computer game in real life.
Congrats man. I got up to well over 8k hours played too before I quit for good. Coincidentally my life got so much fucking better! I still have fond memories of hanging out with the guildies on Vent, but man, it's not worth it. Don't go back.
I'm sure a lot of us here can rattle off our server firsts/high arena ranks/legendary weapons owned etc... But that stuff isn't worth shit anywhere except in Azeroth, and that stuff costs a lot (a whole lot) of time. And really, what's more important than your time? Nothing, actually, and when people realize this is when people quit WoW.
It's just like everyone else in the thread is saying. Some weeks I'll sit in front of a computer for about the same amount of time that I would have spent raiding/grinding/farming in WoW. The difference is I'm not committed for several hours, and scheduled for several nights a week. I can play one game of SC2, and if someone calls with something fun to do, I can just go do it. With WoW, i'm letting anywhere between 5 to 25 (or 40 back in the day) people down if I dip out after 20 minutes.
Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun in WoW, but I'm glad I quit.