Question to people who quit the game

[Flaks]

Dailies and quests are playing the game, just as much as dungeons are. Both are every bit as repetitive and static.

It certainly is. But there are things that are meant to be grindy in an MMO and things that you should be over and done with unless you want to keep going. Questing is in the latter category. Dungeoning and raiding is in the former.

[Pua]

The OP question is kinda pre-loaded.

I am eager to return, love WoW, but into Cata and MoP I think there were many systems implimented that, while they achieved intented goals effectively, they had great long-term unintended consequences. The biggest , but not only, being LFD/LFR. Atleast in the case of me and the fate of my guild, it was a disproportionate exchange of quantity at the expense of quality.

With the implimentation of LFD/LFR combined with time-gating of almost all end-game content (dailies/point caps/lockouts/resets) the game highly incentivizes playing efficiently and penalizes playing socially. Into MoP it was near 100% I would log in to WoW and find everyone in the guild frantically trying to get X dailies done before the end of the day, else they fall behind by a day - too busy to group up for something. Or trying to hit 90 as fast as possible to get into Heroics/LFR as soon as possible - grouping up will slow down that process and they can LFD/LFR and guildies can get to 90 when they get to 90. At the end of Cata is was trying to get finish LFR/LFD to hit point caps and drops before reset.

This did not happen for lack of want to do things as a guild, but the reason everyone experienced was "The better I and my toon are, the more help I am to the guild." While true, there are no longer any landings or plateaus to regroup as a guild - just one long tall climb everyone is conquering individually with a few people at the top, staying at the top, playing together at the top, and everyone else strewn in-between and near nobody in the same place. So, LFD/LFR became the go-to tools for "grouping" but in short order became a drudgery of re-running over & over & over with random people that sometimes may or often not facilitate an enjoyable experience.

Long story short - I found I didn't enjoy logging into an MMORPG to play alone. In WoW people no longer matter - loot, points, dailies & lockouts do. Will probably not return unless this changes. They should have implimented LFR difficulty without the hyper-atomated impersonal LFR farming group tool. It works too well and I think there where better ways to have addressed the problems of Classic, TBC, WotLK but still kept the things great about them that have been lost in the transition.

I enjoyed this post a lot. You seem to understand acutely that Blizzard didn't try to "ruin" the game, they just made decisions they thought would fix certain issues, and they caused (often inadvertently) others that became more endemic.

[Legion]

I'm definitely coming back as soon as I get my life in shape. Right now, WoW would be too much of a distraction from the important stuff I got going on. But I really miss it. Mostly nostalgia, remembering things that are no longer available or as fun as they were at the time of my playing, but I miss it nonetheless.

[Deleted]

Quit during Firelands in Cataclysm. Maybe a really compelling story and setting for the next expansion would make me at least think about trying it again just to see the story. But the biggest issue with the game for me is that pretty much all my IRL friends and friends I met online during the years have stopped playing or don't raid anymore and frankly WoW without raiding and friends for me is much less interesting then good single player games.

So to answer the OP's question if the changes were good enough (and by that I mean ridiculously good) to make my friends eager to play again and do progress raids I would most likely come back. Free to play on the other hand makes no difference for me as I want to do something that I enjoy in my free time regardless if it costs 15$ or 0$ a month.

[paralleluniverse]

it depends.. like who can argue that 40 man content wasnt badass and at the time was only suited to a raid with 40 people, scaling encounters gets you so far but look at the problem we have now... some enbounters overly easy on 10 man can be rediculous on 25 man or vice versa.. so it's a double edged blade really, but at the end of the day blizz will never make 100% of the playerbase happy and clearly they're not hurting for revenue off the game so they will keep making changes as they see fit and if we dont like it.. it's our choice to play or not

So you like GDKP, and you would prefer it if you were forced to do ToC GDKP only in 10m, and forced to do ICC GDKP only in 25m?

[Deleted]

Will never play again, once you've played trough a couple of expansions you've seen it all, i've had great times & great memories (hell i still check mmo champion frequently) but it's been enough.

[zeuseason]

I've quit and returned numerous times over the years. It seems I do unsub after I've sampled all of the content and hit the gear wall and resub after an expansion gets released to experience new content. Currently, I've done all my LFR for the week (with another poor loot showing again) and am left with no other way to upgrade my toons outside of grinding rep which I'm just not going to do. So now I'm done playing WoW for the week.

[Statix]

Would you stay away as long as the game doesn't become free to play, or would you return if the next expansion or the one after turned back to core Warcraft values and/or focused its PVE gameplay on fun/skill instead of pure grind? (overhaul of the current 8 year old system)

I've 'quit' WoW several times, the second to last was to start playing SWTOR. Managed to do that for 5 months before coming back to WoW when MoP was released, because the raiding in SWTOR was too boring. The most recent time was back in October 2012. I had my own guild, but the raidgroup just didn't function properly. Close to 100 wipes and our best attempt was 42% on the lion bosses.

Raiding is what makes me come back. With that gone, all I had left was the daily rep grind. Combind with the awful level 90 Mage talents, made dailies an ever greater pain in the ass. WoW became too frustrating. Should have never leveled my Mage (already had more fun on my Death Knight in Cataclysm, but it's difficult to bench your main). Tried leveling my Death Knight, but he also had those crap dailies, so I decided to quit.

I've reached a point now where I am actually looking forward to playing WoW a little, but I don't think I am willing to pay that €13 every month. Still, WoW is a cheap game, if you look at how much an hour of gaming would cost you. I bought the three Mass Effect games for €70 and played them for about 240 hours (including ME3 MP). One hour of gaming cost about 30 cents. If I were to compare that to the 200 days playing time in World of Warcraft that cost me about €700, an hour wouldn't even cost 15 cents. Eventhough you pay €13 each month, because you play it so much, the game is actually really, really cheap compared to other games. Just look at your how expensive your standard €50 shooter, that you only play for 10 hours, is: €5 per hour!

Anyway, maybe I will return to WoW someday. WoW is that one game that you can keep playing because you are never done. It's why the game is so great, but at the same time, is why the game can be such an obligation. I can deal with anything in WoW, as long as the raiding is awesome. Right now, the obstacle is once again the €13 each month. If it ever becomes free to play, I will definitely return. I said the same for SWTOR, but that F2P is so limited, you can't do shit. Even the 'Prefered Status' is a joke. Hopefully, WoW will be better than SWTOR when it goes F2P, if it ever will.

[LilSaihah]

So you like GDKP, and you would prefer it if you were forced to do ToC GDKP only in 10m, and forced to do ICC GDKP only in 25m?

Like, at gunpoint?

[Harnace]

Never returning. The game is not for me any longer. I'm glad there's a lot of people still playing the game though, It's still a great game, It's just not my type of game anymore.

Blizzard should have a huge props though for keeping me playing for all these 4-5 years that I played the game.

[Snow White]

This game is just too dated for me now that I wouldn't ever return.

The combat is stale, the models are ancient and the community is (for the most part) complete garbage.

[Djuntas]

I can easly see my self playing again OP. But for now I need to know what the next exspansion holds for me. Currently I can actually say I have no real interets inn wow. I keep up with it abit, but really only very little.

Not gonna sub inn MOP again I think, 3 months seems to have been enough for me.

[Lapetos]

I've only just gave up/sold my account (yes not a good thing to do, but may as well get some money back from my time spent in game).

One thing that would make me return, is instant placement in LFR regardless of role... AKA DPS. I've lost all time I have to specifically play it at certain times, IE to be able to stick to raid times in a guild. I found group PvE the most fun (not scenarios really as prefer loot drop on a per boss basis that raids offer), and I'd like to be able to just log in, and instantly be able to join a raid group. Also to not be limited to only 1 loot drop chance per boss per week.

Think i've finally just had enough of the game. Played since vanilla, had breaks here n there, even a year break at 1 point. But I gave up when I logged into my druid a few days ago, wanted to DPS in LFR, noticed there was an average 30 mins queue... logged out, stuck account on eBay...

I might pick it up again 1 day, but this is first time i've quit out of just not finding it fun anymore.

[Deleted]

I've got in to the habit of returning for about a month of each patch and then unsubbing when I get bored. No idea what the core values are, I just got bored after 3 or 4 years of almost constant play

[Banzhe]

This is the part that confuses me:

while at the same time you say At no point in WoW's history has it been more grindy than it was in classic WoW. Why would say that you want it to return to those "core Warcraft values" which included an incredible grind at level cap (by the time you even reached it after grinding out many levels on just mindlessly killing mobs) rather than the game as it is? There is little about World of Warcraft that is the same as classic. Aside from raiding (which was present at end-game) and PvP, there is:

- LFR
- Heroic raiding
- Arenas
- Rated battlegrounds
- Scenarios
- Challenge modes
- Soon to come heroic scenarios
- Vanity gear sets (along with regular tier)
- Pet battles
- Achievements
- Reputation grinds (for those that want them)
- Plethora of mounts/pets to collect

You don't make sense. The game as it existed in classic is nothing like it is today. Even BC was a leap ahead but still far behind than today. I fail to see how that isn't an overhaul of an "8 year old game system"

Opinions are opinions, everything you dotted as a good game today are grinds just for the grind with the exception of heroic raiding (and that's only assuming you finish a heroic tier early) and pets / mounts, everything else is repeating content to replace X item with something that has slightly higher value, and that item is usually replaced within a week or two, and that's all you have to do in that time.

The grind previous had purpose to it, it wasn't just grind to keep players locked in a never ending cycle, it lasted an expansion with a constant set of goals that had value behind them.
It wasn't just, log in > Oh, vp capped.., what do I do now > click button receive bacon (or perhaps you got no bacon n' just got a headache) / if you didn't hit the button > log off as there's nothing of interest.

[Preheet]

I would return as soon as they make normal raiding easier. Without reasonable normal mode difficulty I don't want to play.

so because you haven't found a good enough team of players, and/or haven't invested the time to better yourself as a player to do normal modes, you quit? seems very pessimistic. Normal modes aren't hard, but I feel like blizzard expects people to take the time needed to better themselves skill wise and rise above the "skill-wall" they implement in raids. Having a good raid team is just as important.

[alexday14]

I'd likely renew my subscription if my friends returned to the game.
The likelyhood of that, however, relies entirely around PvP balancing at the moment. I personally think that a PvP fight should last upwards of five minutes, not popping your /win macro and murdering everyone before dying yourself. And I know my friends quit because Blizzard isn't looking like they're going the right way in terms of solving damage issues.

[Shockzilla]

Would you stay away as long as the game doesn't become free to play, or would you return if the next expansion or the one after turned back to core Warcraft values and/or focused its PVE gameplay on fun/skill instead of pure grind? (overhaul of the current 8 year old system)

Is this not more than one question?

[unholytestament]

It certainly is. But there are things that are meant to be grindy in an MMO and things that you should be over and done with unless you want to keep going. Questing is in the latter category. Dungeoning and raiding is in the former.

Care to explain why you think that?

[Hurleys]

After playing wow since Vanilla I recently quit wow. Only reason why I logon now is to talk with friends before my time expires(did a yr sub for D3). I invested all of my spare time the whole time. I feel that I will never be back for a few reasons. A huge reason why I quit is because all my friends left. I know they will never come back, and its boring without them. The best time I had in wow was working on the Scarab Lord quest chain(which I did get the mount) with all my friends. We spent days farming for that quest-chain(about 6 of us, eventually 4 of us would get the mount/title thanks glitchy patch before wotlk). Another reason why I will never come back is I miss vanilla and even bc days. When gear meant something, you had to group with people to do almost anything. Now you have lfr, and lfg heroics. The last issue I see with this game is the under pop servers. My original server used to be medium-high, now it is low. At the peak this server had 10+ 25m guilds doing raids(bc on). Now there is only two 10m guilds and horde do not even exist on this server.

I found this xpac to be good at first but after awhile I found rl to be more exciting.