Preface: The motivation behind this long post was to provide the community with the thoughts and questions I posed to myself that ultimately led a long time WoW player (me) to quit. I am not complaining about the state of the game.
Before I dive into my discussion, I will pose three questions to you. Bear in mind that any reply to this message should include an attempt to not only answer the questions, but provide at least a little honest explanation (short answer quiz!). I encourage you to read past the questions as well, as I express my own thoughts and bring in some of my experiences.
So then, here we go:
1. If you could go back in time to the day you bought WoW, would you buy it again?
2. If you are still an active player, when do you plan to stop playing?
3. If all WoW servers disappeared today and were permanently removed, what would your reaction be?
Now, the part I enjoy – let’s breakdown these questions one at a time. But before we get to this, let me give you my brief WoW resume:
I played for six years, from release to Cataclysm. I logged in for my last time two months ago. During that period, I logged just shy of 300 days among all my characters, and just over 200 days alone on my main. I took breaks from WoW during those years, sometimes months at a time. My longest break was 5 months towards the end of TBC.
The purpose of providing that little WoW bio was to provide some context for the following discussion.
Question 1 – the time travel question: Here, in a purely hypothetical world where time travel exists, you have the unique opportunity to go back in time and effectively remove WoW from your life. You have two choices here: Yes or No.
If you answered “No”: Answering “no” means you’ve decided to NOT buy WoW again. This is my personal response as well, and was part of what led me to put the game down for good. Why continue playing something that, if I had the choice, I wouldn’t even be playing in the first place? I had to consider the good vs. the bad. And while many good experiences came from WoW, many that I would miss if I never bought it, the bad that came from it definitely came out on top.
If you answered “Yes”: Answering “yes” means you’ve decided to pick up and install WoW again, from the start. Ultimately, you’ve made
the decision that WoW has been a positive influence in your life, and as such, you don’t want it to be missing on your second go-around.
For those with this outcome, I’d encourage some explanation, the reasoning behind your choice. Be wary of answers such as “I met some good friends” or “I met my future husband/wife”. These are not intrinsic to WoW. Have you considered the friends in real life you haven’t been meeting because you are playing WoW? Are the relationships you’ve made in WoW truly as meaningful as the ones you could be having with people in your school/community/workplace? If your response is, “I have loved playing my level 85 Tauren Prot Warrior too much to not buy WoW again” – that is something that ONLY WoW can provide, and is better response.
Question 2 – I like this question because so many players I’ve spoken to haven’t really thought about it.
I suspect the common response to this question will be “When I stop having fun.” To that I pose this analogy: You ask a chronic smoker when he/she plans to quit smoking. They respond “When it stops making me feel good.” You laugh. Of course it’ll never stop feeling good – they are hooked. Now while WoW is not the same kind of addiction as nicotine, the logic of that response is equally flawed.
Games are a waste of time. Wasting time isn’t inherently bad. In fact, I’d argue that wasting time is necessary for everyone. We need relaxation time, to blow off steam. It provides balance to our lives. The problem comes with how much is OK. I wasted 300 days - on ONE game alone. How much have you wasted? How much is too much?
Games should have an end. I LOVE the Mass Effect series. Good story, memorable characters, fun gameplay and interesting dialogue. All the pieces of a great game are there. How much have I played it the last week? None. The last month? None. Why? Because I FINISHED it. You will never finish WoW. How much am I looking forward to Mass Effect 3? Tons. Will I play it for 300 days…well, probably not
.
Question 3 – All active players have pictured this doomsday scenario at least once. You wake up and find out that WoW no longer exists. It has vanished from the face of the planet, and the anguished cries of sorrow can be heard all the way from China to Europe and across the oceans.
When I quit for good, I deleted all my toons, including my main with over 200 days logged, 60k gold, and 10k achievement points. I expected for it to hurt. It didn’t. I felt nothing, only disgust that I could have put in that much time and still felt no twinge of pain when I at last deleted my toons.
What would were reaction be?
If you think you would be horrified by the servers disappearing, if it makes your gut sink and your stomach turn that all your efforts could be erased in a single moment – then you are emotionally attached to your characters. That is a sign of addiction.
If you woke up and logged in only to find a blank server list with a message from Blizzard, “Sorry, WoW has ended,” and you feel nothing, just sort of empty, then why are logging in right now?
Summary/Conclusion:
The questions, though slightly loaded I admit, are designed to make the current player examine their WoW experience in three ways: past, future, and present. In the past, what has WoW brought you (that other parts of life couldn’t have)? In the future, where will it end? Or does it even have an ending? In the present, what’s the motivation to log in today? Start asking yourself these questions and taking a serious approach to answer them honestly. My hope is that this will at least start getting some players to consider the influence WoW has had, and continues to have, on them.
Thanks for reading!