Quitting Warcraft – An End to an Era
It goes without saying I’m a longtime Warcraft fan.
My office is decked out with Warcraft memorabilia. From Warcraft legos, Warcraft soda cans, Warcraft cups and Warcraft figures. I even have the full 5-foot cardboard game displays from the game store. Posters galore, cookbooks… you name it, I probably have it. Hell, the license plate on my car is my in-game character name. So even firefighter coworkers, police, church members and God know my passion for the game [and all give me shit relentlessly for it to no avail].
I started playing Warcraft II when it was released and instantly fell in love with the game. Warcraft III… you betcha! I was on both alpha and beta tests (for RoC and FT) and can remember when chimaeras only shot lightning (instead of corrosive breath), but on both land and air units. I poured endless hours into the game… I was a Night Elf master! It was a passion. And I made many friends in my clan.
The World of Warcraft beta was announced and I was instantly involved. I played the beta and somehow was able to get a copy of the game on release day (strangely no lines, but oh the lines I waited in at midnight for BC and Lich King). My passion after level 60 and getting my warlock class mount was camping world bosses and alerting my guild members when they were up. I literally wrote a guide on how to do this, which was used by a large portion of the community for several years (fun read now though lol). My infatuation with all things mundane in WoW came to it’s height when I became obsessed with which enchant did which glow, and I created a website with screenshots and videos of every weapon enchant in the game. I later revamped the website into a guide on wowhead. Showing my interest in the small things of WoW, I wrote another guide on hunting critters for all those squirrel achievements. Suffice to say, I feel I’ve contributed to the community as much as I’ve received from it.
I think most importantly, I’ve raised my family on the game. My wife remained adamantly anti-warcraft until I had my 6-year-old logging in and playing, but quests were teaching him to follow directions. And gold management was teaching him to manage his money. Chat was teaching him how to communicate online. Dungeons were teaching him how to work together as a team. My wife hasn’t logged more than 10-minutes of play (you know, because I had her push the 1 button while I used the bathroom during those 6-hour Molten Core raids), but she has enthusiastically allowed all four of my kids to have accounts, which of course has come with additional lessons in real life, such as time management, doing your chores before you game, etc. My then 6-year-old son is now 19 and serving a mission for our church in Scotland and Ireland. Unlike my 19-year-old who loved endgame up until he left (just want to also point out Blizzard was so kind to send a congratulatory letter when he earned his Eagle Scout), my remaining three children all enjoy leveling with their Dad. We have a great time together and apart.
The beautiful thing about Warcraft is that it caters to everyone.
Although my kids thought it was ok, I thought the movie was terrible and there have been expansions I liked and didn’t like. The beautiful thing about Warcraft is that it caters to everyone. Even when there weren’t aspects of the new stuff I enjoyed, I could always resort to something else.
Tuesday’s patch has changed that. This patch affects EVERYONE and caters to nobody. And not in a good way. All three of my kids’ characters are dying over and over again playing on their own and all three have logged out for good until this patch has been corrected. Why, because the content is simply not possible without Dad. Maybe to Blizz that’s a good thing, but unfortunately I don’t have the time for it. The beauty of the old content was that it was dramatically easier to accomplish and master, which made it possible for my kids. For those that say leveling was too quick before and you didn’t learn you’re class, you’re flat out wrong. My kids know all their classes and the leveling pace was PERFECT, with and without heirlooms. Leveling was encouraging and rewarding. The difficulty of endgame would get them to about level 100 before they’d start another character. What’s more, I PAID for all these expansions + time on each account. I do not understand why I need to sink more time than I already have into each expansion to level more characters. Hell, many of the beloved questlines I cherished have been needlessly removed from the game, and I never complained. I didn’t even complain when the talent trees were royally screwed up. I cannot comprehend the people on the forums saying they actually want and enjoy this patch. You do understand the painful grind you’re now going to have to do for EVERY new character. This doesn’t make you more hardcore or special, and it most definitely isn’t “refreshing” or desirable. If Blizz is looking for their fanboys who will agree with absolutely anything they do, they’ve most certainly found who to nickel and dime on their time on the forums.
Heirlooms… why have them at all if their useless? Just turn em into an achievement and get rid of em if you hate em so much. But oh wait, you got rid of one tenth of all achievements too (when did database space become expensive)!
None of us (my family) wanted scaling. We don’t want legacy servers. My 7-year-old daughter simply wants to play for transmog gear so she can waltz around Stormwind as a princess. My 10-year-old son wants to play pokemon with his pets, run dungeons and collect mounts. My 17-year-old daughter just wants to level. And I just want to be there to support them with some occasional endgame, time permitting in my hectic schedule. This patch makes all of that EXTREMELY difficult.
So yes, we’ve unsubbed. None of the accounts expire until March through May, but we’ll see if anything transpires that might convince us to return. We’re gonna miss our time in the game dearly. I wish we had known or had some warning as to what was going to happen and when this would drop or we would have planned an account closing raid together with all our laptops and snacks galore in front of the big screen; we don’t watch or play PTRs. But what is done is done. Although it doesn’t seem to be the case, I’ve been playing this game for almost 15 years and can certainly understand my playstyle being in the minority. Unfortunately, it’s my whole family’s playstyles that are being eliminated. And no, we won’t be back for BfA if the changes aren’t reverted. We were happy in our comfort zone and 735 removed that.
Only been a couple of days and my son is still into Overwatch and FIFA and my girls are already back to The Sims. I’ll probably just wait for some WC3 Remastered action or hit up the legacy servers if they’re ever finished (my hunch is you’re already playing on the legacy servers and BfA is gonna be used to strip everything down back to horde vs alliance for a hefty WoW2 announcement in 2020 for release in 2021/22 – keeping the current servers alive as “legacy WoW” works in the general order of things in that context). Whatever though. I’ll stay busy and happy with or without Warcraft. Doesn’t mean I won’t miss it.
Wall of text, but it’s my wall. 🙂
On a side note, we went to Target today and all their Warcraft stuff was on clearance… maybe Target’s unsubbing from Warcraft too? Bad patch for retailers too I guess.
