World of Warcraft, a love hate relationship

I have a love/hate relationship with World of Warcraft..

It was the first  Mmo (massively multiplayer online) that I’ve been properly introduced to. In the early days of my relationship with my husband, I remember waking one morning to see him dat at the computer playing a game. I enquired as to what is was as I’d not seen it before. I sat with him a while and he explained (briefly due to the complex lore) what it was. He got me the download going on my laptop and I made my first character. We first rolled Alliance on a PVP (player versus player) realm, I picked a Night Elf Druid. we made it until 51 before my fear of being a cat so close to bosses made us reroll. Then it was a troll mage, (For the Horde!!!) That I stuck with. By this time I’d brought and subbed. We dipped in and out of the game before suffering burn out (usually hubby). Then Mists of Pandaria was announced at Blizzcon.

I was five months pregnant when MoP was revealed, and with myself loving Japanese culture and Japan itself, it’s not surprising I fell in love with it and couldn’t wait! I remember saying to hubby “Pandas! Pandas!” over and over again. Even now he finds it weird I like them! Thing is, they are different. They as a race in WoW are not just another humanoid race and are instead fluffy, bouncy pandas.

Bisquits, my Level 100 mage

I digress.

When MoP came out, my daughter was a few months old, she slept through the night and had a nap for several hours in the day. I had time on my hands (after the day to day chores of running a household) to boot up the laptop and just escape for a while. Games are my personal escape from the world, and this will be expanded on in a future blog post. Hubby helped me and eventually I made it to 90. While levelling I came across a guild that today I am still a part of, we joined and eventually joined the raid team. We are still friends with the core raiders too. Well, most of them.

Bisquits during Children’s Week 2015

All this writing so far, and you are probably wondering why it is a love hate relationship. I love WoW because of memories of being heavily pregnant exploring the new continent, learning with Hubby, and having fun with my guild mates. I love the exploring and the levelling. Even the lore, with its twists and turns.

Then, Warlords of Draenor was announced. I was so-so on it from the beginning, but just before it launched, my raid team’s drama llama reared its head for the final time and the raid team was destroyed. So the four of us left at the core, we were sour. With the guild ranks removed, so many guilds on our server were popping up and we just could not get a full raid team together. We went into a very buggy and laggy Draenor and dinged 100. I believe I did this in a matter of a week at most. We geared and made pug groups for the opening raid but I knew deep down that something felt wrong. I burned out. WoW was not keeping my attention, it felt more like farmville and I just did not want to log on. So, I didn’t. My sub and that of Hubby’s were cancelled and we played other games.

Seven months later, the shareholders meeting told us what we knew, that this expansion according to Blizzard by its subscriber numbers are a fail with the biggest and fastest drop of any expansion. No matter what they add to WoWville (garrisons) there is just not the content to go and do. No one wants to feel like they have wasted money, especially when for those of us in the UK the subscriber had gone up by a pound. I have still not levelled my alternative character beyond 90. Or subscribed for that matter.

I love this game, but I am worried as to where and how it is moving forward from WoD. I do not want WoWville. I am not intrigued by its story really at all. It feels like the narrative is a patch content, not a whole expansion.

Blizzard, if you want to carry on past the ten years, please, go back to how you did things with MoP and before that. Just do what you are good at and don’t just do things for whatever is in our wallets. It is why I now hate WoW. Make it pretty, sure, because Draenor is gorgeous to look at. Just return to making amazing dungeons, raids and levelling content please. Then maybe, maybe I’ll be back.