I’ve always wondered how long I would play World of Warcraft. From the first few moments that I played it, I know that it would hold my attention for a while. Nevertheless, I couldn’t have predicted that I would still be playing it 4-5 years later. I probably would have laughed at the notion at the time. The longest I had ever played a single game was only for a few months at the time. In fact, I have “quit” WoW multiple times (more like took a hiatus). The 4-5 years of playing might never have happened.
The first time that I quit, it was some time before TBC. The game had the honor system for the super hardcore and raiding for the hardcore. Obtaining R13 wasn’t an option due to the massive amount of time needed to reach that rank. Also, I wasn’t able to spend enough time playing while in college to raid and actually get gear. There came a point where I realized that my gear was as good as it possibly could be without me raiding. Since I did not have time to raid, and had no other options of getting gear, I decided to quit. I really still wanted to play WoW, but couldn’t justify playing and not getting anywhere. That all changed a couple months later when Blizzard announced most of TBC changes. It was like they had read my mind and I started playing again. Coincidentally, I started raiding shortly after the game became more casual.
I played through much of TBC before taking another hiatus from WoW, this time for completely different reasons. It was during season 4 and I was playing my paladin. Our main focus was 3’s and our team makeup was Disc Priest, Ret Paladin, Ret Paladin. If you can remember season 4, you will see where our difficulties came from. The lack of a healing debuff or any real interrupts during a season where drain teams and double healers ruled the arenas left a sour taste in our mouths. At the time, ret paladin damage was lackluster at best. I had a lot more fun healing through hours in Zul’Aman with my guild than I did playing PvP. This was a low point in the history of paladins and I was tired of not having a good comp to play in arenas, so I quit again.
During this time, I ran a Counter Strike: Source server that grew to be one of the most popular servers in the world (top 100 out of 30000+ tracked servers). It was all a lot of fun, but ultimately I still wanted to play WoW, just didn’t enjoy it the way that it was. Yet again, Blizzard made changes that drew me back to the game. I have taken breaks from playing many times. Each varied from a couple weeks to a few months and had various other reasons (too busy, gone a lot, trying AoC, other MMOs, etc). Some of those times I was sure that I wouldn’t play again. Each time I was wrong.
So that brings me to to my original question. How long will I play WoW? I don’t think this question can really be answered. Whether another MMO steals my interest or if I just get tired after 5 years, I couldn’t say. Ultimately I’ll at least quit by the time the servers are shut off (which judging by the fact that Everquest is still going, could be another decade or so). Whether I play that long or not depends on if I continue to have fun playing a great game with friends.
Tags: Paladin, Priest, TBC, World of Warcraft
