I referring to WoW. I am referring to it’s end game “raid progression” that goads people into churning hours and hours away at the same content for the sake of epic loot, faction reputation, and pleasing your guild leadership. Those who slack off – for whatever reason, most of the time it doesn’t matter why – will get the boot. Many hardcore guilds won’t tolerate “cherry pickers”.

Am I the only one who feels a bitter sense of irony? It’s a game that I pay $15 a month to enjoy. It was meant to entertain me – that’s all.

If I’m letting people on the Internet (my GO’s) dictate to me how I spend my personal time on a weekly basis then I need to reevaluate what is good for me. My personal freedom or slaving away at a game? I left and have not looked back. I spend my time these days playing with like-minded people and I play MMO’s that don’t pressure me to punch a timecard every night.

1) Something better comes out. For this reason I quit EQ in favor of DAoC and later quit DAoC in favor of WoW.

2) I need to catch up on single player games. I have quit WoW twice, when I realized that a lot of really good games are passing me by. I came back the first time and will come back again once I get my fair share of alone time.

One that I’d like to add, the reason I left my first MMO (EQ) was TOO MUCH development. Releasing a new expansion every 3-4 months and charging your players another $30-50 USD to get the latest and greatest was a huge dissapointing factor for me. In the end I heard about DAoC and gave it a try on opening day (took the day off of work and waited with baited breath for my pre-ordered copy to arrive) and had a BLAST for the first year or so.

Not sure where that one would fall in at, but I know that “Greener Pastures” definately feels like a closer fit.

No game lasts forever, yet a percentage of MMO players appear to take offence that the MMO they are playing can’t entertain them indefinitely. But if you play a game long enough, it is probably going to bore you at some stage and you’ll look elsewhere.

I don’t know if it is a psychological defence – that they used to have fun, but now they don’t, so it has to be the game’s fault and the devs obviously hate them – but it is a pretty common occurance.

1) Now generation: These are the power levelers who apparently have no school or job yet can afford a fast computer, high speed internet, the base game and a monthly subscription. They “consume” the whole game in half the time the developers expected focusing only on how far they could go with one character not how much of the game they could explore or enjoy. Once they’ve had a single ride to the top, they’ve “been there and done that” disregarding that they’ve missed 75% of the game. Just because the reasonable development cycle for new content cannot keep up to this small percentage of l33t’s, is that a fault of the game or the company that produced it? I don’t expect game company’s to keep up with ADD people’s interests.

2) Greener pastures: Nothing wrong with the current game, it’s evolving as expected, but a new game comes out and draws the crowd away temporarily or permanently. Guess that falls under burnout as players want something new and different. The company doesn’t suck until they quit developing the game and ignoring the loyal players left behind. A stagnant game hits all three of these points.

I’ve only paid to play a few games: UO, AC, DAoC, WoW and LotRO. I’ve beta tested a dozen others. I am extremely grateful to any and every game producing company that provides a beta test of their game, MMO or otherwise. This has saved me a huge amount of time and money finding out early that a game is not what I want. The companies could be underhanded and force us to buy the game just to satisfy our curiosity.

Hanna, you are by no means alone. I think there are a great many more non-PvP players than you think. I am grateful for WoW’s method of handling it. I’m able to completely enjoy the game I want without having to deal with PvP any more than ignoring someone who tries to repeatedly duel me. I hadn’t heard about a forced PvP zone in WotLK, but I can guarntee you I’ll be avoiding it. There are plenty of areas in WoW that are “unplayable” for one reason or another, but WoW is so huge it’s a small percentage of loss. True, the PvP crowd does seem to be the most vocal and get the lion’s share of development, but WoW is still evolving and improving faster than I can consume it.