Zub Tales

Talking with a friend about World of Warcraft this morning helped me sum up some of my current thoughts about the game.

The truth is that I’m thinking of canceling my account.

I’ve been logged on for only a few hours since I got back from San Diego. And inbetween Cuba and San Diego I was barely on as well. Seriously, less than an hour at a time over the past couple of weeks. Each time I log on I get incredibly bored in a matter of minutes.

I’m caught between two groups:

Some of my friends are HARDCORE. They play end game content multiple times a week and tweak their characters to an unholy degree. They talk about stuff for their characters and min/maxing equipment to a degree where I don’t even understand what they’re saying. They are competing at a level I’m not even sure I would enjoy. It’s too much.

When I was in the WoW Alpha/Beta there were psychos on Unemployment or Student Loans doing nothing put playing the game EVERY day. You can’t hope to keep up with that madness. Their No Life trumps your Real Life every time.

Some of my friends are ROLE-PLAYING. They’re acting out little stories with their characters and involve themselves in scenarios outside the regular scope of the game. They’re using the game as an engine for drama, something I don’t really want to do. I like role-playing and acting, but doing that through the limited game emotes and typing doesn’t do it for me at all.

Maybe it’s just because I don’t have another person playing in the same room/space as me anymore, maybe it’s because I’ve been a bit more social lately, maybe I can see the grinding repetition clearer now… I don’t know. It’s just not grabbing me lately.

Too many different groups of people on different servers, not enough time to really dig in and no one around at my level/schedule/commitment to the game anymore. I don’t want to play with strangers, even if they’re nice – and they’re usually not. I don’t want to go on the same raids 20+ times to get one or two items. I don’t enjoy the PvP twitchy min/max elements. I log on, look at my quest log and feel like groaning.

All I know is that in the past few weeks I’ve had WAY more fun with things like Guitar Hero and my Nintendo DS. Playing a game at my own pace or playing video games with a live social component – playing with other people in the same space as me. I want a Nintendo Wii this fall so I can invite people over, laugh and have fun in the living room playing games. It’s the same reason I want a nice karaoke unit if/when I get a house. Right now I’d rather play cards or a board game with people than get frustrated with server lag, low drop rates or my character’s DPS rating being optimized.

I’m not as obsessive/compulsive as I used to be. It’s a good thing, though sometimes it feels weird not being as “in” to something all at once. I’m enjoying more things broadly instead of zeroing in on one at a time and going berserk with it.

PS: One of my hardcore WOW friends just IMed me after reading this post to see who my other hardcore WoW friends were to make sure he was raiding tougher game content and was more hardcore than they were. He was partially joking, but even still. 0_0