Both sides agree on one thing

I cannot help giggling while I think of the topic of this post. You see, it seems that both a blogger who loves WoW and a blogger who doesn't like WoW agree on one thing.

They both suggest that people quit playing WoW. (Yes, unless you have read the posts I suggest reading them now)

The lover, Larísa from the Pink Pigtail Inn suggest that the bloggers should cease blogging about WoW because of the fact that everyone and their granny is becoming burned out and bored with the WotLK content. In her words

However, we have now come to This Time of The Expansion Cycle when a lot of the links in our feedreaders and blogrolls suddenly turn into a nasty purple color. Yep. It’s the seasonal Curse of Boredom, Burn-out, Bitterness, Lost faith and Godknowswhat that strikes again, just as it did towards the end of TBC. It is remorseless, the victims are countless and unfortunately it isn’t as easy to click off as the in game-version.

And she suggests that:

There isn’t any quick cure from this, so you’d better treat it as a bad case of battle rez sickness. Rather than writing about what a miserable state the game is in, blaming your guild, Gearscore, Ghostcrawler, the Casuals, the Elitists, your ISP and your Wife, I would suggest you to take a break, not only from WoW, but from blogging and podcasting about it.

Log out from the WoW community, clear your brain from the fog, go do something else. You have NO obligation to anyone. Do not feel forced to rant about something you don't enjoy anymore.

And if you ever decide to come back, like for Cataclysm, I would dare say that you’ll be stocked up with rested energy, spitting out posts like never before.

Oh well. That sounds like some sort of censorship to me: what is better time to really look at the state of the game, the state of the community and the state of the whole state of things than the time just now? When the glamour and glitter has worn off (except from the sparkling pony farting stars) and the content has been seen by most of the players. Or the ones who have deemed the content as something not worth pursuing anymore or have seen it a couple of times too many have already left the game.

I cannot condone that kind of 'abandonment' of the blogging about the game. Sorry, I've been writing about the miserable experiences when others have been gloating with joy and glee, so why should I stop now? Because everyone is starting to feel like I have felt for so long?

Nah.

Like I stated in the earlier posts this week, I feel even more that WoW is a lovely SPMMO, Single Player Massive Multiplayer game. You can be alone within the group of anonymous people, never chatting with anyone and still accomplishing whatever you seek to do within the game. Well, as long as you are as ruthless and selfish as the guy/gal behind the next toon, taking every opportunity to shine with your achievements and GearScore. And making use of the fact that people who really don't know jack from ass read the Gearscore like devil reads the bible rather than recognizing that the arbitrary score is supposed to be a tool telling you that the guy with gs of 4700 is as ready to the ICC10 as the guy with the gs over 5000. The main difference is whether the guy in 4700 does want to learn the fights beforehand or not: he may even be a better choice than the bored gs 6000 guy coming to the PUG.

Like Wolfshead, the one with not as rosy picture of WoW stated:

As long as is there are copious amounts of reward with almost no risk, as long as content remains static and non-dynamic, as long as players have no sense of ownership in their world, as long as players have no need of other players, as long as player freedoms keep getting curtailed, as long as extracting money from subscribers is the end all and be all of game design — you will have the disease that is World of Warcraft.

Anyhow, as Tipa of West Karana just wrote, WoW is the kind of entertainment someone might prefer: something you don't have to pay attention to play. At the lower levels the game really is such, as you can read from her post.

So while I do not approve the reasons Larísa stated for not blogging and playing WoW, I still agree with both Larísa and Wolfshead. That we should stop playing WoW till Cataclysm comes.

There is only one reason to that, and Wolfshead put it very nicely:

We need to stop playing the same unoriginal MMOs out there and cancel our accounts. We need to stop supporting lazy companies that refuse to innovate and reinvest adequate funds into their MMOs. We need to stop playing MMOs until something worthwhile comes out.

Well, to know if there is anything worthwhile out there is to take the money from the Crack of Warcraft and put it into something not-so-familiar. If you really need to play over the summer months, pick a genre or game you have not tried. Or have tried a long time ago. Or that is new or forgotten till now.

Shake off the mantle of your first (or longest in terms of time) MMO for a while!

In my trials and wanderings I've noticed one peculiar thing.

As long as I test, try and explore, it's always more fun to come back home. Even for a short visit.

I hope this post made at least a bit sense to you.


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