Foreword: First of all I suggest you go read this post by Kaozz over on her blog. She echoes a lot of my sentiments regarding the current WoW. Also, this is ranty, you have been warned.
First of all, this is a post I’ve rewritten four times, my recent lack of updates is mainly because I’ve had a lot of trouble recently putting my thoughts in order and figure out what I was really feeling. I haven’t found the final and definitive answer, but it’s becoming clearer and clearer that I’m coming to a crossroad regarding my playing WoW.
Recently I’ve joined the World of Tanks beta and it made me realize that I wasn’t having fun with WoW anymore. Everyday I would think of playing WoW but when came the time to actually play it I would launch WoT or even go do the dishes instead. When I did manage to muster the interest to log into I would not stay logged unless someone else I knew was logged. Even then, I would chat with them and not actually play the game.
Kaozz made me realize this with her post and now knowing that I wasn’t having fun I set out to figure out why. It took me some time because ultimately, I agree with all the changes happening in Cataclysm. I love the new instances, zones and new gameplay changes. I love that heroics are hard and require effort to complete them. There’s nothing I would change. So why am I not having fun anymore?
Because I’m not the playing the game the way it was meant to be played by the designers. I read the recent Ghostcrawler post and I feel disconnected from it. I understand and even agree with all of it but I read it and I think it’s not for me. Myself and most of the people in Walk the Plank are now oddities in WoW when compared to a vast portion of the community. We’re all very casual, playing when we feel like it and when time allows. We’re not out for epics, achievements or guild levels. Yet, we do like the occasional raid and we do want to progress our characters with heroics for example. We can’t do that anymore in Cataclsym since we’re a small guild that doesn’t always have five member ready to run heroics. Some might be on alts, doing professions or just plain messing around.
We’re fine with that too. Putting no pressure on our member and letting them do what they want is something I’m very proud of. But it has for downside that we’re small in numbers. While recruitment is the obvious answer, recruiting enough for our kind of guild is a very hard task. Like I said, we’re mostly oddities in the current progression oriented community. With enough time and persistence we might solve our problems but in the meantime we’re stuck. I don’t know how the others are seeing this but for me it is a problem not being to be able to progress anymore because I chose to be in a small casual guild.
WoW is fine, it’s a well made game and I believe its current state is the best we’ve had yet. However I get the feeling that it was not intended with my current play style in mind. Years ago I would have loved every moment of it, now I don’t care for all the strings that come with progression play. I don’t want to be bogged down with attendance, performance review, meters and all that bells and whistles of raiding.
So I’m back at the crossroads. I have a few choices I see open before me. I could soldier on despite the odds and pray that time fixes everything. Yet, reading about the game direction doesn’t lead me to believe things will get better. I could disband, join up with another guild (got a few offers) and pray that this time the promesses of remaining casual despite raiding will hold true. I’ve been down that path numerous times and every single time before it didn’t pan out. I’ve learned that given enough time, every casual guild turns into a hardcore guild or dies as the raiders leave. Finally, I could leave WoW forever and be done with it.
I’m still thinking about all of this and while I have not reached any final decision a few things have been decided. First of all, whatever happens I stick to my “Stand on Silvermoon” idea. The solution must not involve server transfer. My friends are all on Silvermoon, I’ve transferred my stuff there and I’ve learned a server transfer is not guarantee of a solution. Second, if I am to quit WoW, it will be final. I don’t have much interest anymore for the way WoW does things. It’s not that it’s bad, simply that I’ve played WoW for six years and even the new stuff feel old. You can only reskin stuff so often before it becomes all the same.
Sorry about the rant, still pondering and wondering and thank you for allowing me to write all of this down. It does helps to see clearer.
I hope you don’t quit for good but if you’re not having fun at all then that is something you will have to decide. I thought about taking a break for a month or so to see if anything changes, I’m still not sure about it yet.
While I am not having fun at high end I still enjoy the game. I just feel sort of aimless when it comes to progression.
Miss seeing you guys on. It’s mostly Dire and I holding the for these days but we try to enjoy ourselves with fun stuff. Last night we ran three BC dungeons for my Pally and it was pretty fun.
I will give it some more time don’t worry. What’s killing me is that we all have so very different game times it makes things really hard. I can’t be on at the same times as you and Dire sadly.
Anyway, it’s still in a food for toughts stage.
I’ve been in small guilds before, like the larger ones they have their positives and negatives. The last one I was in I left since no one was ever on. My few buddies that were in the guild had left too. I ended up joining them at their new guild on the Zul’jin server. Although I’m a solo player, I do like interaction when in a guild. With smaller guilds that can be difficult since people play at various times.
Overall, I like the changes within Cata. I really like that they’ve made changes to the classes, granted I don’t like every single change that they have made to them, but overall I’m happy since I get bored playing the same mechanics, months and years later.
On Ysera I’m in a casual guild that does raid. So yes, you can have both but it depends on the leadership and those within the guild too. Although casual we have a lot of members, about 300. The majority are local so we have at least two real life meetups a month. I’ve been in quite a few guilds on various servers, but it’s the tightest guild I’ve been in thus far. I imagine the out of game meetups might have something to do with it. I really like that.
They have plenty of players that enjoy raiding and others like myself that don’t have the time or simply don’t want to raid.
Last night I had fun running BC dungeons with guildies just like me. Our other guildmates were raiding but we were having fun in BS instances! Time quickly got away from me and I had to call it a night after three instances. What’s great is there are people just like me with children and other obligations outside of WoW. So they definitely get that I cannot make certain game events since they are in similar situations. 
I might have to pop on more in the evening to run with them since that’s when most of the casuals tend to play.
I do hope that Blizzard does something with the guild achievement, since for smaller guilds some things are impossible to attain. Our guild is close to level 11, and although the perks don’t mean anything to me. I just recently put the unguilded toons I’d been playing into the guild. (I was planning to move them to Silvermoon, but I’m tired of server transferring and I have great guildmates.) I can see how smaller guilds would enjoy having those extras guild perks too.
Here’s hoping you reach a decision that makes you happy. /cheers
Thanks for the reply. I have been in a big guild before long ago in Vanilla and it didn’t work out really well in the end… guess I’m a bit scared of them nowadays. And I can understand perfectly being tired of server transfering, its the same for me.
Right now I think I’ll ease up for the next few days and let some time pass, maybe thats all I need.
That might be lono, I’ve done that a few times with various games (last one being WoW) and came back enjoying the game again. With a few games, it didn’t work out when I came back so I ended my gameplay. However I had a lot of great memories.
[...] lonomonkey adds his voice to the mix: We’re all very casual, playing when we feel like it and when time allows. We’re not out for epics, achievements or guild levels. Yet, we do like the occasional raid and we do want to progress our characters with heroics for example. We can’t do that anymore in Cataclsym since we’re a small guild that doesn’t always have five member ready to run heroics. [...]
[...] everywhere, myself, Kaozz, Void, Pitrelli, Spinks and many others are all suspecting something is amiss with [...]
I feel the same on many levels, but I have no idea how you can say you feel this way while still saying the current iteration of the game is fantastic. It is the current iteration which is part of the reason you feel this way. Sorry, but this makes no sense in this respect even though I empathize with many of the sentiments here.
I do feel this current iteration is horrible. On paper, its a go. The execution and implementation is terribly done. In fact, Id say it feels like they put the ideas on paper and then went straight to work without giving the idea flesh, sinews, and life. The game lacks passion …not sure if that is the term I am searching for exactly, but it conveys the experience no less.