World of Warcraft...

Since March 2004 when I was invited to the Closed Beta, my relationship with Blizzard's monstrous MMORPG has been, to say the least, rocky. I haven't played every single day since it came out, but the majority of my time has been put into the game for the last several years. But why? In truth, I really fucking hate this game. I really do. It's too much of a timesink, it's a bunch of rep-grinding, repetitive bullshit, and it's not nearly as revolutionary as people like to say it is (at least in certain aspects.) It's really POLISHED, but I wouldn't say anything about it is necessarily amazing or revolutionary.

I will try to break down the game as best as I can, because this has been building up for years.

When you start playing WoW, from the moment you make your first character and you see the little cutscene that flies through the starting area of whichever race you picked, and you hear that disembodied voice explaining the backstory of you, your character, you know this game is going to be something else. Everything is streamlined so well in this game, the quests give you great EXP, and there is very rarely a shortage on quests. Look at almost every korean/free MMO out there, it is mostly grinding. You just sit in a field and kill monsters over and over with no real purpose or objective, other than filling your EXP bar a little bit more with each kill. True, the quests in WoW are mostly stupid, eg. Go collect 10 apples, or go slay 7 bats, etc. But the fact they are there is something.

The game remains consistently fun and enthralling while you level up. The only real frustrations you are likely to find are the lack of groups for low level instances, and if you play on a PVP server, getting ganked by a level 70 with too much time on his hands. But it doesn't matter, this game still kicks ass, and you want to hit 70 so you can get revenge on those who have caused you trouble.

So finally that day arrives, probably a few months after you started, that you hit level 70. DING! The brilliant yellow glow surrounds your character and your eyes instantly zoom down to the chat box to see it says "Congratulations on reaching Level 70!" You cheer and your guildmates congratulate you as you hearthstone back to the city to get your shiny new skills.

Alright so I'm level 70 now, I can't wait to see what the end game is like. And then it hits you, the end game is BULLSHIT. Here's your options: Raid, PVP, Reroll. That's all you can do. This has been a problem since the game came out, and it baffles me that it hasn't been addressed yet. Don't be fooled, when the new expansion pack comes out, it's going to be exactly the same at Level 80 as it is now.

So lets say you decide to raid, so you're going to have to spend a bunch of time in Heroic instances getting blues and a few epics so you can start going into Karazhan, and then into Zul'aman, Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon, etc. It's a big treadmill that you have to run on with 9-24 other people several times a week. If you have the free time, patience, and desire to progress, raiding is probably what you really enjoy, but I personally don't like having to sit on Vent with a bunch of people who take WoW way too seriously, and start cursing at you if you make a mistake, and start screaming when they actually kill a boss and get a new piece of equipment.

On the other hand, here's PVP. Well, lets clear this up, there are 2 different kinds of PVP in WoW. There is the Battlegrounds, which is where more "casual" players tend to hang out, and I'll talk about those soon.

But then there are the Arenas. The arena system is the biggest bullshit that has been put into WoW yet. Everyone gets fucked over by it. First off, Blizzard is apparently really desperate to make WoW become a new fixture in "eSports", which if you don't know, is where people play competitive games for money. The majority of their focus and the game's changes/rebalances in the last year have been because of the arena, and it pisses me off because I fucking hate the arena as do most people I know.

There are 2 big reasons why it sucks. First, most people only use it to get easy epics, or "welfare epics" as people like to call them. All you have to do is play 10 games a week, and you get points toward your gear. You don't even have to win any of the games. True, Blizzard is fixing this with Season 4 by putting a "rating requirement" on everything, so you have to actually do well to wear the best gear, but why was this ever thought of as a good idea? Why even bother trying to do Kara if I can spend an hour losing in a 5v5 arena team and get a better DPS weapon? I know that PVE gear is better for PVE, but weapons are, for some classes, pretty negligible. How many times do you see a PVE freak using a S3 weapon, and vice versa for a T5 weapon?

The other problem I have is that everyone who actually plays takes it way too seriously. There are countless douchebags out there who won't even speak to you unless your rating is higher than 2000. Even if you aren't talking about anything PVP related. The elitist attitude that was already alive with a good number of WoW players was ignited, like throwing gas on a fire, when the arena debuted.

So now you're probably wondering what I would do if I could change something about the Arenas. My answer is simple: Separate it from the rest of WoW. Why does everyone have to be affected by a class nerf because their class happens to be doing well in the arena? I know Paladins feel me on this one. Remember when you got full mana back from critting? Warriors, remember when Mace Stun actually procced more than once every 15 swings? You get the idea. Separate the Arena from WoW and balance it separately.

On the other side of PVP you get the battlegrounds. There really isn't much to say here, it's pretty much the same as it was years back, the only difference is now there is resilience.

All in all, PVE and PVP have one thing in common: IT'S A GRIND. The whole game becomes one big fucking grind once you hit level 70. You would like to think "Well as soon as I am done having to do stupid quests and killing random animals, I get to actually have some real epic battles!" But no, all you do is either grind honor, grind mats for consumables, or grind money for your epic mount, which helps you get to raids/the arena master quicker. Or of course, there was option 3, you can reroll and experience leveling up again.

I'm bitching a lot about the game, but on the other hand, I've been playing it for years, so what's the deal?

It's really easy to get addicted to it. That's all there is to it. Everything you do in the game comes with a proverbial carrot on a stick in front of you, and you're constantly saying "I just need this one last upgrade" or "Just this one last quest", but it never ends (like all MMOs), and you just end up doing the same thing over and over, with some goal in the distance.

The other thing is, at least in my case, everyone I know fucking plays this game. Which makes it really hard to stop, because even if I say "Hmm, I don't really want to play WoW today" Here comes people IMing me, "hey dude lets do an instance" or "Hey can you help me with this?" so I have to log on because apparently not wanting to play WoW is just crazy talk.

I guess it depends on your experience with the game. I've been playing since the beta, and I'm ready to move on. I really wish there was another game as polished and easy to get into as WoW, I really fucking do. A while back I was banned from WoW and had uninstalled it, and was ready to move on, but this was at the same time that literally everyone I know in real life was starting to play again (they had all quit initially, and a few were starting for the first time,) so I gave in to the pressure and bought another copy. Now I really wish I had stayed away.

I'm now back to being level 70, in decent gear, but I don't want to do anything on the game. I log in, and PVP doesn't sound interesting at all. I don't want to group with a bunch of random idiots or even with my guild. So I just log off. That's been my time on WoW the last few days, and it's not looking to change.

May addon or edit later. Just in a bad mood right now.. Sorry for the language.