I managed to stay WoW-free for all of two months

[DirthNader]

Despite my critisisms of WoW in previous posts (which I still feel are valid), I started playing again last night. The sad truth is that despite a healthy social life with my wife, my surfing (as in waves, water) friends and tennis partners, I don't have an outlet for my geeky side. I missed my online buddies of the past few years, despite knowing them only through voice chat and guild chat.

Oh well. I'm hopeful that the game has changed a bit at the higher levels so that you can accomplish something without spending 4-6 hours in a sitting - it sounds like they took out some of the pulls in Scholo / Strat / BRS, which we always ran 5-man (10 in the case of UBRS). I never felt addicted to WoW before, but damn if you didn't have to play at an addict level just to get anything that was a upgrade at 60.

I rolled a priest, hoping that I'll be in demand while I get back to 60 and rejoin my friends. Definately a change of pace from my previous 60 shaman and rogue, and suprisingly it's kind of nice starting over from scratch (I deleted my characters when I cancelled back in February). I'm kind of hoping one of the people I mailed hundreds of gold to when I quit will hook me up with some 16-slot packs though - I forgot what a PITA it is to run out of space.

Oh well, just posting for the hell of it - like I said before, if I told this to any of my friends / family / coworkers they'd just look at me funny.

 

[NeoV]

welcome back!

 

[Schadenfroh]

They always come back.......

I have quit four times myself.

 

[DirthNader]

Scary isn't it?

I just hope I can get through the tard-fest that is every instance from WC to ST without burning up too many favors from my friends.

I honestly don't think I've ever completed a WC run with a group of the appropriate level. You always get someone who decides they need to log off halfway through the damn thing.

 

[RockGuitarDude]

I'm equally pathetic:
http://wow.allakhazam.com/profile.html?537800

 

[Eddieo]

Me too, just over 2 months and I went back for a new month. Only played for a few minutes though. Checking things out.

 

[SunnyD]

WoW free for 3 months and counting. No desire to go back to the wait-two-hours-in-lagforge-to-find-a-raid-group-and-then-another-two-hours-to-fill-the-raid-group-only-to-have-10-people-drop-before-we-get-to-the-instance-then-wait-another-hour-to-fill-those-10-spots-before-we-can-waste-6-hours-inside-the-instance-only-to-wipe-2-times-to-some-Leeroy-wannabe.

Sorry for all the dashes, but you know how those phrasey things work.

 

[Madwand1]

What a waste of time. If you'd know yourself better, you might have avoided that deletion. I'm WoW free for more than a couple of months, but my character's still geared and available to rejoin my old guild mates if I choose to.

My constructive suggestion -- unless you really want to grind + level up again, contact Blizzard support, tell them your sob story, and ask them to retrieve your old deleted character back. They possibly can't. They certainly have in some cases, but perhaps for not this long of down time. They certainly won't do this over and over again for you.

If you sweeten the pot for them saying that you might have to cancel again because you might not have the time to level up again, maybe you'll have better luck with that?

 

[pontifex]

i can't get back into it. every time i try to play again i play for like 30 minutes and then cancel.

 

[abaez]

Originally posted by: RockGuitarDude
I'm equally pathetic:
http://wow.allakhazam.com/profile.html?537800

Did you pick the warrior ring too for the Brood ring quests? lol me too.

 

[DirthNader]

I suppose it couldn't hurt to petition Blizzard to get my toons back - maybe come up with a story about how my vindictive wife logged in and deleted them.

My main was a shaman though, with an alt rogue. I had gotten to the point where I really didn't enjoy playing either class. It won't take me long to get back to where I was before, maybe a few months. I spent a huge amount of time with my shaman trying to PvP and trying to complete the dungeon set, neither of which did anything for raid effectiveness.

 

[Madwand1]

I don't see why it'd be necessary to make up a story about your wife. Tell them the truth, that you quit, but then changed your mind. It's reasonable, and it's also reasonable for them to want you back and to help you out in this by restoring your old characters.

You don't have to play those characters, but having them back will give you more flexibility for pickup raids or whatever, or if you find out after all that leveling the 3rd char, etc., is a lot like leveling your previous ones, and decide that you want to quit there and go to the others. Whatever... your choice. I'm just suggesting that having the old ones, and getting them back now, could be better than not.

 

[DirthNader]

What I'm concerned about is that I didn't just delete them - I vendored everything I could and sent all of the proceeds to friends as a kind of thank-you for playing with me (heck, without them I wouldn't have had it).

Getting my 60 shaman back with full Elements, nice DM gear, and decent enchants would be nice. Getting my epic raptor back would be nice. I don't know how excited I'd get about a naked 60 - I'd probably roll with it seeing that the guild I'd end up in is currently short on shaman, but they're not to the point where I could skip blues and go straight to purple. Not sure if I could stomach grinding through Strat / Scholo / BRS again with the same class trying to get the same loot.

We'll see. They already responded to my initial petition, and asked me to send a more detailed petition back. At this rate, I may know something tonight.

As much as I bagged on their network problems, Blizzard's customer service is still amazing. SOE would've told me to die in a fire if I had sent the same ticket to them.

 

[Madwand1]

Looks like you're having luck so far. A level 60 char is still a "big deal", naked or not. Grinding for blue set gear is as silly as ever. You can still do a lot with AH greens, and combine that with PvP rewards, and probably well exceed anything you can do with set blues.

And once you're in a raiding guild, when you get in, the purples will probably come easily because the others don't really want them anymore. At worst, you'll be in the same boat as everyone else.

If you don't get your chars back, you'll have the same problems, and also need to grind to 60 on top. So it's still a win if you just get the chars back.

Also don't forget how easy DM is and how much good gear there is there.. I've been away for some time, there are probably even better alternative sources. Set gear was never good IMO, until tier 2.

Good luck.

 

[DirthNader]

More e-mails from Blizzard - I'm now at the point where they're trying to dig him up, and they've told me it could take a few days. Who knows what gear they'll restore.

About set gear - I know people bag on all of the dungeon sets, but I liked Elements for an elemental shaman. Most of the other good blue gear for those slots is +crit gear, and given that a shock or lightining crit can pull a mob onto you (especially with the double crit bonus talent) I liked more +healing/damage type stuff for group play.

 

[Dman877]

Is wow your first mmp? If so, I feel for ya. I played DAoC off and on for over 3 years before giving it up for good. Never gonna touch an mmp again, I've learned my lesson .

 

[Madwand1]

Looks like you got lucky; not only are they restoring inactive characters for you; they're going to search through age old backups and from that restore your deleted characters. It sounds as if they aren't even charging you anything extra for this service. Of course, they have some self-interest in having a subscribing player around instead of quitting perhaps, but some other compaines would charge extra / wouldn't do this sort of thing, and it is beyond the norm.

You don't have to keep on playing forever even when they do this for you. It's a paid service; you are free to quit anytime, and Blizzard has a stated practice of keeping quit characters around (but nothing about deleted), so that if you change your mind again, you can go back and pick up from where you left off. Just don't delete them again; there's no need for doing so. I have heard that Blizzard will do this this sort of thing only once for a subscription.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Dman877
Is wow your first mmp? If so, I feel for ya. I played DAoC off and on for over 3 years before giving it up for good. Never gonna touch an mmp again, I've learned my lesson .

DAoC was not nearly as addictive as EQ and WoW IMO. I think they also made a contribution to the genre by showing how the time sinks / grinding could be reduced, and demonstrating good customer service.

About 40-50% of MMOG players self-report addiction. If you have any doubts about yourself being succeptible to further addiction after having already been so, you're probably kidding yourself. It's not a physical addiction, but it is a mental one, which can have just as big or even bigger grasp on you.

 

[DirthNader]

My first MMO was Motor City Online - I played that for about a year or so, until they announced it was being shut down.

After that it was SWG for close to two years. I was addicted to that - I had the top armorsmithing business on my server, had a Dark Jedi Knight, and a PvP character that was geared up well enough that I was literally never killed in six months of active PvP. That one was easier to part with - I hated the "Combat Upgrade", and I sold everything on eBay for about $2000.

WoW didn't strike me as addicitive, it was/is simply time consuming to an awful degree once you start trying to gear up a level 60 character. We never zerged the dungeon instances, and before they reduced the number of trash pulls they simply took too long (DM was great in that you could do a tribute run in an hour or less). I never felt compelled to play, but having to set aside three to six hour chunks of time to do instances was a big enough hassle that I might has well have been.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
WoW free for 3 months and counting. No desire to go back to the I-tried to-play-a-MMORPG-solo-instead-of-making-friends-or-getting-into-a-decent-guild-to-quest-with."
Sorry for all the dashes, but you know how those phrasey things work.

Fixed that for ya.

 

[Madwand1]

Any "decent guild" will also require a substantial time commitment and the returns often less than what the hype would have you believe. In this, I don't mean to say that nobody's getting something they want/need out of guild and in-game friendships. I mean to say that anybody who aims to belittle someone else for not doing that is making a pointless argument for what is in much likelihood a hollow prize, and you shouldn't fall for it.

Grats on getting out, with whatever reasons / means it took, in exercising your independence. To fall for the hype or others's arguments would be pathetic in comparison.

If you're still playing and enjoying, I'm not claiming that you're doing anything wrong necessarily. You're exercising your free will, and I have no problem with that. But if you forget that it's just a game, and it takes on a life of its own, I would say that that's in the wrong.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: Madwand1
Any "decent guild" will also require a substantial time commitment and the returns often less than what the hype would have you believe.

Not true. The entire game is built around your own perceptions. If you feel that you need to be online 18+ hours a day, then that's you own fault. If you "feel" you need to devote 6+ hour blocks of time in order to have fun that's your own fault. If you "feel" that you have to have every epic/legendary piece of gear in the game for your class in order to adequately compete, that again, is your OWN FAULT.

Many, many people, such as myself, have no problem logging in the game in spurts - maybe 1-3 hours a night for a few days, then a week+ break, then maybe a 9 hour Saturday night/Sunday morning marathon session, then another 4-5 day break - and *still* being able to send a tell to some friends, or in guild chat that you need 4-9 other people to help you with a quest or get a certain drop and then having them ready to go in 10 minutes or less.

People like me who are perfectly comfortable in our mismatched blue gear from 5-10man instances, along with a few Tier 0 and 0.5 pieces still enjoy the game.

Like I said, the game (and, to an extent, the entire genre) is all about what *you* make it to be. If you feel the game is a huge timesink that eats into your personal life and steals your soul, then that says a hell of a lot more about YOU than it does about some 1s and 0s sitting on your hard drive.

But then again, this is the "sue happy" generation that excels at shirking personal responsibility and routinely seeks to blame someone else for their own shortcomings, so I'm rarely surprised to the see the whole "ZOMG! WoW is evil! Don't play it!" mentality played out in each and every MMORPG thread.

 

[Madwand1]

Wow, you seem to have taken this quite personally. It's just a game, right?

 

[Xyclone]

I've quit once. I've been WoW-free for 8 months.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: cKGunslinger

Originally posted by: SunnyD
WoW free for 3 months and counting. No desire to go back to the wait-two-hours-in-lagforge-to-find-a-raid-group-and-then-another-two-hours-to-fill-the-raid-group-only-to-have-10-people-drop-before-we-get-to-the-instance-then-wait-another-hour-to-fill-those-10-spots-before-we-can-waste-6-hours-inside-the-instance-only-to-wipe-2-times-to-some-Leeroy-wannabe.

Fixed that for ya.

Fixed back. I had a good guild thanks, and we had a decent alliance thanks. I actually leveled faster got better gear in the solo and 5-man groups. Raid instances were just a waste of time for those that don't have 8 hours straight of "life" to waste.