The End of an Era

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about my first official break from raiding in World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a part of my life since its release in the beginning of 2005. Despite some periods of reduced interest in the game, I never really stopped playing it and more or less completed every aspect of this vast narrative. The fascination for this game really started as I joined my very first raid as this was just an awesome experience.

At this time, raids consisted of 40 players who were collaboratively playing together in order to exhaust the challenges of a particular raid instance. Being only used to smaller five to ten player groups, it was an unprecedented feeling of being part of something that big. Also, once we managed to defeat a new encounter, it really felt as if we accomplished something meaningful as everyone was focussing very hard on this particular goal. This fascination sticked with me for the rest of my raiding career in WoW and kept me motivated throughout the years to continue playing the game.

Now, 12 years after having played WoW for the very first time, this motivation has more or less vanished. Of course, I still enjoy the collaborative aspects of the game, but unfortunately its core gameplay has not changed since its release. In addition, WoW went through several transformations implemented with the releases of the various expansion packs extending the vast narrative by a new story arch. Unfortunately, after turning WoW into a more fun and action packed game with the previous expansion, the current expansion went into the opposite direction and turned the game back into a heavy grinding game. Players were basically required to log in every day in order to gain experience points ultimately making their primary weapons stronger and more powerful. In addition, WoW currently reuses its content a lot thus making it rather boring to tackle the same instance again to experience a new difficulty level.

As a result of this, the gameplay was no longer really fun to me and I mostly continued playing the game to stick with my current raid group. However, after having missed an entire month of raiding due to other appointments or simply because I was too tired, I realized that I have not missed it at all. Thus, I finally decided to draw some consequences and take an official break from the game. Although it is the right decision, it feels weird as this is the first time I stopped raiding since the release of the game.

An era has come to an end …