world of warcraft my thoughts as a guild master

So yea I played world of warcraft, Burning crusade, wrath of the lich king I played it all. I started back when it first opened and finally stopped my account this summer(2010). Why after so many years would I do that? Because wow has become a cash cow for blizzard. Let me explain.

When I first started playing we had some massive amounts of things to do. Instances like crazy. Slowly we had updates that would expand on the instances, thus giving us even more things to do. I helped lead a very successful guild. We raided all the major raids, spent 8 hours a night raiding. I would work all day, come home take a nap, get up by 9 pm raid til the morning get up and start all over again. 5-7 days a week, never bored always doing something.

I did this until Burning crusade. I raided for a while had to take a break and chilled out. Came back and started playing with my gf and her parents. But this time I started over from scratch from lvl 1. So we leveled fast because I had friends that where geared and I knew how to level due to my exp in playing these types of games. So we get to max level and start raiding. Well all in all there was too much to do. Crafting was insane, I helped her dad farm for this bad ass mace that ruled in pvp. It took us 8 hours of farming to get the mats. In pvp you didn't get faced rolled with non-arena gear, you could stand toe to toe and lose but at least you could hold your own.

So yea--pre BC and after BC--the game was epic, fun, lots of shit to do. In fact you never ran out of things to do with ur guild. Only thing holding you back was guild members leaving and having to fill their spots. That was the only pain in the butt. Now...

Here comes Wrath of the Lich King. Which when we started it was fkin fun. We leveled at a good pace. Instanced constantly, learned all our new spells and abilities. We raided asap. So we started farming the instances, I became the guild leader early on and started recruiting members. Then I found out something. The crafting system, it sucked. We wanted to get some crafted gear out to people, to advance them. Well the crafted shit sucked. It was as weak as shit coming from instances. So there was no reason to spend time gathering shit.

Only reason to farm was to get herbs to sell on the AH and daily Jewel crafting tokens. This was 2 months into the update. People were alrdy bitching and complaining about nothing to do. So we got through all the content and then just sat there. So we started leveling alts again. Then came ulduar. This place rocked, it was great. But I noticed something, something bad. I noticed people started to not show up as often. Then everything kind of slowed down and we became a ten man guild.

So we spent our time kicking uldaur's ass, taking names and getting gear. While some people where pugging and doing 25 man pugs. So I went on to examine the situation. It seems as though guilds where on a decline, guilds all over our server where dropping like flies. People not showing up, people losing interest in the game. People only showing up to raid then logging off til the following week.

So the only thing keeping people playing the game was pvp and raiding. Crafting sucked, farming sucked, everyone was an enchanter or had an alt that could do it. There was no need in anyone making a new alt for crafting ability because everyone knew everything. They made the game so easy and gave out everything like a cheap whore--that people where bored.

This really got out of hand with the next raid. Because now heroics started to give out tokens that were hard to get in uldaur. Now that just killed uldaur, so all we had was the new content. Which was an arena style which was a 6 boss encounter. No trash, nothing--just boss fights. 45 mins and done. Now people would only come online to do a few heroics and once a week for 45 mins in this new raid. People got pissed.

We had many months of this, I myself had 8 80s geared to their teeth. Then came Ice crown and 3 new heroics to enjoy. Everyone was happy again. For the first few months. Then we came to realise, with heroics, TOC was useless. The only time it was fun to do the arena was if everyone was bored. So back to the new heroics and ice crown. Well after a lil while people were bored to tears with the new heroics and ice crown was just getting started. Since it was the only thing we did everyone got tired of it in record time. I personally was doing ICC 8 times a week, I had my warlock, my pally tank, my war tank, shaman healer, rogue, mage....You get the point.

So yea, crafting sucked, farming felt pointless, pvp was all about arena and with arena gear you could just destroy non-arena geared people like ticks on a dog's ass. Heroic dungeons (wow...the same heroic we've been doing since WOTLK started) got boring 4 months into it. So for the whole WOTLK expansion this was all we had for raids: uldaur/ICC, naxx was a rehash, the only places were 1 boss encounters. The new heroics where streamlined for fast as hell game play. So people got bored with them. Blizzard really dropped the ball. Or maybe it was designed like this.

What do you think they did?..sat on their asses n collected income. Then get this. They make pets that you have to buy with real world money. Then a mount you have to buy with real world money. You know what I dislike about this? Free to play MMORPG's charge you for this stuff. You know why they charge you? Because this way they get income to continue to provide these games for free. Blizzard has been banking on us for years and NOW they start to charge for jack shit stuff.

I am going to warn everyone, this is just a taste of things to come. Blizzard has become so high on the hog and banking on everyone's stupidity. I say screw that, they have to earn my money. You know what really gets my goat? When I stopped my account, I got no email, nothing of concern as to why I was leaving. Now--even AOL would have begged me in some kind of fashion to come back or to lower my cost for a lil while. Now I hate aol--but this goes to show you that Blizzard couldn't give a shit about any of us.

We're all just money in their bank accounts.