Last night, I canceled my World of Warcraft account after nearly six years of playing the game, but about half a year of inactivity. In those six years, I estimate that I have spent roughly $950 on my subscription. I look back on these years and ask, was it worth it?
The day was November 23, 2004, I was home from my Sophomore year at college for Thanksgiving break, Bush was president, Maroon 5′s “This Love” was just starting to get extremely annoying, and the Star Wars prequel series had yet to end. My brother, a die-hard Warcraft series fan was only talking about one thing, the debut of a massively multiplayer game based in the Warcraft universe, the game was called World of Warcraft and little did I know, it would become a huge part of my life for the next six years.
At the time, I was deep into a game called Star Wars Galaxies, playing consistently every day and because of this I was reluctant to get into WoW. After-all, I was a Jedi in Star Wars Galaxies… a Jedi! How could I leave that behind!?! Looking back on it, Star Wars Galaxies wasn’t that great of a game, I just have a huge affinity for everything Star Wars (see my rant on Star Wars for proof) and the night he bought it, I created a human mage character in World of Warcraft. I named my character Wilow (after the movie Willow, even on the first night the correct spelling was taken) and basically from the second the music started, I knew this was going to be my new game obsession.
The way I always justified the monthly cost to play WoW was that if I played it, I wouldn’t purchase as many $60 games and for the most part this worked. During its best days, Blizzard kept the game extremely fresh and the utter size and complexity of the game made me feel like I still had so much left to do and see. It would be beating a dead gnome for me to talk about the quality of what WoW became through the years.
Finally Hitting Level 80!
As I moved through college, I kept playing. WoW just sort of felt like an extension of life for me, but I swear I never really got to that stereotypical gamer state that so many of you may be thinking. I played very very casually, only hitting the current top level once. It wasn’t really about “winning” or “beating” the game. It was just a nice diversion to pass those quieter times between homework, classes, meals, and going out. It also was a great way to stay connected to my friends from home, and the others at school that also played. Using free trials, I got a number of my friends to play and in its best days, I had over a dozen “real life” friends playing at one time. It was like an exclusive chat room for my friends with a game on top of it.
The largest factor to me staying with World of Warcraft was I got to play with my friends. I can tell you, there was something absolutely addictive to teaming up with 4 other friends and beating a dungeon while joking around and talking about our lives over voice chat. It wasn’t just playing with them that made the game enjoyable, but the bond that was built from us all having one thing in common. Similar to how when the conversation runs dry, “guys” default to sports or “gals” default “shopping”, us nerds always had WoW to talk about. We can tell stories about things that happened in the game like real-life events.
Few games can get to WoW during Christmas level of fun.
Even though Blizzard continues to add new content to the game (in fact, they are revamping the entire world soon), I think it is time I move on and say goodbye to the world of Azeroth and Wilow. Who knows, this may not be forever, but I have not once stopped my subscription in over half a decade. The deciding factor was that since I left school, the people on my friend’s list in game has been dropping and now is vacant. Why? I think we have moved on… and not just to new games. We have moved on into adult jobs, different social circles, some even marriages. Although I know some of us still play, it just will never be what it was.
It is like the end of Toy Story 3, for Andy to move on with his life, he had to let go of his toys. That is WoW for me right now. Believe me, if you read this site you know I still play a lot of video games, but holding on to one with a subscription for pure nostalgia is just silly.
Goodbye Wilow and for perhaps the final time, For the Alliance!
Funny– I just reopened my account after being away from the game for four and a half years. It’s changed a lot, and it seems to mostly be for the better.
They have free servers now, but blizzard doesn’t give out software and the poor guys have to build the servers from scratch, so they are always inherently flawed, but a good fix if your bored and are in the mood for WoWing