Mordiceius' Gaming Blog Flying Away on a Wing and a Prayer

Knowing When to Quit

Okay so when I wrote this post, I was not expecting it to be so long. I apologize for the length in advance.

I have been raiding without significant break for the last three years. I started playing World of Warcraft in October 05, almost a year after it had come out. I had just joined the Air Force and was in technical training school. There was a cyber cafe there with a group of people that started the game and were playing Alliance on the Sargeras server. I started as a human paladin and only made it to level 20. I rerolled as a night elf rogue and made it to level 38.

When I finished up my tech school in January 06, I got sent to the base I currently work at. Here, I found that quite a few people played WoW and almost all of them played together as Horde on the Bleeding Hollow server. I joined their guild as Mordiceius, the undead priest. The Ahn'Qiraj patch had recently come out and everyone was working towards the War Effort. My guild was killing Ragnaros on a weekly basis and getting ready to start Blackwing Lair. My very first raid was Easter Sunday.

In the following months, I raided MC countless times, I went and killed Nefarion, we got up to Sartura in AQ40 and killed Razuvious and Anub'renkan in Naxxramas. My guild was so big that at one time we even had TWO Molten Core raids going on at the same time. When Blizzard announced that Burning Crusade would be giving paladins to the Horde, I was one of the first volunteers to reroll. I leveled an orc hunter to 60 and used that hunter to farm gear for my paladins so from 20-60 I could have blues that I would constantly swap out as I leveled. When Burning Crusade came out, I was the 6th blood elf to 70 on my server. The day I hit 70, I ran Arcatraz to finish off my Karazhan attunement and I attended the raid, helping my guild get their very first Prince Malchezzar kill.

Throughout Burning Crusade I did some guild swapping and though, I was never in the top guild on the server, we were generally on the bleeding edge of progression. We had our Tempest Keep, Serpentshine Cavern, Mount Hyjal and Black Temple attunements before those attunements were removed. My guild was up to the Eredar twins in Sunwell when 3.0 came out.

Currently, my guild is working on Yogg-Saron in 25man Ulduar.

Through all this time, I never really had more than a one month break from raiding (not counting the level up time when an expansion launched). I think that in all this time, I may have had about three different one month breaks from raiding where I went and played other games. There have been many times over the past years where I felt I was missing out on events due to being committed to a raid schedule. If I am in a raiding guild and do not show up, I am letting 25+ people down. Sure, it is just a video game, but there are still people on the other end of that computer.

A lot of people bemoan the change of Blizzard's raiding design to a more casual focus, but at this point I cannot help but praise it. If raiding still required the same commitment as vanilla WoW, I would have had to quit a long time ago. When I started playing WoW, I was single without anything important on my plate and so I could afford to spend many ours in raids and even more hours farming for those raids. I cannot make that commitment anymore.

The last two weeks, I have been dreading approaching raid times. While in a raid, I am only ever anxious for the raids to be over. I love all the people I raid with, but I just would often rather be doing other things. I can barely focus in raids anymore and that makes me a liability to the raid.

So many people talk about how Blizzard's shift in raid design takes away from the sense of accomplishment you receive when you kill bosses. Well personally, I have never raided for that. I raided for the social experiences. I never think back to the times we fought certain bosses, I only think back to all the different actions and personalities of the people in the raids. And this it what makes it hard for me to quit. Those that play just for the purples can come and go freely and not feel an attachment. When you play for the social experience, friendships can drift apart since you do not spend so much time raiding together anymore.

I am not quitting World of Warcraft, I just do not want to be tied down right now. No matter what doom and gloom people talk about, I think it is a great time to be a gamer. There are so many different games out there that I just want to be able to come and go freely. I do not want a responsibility to 25 other people at this time in my life. It is time for me to move on.