After seven months of playing the game, I have decided to stop, likely for good. I started playing WoW right before this expansion after seeing some ads and deciding that I had a bunch of free time coming up, so I might as well dip my toe into the WoW scene. I almost left the game a few times within the first couple of weeks. I have never felt so alone in a multiplayer game as when I am out in the world questing. Players from other realms might as well be bots because there was never any reason for us to group up or even talk. I’m usually not outgoing, but I made the effort to talk to people when I saw them—if I saw them—but usually got no replies or felt like I was pestering them from doing whatever they were doing.
I started using the dungeon finder tool, and that made me long for the lonely questing. Dungeon after dungeon, nobody talked unless it was to flame the tank for taking a less optimal path or accidentally pulling additional mobs. The pace was always absolutely breakneck, pulling as fast and efficiently as anyone could. It mostly felt like I was walking in a parade where nobody speaks, maybe a funeral procession full of people who did not want to be there at all. I found a guild for a bit and stuck around because they said it was better at the end game, so I was determined to give the game an honest shake.
I got to the maximum level and started doing dungeons, delves, and raids, like most everyone else. The speedrun mentality chafes against my expectations that part of an MMORPG is enjoying the journey, being social, and exploring. The dungeons I did were possibly even more asocial than the ones while leveling up. I say asocial because generally, people are not toxic or outwardly hostile in this game like some others I have played, but generally, they say nothing at all unless something is wrong. Luckily for me, I rolled a class that could heal, and I think I did an alright job of it, so I avoided the problems DPS players have with getting into groups. I was able to push nearly to 2500 in my first season and got AOTC with a guild. I know that’s not saying a lot by the standards of the players, but it felt good to me being my first season in the game. Unfortunately, those good times were a small percentage of the time I spent in the game. Even with a highly active guild to do keys with, most of the time I was still in PUG life, and that shouldn’t be such an awful time, but in this game, it is. It’s difficult to explain, but content that is easy enough to be pugged is pugged, and the nature of PUG in this game is asocial.
What eventually pushed me out of the game has been the game and support. When I started the game as a Tauren Druid, that was my class fantasy because I love Minotaurs and nature stuff. When I saw that Tauren heritage armor set, I knew I had to get it. Unfortunately, the last quest for that armor is highly buggy. I would complete the objectives and be unable to turn in the quest as I had multiple versions of Baine in my Thunder Bluff. I tried this over and over again. I looked online for workarounds to make it work, but those didn’t either. Eventually, I opened a ticket in the game. It is REALLY hard to open a ticket in this game, like they do not want you to do that. I explained the issue completely and calmly, but the gamemaster who responded to me just directed me back to the WoWhead article I had already tried and to open a bug report. I really found this to be poor service, to direct me to a third-party website where I had told them I had already been to resolve the issue. I found others on the forums with the same problem going back six years, and it had not been addressed, so I just added onto one of those posts. It’s okay though, I tried a few more attempts. After it didn’t work 10 or so more times, and after getting help from a guildie to help me kill the spirit faster, I gave up and race-changed to the Highmountain Tauren to get their heritage armor.
Eventually, I made another Tauren Hunter, and shockingly, the quest worked for him. That was my moment of triumph because I could just use that appearance on my Druid now if I made him Tauren again, so I did (really getting expensive here, but I am a Tauren enthusiast, and there is inelastic demand when it comes to me and anything with a totem). My Tauren Druid was eventually decked out in his heritage armor, ready to go to Thunder Bluff, march around, and RP… except now my entire Mulgore area is stuck in the corruption-looking stuff of that quest. I do not have the quest to abandon, there are no quest givers in the area, the spirit to defeat is unattackable, and there are multiple Baines standing around. I have this issue in Stormwind as well. There are at least three Anduins in that keep now.
I opened another ticket, and much like the first time, I was told to open a bug report. There are so many broken things in the old world that when I wanted to do Loremaster, I needed to have WoWhead up on the second monitor just to read comments to find workarounds for the bugs. The game feels like it is in disrepair, with the only focus being on the instanced portions of the end game. It doesn’t feel like a world to me, and it doesn’t feel like there is much love or attention on things that are not somehow related to some sort of e-sports thing or microtransaction. I get that some people really like MDI or whatever, but the idea of an MMO being an esport is like putting mustard on your spaghetti. The feel is really off here.
With all that out, I am leaving the game. No, you can’t have my stuff, yada yada.