Thanks for the memories!

June 9, 2008

It’s been quite a while since you’ve heard from me, and Softi recently gave me a poke to see if I was still alive.  Rest assured I am still alive and kicking, but have been avoiding writing this blog post. 

As you can surmise from the title, I have decided to move on; not just from this blog, but also from World of Warcraft. 

That really is the short story, and if you you’re not interested in why I’ve quit or my parting thoughts on WoW, fellow bloggers, and life, then you can stop reading now and not really miss anything.  Really - you won’t offend me.  In fact, the rest of the post is intended for those readers who have been with me for a while.  As much as you can develop a “friendship” in an anonymous, online environment, there are several of you out there I feel that way towards.  And I’m also sure there are many more out there who don’t have their own blogs and have never commented on mine, that feel that way towards me.  At least I hope so.  There may never be an Amanna’s Army reunion, but that doesn’t mean we won’t miss each other.

Why I’m moving on

For those of you that have read this blog for a while, you know that my wife and I have had our share of struggles over the past year.  I’m not the melodramatic sort, and I’m certainly not one to air my personal life in public, but there have been a couple posts where I shared when we separated last summer, reunited in the Fall, and began having some problems again a few months back.

I’m happy to report that things are going well with us.  I’m sure the grown-ups in the crowd can appreciate the challenges and subtleties required to keep a marriage strong and positive.  If there are storybook relationships out there, I haven’t come across any.  Most married couples I know (including several friends in long-term committed relationships), subscribe to the philosophy that “marriage is hard work”. 

Personally, it’s taken me a while to come around to that way of thinking.  I always came from the “it shouldn’t be this hard” camp.  What I’ve come to appreciate, even though I always knew it, is that people are complex beings.  Even if there is such a thing as perfect matches, it’s just not that simple.  You’re having a bad day when I’m having a good one; I say something you take the wrong way; money issues; free time issues; etc. etc. - there are just so many ways that even the best relationship can get strained from time to time.

Add on top of all that, both my wife and I are high-end control takers, very set in each of our ways, with extremely well-developed personalities, who got married later in life (me 39, her 30).  So let’s just say we have our challenges.

There is an upside to challenging relationships though.  I truly believe there is a balance to everything, and the fact that we have to work so hard from time to time to balance our relationship just means there is really something great there to fight for.  We are both over-achievers and when we set our minds to accomplishing personal goals together, I truly believe there is nothing that can stop us. 

There is also an added depth to our relationship with each other.  You come together and get married because you love each other.  People may say that over time that initial headrush of love may mellow, and I suppose they are right.  But tough times are the crucible in which love is forged into something much greater than a simple melange of emotion and hormones: you now have something you have both fought for.  Even as initial feelings have mellowed, stronger feelings emerge as you realize you have something you don’t want to give up.  There is an intimacy born of familiarity that can only be appreciated in a long-term relationship.  Whereas a new relationship is intense, it is shallow; long term relationships have the potential to be much deeper and wider.

So it was in this context of committing to our relationship that we shared with each other a very small number of issues that each of us were just having a hard time getting past.  One of the issues my wife had was World of Warcraft.  Surprise, surprise, right?  For all of you out there that play this game and are in a relationship with a person that doesn’t, especially someone who isn’t into gaming at all, they have a hard time understanding our seeming addiction to the game.  That was my wife.

Yet, it’s not as simple as “she just doesn’t understand”.  I did play the game too much; and in a unfortunate paradox, played even more the worse our relationship got.  We both had ways to avoid confrontation, even each other, and WoW was my main.  I hope it goes without saying that no one has ever resolved marital issues by playing a computer game to the exclusion of meaningful dialogue. 

Yes, I felt it was unfair.  Yes, I felt I was being asked to give up something I greatly enjoyed.  If I was honest I even had thoughts along the lines of “if I give this up, then what’s next?”.  Yes, I am that immature from time to time. 

In the end, I came to two realizations:

1. There was a strong part what she said that I couldn’t argue with.  I did play a lot.  I am a very competitive person, and simply playing a couple hours a week was never enough for me.  First there were professions to be leveled, then there was level 60 (then 70) to be attained, then more gear, then raids.  There was always something to do, and it was all great fun.  Even though I predominantly played after my wife went to bed, it added up.   I also found it very hard to resist playing over the weekend from time to time.  My wife is not a bitch; in fact she largely was fairly laid back about my playing most of the time.  I don’t feel I was addicted in the classic sense, I simply loved playing - it was the best computer game I ever played.  So when you added up after-hours play and weekend play it was quite a bit.  Also, I had to admit from a priority point of view, I often would pick playing the game over household to-do’s I should have been accomplishing.
2. More to my wife’s point I think is that she felt I valued WoW over her.  She wasn’t asking me to change 50 things in my life, or give up everything I enjoyed doing, just this one thing that drove her crazy.  This was no more unreasonable a request than the couple items I asked her to re-evaluate in her life that drove my crazy.  This was the clincher for me.  I was totally prepared to negotiate a play schedule if that’s what it took, but if your loved one says there are 1 or 2 things you need to change to save your marriage, then you have a choice, don’t you?  In the end I think it was really that simple:  WoW isn’t killing our marriage, but you need to choose between the two.  I chose my marriage.

To my fellow bloggers

When I started this blog, I really had to search to find WoW blogs.  I really, really had to search to find Druid blogs.  It has been quite a ride starting as one of the seminal Druid blogs out there and watching the explosion of blogs, Druid and otherwise, around World of Warcraft.  Now we have Blog Azeroth, and just so many good Wow and Druid blogs it’s really hard to keep track of them all. 

It will be very hard to put Adventures in Azeroth to bed, but not as hard now that there are such good Druid blogs to replace me - most if not all probably more informative than this blog ever was.  It shouldn’t take you too long to search out the really good ones.  There are several by playstyle that come to mind.  I’d really rather you find them on your own, there really shouldn’t be any surprises, but for those of you who would rather be lazy, here are my recommendations (with my profound apologies to anyone I may forget):

Balance

• Gray Matter- blogger with three toons all with ”gray” in their title, currently in Hyjal.  His posts on playing a Moonkin are worth checking out, along with lots of gear and gem information.  This is really the only Balance blog I’ve read since Balance of Power went dark.

Feral

• Big Butt Blogger- Cranky ex-Marine turned feral druid.  Has a lot of good stories to tell along with good, useful Druid advice and theorycrafting.  John’s distractions have grown over the past few months (alts, WoW Insider column, etc.) so the detailed insights have become farther apart, but an entertaining read.
• Ferocious Bite- Currently on “sabbatical of unknown length”, add FB to your reader and hope for new posts.  Lots of solid posts on instances (including strategy and kill vids), crafting and questing, etc.  I always looked forward to FB posts.
• Of Teeth and Claws- A self-proclaimed “casual tank”, Karthis is T5 level and always shares detailed information on encounters.

Resto

• Resto4Life- Almost the only blog you need as a Resto druid.  Phaelia, Resto Druid, stylesheet goddess and founder/creator of Blog Azeroth, never disappoints with her insights and valuable guidance. 
• 4Haelz - Another must read for restos, just remember to put on your sunglasses before linking through to the blog.  Good insight, along with the ever-popular gear lists.

Two other Must-Reads (IMO)

• Tobold- Great insight into MMORPG’s in general, with a natural focus lately on WoW (some Conan).  For insightful, thoughtful, intelligent commentary sadly missing from most writers in the genre, Tobold consistently delivers.  If you are a troll, immature, belligerent, think the world revolves around you, or a just a general asshat - please do not visit Tobold.  At the very least, don’t tell him I sent you.
• The Ancient Gaming Noob- MMORPG player who currently appears focused on Eve Online first, WoW second.  Decent insight and commentary; what I like about this blog the most is it appears the writer only plays WoW one or two nights a week with the same group, all around mid-60s in level.  They aren’t rushing for gear, they don’t QQ when something bad happens - they just play the game to have fun with each other.  I love reading the recaps of their weekend instance runs.

Like many of you, I use a feed reader to follow a number of WoW blogs, some of which I will probably still follow even as I’ve quit playing.  There are good number of other blogs that found their way into my reader somehow, that I will not miss following.  I may be a grumpy old blogger, but some of you really drove me crazy.  I offer the following advice primarily to those bloggers (and NO I am not going to name names):

• First and foremost:  SAY SOMETHING!!!  I really don’t care how long it took you to drive to work, what kind of coffee you like, or what you did last night between 7:13 and 7:20.  There - got that out of my system.  I do realize blogs are by nature personal and I myself did not always write specifically WoW-related posts, but this trend I see toward inane, meaningless personal trivia meant to do nothing more than self-promote is something I will not miss.
• Be fair.  We are all the first to share our disgust with forum and comment trolls, do not think that just because you are a public blogger that you can make the same type of comments and they are any less disgusting.   You are not “justified” acting the same way, nor is “I usually don’t talk this way” an excuse.  As a blogger, your words are your actions.
• Pet peeve here, but stop using that darn “more” tag.  I hate it when WoW Insider uses it too, but at least I can understand them using it as a commercial entity and all; that’s their business.  Write your post and publish it.  If there is value in it, then I’ll click through to your site eventually.  If you continually put “more” tags in your posts, then unless you have unusually high value content, you will be removed from my feed list (and many of you have been).  Why do you need it anyway?  Obsessed over your blog stats?  Trying to drive more traffic to your Cafe Press store?  It may just be me, but I just want to read what you have to say.
• Endless self-promotion: Stop.  Now.

Adventures In Azeroth will stay live since it is still getting a decent number of hits from searches.  Most of that I expect to tail off as the new expansion grows closer.  Eventually, I will take the blog down. 

Open Comments to the Blizzard WoW Team

First and foremost, a hearty Thank You for producing simply the best computer game I have ever played.  I have been primarily an RPG gamer since the early days of Wizardry on an Apple IIe, and World of Warcraft has been the most engaging, most enjoyable gaming experience I have ever had with number two far behind.

You are not without your challenges though, both in the current game implementation and looking forward.  While I recently quit playing WoW, it was not because of gameplay issues as you probably read above.  All things being equal, I would love to still be playing.  While I played WoW far longer than any other computer game I ever owned, I had found my interest level starting to suffer a bit over the last few months. 

Let’s put my profile into perspective.  First of all, I am not a PvPer.  Never enjoyed that in any game.  I am a level 70 NE Druid.  I typically played around 15 hours a week, give or take.  I did raid, although due to guild issues both around 60 and 70, raiding did not constitute the majority of my gameplay.  I levelled multiple professions, changed my mind a couple times, then re-levelled the ones I stuck with.  For all these reasons, and more, I feel I represent a fairly typical member of your core target market.  I could be wrong here, but that’s the assumption I’m making.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that even if I am in your core market that the issues I see with your game are shared amongst others.  But you have a great product that I was starting to get frustrated with.  So, making the obviously conceited assumption that you are at all interested in my comments, here they are:

1. First of all, quit funneling new content into remote areas.  I think one of WoW’s biggest selling points is the social aspect of the game.  I’ll never forget as a young Night Elf, rounding the corner out of Stormwind into Goldshire only to stop and gawk at the activity in the town square.  There were duels in progress, little flying dragons as pets and characters of all levels and classes interacting in any variety of ways.  That moment I knew this game was something special and I was hooked.  I doubt you would see the same scene these days in Goldshire as everyone races through “low-level” content to get into Outland now, Northrend in the future.  I really think you’re dropping the ball here Blizzard.  Social is so much more than guilds and raids; it was getting help from a level 60 that just happened to be in my zone for some reason, it was the center of Ironforge on a Saturday night, and it was seeing people everywhere, not just in Outland.
2. Don’t forget the small things, and I don’t mean gnomes.  I’m talking about little features off the beaten path, caves in the middle of nowhere, skydiving off the Twin Colassus, etc. etc.  I never had played a game so rich in both the main questlines, but also in the attention to detail and variety.  I can’t put my finger on it, but it feels like the attention to detail and variety started to suffer in the first expansion.
3. I’ll add my voice to others calling for more attention to mid-level content.  Not only do I believe you need to keep the entire game fresh, not just the newest zones, I also think you need to integrate new content if not entire expansions into the existing world instead of entirely new zones/continents/realms.  Sure Outland existing on the other side of the Dark Portal made a lot of sense and greatly added to gameplay.  I’m not suggesting you change that.  I just think you could have better integrated the rest of Azeroth into the expansion.  You turned on the portal and BAM!, Azeroth was empty.  The same thing is going to repeat for WotLK.  You may think it’s a waste of time upgrading the rest of Azeroth when you have an expansion to work on, but to me it’s building re-playability.  This really hit me when you didn’t take the time to make flying mounts work outside of Outland.  Yes - I hear you.  That would have taken a lot of time and resources and you were trying to get the expansion out of the door.  My response - you are making money hand over fist and I simply don’t buy that you don’t have the resources.  Your mantra has always been that you will release a game or expansion “when it’s ready”.  So don’t tell me you didn’t have the resources, it wasn’t a priority.
4. Power-leveling.  I certainly don’t have the answers here, but I agree with Tobold that this is something that needs fixed.  As more and more expansions come out the process of levelling a new character is going to become more and more tedious, not to mention less fun.  Either the experience multiplier is going to get bigger with each expansion meaning I’ll never complete any questlines in a zone, or it will stay the same, meaning the process will take that much longer.  Hopefully you have some folks working on this.

Just to re-iterate though.  This was hands-down the best game I’ve ever played Blizzard.  Well done.  I hope you have a long and successful run and I look forward to other games you may release.  I just recently read that Diablo 3 may be coming out, which I will certainly be looking forward to.

So, for all of you still reading…

Thanks for reading my blog.  Thanks for all your comments, well wishes and support.  Most of all,

Thanks for the memories!

Posted in World of Warcraft