My Warcraft and Waning Passion.

This is something I think about a bit.

      What is the drive to run around in Azeroth swinging a big sword in a virtual environment?  I will be honest, I have tried other MMOs, but none have been able to pull me in like World of Warcraft has.

     Of course, I pushed myself to get into this at the beginning.  It was something my siblings where doing that looked interesting.  Many first toons where created and deleted as I leveled and played around.  As a matter of fact, if I hadn't been this way my first main character would have been a warlock.  Or a rogue.  Those where the two classes That interested me the most at first.

     Then I decided to try a gnome mage.  Pyreknight was born and leveled as fire.  He didn't level cap until Burning Crusade was live, but he was the first character that I kept pushing until he made that far.  When I got there I was able to learn to dungeon it was with the help of me brudderplaying his then warrior Llyria as a tank.  Gwen would heal on her druid, Me, my wife, and my brother-in-law would dps on rogue, mage, and hunter.  There was a lot of stumbling and figuring things out as we went.  But it was good times.

     About the end of Burning Crusade, beginning of Wrath is the first time I think the story actually started mattering to me.  Before that it was going in, lighting stuff on fire, and getting out was my game.  I was going into fights not caring about backstory or why this big dude in front of me deserved a fireball to the face, or an arrow as my hunter Lazyeye eventually started to take over being my main.  I just cared about the fun of the fight.

    Arthas changed that.  I knew his name, I'd played a little bit of Warcraft III and now I had a villain I was a little familiar with.  I started paying attention to what was going around me and the who and why of things.  I bought Warcraft III and played through to get a grasp on the "what happened before."  Then when our tank defected from the raid team I power leveled a DK to learn to tank on to keep us going.  (Quick note, the tank defecting was not my brother.)  The dose of story in the DK gave that character a little bit more meaning to me.  However, in Trial of the Champions I got sick of the fact my DK would just die in three hits with some bad RNG from the boss, and I started leveling Lag.  My mostly main ever since.

    Lag had started out as a joke.  He was a dwarf who would get into trade and complain about how nobody like "Lag" and all he ever wanted to be was loved.  It was fun to see people virtually roll their eyes at the bad joke my character was.  He would even get mad and say things like "lag has killed more players in this game then you ever will..."

     Not liking the animations of dwarfs (and lets be honest, they aren't that great to look at) I rerolled as a human.  This time leveling I payed attention to the dialog of the quests.  I made sure I understood what was going on around me.  The story was important.  I refused to leave areas until I finished their quests and I still managed to climb quickly to a point where I could take over for my DK as the tank.  Lag was geared and ready before we stepped into the bastion of ICC.

    Since that time the story had driven my passion as much as the game play itself.  While I love my guildies, I am mostly a solo player.  I enjoy a good raid, but I enjoy just leveling and poking at things on my own quite a bit too.  I have a bit of social anxiety in the game as I have a hard time getting to know new players, or trying new groups because it just makes me nervous.  This is why I have characters in AIE and Convert to raid, but I don't talk much.  I just listen to what people have to say and pay attention.  I haven't grouped much with either guild as well because I just haven't gotten that comfortable in there.

    Warlords has strained my passion a lot as well.  I feel the endgame story has been severely lacking compared to what we saw in Pandaria and it has effected my desire to play.  I felt there was not clear drive going into Highmaul.  We are going to fight ogres.  Cool, why?  Iron horde member is in there.  Well we killed him first, why not leave?  Story wise while the Ogres where a threat, they didn't feel like something we needed to completely focus on.  When we went to the Blackrock Foundry and decided to kill Blackhand that felt more like it.  We where fighting Iron horde and this felt important to the story.

     But we were not getting story outside of the raid.  The legendary quest involved us having to raid.  The dailies and garrison quests where all the stuff we where doing from the start of the raid cycle.  There was the weekly garrison quest, but once you finished that, then what?

      When the current raid Hellfire Citadel dropped I was looking forward to more.  Tanaan Jungle here we come!

       But all we got was a drop.

      There was a quick shipyard quest which soon became more dailies to manage that was just clicking a button, oh and this time you can be punished by not succeeding and you can lose that ship you worked so hard to level up.  Ha Ha.

     Tanaan Jungle had little story in it to me as well.  Cool, we are here.  We have a base, and now... now just sit there and hope something interesting happens.  Oh, you've explored everything.  Well at least you have the raid.  You wanted storyline?  Raid.

      No isle of thunder where different objectives unlocked things.  No Krasarang wilds where we where involved in an unfolding story line as we brought our armies to a new land.  Nothing to pull me in for more then a few hours of grinding.

      Needless to say my passion for this game has waned a bit.  Going back to school and having less time hasn't helped.  I am looking forward to Legion but if the story is left on the ground like this, I will continue to struggle.  I won't quit.  I have my guild and my friends.  Logging on to do extra things though, we will see.

     I have high hopes because Cataclysm which was largely complained about led us into Pandaria which is my second favorite expansion, after Wrath.

      There will be other challenges as well.  With my new job raid nights are going to shift to Monday, and Tuesday night.  The other nights I'm going to be working.  That means another shift and another hope that folks will be able to shift as well.  School is going to be a thing for me for at least another year.  That means my time is cut down significantly.

     Blizzard, I love your game.  Please draw me back in again.  Give me more than one or two NPCs I can care about, (Bye Yrell) and let me have the story outside the raid.  Feel important to me.

Lag.