Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Having Fun, One Minute After Another

So I've been playing my hunter a lot. Dinged 49 today and headed back to Feralas for some unfinished business, but not before dragging my guild mistress along. All I had to say was "Cute NCP!" and she was there. After much running around and murdering tauren like there was no tomorrow and numerous AFKs (stop interrupting my WoW, real life!), she and I ended up in the Hinterlands with our very own Sprite Darter Hatchlings. Utter cuteness. Jealously was inspired amongst many and now I have to go back to Feralas to help my guildies get theirs too. I don't mind. Free experience is free.

I logged after showing off the baby dragon- thing and went for a walk. It's a beautiful day and I just had to enjoy it. But as I was walking, my thoughts drifted to an old friend of mine who recently quit WoW. Not like I didn't see it coming a mile away, but it was kind of sad. We both ran gnome mages, leveled and instanced together and hit 70 about the same time. Watching good folks go is never easy.

But why did he quit when I haven't? Same classes, even the same spec for a while. He had almost the exact same gameplay experience I did. Hell, we were in the same guild most of the time.

Then it dawned on me. When Hallow's End came last year (right about when I first started), I got my candy and costumes and had a blast. Then New Years brought fireworks and hours in Stormwind City getting e- drunk. I did all the Valentine's quests for both my mage and my (oft- lamented) pally. Children's Week? Peanut is all the proof I need. My mage picked up the worg pup from LBRS (the spiders are icky. No thanks).

While I was doing these random things that didn't give me money or experience, he was grinding and powerleveling. While I whored myself on LFG (and having one great PuG experience after another), he got high levels to run him through instances to finish quests and get gear. He got epic drop after epic drop. He had more gold than he knew what to do with. I struggled to get vendor trash from mobs and barely had enough gold to buy my mounts.

If anything, I should've quit way before he did. My poor mage had no breaks and his had all of them.

He hated his mage. With a passion. He burned himself out. While I hate tooting my own horn, I was a much better player than he was, even if it did take me longer to max out. I honestly believe the reason I am still playing now is because I have taken the time to do the "useless" things in the game. It's kept me sane. It's kept me playing and learning my class and spending $15 a month to continue to have these experiences.

What this entire post boils down to is, I suppose, this: have fun. Do the things you want to do. Do you want every "Flimsy Male/Female ______ Mask," go for it. You enjoy your bizarre ret spec on that pally with the Stormpike Insignia? Don't listen to folks who say "Go Holy or Prot, Retnub." You want to Arena with a 0/0/61 build on your mage? For that matter, do you want to Arena with your hunter at all? Be the best you can be at it.

But most importantly, have fun.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree completely! My son has about quit playing WoW a few times. The first was due to a guild pushing this a little too far with how he should play his class. The second was due to the difference between how he things a pally should be played and how the game actually makes you play one (fingers crossed for 2.3). But after all that I think you hit the nail on the head. He made it to serious to just chill out and have fun. It had become 'old hat' to him and it was more work than wow. Anyway, just my 2 cents.

Pike said...

Definite agreement from me too... even though I just started playing WoW this year, I decided from the start that I was really going to focus on "fun" with this game. I've played games before that I used to love, and then I would take them too seriously and before long the game had turned into a job that I was playing because I "had" to. I'm not going to let that happen with this game-- or at least, I'm going to try my hardest not to.

Zball said...

That's definitely the way to be, I think. I have my 70 and, honestly I'm bored with it. So I tried something else. Not only am I leveling faster, but I'm having more fun doing it and seeing so much of the work Blizzard put into the game.

MeatShield said...

Gotcha! Having fun with the game is the way to go! If you want epics from SSC, but you like your Survival spec as a hunter then you find a guild that works with you.

For me, I rely heavily on friends. I like the game, but its not THAT much fun. With friends it is another social connection with people from around the world. You share gold, toss a few items a friends way, provide tips and tricks, as well as over all fun and madness.