In my last post I said that everything I write about Warcraft is negative right now, meaning less said the better. Well I wouldn’t read this then, it’s hardly a ray of sunshine. When the pre-order announcement went live, all the Warcraft people I follow on twitter lit up in their enthusiasm, I just felt even more negative. I said in my last post that I was basically asking myself should I quit, the answer being rather obviously yes. I also said that I wasn’t ready.

I have tried to give myself time. I have tried to ensure that I’m not rushing into any decision that I will come to regret. I have waited and waited in the hope that something would change. Nothing has and I’m sick of waiting.

I should never have started playing other games.

Warcraft was the first real game I ever played. I thought it was incredible and I couldn’t imagine a day ever coming when I wanted to stop playing. I started playing at the end of Wrath, so my first real expansion cycle was Cataclysm. Dragon Soul was out 10 months, I basically quit raiding in April, five months after it was released. The raid was cleared, I’d done a couple of heroic bosses but I didn’t care about heroic then, and I don’t care about heroic now. I was done. The next five months I leveled alts till I had 9/10 max level classes, I completed hundreds of achievements, I maxed professions, I got loremaster. I did a lot as I still had a lot to do.

I don’t have anything to do this time.

Well that’s not strictly true, there’s a lot of things I could do. I finally got my Herald alt to level 80, so gearing that and killing Alagon is something to do. I’m not exalted with that timeless isle guy yet, my only remaining non-pvp reputation to max. There’s a few other achievements, various mounts and pets to grind for. There are things to do if I think about it, with Warcraft there is always something to do.

I don’t have the wide-eyed wonder and enthusiasm. I lost that.

The game was still pretty new to me during the Cataclysm downtime, I had lots of the easy/silly achievements to do. I did get a little jaded back then but the release of Mists was soon enough I didn’t worry. There are a lot of things I could do in Warcraft now, but I don’t have the drive to do them, at some point I stopped caring.

Blizz really screwed this one.

It’s not a popular opinion. On WoWInsider, they were deleting people’s comments, where people were saying that blizz had dropped the ball. The thing is blizz did brilliantly for a year, they released all Mists content at perfect timing. Some people said it was too fast, some said it was still too slow, for me it was a reasonable balance. On occasions I was impatient for the next patch to drop but who doesn’t like new and shiny? If they had only released it slower, spread those patches out a little more. Then we wouldn’t be looking at a year, potentially longer, it could be up to fifteen months, of patch 5.4.

An insult to injury.

Warlords costs $10 more than previous expansions. This could just be them increasing the price to match inflation, or it could be to try and make the level 90 boost seem more valuable. I don’t really understand the level 90 boost. I hate levelling but it doesn’t add anything to the game, it’s not new content. It just gives you a shortcut so you can grind the same things on a new alt, as you have already done on your main for the last six months. Plus it requires you pay for the expansion now, in the past I would already have done so, I bought Mists the second it went on pre-order. Now? Now I think the money is better served sitting in my bank account than in blizz’s.

Beta still isn’t out yet. It’s almost halfway through March.

The expansion is coming ‘fall of 2014’, it’s going to be a year or more of 5.4. A year of paying to access nothing new. In the past I never questioned the subscription model. When I divided how much I played vs how much it cost, well it was really cheap entertainment. However, now I do question it. What is blizz giving us for our money? Like I said I should never have started playing other games, it means I make comparisons. We pay for the game, we pay for the expansions, we pay to access what we’ve already paid for. Enough is enough. I don’t expect people to agree with me. In the past I would have agreed with them, I would have said “don’t let the door hit me on the way out”, because what’s the point in complaining like this about a game? Just quit already and leave, if you don’t like it, we don’t want you here.

It’s not that easy.

I did a /played on my main the other day. I won’t say how long it was, it was a lot. That doesn’t take into account my alts, the characters I’ve leveled for starting zones and deleted. I’ve played a lot since I first joined January 30th 2010. I’ve invested a lot of money, and far more importantly, a lot of time into this game. Everything I’ve done will still be there if I come back, frozen waiting, but that’s cold comfort.

This might just be me.

My twitter feed lit up with enthusiasm. I actually looked through a few bloglists to see if I could find someone as disenchanted as I am, I haven’t. Maybe, it’s just because of where I am right now. The other games I’m playing and comparing Warcraft to, the place I am with my life generally. I could be blaming blizz’s decisions on something that would have happened anyway. I don’t know, I don’t think so but it may well be a combination. I would likely be less inclined to quit if I was happy in the game but lots of things contribute to happiness. The last time I considered quitting was because the guild I was in wasn’t a good fit. I’m not entirely happy with my guild right now either, different reasons but same result.

I was talking with a friend and said I was thinking of quitting, they said “you can’t, you won’t know what to do with yourself” and there’s some truth in that. I don’t like raiding as much as I am, I never have, but it gives me something different to do on my evenings. Without it, without the team commitment, I won’t have an excuse to play games in the evening. It’ll be TV all evening, all the time, and I don’t want that either. I’m sick of Siege and I don’t know if it’s because of that, but I’m increasingly getting extremely irritated with various members of the raid team. The team and not wanting to let them down, has been mostly what has kept me from pulling the trigger and quitting, I’m rapidly losing that reason.

I quit. I really do. I quit. Are you happy now blizz? I used to be your most ardent defender, I would make excuses for your decisions all day long. I would say “well just because we don’t like it, doesn’t mean that it’s not the right thing to do”, “the playerbase is very diverse” etc. etc. I accepted so much that I didn’t like and didn’t approve of because I believed in this game, I guess I believed that blizz would do something approaching what I thought was the right thing eventually. Now I’m not saying I’m right but I am saying I’ve had enough. I’ve reached the end of my tolerance level. No more excuses, no more support.

Just like ripping off a bandaid.

Enough is finally enough. I can’t do this anymore. Continuing on out of apathy, out of lack of will to say enough is the status quo. I’m nervous, I’m downright scared about upsetting that. This is like a live post now, with what is actually happening. It’s not just theoretical. I just checked and my subscription expires the day after tomorrow. It would do wouldn’t it? Well, one things for certain I’m not renewing for another three months. Another thing is for sure.

I just hit cancel. My account says cancelled, not subscribed and all I feel is relief.

I’ll get a timecard for 30 days, having got that paladin to level 80 it would be a shame not to get Herald of the Titans. Especially given there’s a suspicion it will be removed with the item squish, if I do ever resubscribe I wouldn’t like to have missed it. Plus 30 days will give my guild some time to organise, two days just isn’t enough notice, as I do hate letting people down.

32 days and counting. Decision made, now I just have to tell everyone.