Uzghul’s view on the gaming world

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since the Beta came out, starting as a small gnome mage to result into an orc rogue on horde side. I don’t think, apart from the holidays, a week has passed when I did not log into the game, to talk with people, to play a bit, or to farm money. Up until the moment that I joined a “raiding guild” all about it was casual playing around with some friends. The moment I joined a raiding guild the game experience changed. Instead of chosing when to play, I found myself racing home to be in time for the raid, and to be able to quickly farm a few flasks to actually be able to raid. In a nutshell, my wow life existed of coming home, farming, raiding and farming after the raid, to be able to pay repairs and to not be yelled at for not having any potions. Great was the relief when we decided to stop raiding one or two months before The Burning Crusade hit us. A lot of chilling, some pvp, and nothing more. No more stress

The moment TBC arrived, it just started all over. I was one of those standing at the store at midnight waiting for it to open to buy my expansion of World of Warcraft. Home 15 minutes later to install my version and play till 3a.m and then off to work. Racing to level 70 only to see that the top guilds already had people running around with epics (Exalted Aldor) and racing myself through the Karazhan prequest. And all over again, coming home, farming, raiding and raidleading, officer discussing after, farming, and off to work. Problems arose in the guild, I sorted the merger and the conditions of our guild with another guild and on it went again. If I see who was playing with me through the entire track from Karazhan to sunwell, there aren’t many left. Lots of new people joined our team and got geared up, without having to go through all the instances I went through. And now, they got the same gear as me. Having spend so much time on WoW only to see the casual people running around with the same gear is something quite annoying, but it is mainly due to the people’s lack of respect for their guildies when leaving for a guild that is 2 bosses further than due to those newcomers.

So when the baby was born, I gave up raiding. I considered giving up WoW alltogether but I still enjoy the game too much. And not playing WoW would result in playing another game, so I preferred to use the time I already put in the game and focused on Arena. Yes, I still play on certain fixed times, but no need for potions, no insane repair costs, and with the recent changes a REAL display of your skill and what you did (wintraders not counted) instead of everyone running around in Tier6 (a bit exaggerated, but it’s insane how many people we gear up from t4). And only 1,2 or 4 people have to wait a bit when the baby needs attention. So yes, World of Warcraft is still worth it. Raiding is fun, it’s just insane how much of your time it takes to do it properly. I still raid when they really need me, but for the rest I’m chilling in WoW, got time to spend with my kid and I still got nice gear to show off that after all this time I learned how to play