Mindblogling!

I ask myself that quite a bit when I blog really and when I do any kind of social networking.  Its not that I don’t enjoy ‘being connected’ but honestly I really wonder how many of my ‘friends’ out there even really read the stuff I post on my social pages and really whats the point to this blog?

I’ve thought about actually creating content people would be interested in reading and making an actual internet site that would generate web traffic here but then I really think about it and two things come to mind.  I’m not that interested in doing that because this site is just to clear my head more or less and two it sounds like a job and I’m just not interested in keeping to any kind of update schedule because then I’d probably view at as not as fun as when I can just do stuff in my free time.

Blogging and sites like this really drive a deeper question for me though which is really quite a pessimistic but, I think, realistic view that whats the point?  If you look at the small scope, this blog for example.  Whats the point to it?  95% of the people I have friended on my social sites probably won’t read this and if more then 50% do I’d be surprised and I openly apologize.  I do know a couple will read this and I call them actual friends, or at least people who semi-care.  Rambling aside though theres not much of a point to this thing since someday I will lose interest or just stop paying the bill or the system will break and it will be shutdown and more or less in the infinity of the internet no one will notice because I was no one.

If you look at the grand scheme of things the human race is less then a spec of a grain of sand in the sea of infinity and we will strive and most likely just fade from existence in an amount of years…

Now the obvious reply to this is in a way I’m telling people to just kill themselves since everything we all do is nothing.  Its actually just the opposite.  I’m actually saying that what you should be doing with your time and energy is something that is worth exactly that.  I used to play MMO’s and while I did enjoy those I look back at those times and for the most part just see waste.

What is something you’ve always wanted to do?  Try to set aside time for it, learn about it, try to persue it.  Yes, this blog is nothing in the grand scope of things and this site only gets about 5 viewers a month but the reason I do this is for me and for anyone that is really actually reading this to hear what I have to say.  I could be sitting in my chair watching nothing on tv right now or I could be expressing some thought and using my mind in a positive way and just relaying some kind of information on my mind.

I actually derailed quite a bit from the topic of the post but this all still follows it.  In many ways I do love technology as its brought convenience and ‘gadgets’ to my life but in other ways I wish life was like the days before technology really came on the scene.

I can’t compare because I wasn’t around but I tend to glorify the ‘old days’ and just look at centuries past and think how they used to be and how the people lived their everyday life and how really simple it was and how it was really worth it.  Like I said I can’t compare but I can ask you how well do you know your neighbors?  When was the last time you really built something worth building with your own hands?

For the longest time I’ve wanted nothing more from my life then to just ‘get off the grid’ and not have anyone pushing on me in any way.  I want to live in peace and not be bothered.  I want my time to actually be worth something and if I have to work I want to be paid what I know I am worth.  I am sick of having some greedy fuck under value me so they can keep whats left over for themselves.

I can just imagine what the days were like when people had the knowledge and ability to live off the land, to build their own houses, to reap what they sow.  When your closest neighbor was at least 3 miles away and at night all you could hear were insects and the wind blowing.

Now days everything seems to revolve around technology and peoples lives seem to not be able to escape the internet.  I think this might just be human evolution and the way things are going and I can say I’m not that “connected” of a person.  I don’t email a lot of people, I’m lucky to actually get 3 calls a week that are conversation worthy and my facebook has less then 50 friends on it but even though my lack of being connected I still get sick of feeling like the only way to stay in touch is through the means of the internet even if it is the most convenient.

The point is though that through all these friends I’ve never once really had a friend that calls me on a regular basis to see whats up, outside of a current one and that years girlfriends(who recalling I think I did more calling, which I guess is how it should be?).  I’ve had to be the one that does 95% of the calling just to even keep the lines of communication open and see if they wanted to do something.

…………

I’ll finish this later, I have to goto bed.

===================================

NOTE:

This post got pretty derailed and instead of just trimming it and posting it as a single topic I’m just posting it as is and hopefully make a post soon about the 2-3 topics that this one tried to cover.

One idea is that why does everyone need an online presence and the second being how can you tell who really are your friends.  I’m sure theres a third mixed in there but I don’t want to reread this mess to try and find it.

I’ve found after reading this again I need to focus a bit more when I write.  I don’t mind writing longer posts but if anyone actually does come here to read this crap I don’t want them losing interest at the 4th paragraph.

So yeah…  There yah go.

"Don't F with me little man!" - Lich King

To a lot of people out there the nearby picture can mean an alternative life.  A life they maybe proud of and take honor in or a life few people in their lives don’t know about.  I was the later.  Well, not entirely.  Lets start from the very beginning I guess.  If you want just the review skim down to where I point out the review starts.

A long time ago in a galaxy that is this one I started playing World of Warcraft on a free server a tad before Burning Crusade was released.  At that time I was demo’ing out free games also as I did not want to shell out month fees.  World of Warcraft at the time was the best thing around compared to the free games out there so I played it and then I got my wife playing it after some time.  We started out as undead people(and I wish sometimes I would’ve stayed horde) but trying the game fully we went the cute side and tried gnomes.  We ended up gnome because our personal lives were closest to them, cute and nerdy.  Also the fact they do a wicked /train with volume pumped was a bonus because our kid really loved trains at the time and he laughed when we did /train.

So we played Burning Crusade, free style for awhile.  Took a break because the server admin were being tools, tried a bunch of free games including Silk Road, ROSE Online, Perfect (Something, I forget), Fly For Fun(which I like a bunch), Gunbound.  I also tried RF Online on a free server when it wasn’t free and liked it but I think I liked the idea of a sci-fi/fantasy game more then the game itself.  I screenshotted that game a lot.  I still love those screenshots.  Not many games let you be a sweet looking robot.

We kept going back to WoW though.  I’m not sure why we did this other then the underlaying mechanics and system it had was pretty damn polished.  I’m talking of the talent point system, the professions(all of them) and it ran smooth.  We finally found a PVE free server, just about the only good free PVE server as almost all the free servers were highly modified or PVP and we tried pvp but after level 20 its a gank fest and that extremely gets old when your just trying to level your toon minding your own damn business.  Now, my comments on pvp realms, it sucks leveling your toon to max on them but once there I think it’d be fun if you got into a good guild and ran together.  PVP realms are NOT for solo players(like myself mostly).  PVE server people just don’t world pvp unless its a chicken achievement run of killing the city leaders and porting out ASAP.

Can't we all just get along? ... I don't think so with horde being asses...

Anyways, we got in a good PVE realm, eventually made a guild that would end up the biggest and best guild on that realm.  A guildee even had a vent server we got to use so overall for a free server we were set.  A little bit about free servers for those wondering.  We played Burning Crusade when Sunwell came out and played for a few months after that for a few months until server admin F’ed it all up.  We were on a 4x XP server so we leveled 4x faster and gold drops were higher so prices were a bit insane for things but the auction houses never worked so Stormwind was the hub for any action.  There would be people all day just sitting in Stormwind trade spamming /y “LFM for BT PST.”  There was no scripting.  That means the bosses were literally tank and spank.  When it came to Black Temple, Sunwell or any raid really, you’d run in, pull mobs, get to the boss and everyone does their role for about 4-5 straight minutes and the bosses never moved, adds never appeared, blah blah.  In retrospective I miss those simple days.  Got the group together, went in, did your thing, got a bunch of loot drops and got out all in about 4-5 hours.

Then the server went south once again because of mainly retarded admin teenagers.  Most of the realm left and we did also.

After awhile we decided to demo World of Warcraft again with a 14 day trial which is extremely limited and a bit of a joke.  We signed up for the real deal after a week or so.

We wanted a high alliance population so we looked on WarcraftRealms.com and chose Muradin.  We did RP-PVE but RP’ers are a bit weird sometimes and can take things a bit to far.  I rolled a shadow priest first and bam to 70 and went holy with a demonology leveling warlock to 70 at which point Wrath of the Lich King came out and later on I rolled a paladin in 3.2 and once at 58 I pwned everything in questing.

I knew the quests like the back of my hand and getting to then level 20-30 sucked cuz so much walking but then 38-58 sucked because the missions started requiring you to goto all these different zones.  Example, I had to spend 10 minutes just running to the town in Desolace to turn in a dungeon quest or something and I never had to visit that zone again.  Thing like this happen a LOT in 35-58.  Once you get to 49 its not so bad and once you hit Hellfire Pen its a freakin’ cakewalk to 70.  Outland questing is what vanilla WoW should’ve had instead of a long boring grind.  Get to leveling your 2-3 alts and the repeative-ness really really gets old and thats actually one reason I vowed never to have more then three main toons.

We also made a guild and I was an officer(really if not the guild leader since we kind of had a weak one at times, IMHO) so guild drama quite things interesting.  It did get to a point that I wish I wasn’t an officer as I busted my ass trying to organize raids and get the guild to what I wanted it to be(the best guild on the F’ing realm).  I ran 25’s when we only had about 10-15 from the guild going and running pug 25’s isn’t that fun especially if you get fail players who don’t know how to decurse or do the dance.  I did it for the good of the guild though to gear us.  I spent a lot of time trying to organize with other officers to get us to switch off weeks but in my off weeks I’d see nothing happening so I gave up for awhile.  More good people came into the guild though and eventually we got to be doing some mostly guild Naxx 25’s with a couple pugs.

I didn’t jump on the band wagon when Wrath of the Lich King came out.  We got it about a month or two later.  I was pretty amazed at the response it got from everyone.  Everyone was freakin’ nuts for it.  Some people in the guild didn’t get it either.  With Cataclysm coming a new guy wanting to play WoW needs to plunk down like nearing $100 after all expansions and first month, that a damn lot of cash for a $15/month game.  I was never a fan of paying to play.  I always felt Blizzard needed a better deal for long term palyers but why would they change if its working for them?

I stopped playing the game about a month ago when they started talking about Cataclysm and the newest patch would have Onxyia coming back to the game so I quit around patch 3.2. something.

At the point I quit I had 3 80’s.  A holy/shadow priest, an affliction/destruction warlock and a pretty fresh 80 paladin who just got d capped about 2 days before my subscription ran dry and I will be honest.  At that point the only thing keeping my interest in the game was my paladin who I was going to start PVP’ing with more.

I’ll also be honest that I took some “time off” from the game for a month previous to that. I needed a break from the grind of raiding, leveling and leveling my paladin to 58 because I was SOOOO sick of leveling.  I borrowed my account to a player friend who played the 80’s and I leveled my pally.  This fact made me wonder at a point that Blizzard may boast the most players but how many have dual accounts and how many are dead accounts taken by another person?

My wife stopped playing long before I did because she busted her ass to 80(I’m talking like 15 levels in a few days) to get into Naxx for a title achievement that she also bused her ass doing while leveling and she didn’t hit the mark so she just got sick of it and she says to this day that if she got that title she might still be playing but right now she does not miss the game at all.

Before I took the time off we had, IMO, the best guild on the realm.  Not the best raiding guild, but the best casual/raiding guild.  I took time off, played my pally, kept tabs on what was going on and the guild was slowly falling apart because of very poor guild leader who couldn’t keep officers in check.  A few weeks before I came back a few officers left and more then a few good players left the guild.  I was pretty pissed the lead let this happen as I felt personally I nearly built the guild to what it was.  I recruited probably 85% of the people who invited the other good people.

At that point I had a fresh 80 Ret / Whatever paladin and a guild that was once awesome and now in pieces and still falling apart.  I didn’t bother trying to put it back together, if it was up to me I would’ve disbanded and let the pieces fall where they will and take the good players to another guild but someone stepped up and took the reins and got it back on its feet and solid again.  I actually also left the guild with my paladin as I didn’t really want to be an officer anymore and I wanted 25 Ulduar and such but the way Muradin was going there weren’t many guilds standing out to me.  I hate the idea of DKP, I don’t like jerk people to raid with.  I didn’t enjoy running raids that much but I have to say that I loved the raids I did run and I think everyone loved being in my raid as it was like a lot of people just hanging out and getting gear.

At the time Blizzard put the system into effect that grind heroic dungeons for emblems and you can buy close to the best gear in the game.  So in doing so they made everyone already geared go back to grinding ass on the same dungeons they ground to gear up to get the gear to do Naxx and then Ulduar.  I think the system is a double edged sword.  There I am having 2 geared 80’s, grinding dungeons, gearing up, and here I have a third 80 grinding gear to get defense capped and to get gear to do better stuff but my best option is to just grind these same dungeons over and over and over and over, week after week until I have enough emblems to buy all my t8 but remember I’m a paladin now so I don’t need just one main set like a warlock, I need 3 sets, PLUS my pvp set.  Do the math and that equals out to … 1337 emblems of conquest … or not 1337.

Remember I was guildless with my paladin at that time also with 2 other people I had to grind ass to gear to get where they were so I felt I deserved a little carrying in Ulduar or whatnot but I couldn’t even get in to do the easiest boss in the game, Flame Leviathan.

======  Real Review ======

I’ll cut the bullshit and get to the real review here.  I apologize for rambling but I played this game for a year and a few months plus the time on private servers so I have a lot of history and a lot to say.

So if you did read all this you should know towards the end I was a little jaded but for about 4 month prior to me quitting I had these feelings that the games not as impressive as it should be and that Blizzard is doing things to make it easier for “n00bs” and is doing things that they should’ve done long long ago.  Examples?  It took them until 3.0 or 3.1(like 4 years?) to figure out that mining should take all the ore in 1 tap instead of 3 attempts.  They finally got rid of failed attempts at leveling a gathering skill.  Failed attempts just equal wasted time to the player.  Wasted time to Blizzard equals more money in their pocket because you have to play longer to make up for that wasted time.  It was the biggest deal in 3.1? that riding mounts got lowered by 10 levels so you can mount at 20 and epic at 60 I believe.  There is a ton of other stuff also but those were the ones that stood out to me because they affected me most.  Its just common sense and to me a lot of stuff they’ve done since 3.0 is common sense that should’ve been done long ago.

Dual spec?  WTF is that?  That and that alone should’ve been done when Sunwell hit.  Thats all I have to say about that.  That one is plain common sense.

When you hit 80 and get gear and usually before 80 you roll an alt.  Everyone who plays probably has about 3-4 alts if not 10.  Its just dumb they didn’t have mounts at 20. since the level cap is 10 levels higher now.  No one I know liked running 10 minutes from one side of Duskwood to the other side to do a simple turn in quest to have to run back to the other side for another 10 minute run.

Another thing that drove me nuts is paladins buffs need to last 60 minutes.  So much time is wasted in re-buffing in raids because of 30 minutes goes by fast in raids.

They need to put their lore into the game.  They need to have video cutscenes.  They need to make people care about the lore more.  I am not a lore nut, I don’t care if Arthas is Durnholdes kid and the Onxyia is the sister of Luna Lovechild or any of that crap.  I’m not going nuts and getting into 20 minute long discussions on Warcraft 3 nit pickings because I never played Warcraft 3 and don’t one bit care to.  I can tell you though I spent a lot of time at WoW Wiki reading the history of some of the major players and major events and they have good lore and just the 3-ish paragraphs I’ve read on Cataclysm the lore looks quite interesting.  The problem is though if you played the game the way I did you hit the quest guy, accept, goto QuestHelper, do it, turn in and not give a shit what the guy said because quests are just XP and nothing more.  They have only one epic chain quest that I know of that has a cutscene somewhere in it and the cutscene is pretty cool.  I never did the chain because you don’t even need to do the chain to level cap(which is mildly retarded because they wasted a good cutscene on those that don’t don’t care about it) but I saw it on youtube.  Two things on this point and move on…

1) I actually loved Culling of Stratholme and they need more like it but they need to have an option to skip the 20 minute long intro and strut that Arthas does.  Culling of Strat is cool because it actually puts lore into the game and its not vital but IMO pretty cool because you get to see a piece of that worlds history.

2)  They need more cutscenes like the epic chain one but they need to make that where everyone sees that.  They need to make vital quests you have to do to hit level cap and the scenes need to be in the chain to explain or make you actually feel like your having an impact on this world because as it stands the game recycles content week to week, year to year and its a grind.  You kill Yogg Saron this week?  Guess what, you’ll get to do the exact same thing next week, and the week after, and the week after, and all weeks after that because it never really dies, thus meaning you have no impact on this world and to me it felt in a way like I was accomplishing nothing.  All it is is a grind for gear and you better pry to whatever God that your guild doesn’t fall apart and you get in a good group every week because getting in a crap pug is the worst thing about this game, or one of the worst things.

Heres an example, I just did a search for that Wrath cutscene and found this cutscene below that I never even knew was in the game or even if it is in the game but linking it anyway because it looks like it is.  I imagine only the epic of the epic in Burning Crusade got to see this, probably only if you actually got to Illidan.

Now, this is just my opinion here but Blizzard also needs to cut the pop culture references in the game.  Yes, Ophera Windfury and the Paris Hilton npc are cute and funny and it makes people talk about the game and its quirks but I play it partially as a way to escape life.  I get to hear enough about Hilton in my real life on the way to work and I don’t give one fucking rat shit about her in either world and you may think its cute but I think its not and I imagine theres more out there like me who just want to play a fantasy game and not be reminded I have to get up at 5:52am on Monday to goto a job I hate.  I didn’t even mind that stuff until I got to Scholar Basin and found the damned LOST Hatch on an island there.  You hover over the hatch and you even get the numbers.  It actually made me hang my head in shame and make me wonder if I’m playing a game with original content or just a bunch of nerds who want to make references to stuff.

They need to make the racial bonuses fair and make it seem like they don’t favor the horde which I think everyone knows Blizzard does. Arcane torrent compared to +15 engineering skill? Canabalize VS +5 jewelcrafting and a crappy HOT?  WTF, mildly unbalanced and one reason I wish I would have rolled horde.

======  The Question ======

This is what anyone reading here wants to hear though, the honest to goodness “is World of Warcraft worth it” question answer.

… is World of Warcraft worth it?  That in itself is actually a long answer also because it is actually a bit of a double edge sword but I will be honest here with my impression up to the point of patch 3.2 something.  No, World of Warcraft is not worth it but to be completely honest it can be.

The endgame is extremely lack of.  Extremely.  There is nothing to do but PVP and raid.  I will hand it to Blizzard that they made a third thing to do, grind achievements(which I guess will be implemented into a new guild achievement system in Cataclysm) but I for one never got into that and some of them I wanted and could’ve gotten with time but saw no point.  You can’t spend the ACH points on anything.  The only ones worth anything were the titles and half the titles were just dumb looking titles I thought.  The only titles I remember wanting were The Insane which is actually just insane to grind to get, The Love Fool(which my wife quit the game over(read the way above)), and Chef.  There were some others I might’ve wanted but I forgot them so I didn’t really want them that bad.

I never got into PVP much.  I didn’t do arenas, and I would’ve with my priest or paladin but never got to it.  I did world pvp and the alliance battlegrounds were almost nothing but bitching about people not doing they jobs(defending) and the thing I did notice on the alliance side was almost always a lack of healers in battlegrounds and for raiding a lot also.  I had a guild group for Naxx10 but our pally healer had to bail and I had to stay LF 1 healer for about an hour because none were on and I was spamming everywhere.

As for PVE, the game is a very repetitive grind.  Like I mentioned in the long blah blah above the new emblem system in 3.2 makes it a very boring game.  I’ll used my paladin as an example.  I got him to a fresh 80, so I grind heroics to gear up to get into Ulduar/etc but they way Blizzard made it I know just have to grind those same heroics to buy nearly the best loot in the game so I’ll be running those same heroics to gear up and to get close to best gear but one piece of gear costs like 60 emblems(or more) and a character has what… 15 some equipment slots?  The kicker here is now dual specs so everyone is grinding twice as much for two sets of gear and being a paladin I was grinding for 3 sets.  So there are… say 5 bosses(and thats above par I think) in Nexus and you can only do Nexus once a day and Nexus can take at least 30 minutes with a really good crew I think.  I’m not sure what the math equals out to but its freaking insane and on Blizzards end genius at the same time.

I know why they did it, because so many ‘noobs’ were bitching everyone was out gearing them and not running heroics anymore so they could’ve gear up to get into better stuff so Blizz changed the entire game so that everyone is doing heroics now and everyone is gearing up and the only progression thats partially worth doing in like 2 instances?  I’m talking of 3.3 now because I think Onxyia and Grand Coliseum are the only ones that give a good gear boost.  Ulduar 25 is nice but not that great and a bit of a pain in the ass and H-TOC drops some nice stuff and much easier.  Its genius on Blizz’s end though because they have everyone grinding for more gear and all in a huff to get it and be uber but at the time I was mildly sick of the game and not falling for their game and I know others I talked to in the game weren’t impressed with what they did either and were getting kind of sick of it.

This might only be a Muradin realm thing also but I should mention the ‘noobs’ situation.  Blizzard really needs to implement a better ‘banning’ system and maybe put an admin on a realm.  I say banning because we had a trade spammer who would just sit on trade being an ass, a very annoying ass and they created a guild for annoying asses and amazingly a lot of people were in it and they went unchecked.  Sure you could ignore them but your ignore list can only hold like 20? people.  About every two weeks I had to delete people from my ignore list so I could ignore new ones, but I could’ve downloaded a resource eating addon to make my ignore list bigger but thats another thing Blizzard should have common sense about and something else you shouldn’t need an addon for!  I actually joined that guild, which consisted of people level 6 and under(if your over level 6 you get kicked) alts, just so I could fill their entire guild bank with items you can’t vendor.  The point is though you shouldn’t need to ignore these idiots and they should get a 1-2 day ban scaling up.

Besides the general idiocy of trade chat you meet a LOT of jerks while pugging groups.  I’ve wasted a lot of time because there were ninja pullers wiping 25’s, some ass healer didn’t want to do the last bosses because they only needed one drop and left after the one boss and didn’t tell us before hand.  About 2 days before I stopped playing I ran in a pug with a healer who was so pushy he was pulling bosses himself and just being about the biggest fuck tard I’ve ever met virtually but theres been a number of others ranking up there with him.

I stopped pugging groups on my priest because as a healer you are blamed for nearly everything if a group fails.  It was my first toon and I wanted to go shadow but went heals because the guild had lack of so I was doing heals and I had to pug groups because we didn’t have enough 80’s.  Now, just me saying that the healer should run the show and the tank should tell the healer his plans so he knows whats up and where to stand but a lot of pugs you just have people going nuts.  I just really don’t think people knew their classes and I know it wasn’t me because I research my classes, I know the dungeons but I’d still get /yelled at and I don’t know how many whispers I’ve gotten saying I should be using this over this or that or this or just someone know whoes the class better then I do.  I know how not to go OOM without using a pot, I know how to get the tank and the party shielded and hotted up before I get a full channel of Hymn of Hope up, don’t fucking tell me I don’t know what I’m doing.  I always got a kick out of dps that was saying this party is great.  I always replied if you want to know how well its really going ask the healers.

Everything in WoW rides on the back of healers and being a good one gets old because they always want you in that roll and thats one reason I rolled a warlock.  Just mindless dps and face rolling its such a true vacation.  Just have to output your dps so no one complains your only pulling 1.3k dps when you should be getting 1.8k and your good for a follow the team night.

Really though besides PVE and PVP theres nothing to do in this game.  Achievements over all are just a way for Blizzard to make more money off you as you grind things but when I say that, thats all this game is really built for, grinding.  Hours and hours of grinding and making Blizzard money and for what?  Virtual clothes?  So in game you are someone and someone will inspect you and be jealous you have a +5 more dps gun then you have?

I will again be honest that I may be a bit jaded or whatever and I do yet and did enjoy the game.  I said the game can be worth it and I did mean that when I said it.  It can be worth it if you really don’t have a life and need a hobby and a way to socialize without leaving your house while having that desire to “do something” fulfilled.  In the few times I’ve stopped playing I’ve realized I don’t have that many hobbies and WoW gave me something to do with my time.  Its a diversion and can be a really good one.  I stand by my statement that parents of young children(infant through probably 7 or 8 years old) should not be playing this game and spending time with their children unless they are dedicated part time players.  This game is perfect for anti-social twenty somethings that don’t like going to the bar on the weekend I think.  I’ve been a month away from it and it still calls my name but I do look at myself in third person because of it.  I’ve known people that played WoW, some good people and I’ve known others that have played and have lack of substance to their life outside of it and I’ve really put a hard look on myself and I don’t entirely regret playing the game but I wish I didn’t delve into it quite like I did.  I do not want to end up the guy at Thanksgiving who sits on WoW and takes about guild progression and how much dps I can output but thats just me.

Come on guys hold up, my vents not working, I need to load my addons, I need to restart, I don't have a mic, vent doesn't work, anyone have any pots, can anyone spare gold for repairs? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PEOPLE COME ON! - Comic from my webcomic site.

I look at the time spent on it in retrospect and wish I would’ve been doing more with my life and see the things I could have done, like working on my webcomic which I linked a strip above.  Thats not to say you can’t play the game and not have a life but, from my eyes, if you do have a life and do go out and do things with friends or have young kids(which I do) whats the point to playing when your really only half serious about it?  Being a parent of young kids and having another one on the way and having a wife and trying to be a raider in a game where you sometimes you have 24 other people waiting on you and you can’t pause the game to go eat supper with your family or watch a movie with your wife because your at a boss or killing one and don’t have a good breaking point…  whats the point?  Do you really have your priorities straight?  Family/friends or some virtual clothes on a game that will eventually get outdated and/or shutdown and be no more?

I know some people out there probably just wanted some perspective on if World of Warcraft is worth it and in looking back over the time I’ve played and the month I’ve been away and the time in between, I do think I’ve given my honest answer and I hope it helps someone out there.