Tales of a (recovering?) W.o.W. addict.

I used to play World of Warcraft a lot. It didn't start off so bad, I'd play a couple hours a night, get some levels have some fun. It started to take away from some of my console gaming, which wasn't really a bad thing. I play video games a lot, so it wasn't like WoW was making me waste more time than I normally would, just that I'd be wasting it differently. It was something to keep me entertained through my long nights after work and was certainly enjoyable. It wouldn't be the top MMO on the market if it weren't fun.

My brother got me started on the game. I had only played one MMORPG game previously (Earth and Beyond) and didn't really stick that one out very long. But he had picked it up and it came with a free trial he passed along to me. He stayed long enough for me to get hooked before jumping servers and (I think) eventually quitting completely as did his friend who was the only other person I actually knew who played. I soldiered on, I had met people I enjoyed talking to and playing with so I didn't feel completely alone.

I wandered from guilds falling apart to raiding guilds to playing solo or with a friend. When my xbox360 broke and I was too lazy/annoyed to get it fixed WoW pretty much became my pastime. I would come home, log on, take a food break and log off around 6 or 7 am. I went on some raids, plowed through tons of dungeons made some gold and formed relationships with friends. I knew I would never be the elite of the wow world, but I was comfortable with my progression and always felt there was something left to do that I could accomplish.

I was really excited when the Burning Crusade expansion pack came out, but I started to play less. I had some guild drama that irked me and I lost some friends to play with. Also I met an awesome girl around the same time, which cut down on my playtime(probably not a bad thing.) I still log on sometimes when I get home, but I never seem to have quite the drive I used to. I almost never have the time for a full instance run, I've only been to two of the expansions dungeons once each, and they were the very first/easiest. I did finally manage to hit lvl 70 with my mage, but I'm slowly starting to wonder why I bother.

I'll never have Elite gear again, it's just not going to happen. I don't really care about pvping enough to make an arena team or grind honor. I've accepted the fact that I will never get my precious polymorph turtle spell from ZG. My guild is full of alts and unambitious people which is fine for me I guess, but not all the people in it as they keep slowly leaving for bigger and better things. Right now my only goal is to acquire enough gold to buy my epic flying mount. After that, I don't know what I'll have left to play for.