Tag Archives: wow

The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO)

Hey guys, remember Steamvaults?

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So I haven’t played World of Warcraft in a few months now– my account expired sometime in February or March, and I hadn’t been playing for weeks before that– but I still follow a lot of active WoW players on Twitter by virtue of my background as a WoW blogger, so I hear a lot of game-related news simply through the grapevine. And one of the things that’s going to be happening soon, from what I hear, is the removal of the keyring and keys from the game.

Now if you’ve been following me for a long time, you can probably see where this is going. If not, I’m just going to leave this here:

Remember getting the Karazhan key? Remember ALL THOSE FREAKING DUNGEONS?

No? Lemme refresh your memory:

Remember Sethekk Halls, Shadow Labs, Steamvault, Botanica, Mechanar, Arcatraz, Old Hillsbrad Foothills, and The Black Morass? And how it took days to do all of these because you had to get groups together and stuff, because there was no Dungeon Finder? You’d wait and wait until your trusted guildies and friends were online before even thinking about making a group? Yeah.

It was such a pain but it felt so good to get that key at the end. These were some seriously hard dungeons, too. Remember freaking Shadow Labs? Remember when you would grind that thing for days just to get a blue?

Cause I do.

Back then, you needed keys for everything, and the Master’s Key was one of the big ones. After you spent forever getting that key, it was time to grind rep in order to get keys to get into Heroics, so you could get epics. Remember Heroic Steamvaults? What a pain in the butt dungeon. Heroic Mech, anyone? That fire chick, anyone?

I can still hear the "WE ARE ON A STRICT TIMETABLE"

Keys were a tangible reward showing that you’d been through the maze and done your time and had access to all those mythical places that you heard about only in whispers in trade chat. Hearing that they’re going away is… well, it’s not the end of the world and I’m not crying about it or anything. But it made me think back to those days when they and their partner “attunement” were a pretty big aspect of endgame. And that made me nostalgic. Hence this post.

I may not play anymore, but I’m going to miss my Master’s Key, I think. Just a bit.

The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO)

It’s Not You, WoW, It’s Me

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As I’m sure most of you know, I hail from the vast and amazing World of Warcraft blogging community. I love this community and everything it entails and I’m proud I was able to share a corner of it with everyone for so long.

Likewise, I love World of Warcraft. I don’t even care if that makes me a cooped-up nerd with no life or whatever that makes me, I love it. (Besides, I already am a cooped-up nerd with no life, so).

I think Cataclysm did a lot of really great stuff. I love the zone revamps. I love the new Cataclysm zones. The few new instances I did were pretty great. I love that Blizzard is trying to take the best stuff from both Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King and weld them together into something great. How much they succeeded at this is up for debate, I’m sure, but the intentions are there and I appreciate it. As far as I’m concerned, WoW is in pretty good shape right now.

But I’m not playing.

You know, I’ve quit and returned and quit and returned to WoW so many times at this point that you’re probably getting sick of hearing about the details, so to make a long story short let’s just say that I really consider myself to have quit WoW back in early 2010. I’ve had stints since then where I’ve briefly returned to flirt with the game and in general be the very definition of casual, but I really haven’t done anything like I used to. I did play rather solidly for a few months late last year. But even that went something akin to this: Got Cataclysm, leveled to 85, glanced around, decided it was a job well done, and then logged out and pretty much didn’t log back in.

So I quit. Again.

A few weeks later, Mr. Adequate and I both re-subbed specifically to make tauren paladins and geek it up together. We had a blast. We ran around and smashed things with our hammers and we PvP’d and we did Shadowfang Keep (during which I fell in love with tanking) and we giggled over the Azshara quests and all in all we had a great time for about, oh, a week or so.

Then we quit again. And that’s where I’m at currently.

And you know, when I try to explain all of this, it’s really difficult to articulate how or why, exactly, I fell off that treadmill. There was a time when, if I wasn’t playing WoW, I was probably thinking about it or writing about it or reading about it. Obviously that isn’t the case anymore. Which is ironic, because these days I think the game is better now than it has ever really been before. But a certain spark is missing. And you know what? I don’t think that’s Blizzard’s fault. Rather, it’s mine. I had my fun, I changed, and I’ve largely moved on. Nothing wrong with that.

All around, I seem to see concerns and/or rumors that WoW is dying and people are leaving in droves and whatnot. Perhaps it’s because I still hang out with the WoW blogging community on Twitter, and most of these are people who grew up alongside me as a part of my blogging/WoW generation and many of us all sort of reaching the same stage. That’s my theory, anyway.

Or maybe I’m entirely wrong and WoW really is dying.

I don’t think so, though.

I’d like to think the game will still be there next time I suddenly get the urge to roll up a new character and level and explore and tame rare pets and play lowbie Arathi Basin just like I used to.

Because the details may have changed, but the spirit is still there, of this I’m sure. I know this because sometimes, even lately, even with how jaded I am over here on the porch with my rocker and my cane-waving and my “When I was your age we didn’t get mounts until level 40 and we had to run up and down Stranglethorn Vale for ten levels”– sometimes I catch a glimpse of that spirit, and then it reminds me why I dumped well over half a year into WoW playtime across all my characters.

Keep doing that, Blizzard. I’m sure I’ll be back. It’s not you. It’s me.

We’re still friends. Right?