Quitting MMORPGs
 

For some, MMOs are so addictive that we speak of quitting them like we would speak of quitting smoking, like it's some huge milestone.

I think it's a big issue. I've made the decision to quit several times. But after a few months I check out the patch notes to WoW or Lineage 2 and resubscribe -- "just for a little while," I'd say.

I've always felt in control of my MMORPG play, like it was a conscious decision to grind every day for several hours, but in the back of my mind I knew it was in sacrifice to a more eventful lifestyle.

Quitting MMO's -- is this an issue you guys have fought with? What have been your experiences with quitting?

I bring this up because of an article I read: How to Quit an MMORPG.

I know how you feel. I played WoW for over a year. Every time. "I'll quit when my subscription runs out" but every time I ended up renewing. 4 times in a row.

I'm clean for 3 months now, and I don't regret quitting at all. I have so much free time now that I didn't have back then. Freaking raids always sucked away your time.

Have to say though, I miss by buddies. We used to talk on ventrillo all the time. Good days...but that guild turned in a big epeen guild that only cares about getting epics, and things like friendship weren't important anymore, so it was a good choice.

It really depends on the gaming experience I have, in WoW I have played with the same 2 friends of mine, haven't found any other people I like or whatever in the game, so even though I like the mechanics better in WoW, it doesn't have the same hold EQ did on me (yet). EQ also had that "friendship" thing that WoW guilds seem to be absolutely empty of, so I do know exactly where you're coming from.

Honestly though, what is the problem to being addicted to a game? Is it the money? Even a minimum wage job should be able to cover the $15 a month no problem. If you would rather be doing something else...go f***ing do it.

Maybe I don't get it because i might not be addicted, I play WoW because I've had a lot of downtime lately, waiting for college and a job and all, but whenever something interesting goes down, it's not hard at all for me to put WoW on hold.

I quit Final Fantasy XI in May after nearly 2 years playing. I had gotten everything possible in that game. I was a 75 RDM, BRD, SMN and BLM, 68 THF and had everything else high enough to sub. I had all of the expansions completed and the main storyline for Windurst cleared. I had killed nearly every single NM that game had to offer, and wore nearly all the armour.

Quitting that game was a very big step for me because I was so used to playing it all the time. Getting that far really involved a lot of time commitments and I started to only play the game, ignoring my social, professional and personal obligations. The first week of not playing I felt like I was missing something important, now I couldnt be happier that it isnt in my daily routine. I actually go out all the time and have fun in real life. That game nearly destroyed me, thank god I stopped when I did.

So I agree that quitting an MMoRPG can be very difficult, if you get as attached as I did. Quitting Ragnarok was simple though, I just got really bored, same with Guild Wars.

I have friends and cousins who are addicted to WoW and have a hard time staying away from it. One of my cousins plays almost six hours a day! For me, I have not attempted to try MMoRPG's because I get addicted enough to games like Civilization IV and Sim City IV. A game like WoW would destroy my academic, and social life.... :(

I found an interesting blog post from the leader of one of the biggest WoW guilds in the world. He quit. Here's his story: clicky clicky

i guess even gamers need rehab
haha

After close to four months away from WoW, I have no regrets.

I can certainly agree with this. I spent my last months in the game as a guild officer and healer raid leader. To do this week in, week out took a huge toll on me. I was raiding early on Saturdays and Sunday mornings (occasionally hungover, but certainly worse for wear). I had to deal with a lot of issues, most of which were based around loot, a few problem members, and just organising everyone. Weeknights were spent discussing guild applications, running instances for gear (priests always get invites), farming herbs for potions, and answering assorted questions on Vent.

Before long, I was sick of the workload. Minor dramas turned into major issues which divided the guild. It messed up my study commitments so I called it quits, said goodbye to the guild, and timed it so that I was going away for a holiday not long after. By the time I came back the guild was in tatters and a lot of others had left the game. A few of my friends had left the game for the same reason I did, others had moved on.

It was sad to see all the work the guild had done raiding -- from spending two days struggling in MC into clearing everything plus Onyxia on the one night and giving BWL a solid attempt on the other night -- had fallen apart, but I was not interested in returning.

These days, my brother still plays Guild Wars. Its just a reminder of what I did because he spends most of his free time on there. The rewards from raiding weren't worth the time invested, and its a pity that it took me so long to recognise this. But I did have a lot of fun with my friends otherwise.

I have played several MMORPG's including: Everquest, Everquest II, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online and Ultima Online. Plus a couple pseudo MMORPG's like Diablo, Diablo II and Guild Wars: Factions.

From my experience Everquest was the most difficult to quit. I had over two years invested in my two characters most of that being devoted to my bard. I had become pretty attached to that character. That and, I don't care what anyone says, but EQ set the bar for MMORPG's and no game since can even hope to reproduce the same level of excitment and fear. EQ made you care about your avatar. Today's MMORPG's have become way too user friendly with their hand holding gameplay. This undoubtedly made quitting EQ that much harder.

EQII is my only active account at the moment, although I haven't played it for about three months.

I was pretty big into Diablo 2 back in the day. I would play with some of my friends from college, but I never let myself get to the point of being a shut in just to play it.

I quit it more out of boredom then lack of free time.

Some people are just sad about their gaming addictions.

Awesome. I read that on Slashdot like... half hour ago.

Damn you, you beat me to it!:boxing:

I agree with JackyBoy about alot that he said about EQ1. From what I remember, in that raiding was more for fun then because you NEEEDED to do it. That and I think that for alot of people, your first MMORPG just has this magical feel that you won't feel again when playing another one.

I've played alot of MMORPGs. Everquest, Everquest 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Final Fantasy 11, Matrix Online(Aweful), Star Wars Galaxies(More screwed up then I thought imaginable), City of Heroes/Villains(What I'm playing now).

If you're like me, then when you decide to quit a MMORPG. It's like you suddenly don't know what to do in your spare time. I kept buying some console games and alot of DVDs that have all piled up due to MMORPGs. It's like I have so much stuff to do now, I don't know what to do. I'm still playing City of Heroes but that isn't as all consuming as some of the other ones. I'm planning on trying Age of Conan when it comes out but if that sucks, I'm either gonna play CoH or be done altogether.

On a side note, my social life never really suffered from MMORPGs because I didn't have much of one to begin with. But I still hung out with what friends I do have.

Most MMORPG sucks period. Mostly item based. Not skill based. That's why I hate it. Not worth my time since mostly I play games 15 min~30. So I play FPS/RTS instead since I can play any time without ganing or loosing anything >.>

I find the article quiet intresting to read. Yeah, I find people spending TOO much time on games =.=

Sometimes the main story is very interesting, but offers very little to the player after completion. Thats when mindless grinding and fighting comes into play.

Interesting topic of discussion! I held high positions in a few very successful WoW guilds but overtime I became annoyed with how much time players were expecting me to put into the game for them. I felt I was starting to miss out on things and was really tired of the 4-5 hours of essentially required raiding every night or every other night.

So... my girlfriend said to me one day "why don't we just quit?" and we did. Within a few weeks my life turned completely around. I grew more ambitious, I was more productive at work, I got a higher paying job with a more prestigious role, and I've been getting in shape.

Do I miss WoW? Yeah, sometimes... but when I see screenshots of all those people at raids... I feel sick. I plan on giving PSU a shot but I know better now than to let myself get pulled so deep into things because I know from firsthand experience that involvement at that level doesn't make me very happy at all.

PSU sucks. Sucks sucks sucks sucks. Just like rest of most MMORPG out there. Yes I played damn beta.

Its fun till you remember you will have to pay for it.

Good point. Isn't PSU out on November 10th for NA? Sweet, maybe there will be private PSU server>.>. If there is one, I would play that for awhile >.> (I am not paying Sega 10 bucks per month to play a game =.=)

I thought it was end of October, but I really havent been keeping up with it. A friend of mine has been waiting on the U.S. 360 release since the game was announced on PS2. So he keeps telling me about it.

Heh, you could always do like me, and just play a "free" game that slowly but surely goes P2P despite the creators saying it wouldn't. In particular, that would be Graal online. I use to play that game a LOT. First it was questing...then it was PKing. Eventually though, that got a bit boring, so I found other things to do in the game (like actually "roleplaying" as an arrogant oldbie who would only spar if paid). However, by that time, they started to also put restrictions on the game. Eventually, they locked down accounts so that they stayed in 'newbie mode' with three hearts and the like. By that time, I had lost all interest in the game, coupled with going to a new college, and hence I bid farewell to the game.

I have to admit, I've been "addicted" to some MMO's in the past (Ultima Online, then Dark Age of Camelot, then WoW itself), but have somehow always managed to get myself out of that situation.

Surprisingly enough, it's often the game "shooting itself in the foot" that ultimately helps me to break the addiction.

For example, I played WoW for almost 6 months straight. The Level 1-59 content was awesome, because you could do quests, and there were enough of them that you didn't have to "grind" very often. But once I hit 60, it was all raid, raid, raid. And I don't know about you, but those raids got boring to me very, very quickly. Although I made alts, that didn't help to keep me in the game, and after that, I just stopped playing altogether.

For Dark Age of Camelot, another game I played on and off for 3 years, it was also because "the game got boring". But in this case, it was mostly because I was finding myself being forced to solo more and more. The reason was because this game has a very low population (the most I ever remember "seeing" online was about 1000 players per realm/server. But last time I played, the average was about 230 online at any given time), and unlike WoW, not every class can solo, or solo effectively anyway. There's no such thing as "bandages" or "food/drink" in DAOC to lower downtime, and I hated sitting on my ass for 2-3 minutes PER fight with a tank, or waiting on mana for a caster. And for the most part, those classes that could solo well, often weren't wanted in groups (such as necromancers, vampiirs, and to a lesser extent, warlocks, unless they spammed the group heal spell they can specialize in).

This kind of sucks because I loved DAOC's endgame stuff (Realm vs. Realm, where you could take keeps/towers and have big 100 on 100 battles if there were enough people on). Many players have begged the devs for DAOC to advertise more, to bring in more new players, and their European counterparts even made an awesome commercial for it, but sadly it seems the devs only want to keep the game alive long enough until Warhammer Online comes out, then I'm sure they're going to pull the plug on DAOC (or EA will pull the plug for them, since EA owns Mythic now).

I guess what I'm saying here is, the games can often "shoot themselves in the foot", if they continue to ignore players requests (or only listen to a select few), and keep making changes which alienates the playerbase (look at what happened to Star Wars Galaxies. That game had so much potential, but they just continually screwed it up).

You sound like me. I ended with 5 60s. I quit for many reasons but one of them would be that I got tired of the raiding routine, and especially bored of doing the same place over, over, over and over.

Blizz is gonna shoot itself in the foot alright with the expansion. I will never come back that's for sure. Basically the hardcore raiders get fucked over. The years they spent raiding to get the gear they have now is basically wasted in the expansion. Combine that with changing instances to 25 man, and you got a winner.

From the article:

So true. Quitting WoW gave me a chance to play Beyond Good & Evil, Shadow Hearts, Paper Mario: TTYD, DQVIII, F.E.A.R., and the list goes on.

MMORPG's take too much time, a fact which I think is proven true by the subscription fees. If everyone only played a couple hours a week, would they need to charge anyone for "bandwidth?" ;)

Quitting an MMO is like kicking the bitch roommate out that never does their share of the work, and always makes too much noise.

It's like the epitome of freedom, because you're not tied down to going to X raid at Y time every Z days or getting new equipment to replace your old equipment, and new equipment to replace that equipment and so forth.

Games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft make their money on timesinks and cheap shit. I wait for the day where there's a game that you can log on, make some real friends, play an hour or two, and log out without any fucking obligations.

There are some already, they're called Diablo, Phantasy Star Online, Monster Hunter, Guild Wars, and the releasing-in-two-days Phantasy Star Universe. =P

Damn, why did you have to name off some of the worst MMORPG?

I perfer MMO than MMORPG. MMORPG is too much item and level based.

Cant speak for the others, but Diablo was the shit back in the day. Guild Wars is fun when you play with people you actually know in real life. Oh, and their free. Cant forget about that.

On a side note. PSU is pay to play. So im not sure if it should be lumped with those other games.

There is a game like that, it's called City of Heroes.

I only swore myself I wouldn't get involved in another online rpg at about the end of August so I completly understand how it feels about the whole "I quit" factor. I also read an article on the subject not too long ago which tried to explain how the games have developed I only wish I still had it to share it here. I think online rpgs come down to something the first online rpg makers realised a long time ago:

gamer persistance>game difficutly answer?= make the game never end

Imagine the first time the admins on an rpg allowed online player killing it must have been a total warzone, or the first time 30+ players all jumped the same dragon boss at once the poor game creators back then must have been totally freaked out at the determination of it all as if it was some kind of real fight for surivival.

They've realised since those days that if a game has any flaws at all the player WILL exploit them without mercy to make life easier for them and/or beating other players. The makers have got much smarter since then so they know now how they can get the harcore lifeless players to stay playing even at the end, as well as draw new players in by moving the goalposts slowely further apart every time you progress once you're drawn in the game. So now you get games where you can't complete hardely any tasks alone to encourage more player interaction (FF online anyone? XD) rare items dropped by monsters with a less then 0.5% drop rate which is just plain insain, and in most cases the games characters take roughly a year to train to perfection if not longer (times that by 3 or more characters and that's a LOT of repetitive 'gameplay').

This 'training' or as the elites call 'grinding' normally only consists of you killing the same recoloured monsters 1000+ times and that's an optimistic prediction not dividing things by assisting other players and guilds reaching their own goals not to mention their 'codes of honour' and all that jazz XD.

People are selling their characters off on ebay for gods sake @_@ so for those who don't sell theirs correct me if I'm wrong but am I the only one here who's stopped seeing a casual video game genre and starting to see some kind of unpaid job in a virtual world? :eyebrow:

You got it wrong. It's Runescape.

Anyways, personally GW is alright. It isn't the best mmorpg out there. I never liked MMORPG.

Here's general routine of MMORPGer that is addicted like hell.

1. Buy the game.
2. Pay monthly fee.
3. Play like mad man.
4. When your PC time is up, turn off PC.
5. Wake up at 2 AM and start playing.
6. Play until you go to school.
7. You become tired as f*ck.
8. Repeat 3~5

Considering I was addicted to Ragnarok Online I am guessing I have general feeling of MMORPGer's routine. [What? I can't say it because I sucked at the game? Think again, I was top 100 player AND in best guild ATM)

Generally playing P2P game made me feel as if my money went down the drain if I didn't level up to lvl 99 trans with good PVP items less than a month =.=

I agree. Plus, I play games as a diversion, so I don't want to run into the same kind of a-holes in a "virtual world" that I'm trying to take a vacation from in the "real world" and end up paying $ for it monthly ta boot! Ridiculous...

Man, that used to be my brother. When he lost his job, he used the rest of his money on paying for the cable internet bill (which I later had to foot later on because I used internet extensively as well), and playing MMO's. Wouldn't go get a job or anything, would just log in and play games. He even got to the point of taking my sister's comp and using both comps (and eating a ton of power, which he wasn't helping pay for) just to play one game (the 2nd comp was for a buffbot, which was notorious in DAOC).

Most people I know probably would've kicked this guy out. But my mom is too damn nice, and refused to do it (and we didn't make enough to move out yet either). And it pisses me off that he was such a damn freeloader (would eat a ton of our food, then didn't help with any chores either).

Luckily after about two years of doing this, he finally got his act together and got a job (and I hope he's making a lot, cause he owes my mom a lot of money) and stopped playing so much. But still, the fact that this game ended up doing that (and I'm sure it's done that to many others as well) kind of turned me off being such a hardcore gamer (aside from the endgame stuff pissing me off that is).

I'm all for having fun and playing games, but not to the point where it's a 'second job', and one you have to pay for to boot. Sociology/psychology/business majors, have fun studying this stuff :D

I had began playing Wow about a year ago. Maybe less. I got it, and I played often. It was about the only thing I played. I played it after my Day of Defeat: Source addiction, you could call it. Games are addicting in general, in my opinion. Anyway, this was my first real MMORPG experience. I had a moderate amount of fun, questing, checking out the landscapes, getting the P2P experience and what not. I didn't do much PVP at all, just did my run to 60. At first I had set a goal to just get to 60, raid a little and be done. But I didn't even get to 60. I got to level 52 as a Nightelf Warrior, and got sick of it, because I noticed how the game was causing me to play more, to level higher. The gameplay was even more mundane to me, or it just lost the luster it had.

About a week before I quit I was in desolace, pretty tired from my day, I logged on to grind up a bit there. I wanted to go to a friend's party that night but I thought I was too tired too. I happened to consult this random player I found in desolace, and share some of my thoughts with him. Explaining that I could go to a party but I was too tired... so I had just decided to play some WoW. He was foreign so his english wasn't great but he generally agreed. We chatted as we fought some mobs, floating around with no real goal except to grind. Then I had recieved a call from one of my friends of the friend who was throwing the party and they had insisted they could come and pick me up to the party, where I had to take the bus if I wanted to go, originally. Then I was just like, fuck it, I'll go.

So I went to the party and drank some homeade absinthe with everclear this guy made. MAN THAT SHIT WAS GROSS! But it got me kinda surly =D

I related this story kind of as a sentiment to the regard of quitting the game. I mean, that situation is kind of representative of an addicted MMORPG'er.

1. He's exhausted but is logged on anyway.
2. He has something better to do. (sleep, go to a party)
3. He's grinding.

But ya know, I enjoyed player interaction every now and then. I made a couple friends through mad instance leveling. There was 2 days that I stayed up straight on the SM instances. I met some people who were doing that almost as dedicated as I was. It was interesting, there really were about 5-10 people who were doing those instances just non-stop, that I continued to see during the timespan that I played.

ACTUALLY, the first MMO I tried was fuckin FlyForFun. FlyFF as it's called. I really enjoyed this one, minus its senseless grinding, because of overall friendliness of all the players. Hell, I might even get back into it. Also, because there seemed to be a good amount of young players. I made a friend with a 9 year old australian girl, it was so cute. We didn't talk a lot but we were usually happy to grind together. It's games like those that it's cartoony charm and sheer simplicity bring out the friendly gamers. Well, I might very well be generalizing.

I quit WoW at 52, and don't have any real intention to ever play again. However, my friends are going to get back into it when Burning Crusade comes out. They want me to, but I will refuse them adamantly.

I treated mmo's as a complete escape from my problems. Been trying to quit for 4 months. I think I've almost made it.

Go play WoW, you can be in complete shit gear and still rock the house. Trust me, watch some PVP movies of a rogue using the dagger you start out with at level 1. Or even a level 60 or 70 mage in just greens/blues that are pre BC and sitll own people in tier 2.

WoW was the only game I held respect because if you were smart/skillful you could easily out beat someone with better gear... Though gear does help you kill more/easier but it isn't really required. And level isn't a problem if your the max level and you go into a battleground.

I quit WoW because it bored me, I logged in, within five seconds, bam I wanted to log out.

I never played EQ cause well... at the time I didn't have net nor a job. Guildwars I stopped at like level 14 due to shitty people. You couldn't get missions done and other things cause people would flame you, OMG A MESMER AND A NECRO? YOU MADE A SHIT BUILD! Or the other flames. I don't have to deal with little kiddies who have an e-peen issue. GUild wars was the most waste of 50 bucks + 5.1%(Wisconsin state tax) in my life.

Once I get my new machine, I may play EQII to see what it is all about. The only thing I find fun about MMORPGS is cause of all the people you meet in the game. And the friends you make while playing.

I've tried to quit ragnarok soooooo many times. But the mere mention of it will kick up my urges to kill porings.

I'm actually risking another urge just by typing this message. And i really hope i can keep it down.

My only advice, get your REAL friends to play your account and piss off all your ONLINE friends so your online friends will stop playing with you. And if you don't have real friends tough luck. If you don't have online friends, why the hell are you still playing mmos? Grinding on porings is NOT fun, but it is addicting. Just like smoking alone, not very fun. Smoking with friends a lot of fun.

This was a great story, even better since its true.

Granted I was nothing of such importance during my FFXI hay-days, once I hit somewhere near the top of my game I sat down and thought, "What is my goal?"

There was no goal, it had become mindless repitition, and although some may argue FFXI is the best game for it, all MMORPGs are long-term investments in repitition and the mundane. Once that hit me deep I kinda wanted to cry, I wasted so much time (not to say I'd have done anything more progressive in real life, but I could've read a book or two instead of playing).

I'll always remember the good times and the two great friends I made in the ::three years:: of dedicated playing I spent, the few hundred screenshots I took, but I could never go back to ANY mmorpg now, just the occasional CS:Source with my pals when I go back home from school is the extent of any time investment I'm interested in making with MMOs now.

I play CS. :shade:

I've been completely indifferent to all "true" MMORPGs, never had enough time to sink into them to want to get involved. I used to play Diablo 2 with my best friend in high school all the time (he had a Mac, it was our only choice), and once Guild Wars came out I played that for a semester or two with my roommate in college. Both of us got bored in GW around the same time as we realized that the PvP was pretty much as lame as everything else.

The only game that currently stands a chance at sucking me back in for a lot of time is Hellgate: London because it's sounding like exactly the style of game I've been wanting for years. Of course, it comes out the same month I start grad school, so it might have to wait two years until I finish all of my classes and start to just do research (of course, by that time nobody else will be playing so I'll just be alone going :( ).

That is the one thing that has probably kept me from quitting WoW for good. I have so many good friends whom I've met in the game. I don't think I could up and quit the game, since they probably would never sign onto IM even if I left an IM name, never email much, etc. Finding them in game is pretty much the best way of just catching up and having a chat.

As a true story last week I logged in, and for almost 15 minutes straight, I just sat there and chatted in whispers with one of my friends. I moved about a little bit in between the typing, but still, the conversation was great and I wasn't paying a spit of attention to the quests I had, trying to gain the next level as fast as I could, what have you. It's that kind of stuff that makes me still log into the game for the most part.