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