From Demons to Pandas

World of Warcraft. The name alone is enough to send half the internet into an uproar of praising and rioting, while the other half sits there and stares in either awe or disgust.

I have to give credit where it's due: Blizzard knows their stuff when it comes to making video games. Not only have they made and maintain probably the most successful MMO in history, but they have spawned other franchises alongside it like Starcraft and Diablo that hold their own incredibly large fanbases by themselves. When put together, that's a lot of freakin' people.

Yet, as of this moment, I can say with absolute near-confidence that I am bored.

Yeah yeah, Diablo 3 isn't out yet and Starcraft 2 is having an expansion soon, but WoW is a different breed of Blizzard game. It's based on one of their first successful games that they ever released, and if we count the years from then, the story has been going for 17 years now. Starcraft and Diablo have been around for a long time too, but Warcraft has had 3 RTS games and an MMO, with 1-2 expansions for the last two RTS's and the MMO about to have its fourth. To have a game franchise last that long with so many iterations and still make the amount of money it rakes in every year is nothing short of a miracle, and yet...why do I feel so underwhelmed?

I started playing in the second expansion, Burning Crusade, right around when Patch 2.3 came out. I was incredibly naive at the time, basically raiding Karazhan and Gruul's Lair all the time. It was a blast, especially when the next expansion came out. I had never experienced something like it before: starting fresh with everyone else, leveling up 10 more levels, going through each new raid tier in a guild, and everything else. It was an absolute blast.

But then...something happened. Things started getting more and more dull. Raiding started to feel like a chore. Other console and PC games that weren't MMOs were taking up more of my time. WoW started to seem like a hanging investment rather than a fun game filled with RPG goodness. I couldn't figure out why the game was becoming so boring and lifeless, yet I still kept raiding and playing into the Cataclysm expansion. Here I am, at the end of said expansion, at a crossroads.

I'm sure I'm not the first to arrive at this decision. One possible road has you still playing, either finding new and good ways to make the game fun again and enjoying the friends you've made over the years online, or outright failing and having a pretty good feeling of disappointment when you find that the risk you took was for nothing. On the other hand, you can outright quit and not take any risks at all, but you would be letting down the obligation you feel for your friends in the guild you've been in for so long, and letting such a long investment go so easily just doesn't sit right in your mind.

Luckily, Blizzard recently announced a feature called the Annual Pass, where if I agree to pay for WoW for the next year, I not only get a standard edition of Diablo 3 for free online (U jelly?), but I get a free invite to the next expansion's beta test.

Stop. The God. Damn. Presses.

This is exactly what I or anyone for that matter needs for making a concrete decision on staying. I can test the next expansion, and if I'm not impressed, I can leave. I have already agreed to pay for the next year, so even if I get a little nostalgic or some shit like that, I can login and do whatever until my subscription runs out. It's genius!

I got plenty more to say, but this post is already long enough. Maybe more a little later, which could be anywhere from tomorrow to whenever the hell I feel like it.