I just took a break from WoW as I do from time to time to focus on my single player games backlog. I am trying to finish up the Windows games i owned before getting my iMac last year around this time. I have found enough stuff to satisfy me comes out for Mac thanks to Feral, Aspyr, Blizzard, EA, Virtual Programming, Indies, etc. So I''d like to kiss the Bootcamp partition goodbye and go all Mac!
Not to take this off-topic too much but that was my reasoning for letting WoW go for a bit as I still enjoy MMO games too. I spent so many hours in EverQuest and EverQuest II and then WoW that I guess I am old fashioned now or something. I am okay with the standard MMO formula if done well in an interesting, fun to explore world that supports independent play.
I play WoW casually and a lot differently than many do I think. I don't do anything competitively in the game for one thing. I enjoy relaxing goof off time doing stuff like fishing, farming an old instance for mats or cool things with one of my two high level characters (my Blood Elf Pally or my Troll Druid), I run dailies still (Argent Tournament) to earn complete sets of heirloom gear to be shared by my alt army members, crafting, playing the AH game, making lots of gold, questing with a character or two (notice how far into this list this item is?), and more.
I would actually like to try out my Pally and Warrior in BG PvP for some fun. I have done it just a little and liked it. It might be cool to play that and earn the appropriate gear on my own time schedule.
I'm not big on grouping or LFR raids because too often people do not play nice and I don't have time for that. I enter the world of Azeroth to enjoy it, not fight over loot, who has what DPS, etc. Back in the day, in EverQuest, we'd put together a group and just have fun socializing, killing stuff in some camp somewhere, maybe camping some epic quest drop or whatnot and we did not worry about who played perfect, we did not measure dps, etc. We just played for fun. That is what I still do.
I am in a very nice guild of older players and enjoy their company in guild chat. If I get one of my two 80's to cap, who knows, maybe sometime I'll do the runs to be able to play the end game stuff with them but I don't worry about it. I just log in and have fun however I feel like it on any given day and I give the subscription a break altogether when I want to focus on other games for a while.
This is totally different from how I used to play EverQuest where I was in the number one raiding guild on my server and one of the best geared clerics at the time there, etc. That was fun for a while and I am glad I enjoyed that when I did but those days are long gone now.
I'm looking forward to what Blizzard comes up with, with Titan. But I am not in any rush to see it yet. I have a lot to do in WoW still at my own snail's pace. I'd like to at least outfit all the alts in heirlooms and level them into at least The Burning Crusade for the fun of playing the different classes.
I thought I'd really like to try Guild Wars 2 also but I am not willing to reboot for acceptable (to me) performance of the game. I feel it is a shame they didn't go the distance and do a native port but that is simply my own personal take and not anything I'd want to argue with anyone.
Elder Scrolls Online sure interests me and if it is WoW-like that wouldn't bother me really, particularly if there is focus on providing the sort of exploration the single player series is known for. I might like that a lot. I certainly love the world of Elder Scrolls. Morrowind was one of the greatest games I've ever played. I am so behind!! I haven't yet played Oblivion nor Skyrim! But I own them both and will get to them.
That's the thing too. To have time for the likes of Oblivion and Skyrim and the excellent Mac games I've been collecting, I can't do 40+ hours in any MMO anymore. It's casual or bust pretty much. I wonder how many people as they get older move in this direction and if that is not what has impacted the market to some extent - people are not willing to engage in games that tend to have (in their own perception) such high time requirements to advance (to a point they are happy with).
Anyway, enough of my rambling! But before I close here, hats off to Blizzard, Turbine and in the future Bethesda for providing native Mac MMO options to enjoy. For me, it is just one more reason I don't need Windows anymore. Yes, I make some tradeoffs but I'm just fine with that. No platform has everything. Hell, I can't catch up on what I do have as it is.
