Let me preface this by apologizing for not posting sooner. I’m also sorry if the following isn’t something you’re interested in, but it’s just my personal thoughts and feelings summing up my experiences revolving around the game. Some of this is from an article I drafted but never posted a few months ago. I haven’t been posting any of the comments that you might find in some of the articles under my name.

What am I doing now?

So as most of you have probably assumed, I’m essentially finished with the game, and have been for a while now. I never “quit”, which I always found ridiculous for people to say. Quitting makes it sound like an addiction. I played because I enjoyed playing, and I gradually lost interest. Since about last summer, I began playing more and more casually until I simply didn’t log on at all.

There’s a lot of reasons for this. Personally, I’m kind of moving on in life from wanting to sink a lot of time into gaming, my interests have just gradually changed.The game itself has also changed and become undeniably worse than it was in the past, both from a raw gameplay and game experience standpoint and from a community standpoint (I’ll detail my thoughts on this below).

The Decline of the WoW Community and its Understanding of PvP

When I refer to this, I’m not just talking about numbers, but about attitude. Maybe I personally changed, but over the course of this expansion I felt I witnessed a really decaying community that both didn’t understand what used to make this game good, and didn’t really help make the game more fun. What really made the game for me was the people I interacted with, and this had become abysmal.

One of the things that made me realize how much the pvp community specifically had changed was the reception I saw when Drakedog 9 was released.

Here’s my take on that video. The editing was incredible, first and foremost, from Vurtne. You can tell a lot of time and effort went into it and it shows. The video looks and feels beautiful, even if you forget the PvP content itself. It flows extremely well. It’s not the best editing I’ve ever seen but it’s comparable to the highest caliber of PvP video editing.

The content itself is world PvP. Having made a world PvP video in this expansion, I know how tremendously hard it is to find content, but Drakedog did, and having managed to do so is really a testament to him wanting to make the best product. Arena clips are vastly easier to procure, with some effort a solid arena video can be finished in a month; a mediocre one in a week; an unedited one in a few days. The content itself was solid, exciting 1vn that demonstrates control.

What was the reaction of most? People hating on world PvP. Really? What the fuck? You may say that this is just one video and you can’t base your views of the whole community on just one example, but what this critique leads me to is a deeper understanding that a large percentage of WoW’s current player base has no fucking idea what this game was and why it was so good. That epic PvP encounter in the roaming world, a random battle behind some mystifying scenery that will only happen once, where the only reward is pride. World PvP is WoW as a game, as a memorable experience. And THIS was one of people’s biggest complaints about the video. Players who have no idea what world PvP, is who would prefer a scripted arena match that can be decided before the gates open. I love(d) arena but it can NEVER be seen in the same light as world PvP to me. It’s just not the same experience and 99 percent of the time doesn’t even come close.

Things used to be much different. I felt like I was gearing my character and spending the time and practicing to become better so that I could kick ass when that moment came, whether in dueling or in world PvP or even in Arena.

But at this point in WoW? People blindly accept that arena is synonamous with PvP and Skill, and they are happy to sit idling in Dalaran until their partners log on, and are willing to call this a game. You can blame Blizzard all you want for ruining wow, but the community let it happen and gradually accepted it, and what hope is there for the game to improve when the community doesn’t even know what the problem is.

A lot of players who never played before WOTLK have no understanding of this game or its potential depth. They are told that 3v3 arena is all that matters in understanding skill and they follow this idea pretty blindly.

This all leads me down another path of thought. People talking about skill who have no fucking idea what skill is or what they are talking about.

This isn’t really a new trend but it’s one that has expanded greatly. You have this entire segment of the player base that only see this game through arena and arena ratings and gear scores. A lot of these players are elitists, and they don’t even know why. A big reason is that they emulate what they see from peers I suppose. These are the players that base skill entirely on meaningless arena rating. Not on reaction time, timing, control, movement, consistency, coordination, but arena rating.

So here’s a quick explanation of top level arena in WoW and how it relates to skill, because I think a lot of people don’t understand this. Skill is not the major factor in success in WoW arena. It may have been in BC, or even earlier in WOTLK, but as the expansion has progressed, what determines your success in arena is moreso the following factors:

What Comp Do you Play? What class do you play? What Spec do you Play?

Since the inception of arena, this has always been true to a certain degree, but in the past (TBC) skilled players could overcome the fact they were playing a weaker comp or spec or even class in arena. Today? Look at the trends of beast cleave or wizard cleaves. Want to succeed as a rogue? Make an RLS. I played RLS early this season for less than a week and barely knowing the comp got 2750+ mmr with cirranis who clicks out of his spellbook and shoewhistle, an alt warlock. I exaggerate because they are both competent players, but the key is certainly the comp. I’m fairly certain I could play with any competent RLS and succeed at the moment. I think any two decent healers and a warrior can achieve ratings for the same reasons that DK/Pally dominated 2s early in the expansion.

Is skill a factor? Yes, but what’s much more important than that is the people you play with and the classes you play with. Which brings me to my next point in this rant.

The Other Big Factor in Success in Arena is Who you Know in WoW and Who you Play with？

You know what’s more important than skill in this game? Playing with the most well connected players and socially networking with them. When I was looking around to get sponsored in the past, I got a first hand look at what it took. Step one is be friends with other people who are sponsored. If you are not, you will almost certainly not succeed. That’s it. If you aren’t good friends with the handful of sponsored players, don’t expect to do anything unless you can qualify for that once a year tournament realm, and can find the right comp and committed players for it which can be almost impossible.

Look at the example of EG tryouts last year. Myself, perplexity, scythe, and litreacola were all passed up in recruitment in favor of a rogue named smatin. Not even speaking for myself, but smatin was a pile of shit compared to any of the other rogues I mentioned, but since he was friends with tenderloin (eg’s shaman at the time to replace kollectiv), he was selected.

That’s just a single example, but I’m sure many players trying to break into top pvp can attest that who you know is much more important than how well you play. You can argue that WoW is an MMO and social aspects are part of this, but I still think that skill should be the most important factor in your success in arena. Unforunately, it is far from it. This is one of the big reasons I no longer care about WoW, because I don’t want to spend time wandering around guilds and ventrilos trying to find a good resto shaman just to succeed.

Some Final Thoughts

Now don’t let the above rant fool you, most of that was written in frustration a few months ago. The game obviously wasn’t all bad. As lame as this may sound, I learned a lot about people and life and had countless amounts of fun playing on and off over the years. At its best WoW was an engrossing experience and I feel like it had a lot to offer.

I probably had the most fun in this game making videos, it was a unique experience and it let me be creative. I made them because I enjoyed making them, BUT I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE FOR THEIR SUPPORT! I’ve had a ton of support both with videos and this site over the years, and I hope that I’ve been of some help and offered you some entertainment along the way.

Although I’ve always tried to keep my personal life separate from gaming, I will mention that things are going really well for me. I never felt that WoW stopped me from having a social life and that this was just a myth because so many gamers are social disasters, but it was a time investment and it did affect my lifestyle. Since I moved away from playing over this past year I’ve been going to the gym 4-5 times a week, done better in academics, smoked a lot less weed (although you might argue this isn’t a good thing), and I’ve gone from meaningless one nighters to more meaningful things. On the off chance you care, life is good.

So thanks for the support along the way, and helping to make my personal experience with the game more than it would have been. I don’t know what I’ll be doing next in terms of gaming, or if I’ll ever come back, I may continue to update the site intermittently regardless.

Thank you and good luck.