And this time it’s for good. I’ve left World of Warcraft twice before, but never was it for good. Those other times I simply needed a break or just was lured in by another game for the time being. Now the time has come where I must lay WoW to rest, not because I don’t like it, but because I’m burned out. Over the last four years I’ve done a fairly large chunk of grinding: Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Everquest 2 (twice), Guild Wars, Anarchy Online and the Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online betas. The bottom line was that it was all the same grind, just in a different environment, and I simply can not do that any more. In a recent interview with RealMMO, Raph Koster said:

I think WoW sets us back only in specific ways. I think it moves us forward in other specific ways. Blizzard, as usual, nailed polish, nailed guiding the player, nailed a look and feel. They took the old formula and put it in really snazzy bottles. That’s what they do best, and they are very very good at it – the best in the industry.

But they also didn’t pick up the ball and run with a lot of stuff that are growing trends in the MMO industry today – and what’s more, given their expertise, they probably never will. We’re seeing a lot of interest in stuff like user-created content, in-world economies in games like Eve Online, and so on, and we don’t see anything that sophisticated in WoW. WoW is very much a “theme park” sort of world, one which is about putting you on a ride and letting you experience it. There’s a lot of directions that online worlds are starting to grow in, and I think that in a lot of ways WoW is like the apotheosis of the old, rather than pointing a way to the new.

This pretty much summed up how I ended up feeling about WoW, even with the Burning Crusade. However, the one “old formula” that kept being put in “snazzy new bottles” for each game was the grind. The grind was identical, and by the time I played my fourth MMO, it was becoming more of a hassle. Instead of noticing how awesome a game was, I was distracted by the fact that I had to kill another 70,000 minions before having the chance to explore the game’s full potential. Furthermore, this was 70,000 minions in addition to those 70,000 I had already killed in each subsequent MMO I had played. I simply cannot do that any more. I’m burned out. I’m back in a gaming slump and I’m on the search for a new MMO that offers potential, not grinding. Maybe Age of Conan or Star Trek Online will save the day. But those are a good six months to a year away…