Ditching WildStar for WoW

I cancelled my WildStar subscription*. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that I don’t feel like playing it any more. My Esper has remained largely static between levels 20 and 30, with no noticeable improvements in abilities, so I fully anticipate it will just be a repetitive chore to get from 30 to 50, at which time I would enter the cesspool of toxic behavior that I keep hearing about. Don’t fret, though, I’m sure I’ll be back someday.

Meanwhile, I added a month of WoW subscription time, because it’s the perfect MMO for my current gaming mood. WoW is fantastic when you don’t want to do any thinking or work. You just log in, grab quests, kill stuff with ridiculously overpowered abilities, and watch your experience bar go up. All while catching up on your Netflix shows. Or after your brain is mushed up from Camp NaNoWriMo.

My Hunter has reached level 82 now, which means I finished up with the WotLK zones. Half of them, at least. And by “finished” of course I mean I only completed enough quests to get from level 70 to level 80. I have to say that I was very impressed by the Storm Peaks zone. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a snowy, mountainous zone that is extremely “vertical” in nature, so you spend just as much time flying up and down as you do laterally, and the scenary is very interesting with all the ancient ruins and clouds and lightning and whatnot.

But I alas I had to leave it. After an amusing boat ride (“oooh, shiny!”), I started out Cataclysm underwater in Vashj’ir, which was surprisingly not-awful. (I have a strong suspicion that I got a taste of what the Rift 3.0 underwater expansion will look like there.) But it wasn’t quite not-awful enough to keep me from taking a tip I got on Twitter and heading over to Mount Hyjal. If I remember correctly Cataclysm was only 5 levels of content, so unless writing slows me down more than I think, I should be hitting Pandaria zones next week.

* Barring something amazing in the WildStar Strain “please don’t leave!” patch.**

** Nothing amazing has yet been observed.

Related

• WoW – Yeah, You Read That Right
• Mid-June MMO Status Report
• Landmark et al – Take My Money!
• On Hardcore Raiding
• May, The MMO Crisis Month