Warcraftian Hiatus

I canned my World of Warcraft account the other day, and I feel fairly satisfied about the whole deal. I made it to level 60, ran around with a few alts, grouped, raided, did some PvP in Battlegrounds and out in the wilds, collected some rareish items, joined a couple of guilds and got myself ganked a whole bunch of times. I didn't run any of the high-level instances like Molten Core or Blackwing Lair, but since I don't have 39 other friends to help me out with either of those little outings, I don't really mind that much.

Are 5.5 million subscribers wrong about the game being fun? Well, not really. It's very well done, beautifully polished and engaging. The graphics aren't cutting edge, but each zone has its own distinctive atmosphere, and the main cities are quite spectacular. It does have problems though, such as long login queues, regular disconnections, and a dearth of constructive things to do at level 60. It would be a much more enjoyable endgame if I had four or five actual friends in my time zone to play with, so that when one of us wipes the group halfway through LBRS we could all laugh about it and penalize the transgressor a round of beers or movie tickets for the weekend, instead of having to endure the text-based tantrums of a faceless thirteen-year-old with a complete lack of social skills, infinite free time and an Arcanite Reaper.

Blizzard have been quite sneaky with unsubcriptions as well. They keep characters for inactive accounts indefinitely, so there's always a temptation to reactivate and pick things up again. I'll probably end up doing this when I get settled back in Australia, around the same time the WoW expansion pack is released. I might be all caught up in Oblivion and Quake Wars by then, so I'll have to see.