Tobold's Blog
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
 
Leaving in style

Cancelling my World of Warcraft account encouraged me to log on again and make some order before leaving the account unplayed for several months. You wouldn't want to still have mail in your mailbox when you leave, or items in your inventory for some half-finished project you won't remember. Although I didn't really play much WoW any more in the last two months, I still logged on often, for example for alchemy transmutations, or for trying to buy cheap adamantite ore and prospecting it into more expensive gems. And all that still earned me gold, but how much?

So I emptied my virtual piggy bank and logged on all of my characters and banking and auction mules, sending most of their gold to just one character. The result was a surprising 5,800 gold. So I decided to leave in style, and bought an epic flying mount for 5,200 gold for my warrior. Another checkmark against a goal achieved that I hadn't originally thought I would reach. The reason why I thought I wouldn't reach the epic flying mount was that given the money experience from WoW 1.x, 5,200 gold sounded like a lot of money. But I hadn't thought of inflation: In WoW 2.x it is a lot easier to make money, thus 5,200 gold is equivalent to less effort than it was before. A single transmutation makes me over 20 gold now, and with jewelcrafting I could transform 300 gold worth of adamantite ore into 600 gold worth of gems. And that was just what I earned without even leaving the city!

Of course buying an epic flying mount I don't plan to use much, if at all, this year is kind of silly. But keeping the cash wouldn't have been any better. It just would have made me nervous that somebody hacked into my account and stole it. Now that it is spent on riding skill, it can't be stolen any more. And maybe in the three weeks until the account finally runs out, I can still find the time to make a final tour around Outland before I leave. I can just hope that whatever new lands Blizzard adds in the next expansion can be flown over.
Comments:
I use the mod Total Gold to see how much I have in the bank across my characters.

http://www.discordmods.com/cgi-bin/page.pl?mod=TG
 
Congratulations on your new mount Tobold.

Only yesterday I commented in my own blog about the difference between finishing a single player game and finishing with an MMORPG. If you reach the game over screen in a single player game you can leave with a sense of accomplishment and fond memories of the game but normally when you finish with an MMORPG you must sneak out the back door a failure. So I must also congratulate you on having found a way to leave WOW on a high note. Well done.
 
You may want to be careful Tobold as canceling your account can result in your account being deleted without any notice.

A friend of mine quit playing 5 months ago and then tried to reinstate his account last week just to see, account doesn't exist. He called Blizz and they said there was nothing they could do so his 60 warrior with 300 BS and 300 Mining is gone for good. Not cool in my opinion.
 
Gratz on the speedy mount.

As the last part of a guild get-together in Nagrand (sp?), we decided to have a flying mount race to one of the floaty islands near where our party was. The race was to the island and back again. One player had her epic mount while the rest of us were on our 60% ones. She said she'd give us a head start.

So we all took off except her. I was within a body-length of the floating island when she comes gearing over my shoulder, around the island, banks hard right and flew back to the starting point.

She even had time to say her goodnights before logging off before the rest of us even ended the race. :)
 
Gratz :).

Whilst you may not care anymore - the TK and Serpentshrine attunement requirements are being lifted.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=110637185&sid=1
 
I had no idea how much weight your blog carried over there at Blizzard HQ Tobold! Mere days after you announce your departure and account cancelling, they "decide" to remove the attunement requirements for Seprentshrine Cavern and the Eye both. Just goes to show everyone that one man can make a difference!

:-)

-Wayne
 
haha, way to go Tobold! I think Blizzard wants you to keep playing, either that or your some sort of psychic Nostradamus with bad timing.
 
this is a bone-throw to all the semi-casuals that haven't touched ssc/eye yet. Since blizzard has no content they can usher to the uber-hardcores that are working on bt to keep them playing, I believe they are just shifting the focus back on the karazhan dead end folks and saying "look, now you can get into ssc!".

Whatever it takes to get people to think in the back of thier mind that they may be able to 'reach that next step'.

In my mind this says that a considerable amount of people in the "I've finished karazhan now I can't do anything" range have quit. This is a desperation move. I wouldn't be surprised if they nerf ssc/eye in the next patch just to keep this very crowd from getting bored/frustrated and quitting.
 
Mebbe so...
There is a recent article on gigaom that shows the number of WoW actual players online (measured using '/who') as declining since a January peak of around 900,000 online (data collected over about 2 years, IIRC).

HOWEVER...
The the same article shows that the current number of players still exceeds the pre-BC December totals by a significant number -- I think it was about 50,000. Hardly a desperate situation!

Blizzard most certainly seeks to stop that slide, but it's quite difficult to pin the decline on endgame woes without serious consideration of many other possible factors -- such as curious returners who played a few weeks and left again, a spike of nwe players who did not all stick to it, banned gold farmers, competition in a year of other good game releases, etc.
 
I know it hasn't been your only problem with the game, but Tigole just announced that they are removing the attunements for Serpentshine Cavern and The Eye raid instances.

So if you did go back to playing, there is no reason you could not go with your guild into SSC.
 
A friend of mine who quit the game a few months ago (he has since resumed playing) said that getting his affairs in order felt like planning his own funeral. Do you feel any sadness, or not really because you plan on coming back with the next expansion?
 
Seems like a good way to go out! The comment about how it seems you sneak out is dead on. It really is that way.

I look forward to the LoTR posts. That game has a lot of stuff to hold interest too.
 
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