Reasons I don't plan to come back for Cata....

Yes my friends in the early hours in the morning I've seen it fit to finally write this post elaborating on exactly why I don't plan to come back to the World of Warcraft. I feel this post (in addition to my time spent on vacation) is far overdue and will give an overview along with a detailed level reasoning as to why i do not plan to return. There all fairly valid reason from my point of view and of course can be argued as sense we are all humans (most of us anyways) we are capable of debate. However without further a due lets begin.

ActivisionBlizzard:

Instead of rambling on about how much I despise this overall merger I'm just going to link this 17 page article of all the changes that have happen to Blizzard sense the merger to June/July 2010:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252

This pretty much saves me a large chunk of hassle and pretty much states the facts without having me throw in the large amount of bais opinion that comes with my voice when delivering a message.

Friends on multiple servers:

This one is definitely a biggie on my list. Prior to considering coming back for Cataclysm there have been about 2-3 friends that have been interested in having me come back and play with them on each of there respective servers. In the past when attempting to level multiple toons on multiple servers while playing with several friends it never turned out well. I would spend approximately 8-12 hours a day leveling and socializing which in my current real life scenario I definitely don't have the time. Primarily this would cut into my other game time, job hunting, and A+ studies. Not to mention sense this is during the early phases of the game it might result in raiding with multiple guilds...another big no no on my list.

Enjoying the time away:

Since I quit back in the earlier portions of this year I haven't really had an urge to come back. Equally due to my knowledge in previous MMO there was already a plan in place to fill in the void of time that would result from quitting (which wasn't that large sense I mostly was playing arena at that point). As a result the list of my steam games has increased significantly along with my passion for board games. Now a days I find myself playing through my games on steam/wii, playing casual games of no stat hon and board games with friend. I enjoy the fact that my life/free time no longer revolves around a raid schedule and I'm free to do as I please. The choice of going 'hey I wanna go work on Kirby Super Star today or maybe Dead Space' rather than 'did I work on those dailys today..is the hope the heroic isn't occy' doesn't seem as a appeal.

Lack of time there of:

This kind of ties into the last point but rather as of late I haven't had a lot time (with the exception of this week) to really sink a large chunk of time into a game. With warcraft I would need at least 2-3 hours set aside to take care of everything I wanted to (on a single toon) while if I'm working on another title or reading I can place it aside when I please and go about to attend to another task. Not much to this point but felt another paragraph was necessary.

Its new and fresh...or is it?

I know not everyone can reflect on this but basically Cata has had this kind of feel on me. Do you remember playing Golden Eye and how insanely fun it was. Remembering the spawn points for special weapons, respawn after you killed someone to effective camp their body, Facility on 00 agent in under 2 minutes and 5 seconds? Those were solid and good times right? Back in the day where Rare made solid games that made you nod and truely appreciate the company (well at least till they made Donkey Kong 64...ranks up there with Super Man imo). In either case then Perfect Dark is released a little while later. Same solid game but with improvements. There's added functionality for bots, more weapons, added firing range feature, saved statitics the works...but I still have more fond memories of Golden Eye. Why? Mainly I think because it came first and even with all the fixes and tweaks the old dog is still one of my best friends.

I've used this analogy with Diablo and Titan Quest as well and the way I feel with games that follow this model is that its had its day in the Sun and just as Blizzard wiped away all there good memories of old world (with its bit of bad coding {honestly from a dev standpoint fixing it would have been nicer} old dungeons, and uneven terrain to be exploited for climbing purposes) I feel that I must to must say the old dog to rest and move forward. This also reflects back to being a 'gamer' rather than a 'warcraft player' but none the less I feel its time to move on :).

Not everything is new in Cata...early levels:

I know some people will disagree with me and my 1 week worth of PTR knowledge relating to this but based on what I played primarily the newbie areas had been revamped...well some of them. Orc newbie land is exactly the same along with a few others. Equally though while some of the new areas are updated (Gnome, Troll, and Undead to name a few) the secondary quest hubs are essentially the same...which was a huge let down. I always find the first 5 levels to be the easiest and chill but when your hitting that second quest hub area you'd hope the freshness would continue which is unfortunately not the case. You get a bit of stale bread with your fresh milk and it doesn't leave the freshest taste in your mouth.

PVP Balance:

This is basically blank till I see what's happening this arena season.

Endless Cycle:

I'm getting way to sleep at this point but basically this point is establishing that I really don't feel like sinking back into the loop again where I'm binded to paying 190 dollars (approximately 2.5 billion steam games or the 1/3 of a PS3) to play the game each year. I feel like my money could be better invested else where and I would actually have possession of whatever I own (steam is pseudo possession but good enough for me). That and I'll see myself come next expansion going 'well nope I don't wanna play...oh look my accounts been reupped and I'm good to go'. Just going to sit out and put my foot down.

I realize there's some points I missed here (seeing how its 5:30 in the morning) and the donut shop openned 30 minutes ago so I'm going to get myself a fresh donut...maybe sleep, nite all :3

Edit: 12/23/2010 - Just realized this was formatted incorrectly so tweaking this post