State of the WoW

For 20 years J and I have been diving into and out of different worlds created by MMOrpgs since 2001 when we met. Back then he introduced me to Everquest. MMOrpgs have been part of our lives ever since.

• Everquest

• Dark Age of Camelot

• Star Wars Galaxies

• World of Warcraft

• Warhammer Online

• Guild Wars 2

• Star Wars: The Old Republic

• Wildstar

And since 2004, World of Warcraft with all of the expansions over the years. For the first ten years we played without interruption to our subscriptions. Our hardcore playing started to wane when Mists of Pandaria was released and neither of us felt the urge to buy the expansion. I got it a year after it launched but quickly lost interest in it. Warlords of Draenor didn’t help the situation when it appeared on the scene in 2014. Then in January 2019 after playing Battle for Azeroth for 5 months we cancelled our subscription because of Destiny 2.

I’m notoriously bad at shooters. At least we thought i was bad. My only experience with shooty games was on console. On a whim and because the game was free, I installed Destiny 2 and started playing. One evening while I was playing I was aware of J standing over my shoulder watching my gameplay…

“You can play shooters?! “

Apparently I can’t play shooters for shite on console but put the game on pc and I’m right in the thick of it. He bought Borderlands 2 for me on PC and we spent 100 hours a month bouncing between both games. When Borderlands 3 was announced for 2019 we were excited!! We pre-ordered the game and started counting down the months, weeks and days until it released. And then the MMO itch hit me so I decided to resubscribe to World of Warcraft for a month until Borderlands 3 was released.

We’ve been playing every day since August. In fact we’ve played more WoW than Borderlands 3 which surprised the heck out of both of us. We’ve only finished one play-through of Borderlands 3 so far and it’s a great game. It’s even better than Borderlands 2 but WoW is once again our first game of choice when we sit down to play. It’s been a pleasant surprise.

So what are we doing in WoW since the game is between expansions? With Shadowlands set to release in 2020 (we’re thinking an August release) we’ve been spending our time leveling alts to 120 while the 15th anniversary experience buff is in place. We’re also doing transmog and mount runs and leveling professions. And we’re chasing achievements. It’s been incredibly enjoyable.

Currently I’m bouncing between my frost mage, demo lock and ret pally while leveling a priest to max. We’re just waiting for Patch 8.3 to drop so we can play Mechagnome hunters together. And when we’re not playing WoW we get together with the family to play Dungeons and Dragons. But that’s something for another post.