Pretty well, all things considered. I played off and on for about 15 years (more on than off). Got into an awesome family-friendly guild and made some very good friends. I still regularly chat with and occasionally play other games with some of them.

I became the leader of that guild eventually, but by then it was well into a slow death spiral. It was sad to see everything slowly fall apart and there being nothing anyone could do to resurrect it. That was kind of a painful life lesson.

But I also have some very fond memories playing with both my wife and my son, and with those friends.

Maybe I was to much of a ‘filthy casual’ to get drawn too deeply into it (I only casually raided sporadically). But even still, it did hook me in for a while. And even now it’s left an itch I can’t scratch. I miss the Wrath era and how vibrant and dynamic and crazy the ‘world’ could be.

Overall I feel like it was worth the time and money. But I know that’s not the case for many others.

My son still plays it sometimes and is trying to get me to come back for the new xpac. But I have zero enthusiasm for it. The last several months I was playing I would log in out of obligation and then almost immediately log off again because nothing sounded fun to do. I didn’t (and still don’t) like what they’ve done with both retail and classic. I guess I’ve moved on in life.

I never did raid content and got sick of it when I hit the level cap on the burning crusade.

I look back on my time playing wow very fondly because the Skinner box endgame ship never appealed to me at all. It was fun and social and when I got sick of it I moved on.

Very happy about my time spent playing wow.

Man I miss it like crazy and I frequently think about the lost connection to friends who still play.

I’ve got too many things to do to get back in, but it kind of stops me from gaming at all because part of the allure is being really invested and really GOOD. There’s the UI investment, the research, and just the casual play and chat time… I miss it all.

The guild I was in really kicked off at Cataclysm and we were alliance first for heroic end game (server second) for like 3 xpacs. I quit wow 4 times before it stuck. I started in vanilla in 2005 in college and played until… 2014? Pretty sure my main (and I had 3 characters) had about 370 days in /played.

It lives on a pedestal of gaming and I basically have to leave it sitting there until my family is grown, playing a casual chess game or two instead.

TL;DR: When it comes to games I’ve got no chill now. Even with casual chess I pay for lessons.

Edit:

As an aside, it’s wild to me how many people ITT didnt even raid at all, it’s like 1/3+ of the game! That’s carving some space for PvP, which was also hella fun back when PvP servers and griefing and casual raids of enemy towns was a thing.

The dumbest game I’ve ever played. Escaped into it as a kid on release and got addicted. Sure the initial journey to 60 was pretty magical. It was my first mmo, and I had played WC3 a lot before.

But my god, the dunning krueger effect, the toxicity, the community. Just terrible imo. And of course the utter unfulfilling time sink.
I’ve also been quite a competitive gamer, having played a lot of cs, dota and wc3 ladder, some semi-professionally. And WoW is simply not it.

I learned how evil Blizzard is, how addicted I can get to certain games, etc. yeah, the one word that comes to mind looking back at it is “stupid”.

I left because of things the company was doing. I liked being part of a community that aligned with my interests.

I miss being able to play with people like that. The challenge of raids were fun and I took a lot of pride in the progress we were making.

Honestly it’s been lonely. I’ve tried to play other games with people but it felt disconnected and eventually I walked away from that and only played single player games.

points to username

I omly played it for a year or maybe two tops just before and through Cata. Hated the grind so mostly played a Death Knight tank and joined a random group looking for a tank in all chat that was a blast to play with. Lots of late nights, and had fun, but didn’t miss it when I quit after not wanting to spend money on another expansion on top of the monthly sub.

If anything it soured the concept of grinding. If a game isn’t fun from the outset I don’t even bother with it. Leveling/upgrades are fine as long as it doesn’t feel like I need to for the game to be fun.

Well I occasionally have the impulse to tell my coworkers “That’s Minus Fifty DKP!” but aside from that, I dunno maybe there’s something to be said about just knowing your role, doing your job right, and assuming you don’t need to micromanage everyone else.

I would like to start again but just don’t have the time anymore. Fuck retail tho

I played from 2005 to 2009 and it was my first MMO. I learned a lot about my own addictive nature with WoW and MMOs in general.

I got lost in the minutiae of theorycrafting out builds and because of being in one of the more hardcore raid guilds during vanilla (5 raid nights a week), basically every raising resto druid on the server knew me and would cross faction just to hang out and talk builds and strategy. Was a ton of fun, but kept me so invested beyond even my raid schedule and when I quit, my druid alone had 1 year of in-game time.

Quitting WoW was easily the best decision I could have made (during WotLK) for my own mental health and for my (at the time) young professional career. I learned that of all the “close friends” didn’t actually give a damn when the game was removed from conversations. I had a lot of fun while playing but I allowed it to take over my social life to the point I didn’t realize I no longer had one.

It’s funny, the game that got me over WoW was Dragon Age: Origins which dropped within a few weeks of quitting. It felt and played kind of like a single player WoW in a weird way, and I just never felt like picking it back up.

I don’t really think about my time with WoW much and usually think about all the great moments, but then if I really think about it, I can remember all the incredibly toxic moments too and that keeps me away even though I’m sure 90% of all those people have moved on by now too.

No WoW specifically, never played it, but Runescape had that GRIP on my psyche whenever I was younger. Late nights staying up to make sure I was still AFK skilling.

Now, it seems so dumb to spend so much money on a game that I basically played alone because CoD was the style at the time (and I guess still is), especially since it doesn’t feel like I gained anything from it other than a love of the game and its style.

I had fun though, so I guess it wasn’t all in vain?

I played it when it first came out. I reached level 48 and got bored with it when it became clear the story was about to run out, and all that was left was repetitive grinds the same dungeon over and over. I never went back, and rarely think about it…

I played for a handful of years around 2009-ish

Never got very far, don’t think I hit max level, never got super into any particular aspect of it

But I had fun fucking around online with some friends

Probably the biggest source of strife in my marriage is that my wife played for the alliance and I was horde.

And well over a decade later my text message notification sound is still a murloc.

It was such a tremendous waste of time.

It was a beautiful journey that I won’t ever forget, I listen to the music to this day, but it occupied so MUCH of my 20S & 30s that I could have accomplished so much and done so many more important things if I had even just regulated the number of hours a day I spent on it.

I didn’t, I couldn’t, I just disappeared into it. Textbook destructive addition.

I didn’t get a college degree because of that game. So that, I guess.