Terri and I first really started playing MMOGs back with EverQuest.  Sure, I’d played various MUDs in college, but never with all that much dedication or enthusiasm.  They were diversion, but not necessarily what I spent my evenings doing.  But that all changed with EverQuest.

Terri and I have always been gamers.  We’d spend evenings sitting in front of a console or a computer screen, working our way through one game after another.  And that started to get expensive.  Video games have never been cheap, and when you’re trying to satisfy the cravings of two gamer it becomes even more expensive.

The idea of a video game that we could keep playing, basically forever, sounded terrific.  So we gave EverQuest a try…  But we never really got into it.  EQ was really aimed more at the “hardcore” gamer – the kind of person who could dedicate dozens of hours a week to improving their character.  We just couldn’t do that.  We never made it much past level 20.

The next game that we played together was Dark Age of Camelot, and we had much more success with this game.  DAoC was a lot more party-friendly – it was easier to find a group of people and play together.  There were more shared goals to accomplish.  The leveling process wasn’t nearly as arduous.  And we actually managed to make it to level 50 (the highest you could go, when we were playing).  We wound up in a very nice guild and raided with them almost weekly.

We had a lot of fun in DAoC…but ultimately it was not designed for gamers like us.  We’ve always been more oriented towards PvE gameplay.  We like exploring the countryside, killing monsters, running through quests, finding treasure…  And DAoC was always strongly slanted towards PvP gameplay.  We got around that for a long time by playing on the co-op server, Gaheris, but even that stopped working eventually.  Patches kept changing gameplay mechanics in favor of PvP, and eventually it just wasn’t much fun anymore.

We wound up moving to World of Warcraft, along with the vast majority of our guild, when it launched in 2004.  Terri and I have been playing it almost nonstop since then.  There have been breaks here an there as our interest waxed and waned…  But WoW delivers a kind of raw addictive power that isn’t usually seen outside of opium dens.

Part of the appeal is in Blizzard‘s rich setting.  I’ve been playing WarCraft games for years now, and it is terrific fun to run through that world.  It’s great to see these locations fleshed out and brought to life.  Blizzard also puts a lot of humor into their games…  References to popular culture, television, previous games…  Tons of Easter Eggs to stumble across.

A large part of what keeps me coming back to WoW is the constantly evolving gameplay.  The game today resembles what I bought at the store back in 2004 in very few ways.  Spells have been tweaked, talents have changed, new dungeons have been added, old dungeons have been tweaked, completely new gameplay mechanics have been introduced.  Every time I find myself getting bored, I manage to find something new and interesting to explore.

It also helps that Blizzard has done a terrific job of balancing the gameplay to appeal to virtually anyone.  WoW is very accessable to casual gamers.  It is very possible to make it to the highest levels without having to invest dozens of hours every week.  There is plenty of PvE content, and plenty of PvP content, and a very nice synergy between the two.  Rewards from PvE can be helpful in PvP, and vice-versa.  So you don’t often see people focusing entirely on one to the exclusion of the other.

My first character was a Warlock named Olvyl – a huge departure for me.  Typically I play Dwarven Warriors in just about any RPG, but something about the mechanics of the Warlock appealed to me.  I leveled him all the way up to 60 (the highest I could go, at the time) and did quite a bit of raiding with my guild – the same guild that we had played with back in DAoC.

Unfortunately that guild didn’t last too long.  The mechanics of WoW forced different gameplay than what worked in DAoC, and the guild suffered because of it.  We couldn’t fit 200+ people in a single raid, folks had to be left out, folks got unhappy.  Eventually the guild broke up.

Terri and I wound up following some guild members over to a new server where we played on the Horde side – I played a Tauren Warrior.  Again I leveled to 60, and again we raided.  But the Horde just wasn’t for us, and we wound up leaving before too long.

We went back to our old server, and the Burning Crusade expansion was released.  I leveled my Warlock up to 70 (the new cap) and started leveling a Rogue as well.

Our new guild, however, didn’t hold together.  Again the pressure to raid successfully was too much and folks started leaving for greener pastures.  Before too long there was nobody left in the guild and Terri and I were playing on our own again.

We stopped playing for a while, and tried a new guild, but neither of those was terribly satisfying.

Once Wrath of the Lich King was released, however, most of our old guild came back together.  The disruptive elements that had caused the guild to fall apart had moved on to cause heartache somewhere else.

I leveled my Warlock to 80 and did some raiding…  Then I rolled up a Death Knight and took him to 80…  And then I ran out of steam.

So I’ve suspended my WoW account for now.