Quitting MMO's (Wildstar) for good

!!RAMBLING INCOMING!!

I have been playing MMO's since the glory days of Star War Galaxies and I can safely say that the MMO's of today are a shadow of what they started out as. What were great community based games have turned into what are commonly called "theme park" games. Most MMO's today (Star Wars: The Old Republic, WoW, Tera Online, Wildstar, ext) follow this train of thought that for some reason questing to level cap has to be tedious "you have to kill 15 fish/bears/tigers/bacon" quests that are lifeless and lacking in choice. In TOR you sorta had options on how to do some quests but like the most recent Bioware games, the choices are pretty black and white and leave really nothing to the imagination. The new MMO from Carbine Studios is not a bad game, it's just masked in that boring "theme park" nonsense for the first 25hrs of gameplay.

I quit TOR about 3 months ago due to some personal and game related issues. The PvE content while challenging (the newest operations) was very limiting and left almost nothing to do other than level alts after your raids for the week were finished. I decided to take a break from MMO's until Wildstar came out in order to keep a cool and level head for the launch. What I quickly found out however is that much like my frustration with WoW's and Tera's leveling experience, I just could not stick out the questing in Wildstar. To some of you, this may sound like a superficial and stupid complaint. "It's a MMO duh you have to invest +20 hours before the real game starts." What if the "real" game isn't worth the time invested? Who in god's name decided that in order to have fun, you had to invest "x" amount of time? I get that some people like mindless questing for lore purposes; I do not. I had a blast PvPing and doing the first 3 dungeons but I just cannot kill 15 more robots or go fix some motorbikes. No amount of pvp awesomeness and house customizing can keep me grinding in Wildstar.

It really is a shame though because not only was I really looking forward this game, it was going to be the first MMO that I would be playing with some real life friends (they didn't catch onto the TOR train). Wildstar did do something great for me though; it taught me that modern day MMO's are just not for me. I really wish this, GW2, and FFXIV: ARR could of been great and different than all the EVERQUEST clones. I however just cannot put up with the grind anymore. I'm sure I'll hear about all the awesome 40 man raids that I am missing out on but even those are an endless circle of rinse and repeat.

My father once asked me what's the point in playing a game if there is no real tangible reward. My answer was that in some instances a game can yield a memory that you will never forget. I remember playing endless hours of Halo 3 in high school with my two best friends trying to get our ranking higher and higher, killing the Terror from Beyond for a server 2nd kill in TOR, and teaching those Reapers who their daddy was in the Mass Effect games. Those memories will always be in my heart because of not only who I accomplished the task with but also how well the developer crafted that experience. I have no doubt that Carbine Studios will deliver what modern MMO fans want with Wildstar. I have no ill-will towards them, they did not falsely advertise their game to me. I in fact I commend them for being so open and upfront with the community. Their streams and devspeaks helped paint a pretty good picture of what the game was going to be. It's just that I have graduated from your market's over-saturated and dubbed-down genre.

Sorry for the long rambling post. If you made it this far enjoy this video of a little black kid that talks about someone kicking someone else in the penis.