I have basically shelved WoW for now and am playing Rift. I am keeping my WoW account active as my son and other family members play and out of sense of loyalty to my guild. I hop on once in awhile to say hi and to deal with any guild issues that have arisen. Other then that I sadly have no desire to play the game anymore.

I have been playing WoW for awhile since BC and my Druid is my main. I’ve had some great times and met some amazing people that are a blast to play with. I’ve checked out other MMO’s(DAOC, City of Heroes, LOTRO, Runes of Magic, etc) but always seemed to come back to WoW. When Cata dropped I leveled two of my toons to 85 but found it harder and harder to login. To me if feels like something is missing with Cata. Hard to put a finger on what exactly but perhaps it is a combination of things. The size of the guild grew as people wanted into guilds for the perks and our guild is large and leveled quickly. With the size increase came more issues and asshats. Guildmates calling out other guildmates in runs. No respect for Officers and such. I had to kick a toon for threatening another guildmate with physical harm. The kid was only 11 Seems like people just wanted their toons in the guild for the perks but did not care about the guild or guildmates. I know that this is not indicitive of the whole WoW community but from my perspective things got worse after Cata. From an Officer’s perspective it became more like work and less like fun. There are other issues but to me there is something missing with Cata. If you look at the forums I am not the only one that feels that way. I used to come home from work excited about logging onto WoW but that changed a couple weeks into Cata. I started looking around for something else to play. I eventually got the Beta invite to Rift and have been playing ever since. I’m not the only one as a half dozen or so guildmates have left WoW and are now playing Rift. I have a feeling that a fair number of people have either left WoW for Rift or are playing both. I have no numbers to back that up but that’s the feeling I get. Alot of the chat has to do with either bashing WoW or comparing things between the two games. I have seen quite a few people state that they play both.

I have to say that I am enjoying my time with Rift. Currently playing a Pally tank LVL36 on a PVP server. I like the graphics and find it a welcome change to the graphics in WoW. I run an i5 750 CPU with a Nvidia 560Ti($250) video card and can run the game on Ultra. If feels like Trion took some parts from WoW, DAOC, Warhammer and other MMO’s and incorporated them into Rift. One of the things that Blizzard should take from Rift is AOE looting. I love it. There are some balancing issues and bugs but the launch was pretty smooth and Trion seems to be pretty quick about fixing issues that crop up. If you are familiar with the controls to WoW you will be right at home in Rift. The interface is easy to customize and it took me very little time doing so. So far Trion is not allowing any addons and that is one thing that I do miss.

All in all playing games for me is supposed to fun. A way to relax and to have fun with friends. I am having fun with Rift and in the end I guess that is what matters.

Sorry for the long post and keep up the good work! I enjoy reading your Blog and want to say thanks from a retired Bear tank.

Thanks a lot, Rowtan!

I’m not going to take you up on your offer, though, because when you have access to someone’s account name and password, there is always the possibility that the account management process could allow the person entry into changing billing or payment options, microtransactions, transfers or in-game reputation or behavior issues.

Obviously, I know that *I* wouldn’t do that, and I’m flattered that you assume that I wouldn’t either, but I don’t see any compelling reason to have even the faintest trace of worry cross the mind of a friend that was just thinking about doing someone a favor. I am sure that if I’m really THAT interested, my finances would afford my buying it.

So far, I am still having fun in WoW. Got my Mage and Cassies Druid to 70! I get fast flight, and SHE gets a pretty birdie form! Woot!