Killing time

Over the last few months my enthusiasm for playing WoW has been fading. And now I have reached the point where there is no doubt anymore - I am burned out on WoW. I log on and do the same dailies every day, raid the same instances, do the same quests that I did last week on a different alt, ... basically I am just killing time. It is not so much the repetition that gets to me, it is the lack of new stuff to do, new areas to explore.

A lot of my time is usually spent raiding. The normal schedule of my guild is three nights with 4 hours each, plus some time before and after to prepare or to squeeze in a "last attempt". This is a lot of time, but it is necessary if you want to get through all the raiding tiers in WoW. There is fresh content in the raid instances, but it requires a huge amount of dedication to unlock that content.

While raiding the progress usually is glacially slow. Lots of raids are spent bashing your head against the same boss over and over again. Whatever was unique or cool with the encounter is soon replaced by the feeling of "not again". And after you beat the encounter you still get to do it over and over again every week for months - to gear up.

If I am not raiding then I am often levelling up my alts. But questing on an alt is been-there-done-that - there hasn't been much in terms of mid-level content additions apart from the upgrade of Dustwallow Marsh. There is simply no new content to explore after you levelled three characters to 70, one of which basically has done every quest there is in the game. The only new content gained by playing alts is from class specific quests and from gaining new spells and talents.

And the rest of the time in WoW was spent doing dailies for gold and reputation. The 2.4 patch was exciting for about a week with new daily quests. But doing the dailies over and over again? All the gold I earn doesn't buy me new content to explore.

Maybe it is best to cut down drastically on my WoW time and go into "hibernation". Drag out one of my characters for an evening or two each week and do some instances or a raid with my friends.