I’ve got a cycle with Warcraft. I resubscribe for a while, get a bunch of things accomplished, like hit max level in a new expansion, or gear up to a point where it slows down; then I usually cancel my subscription. At what point does the average person cancel their subscription with Warcraft? Is it when you can’t progress any further? Is it when you almost have everything you want? Where is the breaking point?

As you might of read, right now I’m playing my Death Knight that I had leveled up and played during the first few months of WOTLK. Coming back with a bunch of Naxx gear I had a lot of progressing to do. With the new Dungeon Finder tool I had a clear path to decent gear and a goal in mind. That goal was to gear up and get raid ready. Since I’m not in a Guild (my life schedule makes it tough to commit to a few nights a week in the middle of the evening), I was looking to get into a few PUGs here and there when I get an evening off. On Mal’Ganis you need at least a 4,500 gearscore just to get a sniff at a raid or two.

So I had my goal; hit a 4,500 gearscore with badges, then log on when I can and see if I can hop into a raid. So for the last two weeks or so I start grinding badges. In between dungeon runs I’m getting my jewelcrafting and mining up as well. It was pretty fun. I had a good goal in mind and I enjoy playing the game. Then the worst thing happened. I reached my goal on Saturday. I hit a 4700 gearscore and my jewelcrafting and mining are where I want them to be.

Why is this the worst thing that could happen? Because now there are only a few more upgrades for me. There is a slight upgrade for my breastplate with 50 badges. There are a few drops in the ICC-5 Mans that could improve my character a bit; namely a weapon, trinket and a neck. I hit my goal and my character progress has stalled with what I can do on my own, on my own time. The rest of my progress will now rely on other people forming raids. (Edit to add: I don’t count farming Frost Badges with the daily either. I have 38 Frost badges right now for my cloak.)

I’m not ready to retire my account again though. I’m leveling up cooking and fishing for the first time on any character in five years of playing this game and I still want to see some of those raids, but I’m not sure how much I’ll be playing. Will I be logging in most days now? Maybe not. Right now I can farm and fish etc. while waiting for the Dungeon Finder to get my into a badge farming group. Finding a PUG raid has me sitting in Dalaran waiting for Raid Leaders to spam an appropriate raid looking for DPS while I twiddle my thumbs waiting.

I guess it was bound to happen. My Warcraft comeback is numbered now unless I can find a really cool guild that won’t mind some guy joining that can play random days during the week. I doubt that will I will find one of those.

Does this same cycle happen to other people? When your progress any game has slowed down to a point, do you stop playing, slow down, or begin to lose interest? I think you can take this point and translate that to other games. For example, how many people that play Final Fantasy games keep playing after they beat the game? Every Final Fantasy game has extra stuff you could go for that make your character more powerful, but in the the end is unnecessary. I bet the number of people that do that is a pretty low percentage.

Take a look at Warcraft’s subscription numbers as they’ve improved the game. The barrier of character progress and things to work for has slowly grown for the base group of players. You went from 40-man raids that blocked a ton of players from new content and progress paths, to 20 man raids. This transitioned to 25 man raids and 10 man raids to raiding and daily quests with heroics to allow people to taste the purple koolaid. Daily Quests expanded A LOT over time to what you see today. Professions changed, reputation rewards became more open and it finally came down to badge farming with the Dungeon Finder tool.

As Warcraft grew up so did the options of progression paths. The result is fairly obvious. Give me people more stuff to do, the more they play. It’s amazing that some games don’t get this; or they do get this but they think a ton of levels and a long leveling curve is the answer.

Don’t get me started on DIKU games and leveling.