World of Warcraft<\/em><\/a>, many will eventually come to the end of their playing season. The reasons for this are as varied as the players themselves, but common causes cited are a change the developers made to the game or a change in the player\u2019s life season.<\/p>\nI\u2019ve been playing\u00a0World of Warcraft<\/em> since late Vanilla. I\u2019ve seen many changes to the game, to my favorite role, tanking, and to my favorite class, Paladin.\u00a0 Tankadins changed from wanting a spell damage weapon for threat to wanting STR plate. There was the introduction of Active Mitigation. I\u2019ve seen Holy Power added, removed and come back again. They buffed my class. They nerfed my class. TO THE GROUND! None of those changes was enough to make me quit.<\/p>\nMy end of days came from a change in my life season. The height of my raiding career was\u00a0Burning Crusade<\/em>\u00a0through\u00a0Wrath of the Lich King<\/em>. As I matured \u2014 yes, that\u2019s the word for it \u2014 both my situational awareness and reaction times worsened. I knew what I was supposed to do, but either my situational awareness failed or I was too slow with my reaction time. It felt like I was holding back my raid\u2019s progression, or making my team fail M+ keys. You simply can\u2019t cover for a tank\u2019s mistakes as easily as a DPS or healer. I tried changing roles, but I didn\u2019t enjoy it as much, and the mistakes still cost keys and progression.<\/p>\nI also had a new passion vying for my attention. Like most writers, I was an aspiring novelist. But writing a novel is an enormous time commitment, and I was splitting the few hours a day where I wasn\u2019t working, eating, or sleeping between writing and playing\u00a0World of Warcraft<\/em>. Neither was getting the time it needed. Writer friends finished their books while I was still writing mine, plus I wasn\u2019t doing all the little things you need to between raid nights to keep your gear up to date, like farming or dailies for rep and whatever AP stood for in that expansion.<\/p>\nI had tried spinning both plates, but they both wobbled and threatened to fall. The only path forward was to make a choice. Gaming or writing? I chose to cancel my World of Warcraft <\/em>subscription and pursue writing. With this singular focus, I finished my novel, and released it in June 2023.<\/p>\nBut that\u2019s my story. When did your playing season end (if it did)? Was it more related to a change the developers made, or a way it something in your own life season? Do you think you\u2019ll ever come back?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is an ancient poem that says: \u201cThere is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: to everything there is a season turn, and a time to every purpose under Heaven.\u201d For players of the World of Warcraft, many will eventually come to the end of their playing season….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":173762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24,3],"tags":[74060,1658],"yst_prominent_words":[39846,8509,8342,8329,9105,8346,8263,59175,59174,37326,9000,52247,52248,13279,8147,8144,8901],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173761"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173761"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173937,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173761\/revisions\/173937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173761"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=173761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}