Coming Back to WOW, How'd you do it?

[Draegan]

I'm sitting at work reading about WOTLK on various sites and I got thinking about coming back to WOW.  See I've played WOW on and off since release.  I raided in 1.0 though not extensively, and I've raided up to Tier 5 in TBC and most of it has been with the same people, or on the same server with the same online friends.  Now that  I'm toying with the idea of resubbing because the interest in the new expansion is making want to play the game again, I find that the people I've always played the game with are gone and don't play anymore.

Here's the question, have you ever gone back to an MMO and not only doing a character reboot but a social reboot as well?  If I were to go back I would enter a game with zero social anchoring.  I want to level up and enjoy playing the game with familiar people in the expansion, but in order to build that social structure I would have to start playing up sooner rather than later.

The most logical approach would take my old character and just start playing again, pick a guild and go!  But for some reason, be it nostalgia or whatever, doing that seems empty.  I'm not sure if I'm conveying my thoughts on this properly but I'm curious to see what others' thoughts are on this.

Edit:
I guess this isn't a specific WOW topic, but could be applied to any MMO.

Edit2:
More appropriate question I suppose would be:

How many time have you resubbed to WOW after quitting for a few months or more and have found that no one you used to play with is playing anymore?

Does this make your playing experience worse, better, the same, or you just don't care?

[Dren]

This has happened to me in 3 MMOs.

UO:  I went through 3 major shifts of community in that game, but kept all my same characters/server.

SB: I went through 3 major shifts of community in that game, but kept all my same characters/server.

WoW: I went through 2 major shifts of community  and am still playing.  This was again with all the same characters and on the same server.

In each of my cases, I didn't stop playing.  Most of the time the reason was that the guild broke up (people quit playing.)  I left one guild on my own becaue they were too hardcore for me and I didn't feel comfortable. (WoW)

In each of my cases, I had to go through a fairly long time of being on my own (in SB this was brutal!)  However, I always seem to just kind of fall into a decent group just by playing the game and being friendly.  It doesn't take much time in the long run and all of the changes have been good ones for me.

[cevik]

My wife and I used to play WoW with a friend in real life.  We all quit right around the time that TBC came out.  Just in the last few weeks we started playing again, along with that real life friend and his girlfriend.  We were shocked at how many old friends still played the game and immediately recognized us.  It took no time at all to have a regular group of old friends to run with every night.

Have you resubbed yet and checked your friends list?  I would think if you made it to T5 level gear, you surely have to have had a bit of a social network when you logged.  Surely you'll encounter some people you used to know and then branch out from there.

[photek]

I quit WoW quite a while back, a few months or so, and decided to come back yesterday. Main reason is, before I used to play just to get number 1 spot in Season 3 (which we did), but now I'm playing to have fun with friends, and it is a complete different game for me. Also it feels good to play a solid MMO instead of the unfortunate events that happened in AoC, which I really hoped would keep me subbed, but nah.

[Arrrgh]

I've been in the same guild for over eight years now. Finding a new group to play with if I haven't played for a while simply isn't a problem. Finding a group to play with in warhammer won't be a problem.

But (since OP mentioned only rading) we don't raid in WoW. If we drop below critical mass required for some raid there's no drama and explosion of the guild. People come and go (in games, not the guild) as they please because it doesn't screw up any sort of progression.

[Draegan]

My wife and I used to play WoW with a friend in real life.  We all quit right around the time that TBC came out.  Just in the last few weeks we started playing again, along with that real life friend and his girlfriend.  We were shocked at how many old friends still played the game and immediately recognized us.  It took no time at all to have a regular group of old friends to run with every night.

Have you resubbed yet and checked your friends list?  I would think if you made it to T5 level gear, you surely have to have had a bit of a social network when you logged.  Surely you'll encounter some people you used to know and then branch out from there.

The T5 progression came with a new guild that I joined to see content, I was there for a few months, I didn't make any lasting connections.  The rest of my friends that I played years with were in different guilds but we all grouped up to do pvp and 5 man stuff together every night.  The people who I knew for years I keep in touch with via email and know they left the game or don't spend the same amount of time with it anymore.

[Koyasha]

EQ has always been 'coming home' for me.  There hasn't yet been a time when I've come back to EQ and no one I knew has been around.  If I ever go back again that may finally change as it's been 2 years now.

WoW, on the other hand, I very often seem to just start fresh on a new server.  In order to do this best, I tend to look up as much info as I can about the server and the guilds there, find one that I like, do as much research on the guild as possible, reading its public forums and looking for mentions of it on the WoW server forums, then creating a character on that server, doing some regular /whos at the times I typically play to see if the guild has a good number of people on when I can play.  Once I'm satisfied all that is true, I'll start playing in earnest with the intention to join that guild.  Usually leveling a new character from scratch to do so, though occasionally I'll transfer or pick up one of my older ones.  More often I'll use my existing high level characters to assist my new character as I build them up to join the guild.  This has worked out pretty well on a few occasions.

If you're considering transferring your T5 character over to a new server for this, do the research first, ask to join the guild for a few days with a lowbie or something so you can get to know everyone and make sure you LIKE the guild.  Listen in on their raids (if raiding interests you) and so on, so you can be sure the guild is going to fit before making the transfer.  If you're staying on the same server, it's easier to just join the guild you're interested in with your existing main and see if you fit in that way.  Just make sure everyone's aware that it's a trial period that goes both ways - a lot of guilds seem to think that only applies one way, if they like the applicant he's in and obviously he shouldn't say no after the trial period cause he applied.

If you're not considering transferring your character over, and you have interest in raiding, things can be more difficult, since most raiding guilds won't let you join until you meet requirements, and building a character to join a specific guild when you can't get a handle on what the guild is like is risky.

Of course, if you're not interested in raiding very much at all, try to find a guild that is also not interested.  Do you think you'll like the 10 mans in Lich King?  Look for a guild with the stated goal of doing them, but not doing the 25-mans, and so on, then pray that when the time comes the guild sticks to its mission goals.  A guild trying to progress, especially step up in raid size from 10 to 25-man is an unstable environment.  It can be a very good and rewarding environment on rare occasions, but more often than not it's filled with drama and stress.

[Rasix]

I've quit and rejoined WoW several times. 

The first time I had joined a bleeding-edge, server-first raid guild, but then my friends that were not in that guild decided to stop playing WoW.  I got bored and fed up with Molten Core and decided to quit. 

I came back several months later and was at a loss as to what to do.  The only people I knew were those in the raid guild, and I decided to rejoin them even though there was no possible way I could keep up with the raiding play style.  This started to wear on my real life and fortunately, my guild decided to server transfer to a PVP realm.  I used this as a convenient way to stop raiding and just stop playing WoW.

So, when I rejoined for TBC (about a month or two before) I did a complete social and priority wipe. I was now just playing WoW for me. Joined a casual guild and just played how I wanted to play because, hell, I enjoyed it.   I took a long break in TBC and came back to find my characters were in the same guild, so I just carried on.  There were some familiar faces, but this was pretty much a complete social reboot.

This guild eventually dissolved due to a number of folks wanting to at least try Karazhan.  I moved to a casual/raid guild (becoming more of a raid guild and actually cutting off recruitment currently, /sigh) and have been there for the last few months or so.  My main character is in a mix of t4, kara gear and badge gear with good enough stats that he should be able to do all t5 content.  This is with playing the game how I want to play without interfering with my home life and other interests.

I have no problems with social reboots. I don't really form connections in these games.  I'm in a guild where most of the officers refer to each other on a first name basis; I'm still "Rasix" or "Cowbell".  Now, this isn't to say that WoW  or any MMO isn't more fun with some solid social connections.  My two friends that I initially leveled to 60 with recently resubbed after most recently playing pre-TBC (mentioned them earlier).  They've been leveling and we've been doing 60-69 bracket BGs, and I don't think we've had this much fun ever.  They really had a hard time with PVP, gear imbalance, shitty specs, etc but TBC and this BG bracket in particular has helped them a lot.  Having them around has made the game better for me even if I'm only playing with them sporadically.

[Draegan]

Sounds like my story except the guild I joined after my MC raiding stint was a guild I actually became first name basis with who have now broken up.

[lamaros]

I played WoW at original release and stopped after 4 or so months. I didn't play it again for a year and a half after that.

When I rejoined I moved servers to one where my brother and some of his friends were playing but I played a different character. Instead of playing my Warlock I leveled up my priest. I joined a guild and played with them, making some new aquaintances and friends, and enjoyed the game. When the expansion came out I moved guilds a couple of times before playing with one group for a few months, making new friends and such with that group too. I enjoyed playing with new people in both instances, and my brother and some others have also been around on the server, though not always in the same guilds as me.

Then I stopped playing for a year, resubbing in late may this year. My brother and his friends who play had moved servers and the guild I used to play with split in two directions, half moving to another server too. Those people were raiding and I didn't feel like doing that again before the new expansion, plus I had had my fill of some of them, so I started a new character on my brothers new server, eventually transfering over my Warlock to do some stuff.

From the time when I first played, on a US server with no Australian friends, I no longer know anyone in game, but I don't find it a big deal. From my time on Australian servers onwards I'm still in contact with a couple of guys in guilds I played with (though one is inactive and one is on another server), and otherwise I just know my brother and some of his rl friends.

It's nice knowing people you play the game with in some ways, because they can be nice people to play with, but it's nice to start with a new guild and meet new people and get away from the annoying aspects of old guilds too, so overall I don't have a big problem with starting fresh. However I much prefer playing on the same server as my brother; its fun to play with people you know in some real way (when they're not dickheads).

However, unless you know people really well I wouldn't make my decisions based on where they're playing. First and foremost I play the game to do certain things in the game, not as a social experience, so I'm not going to join a server just because some guy I know is there. He might decide to stop playing at any time and if that's the case I'd still want to be on a server where I can do all the things I want to do. The server my brother is on is a bit of a dead end raiding-wise, and I wouldn't have joined it if I planned to raid before Wrath because I wouldn't be able to do so to the extent I wanted to.

I'm planning on resubbing again for Wrath, and I expect I'll either play on the server I'm on now if my brother and the guys I know here are still about and it's possible to make a good enough guild to do content. I'll go over to a bigger server and join some new guild and meet new people all over again if it's not.

[Rasix]

The funny thing is, I keep in touch regularly with the two friends that just rejoined WoW.  One is my best friend in from college that I roomed with for 3 years and the other is his brother. We chat on the phone occasionally, mostly about games and sports.  We've been playing MMOs together since EQ.  I've been trying to get them to play WoW again with me for a while, but one has a two young children and the other has a somewhat addictive personality when it comes to this type of game.  I didn't want to mess with their RL situations so I really didn't press to hard.  Plus, you know, I have my guild commitments.

So, one day we're chatting.  They were talking about playing some EQ a month or so ago for nostalgia's sake. I'm playing Conan at this time, taking a break from WoW.  They start discussing perhaps playing WoW again.  Neither has a PC that can play Conan.  So, I start giving them a current state-of-the-game of WoW.  PVE, PVP, etc etc.  Dispel some myths and give them some realistic expectations of what they could do before WoLK. 

So then my ex roommate says "well, I have a confession to make".  Me: "Oh?"  Him: "Yah, I've been playing WoW for a month now and have a new 60 druid. I've been playing on a friend from work's  server.  Would it be cool if I transfered to yours?"    Of course, I said it was cool and within a week his brother had bought TBC and server transfered 3 toons over.  My ex roomie has since then transfered his old mage over.

The good thing is that at least my ex roomie seems to only be playing later at night and not messing up his family dynamic and his brother is actually logging off and not picking WoW over sleep, food and friends.  It's been great so far.

[Soln]

I took a break from almost all games (except dice, board and cards) and things like my blog and even f13 when RL went upside down for me.  My wife kept playing WoW for a bit and out levelled me. But she also stopped.  The last "new" MMO I played was HG:L and that was enough with new MMO's (appalling pile that).  We started playing WoW again together maybe 4 weeks ago and it's been (to be cheesy) a delight.

Talent changes, some spell changes, the lvl 30 mounts -- tons of things with TBC (we never played it) have made it terrific to play.  Even the new LFG tool has been great.  I perpetually orbit between many MMO's, but I can't think of a time of returning to one where I really consistently had a better experience.  I also notice the tard population is a little better.  And, no gold spam.  Even the 1 CS ticket I opened was answered in maybe 1hr.  So, WoW is a great game to reroll on.  We'll see if we make it to any real end game content.  But I couldn't imagine going back to say EQ2 (again) and having this good and ease of play time.

[Zetor]

I've likely quit/came back to WOW about 4 times now since 2004 [currently in a 'quit' stage, likely until WOTLK]. Of course I'm in a small casual guild (we've never raided anything larger than a 10-man, don't have any "serious arena players", etc) that constantly hops between games, so there's always been some support for instancing, leveling alts, crafting-related stuff, etc.

Also, PUG a lot... it helps build an extensive friends list of "people that don't suck and have a good attitude". Of course it'll likely also build an ignore list almost twice as long, but them's the breaks. 

My server also has an IRC channel which is a decent way to get caught up with the latest drama / learn which guilds do what / etc.


-- Z.