Quitting WoW

I cancelled my account today, barely escaping another month charged for not playing. Tron 2.0 might have cost me $50, but at least when I wasn't playing it it didn't charge me $14/month.

WoW's a great game. It's well-balanced, it's fun to play (mostly), and I totally loved riding around on my kodo all over the place. For my first online RPG, I couldn't imagine a better way to get into it.

Here's the problem, though:
I don't have time.

Oh, sure, WoW's designed for the person without a lot of time. And it is, in a way: the rest meter does a lot to help keep things even. But at higher levels, all of the quests you can go on are elite or instances. When I quit, I had 18/20 elite/instance quests and the other two were actually elite/instance and not properly classified (go kill this one elite guy who spawns 90,000 normal guys of your level, should be a piece of cake).

This requires you to either be in a good guild, which I was before it merged, or find pickup groups, and pickup groups... hooooooooly mackeral, it really only takes one moron to make your life difficult, and then you've wasted a night.

But moreover, having friends/a good social network requires you to play a lot. I'm trying to finish a book project, I've got a challenging day job that requires me to work at work and then sometimes afterwards, and a wife I like spending time with.

One of the great things WoW does, though, and I talk about this every time I write about video games, is it gives a great sense of rising power as you go. At level 50, when I have to cross back through areas I remember were way hard before, they're a cakewalk now. The instances are more interesting and challenging, and your tactics have to get way better (which, again, goes back to the grouping thing).

The other thing is that I'm really moving away from PC gaming. Despite having to buy a second X-Box recently (thank you, Microsoft), I'm at the point where my not-that-old computer can't really handle what I want it to do for game performance (run 1600x1200 for my LCD and do it fast) without having me spend a huge chunk of money on it, and

• I'm cheap in my old age and
• As long as I'm spending money on random consumer items, I'd rather buy a nice TV or something

I suspect, of course, that when the next Call of Duty comes out, that'll be it for my new-found resolve. Man, I liked that game.