A World Without Warcraft

So I made a peon cry the other day.

OK, it was an orcish peon, and a virtual orcish peon at that, so I shouldn't feel too badly. You see, I canceled my World of Warcraft account. My reasons were three-fold - I didn't have any time, what time I did have I wanted to use to explore new games, and while I was in a half-dozen worlds with various friends, I never got to play at the same time, and they eventually all leveled past me, created new characters, and those new characters leveled past me.

And all for fifteen bucks a month. I hadn't been able to really get going with anything for three months, so I figured it was time.

But when you cancel your WoW account, they first recommend you call their toll-free number so a human being can try to convince you otherwise. I passed on that option, downloaded the latest patch (yeah, I PATCHED in order to drop the game), and went to the site to cancel. And met the weeping orcish peon there.

The peon was despondent, and would not let me leave without a reason why. It had a pull-down menu, and experimenting with a few of them, found that when you chose one, the weeping orc would pop up with another box, arguing with me about why I was wrong.

And interesting approach. Of the three reasons I just mentioned, I couldn't find one for "no time" or "friends much better than I am", so I finally settled on "leaving for another game". And the weeping orc, a spurned, jealous lover, wanted to know "what game?" and I put down Guild Wars (though LOTRO and the beta of a Korean game I keep calling Grando Espresso were also there). And it informed me that other games may have their "shiny baubles" but only WoW strive to presenting the best and most varied game experience.

Uh-HUH. You know, these guys charge 45 bucks every three months whether I play or not. Their dedication to my participation would be more sincere if it showed up before I decided to turn off the cash flow. So a couple button punches later, along the lines "but are you SURE?", this shows up:

"If you choose to deactivate your subscription‚ you will still be able to play until your currently paid for time expires on June XX, 2007 X:XX AM PDT. The peon is full-on weeping now. We hope you're happy. Are you positive you want to deactivate your subscription?"

Am I happy? Absolutely. I made virtual orc marketing peon cry. More people should take advantage of that opportunity.

More later,