I got a burnout shortly after killing Vashj, so now I'm focusing on real life more and just playing WoW for the social stuff and some casual arena PvP.

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I'm currently sitting squarely in Burnout.

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I think it's possible for some people (though not a guild as a whole) to skip the Burnout stage and go directly to the End-Game Casual. It's also a pretty slippery slope on that end of the spectrum, with both End-Game Casual and Mastery levels easily sliding into Burnout. Although I've never been firmly cemented in the Burnout phase - I've hit the edge of it quite a few times. And I think we probably lost about 50% of our raiders to the burnout phase as we headed for End-Game Casual - the rest of us made it through.

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End game casual, I love it. Currently I have three 70s and one approaching, there are periods where I play a *lot* of WoW and then spaces of months where it's hard for me to even login a few hours a week. But when I'm playing it's most definitely not casual. My tank/healbot are both heroic/kara geared but the Kara stuff has come from an interesting way of playing compared to pre-BC.

My Kara runs are either pickups for a guild that needs a tank for the night or healbotting for the same guild a couple nights every other week. It's all very casual, laid-back and most importantly friendly. People in these runs are happy for others to get gear, there are no petty power plays and no one is trying to stab someone else in the back (Why, hello DKP nonsense from MC+).

While I sometime lament not running SSC I've found not having a "true" main allows me to always have a play style when I'm bored and most importantly with so many chars there is always something "casual" to run that doesn't require farming pots and wiping on the same boss eight times in a row.

My friends list on my two oldest characters is pretty evenly split between people whom you could call serious raiders and casual raiders. There is a definite difference in the two and as time passes it turns more to the casual.

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heh, yes I'm at the "Restart" of the Burnout phase, I played a healer for a raiding guild MC-AQ40 and by the end of that we only had 2 mandatory raid days.

Then we got to TBC and we started slow, 1 day for 25 mans 2 days for 10. Then it slowly became more hectic, 5 days a week and you need full consumables for everyday (and I didn't have an alt too farm mats for me so it took a little longer).

So eventually RL takes control and I have to abandon raiding.

But now I'm rerolling and plan to enter a casual 10 man raiding guild when I'm 70 ^^

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it definitely goes in stages

i just hit 70 last week and am starting to ramp up to some of the fun things endgame has to offer. a couple months ago i almost completely abandoned my 62 main, and leveled a priest up to 41. when i came back to my main, it was just as fun as before, if not more so.

taking breaks is essential, and seeing new stuff is a good diversion (i still have never set foot in silithus). if you've seen everything, and have many alts, burnout could come quicker, however.

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another fun refresher is to research new and different addons specific to your taste and playstyle. i recently redid my entire UI (after the last patch broke everything) and i absolutely love it. it definitely enhances gameplay and gives a fresh perspective on some older stuff

here's what it looks like now (plus very minor tweaks since lvl 67):
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/5256/wowscrnshot093007014749ul5.jpg

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End game casual ftw

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I'm in the final recovery stage. I have three level 70s that do nothing more than log in and goof off depending on my mood. I don't accomplish much in the way of progression, but I have fun simply doing whatever tickles my fancy at the moment.

Pre BC, I spent way too much time raiding and I finally burned out. I left for a while, but I got back into it once the expansion came out. Now that I've done everything I can do without getting back on the raiding wagon, I'm pretty bored with everything.

I generally pass my time, when I actually log in, by helping random lowbies, exploring, or doing a bit of crafting. It's still fun, but nothing as serious as it was before.

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I raided 40 mans till AQ40 got burnt out, waited for the expansion played for fun, got to 70 started raiding again Gruul, etc got sick of it.

Now I alternate playing for an hour or two here and there between my level 60-63 alts leveling them differenlty via different quests and zones.

I basically play to compete against myself receiving enjoyment when I get a quest reward that improves my character.

Also taking my time I make sure to do every single quest there is and notice how much gold I have now lol.

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I'm solidly in the fourth phase right now. I've canceled my account. But, I'm still able to log into the PTR.

Patch 2.3 is nudging me in the direction of the fifth phase. They are coming close to convincing me to pick up the occasional one-month card and poke around a bit from time to time. There might be enough to do now.

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I was surprised at how well this fit me. Amazed, in fact. Currently I'm in the "Recovery" process.

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Yes, Burnout. After 3 1/2 years of playing I am not very stoked any more, because I've seen all the good stuff, and the annoying stuff is still annoying. But I still play casually.

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I think a big part of recovery is new content! He only lists the "end-game casual" which is understandable, i recently went from this transition from a gruul's raid leader, to leaving the guild,a nd no i just bg/arena a bit for fun (basically going immeditaltey from step 3 to step 5).

But last year, after i got burnt out on leading another guild, i was in the burnout stage for 3 months, just didnt play at all. But TBC came out and that got me into the game! New content always brings a large portion of the player populace back, especially expansions.

thats prolly a reason why blizzard is so intent on making vertical content, instead of horizontal content =/

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definitely : high level casual.

I play in a little and slow raid (maybe we will try gruul one day :) ), reAAaally slowly taking my time to do quests (and read it, and read pnj and go watch the little flower on the nice mountains..) , doing RP with my little rp guild and so on.

and of course I try every crazy engineering things.

nice and quiet. a little videogame to explore something at home.

a long time before, I decided to never do "professional raid" and never accepted to do more than 3 raids/instances in a week even for friends. 3 is already too much. one or 2 in a week is perfect.

I will surely never see Past Hyjal but I know where is the baby gnome :)

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no burnout.

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i guess i am in burnout. but i don't see myself going into recovery unless the expansion is amazing, which it doesn't sound like it will be.

once i stopped playing for a couple weeks, i had/have no desire to go back.

except that i still read about it...i guess in the hope that i find an interesting reason to go back.

dunno if that make sense really, i miss WOW as it used to be prior to BC, i guess.

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I'm trying really hard to find a reason to re-activate my account. I was always decidedly casual and actually have never raided on any of my characters, but I played in college so I never really had the time or desire to. Now I'm in grad school and have even less time, but I'm considering rolling a new character just for kicks. I've always played only Horde so I'm tempted to have an Alliance character if only to experience the other half of the game. I keep waffling on whether or not it's worth $15 to only log in a few times and realize I don't really wanna start again :/

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Bliz needs to understand this about their userbase...

Why is it that expansions bring people back in mass but that new 5/10/25 man instance only brings a small response? It is because WoW is a solo game that we all play together. Bring more new solo content and the masses will follow.

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one day i vendored all my epics, deleted all my characters and rerolled horde on the same server - it was one of the most exciting and liberating things ive ever done in my entire life, and i recommend that everyone at burnout stage give it a try!

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I feel like I've experienced burnout after various stages, as each character I've made goes further than the one before, until I hit a wall in terms of my interest to keep playing.

Phase 1: I had no experience with MMO games and started with a human rogue, who I played (gruelingly) to level 39. I only played solo, and everything took forever because I didn't know much about the game. Burned out at entry.

Phase 2: I came back to the game later to play an orc hunter. It seemed like a very different character from the rogue. I joined groups for the first time, played some Warsong Gulch (long enough ago that this is my only character to have an old PVP rank title) and even joined a guild (which turned out to be mostly Insane Clown Posse fans. Hmm.). I got to level 40 much faster than my rogue had gotten to 39, but after I bought my mount, it didn't seem like there was anything else very exciting to keep me playing. Burned out at practice.

Phase 3: After the hunter, I didn't play for a long, long time. I also, uh... failed to cancel my account. Finally noticing the charge on my CC statement, I logged in (around January, I think, just before BC) to take care of it, but instead started reading about the expansion and got interested. I started a balance druid and played all the way to level 59, getting to see a bit of the Outlands and being part of a guild and many groups who were "lf healer." Fell in love with BGs... and decided that playing on a PVE server was boring. Burnout at mastery.

Phase 4: There was no downtime here for a change, as I immediately re-rolled on a PVP server. I chose another rogue, this time an undead, returning to the class that initially attracted me (and now armed with pretty decent game knowledge). I levelled fast and hit a lot of new-to-me solo content, then joined a small guild that burned me out doing Blackrock Depths clears. I quit for about a month (started a new job, among other things) and when I came back, my guildies had hit 70 and transferred. No biggie, though. I did a major PVP grind to get a few of the best items and then headed for Outlands, keen to see more than just HF Peninsula this time. But... having levelled my best-ever character (that'd be Smurk) to 65, I don't really feel the urge to push for 70/flying mount/etc. In the last few weeks I've only played as a new blood elf paladin. So this topic leads me to question how much more I'll actually play, period: I know I'll never join a raiding guild, and I doubt I'll ever play enough to get another character as high as my 65 rogue is now. So I guess I'm at the real burnout phase right now according to that progression.

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O M G! That graph image is so describing my current WoW situation. The game has nothing to give to me. To get something "new" outta it, I rolled an alliance alt. But PvP'ing and raiding do not interest me at all anymore.

I so wish that Blizz would update the old world content a lot more. Or even add new quests to the Outlands leveling zones.

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