WoW....

A chat with a real life friend and wow guildie had put wow on my mind. He has unsubbed as well and seems determined to never return due to the never ending grind.
We have always bemoaned the grind cycle that is World of Warcraft. It is what it is. The real draw that binds activity are the people and the guilds we have been with.
So I did a quick login to wow as I've still got some gametime left. I wanted to see if there was any draw to the game with the new raid being released. A quick logon and check of the guild activity logs showed only the raid leader and his alts as being active. A short queue time of 7 minutes saw my Warlock into the LFR version. There was noting special about the boss fights, it all felt very mundane.Maybe that was LFR....
I wont' be talking any other trips to the gates of hell. Gametime is better spent elsewhere.

As time goes on I've been trending more towards sandbox games than theme park. I want more long term value from the gametime I pay for/enjoy. With that in mind the best way to describe the value of gametime in WoW 'vs' Eve Online is to view the items that you start with.
In WoW you start anew with white items on your character, within moments they are replaced with grey items as an improvement. Green items with stats are much better that lead on to blue etc... etc.. But you never go backwards. Replace an item and the old one is useless, sold, banked or disenchanted. You'll never go back to it again, the more time passes the more useless an old item becomes. The grind is real, never one step backwards.
In Eve your starter ship is what you get for free first, you trade up like in WoW for better ships and better stats; But unlike WoW you do have a use for that old starter ship if you want to return to it. It can be used as a shuttle, as a cargo transport, as a cyno ship. There is more emphasis on effective use of your time and the tools at your disposal to make that happen.

Grind faction reputation in WoW and that faction vendor's gear is only useful for than one expansion, it that.
Grind standing with a faction in Eve and you'll have that faction standing and access to it's "shop" for as long as you are friendly with the faction. Regardless of any expansion the gear is still useful and wanted.


In the end Eve seems more like a long term investment, WoW seems more like a waste of time.