Where to go from here?

I blogged before about how MMO's need achievements. And it sounds like the new Lord of the Rings MMORPG is delivering just that. It also helps that it's based in the very rich world of Middle Earth. So, I'm tempted…

But I don’t know if I have the energy to start another one of these games. I've been playing WoW for two years now, and for a large chunk of that time it was pretty much the only game I played. Which is not how I like to operate. I'd rather experience a variety of different stories than be entrenched in one ongoing epic. It took me awhile to break free from its grasp, and I don't want to fall back into bad habits again.

I'm at a turning point with WoW. When the expansion came out I set a goal for myself that I would delay the inevitable endgame grind as much as possible by staying focusing on seeing all the content. This weekend I completed one of the primary goals I set for myself: run all the (non-hardcore) instances. And I already finished off my single player questing goals weeks ago (the only quests left in my log are the group quests that are impossible to find groups for). I need to decide if I want to take a crack at Karazhan, but besides that I've reached the end of the content. I've essentially seen all there is to see without spending an absurd amount of time grinding to the next tier. And I'm not really interested in taking another character through the same old stuff again, which is how I handed the pre-Burning Crusade level cap.

My plan right now is to put my WoW account into hibernate and only pop in as they bring more content online. But new stuff comes along rarely, so it sounds like I won't be playing much WoW. The question I'm posed with now is do I hang up my MMO hat or do I pursue the next evolution that is Lord of the Rings Online?