I am not sure I will continue this blog as it was intended. I instead am going to change it to be musings on the game of World of Warcraft in general from my perspective as a female dwarven tank in a casual guild. I still plan on finishing these walk-throughs but summer has caused a huge pause in the project just for sheer lack of time/players to help me with it. Firelands came out at a very bad time and my raid group that was struggling with filling spots for a 10 man has taken a month-long break from raiding. We start back up next month and my game playing should be more steady.
Right now I am barely playing in-game at all. When I do, it's mainly archeology while watching a movie or tv show. Blizzard has really let me down this expansion in terms of replay value. I did all the first tier raids when they were new and then Firelands came out so Blizz nerfed the older raids so that anyone could do them with a pick up group. Those raids are already boring to me and Firelands is too difficult when you are having to do a lot of off-specs and fill-ins due to summer. So it put me in the odd position of not progressing. The game itself is not enough to hold me as a player without the people I play with. Not only that but I am tired of killing bosses 'again' like Ragnaros and the ZG heroics, it just seems pointless as I killed those dungeons years ago. It's one thing to revisit a boss here or there but having two recycled dungeons (yes, mechanics were altered) and a 'big baddie' that we've seen before just makes it pretty boring too quickly.
Good news in on the horizon though with another big patch on the way and perhaps Blizzard is listening. They scrapped the water raid because it's story wasn't compelling enough (hello, story is VERY important to me in this game, it's why killing Arthas meant so much to me as a WCIII fan). They have promised us sort of an appearance tab. If they put the dance studio in, I could see myself playing the game just for those features. I used to play LOTRO simply because I could compose and play my own music in taverns and with other people and it was incredibly fun for me. Simple things like that WoW has been lacking. Another feature I would REALLY love to see is world events with open public grouping like other games have. I loved it in WAR and RIFT made it even more amazing as an available feature. Blizz is going back in the right direction with some of these announcements but it still remains to be seen if they can actually push the changes out decently fast as to not lose anymore playerbase.
The last month I have been considering cancelling my subscription to the game as well because I realized how little I have invested in it anymore other than as a time sink. My friends, a way to play with them, share time and a hobby with them will always be worth $15 a month and for now we pay that for WoW. But if my friends aren't online and I find I really don't want to do anything and quickly become bored and log off.
It seems, too, like we get less and less with our money's worth the longer we stay in the game-there is no real reason to be a veteran player, no perks, nothing because you have played for years. If I were to quit today and come back in 6 months, I could catch up with less effort of the people that go through the content today. More unique one time only events with rewards would add some spice to that veteran status I think and would be a worthwhile investment.
I am not sure how to 'fix' WoW for me. Perhaps time has just stretched the game too far into feeling like another job. Perhaps I just have lost the 'fun hobby' part of the game. I am hoping the next patch will bring back the oomph, but then I think I sound like a druggie: Just one more patch, one more patch and then I'll get my fix.
Hopefully in the next month I will be able to finish all regular heroic dungeon walk-throughs and hopefully also the troll instances.
I hear you!
ReplyDeleteI too think that the game has lost a lot of its replay value. In many ways I think that Cataclysm is simply a WotLK 2.0. There are more instances but mechanics (both boss and player) are not really that different. I think that the major contribution for Cataclysm has actually been the revamp of all the low level zones (that is also pretty great).
For the end game, I really think they (Blizzard) should try to approach it as a new game. Where is the 100+ man raid that requires a lot of PuG members? Why is all progress dependend on gear? Why not give some Power Up rewards for raids? I'm sure Blizzard can come up with more and better ideas than me :-)
On a more general note: I think that Burning Crusade was by far the best expansion. In Burning Crusade they tried out a lot of new stuff: smaller raid instance, Badges of Justice, flying mounts etc. Wrath of the Lich King was in many ways just a polished version of Burning Crusade. Not that many new features but the existing successful features were but to good use: all raids were now 10/25 man and clear system for badges. And of course a GREAT background story :-). With Cataclysm it all seemed to fall apart. I really cannot come up with something new that was important. Just more dungeons and raids.
Well that was just my two cents :-).
Yours
/peter