… they pull me back in.
Yes, I’m talking about that old standby that nobody ever truly escapes from, the game that both codified MMOs and redefined what they could commercially and culturally achieve – World of Warcraft. Now, our dear Pike has as most of you will know been a very long-time player of WoW, and played solidly for years, which is of course where her delightful Aspect of the Hare arose from. In fact I first played the game considerably before she ever touched it (I got it just as Patch 1.6 came out.), but unlike her I come and go in waves. I play for a few months, then put it aside for a few months, repeat. Apparently ad nauseum. I had thought I had escaped for good; I last played in early Spring if I recall correctly.
But here I am, and I know the signs by now. I’ve started reading the WoW forums. I keep an eye on the patch notes. I’ve updated to the latest version. I’m looking for the best current plugins to use. Sooner or later, no matter how long and hard I resist it, I’m going to give Blizzard yet more of my altogether too scarce money and I am going to spend an extraordinary amount of time playing World of Warcraft.
Again. And I’m sure I’ll drag Pike along with me, because she’s susceptible to that sort of thing and hearing me ooh-ing and ah-ing over some mediocre Green I just found will make her itch to play it.
Are there any games, MMO or otherwise, which just seem to always manage to call you back to them, an irresistible siren song that must inexorably conquer you despite your best efforts?
Also how is WoW these days, to those who still play?
Greens aren’t going to pull me back in.
You regaling me with tales of smashing some poor fool’s face in during a round of 29 bracket Arathi Basin is going to pull me back in.
:( why do you do this
Go DDO- its free, prettier, and has lots of cyberpunk influence. Google “self-forged”
With the coming Transmogalypse, greens will no longer be worthless as long as they look cool.
I’m still enjoying WoW, but I’m one of those people who doesn’t commit heavily to one aspect of it (say, raiding). A little bit of everything works nicely for me – your mileage may vary. Open invitations to both of you should you wish a casual guild to join or low-level dungeons smooshed for that one damn item that never drops when you pug.
World of the Warcraft is the only MMO I can play for any period of time. I’ve tried others, namely EQ 2, but none of them hold my attention for long. Of course, come December Star Wars: The Old Republic may be the game that causes me to finally hang up my hunter’s bow, provided I have a strong enough computer to support it. (Which I highly doubt)
I enjoy WoW, especially now that I gave up raiding at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. I got burned out and that’s when I realized that I’m not a hardcore raider, which is what I tried to force myself to be all throughout. Now my favorite thing to do is play alts. I am up to 8 level 85s (2 hunters and 2 death knights among them), 1 level 84 and one at level 80 with a bunch of alts at various levels spread among four total servers.
(warning: I am very verbose and this post is gonna be LONG)
Things to pull you back in….
1. Streamlined questing. No more hopping from Silithis to Loch Modan to STV for a single quest. Sounds like they’ve gimped the questing until you level a new toon and remember why it sucked to fly for 14 minutes of every hour. A bunch of changed quest lines as well. Tons of vanity pets as quest rewards. And if you’ve not played since Cata launched, you can do some of your favorite quests over since every quest that was changed was reset so even veteran players can save Aim-ee again. Plus, the goblin and worgen starting areas are pretty great storylines.
1.5 Throw on your Bind on Account gear and you’ll sail through questing. Or don’t wear any at all and still gain levels at a reasonable pace. Hands down one of Blizz’s best perks towards players. Send the BoA from Ally side to Horde side and back again. There’s even talk about them allowing BoA’s to be sent across servers.
2. Turn off that experience. Permanent twinks who can run dungeons over and over and over and never gain a point of exp to push them into the next bracket. Pair this with the random dungeon finder? Other than jerk puggers, you’ve got a recipe for awesomeness. Tired of pugs? Have your best lvl 85 buddy run you through the dungeon until those bracers you want drop from the last boss. On a silly note, twinks can now do the holiday quests for the cool loot with no fear of dinging to the next level. :)
3. New pvp brackets. Instead of a 10 level span, it’s now every 4 levels. Currently I play in the 70-74 bracket and the 45-49 bracket. Both are super fun. They lowered the points needed to get the old (i.e. not lvl 85) pvp season gear. About 500pts will get you a pretty good set. At 60 points or so per win, it doesn’t take long!
4. Guild perks. I’m 2nd in command of a 500+ toon guild (about 200 active accts), so our guild leveled FAST. Mass rez after a wipe, fast run speed when you’re dead, access to the guild bank for when you’re out in the middle of nowhere and you KNOW there’s a bronze tube in the bank for this quest. And our very very favorite “Have Group Will Travel”. Want to do Ring of Blood and Nagrand is empty? No problem at all. Grab a guildie or two and cast a spell…it’s your own personal warlock closet every 2 hours.
5. Achievements. I’m an achievement chaser, I’ll admit to it. Nothing like a group of friends racing each other in a sheer numbers game. I’m in 6th place….but not for long. >:)
6. Transmogrification. Our guild is in a frenzy over how each of their toons is going to look. Old raids (SSC, Mags, Gruuls, TK, KZ) have been added to the raid calendar every week for the last month. Since you can 3-5 man most of them including Black Temple, we’ve even just been snagging a few friends on slow nights and running them for tier sets.
7. Updates to the UI. The mini-map is actually useful to track targets and vendors. Dungeon guide is a great addition. Can’t remember how hard Shaddox’s spear hits for? The numbers are a click away. Dungeons maps…they work well, but I still get lost in Wailing Caverns. :|
8. Simplified stats. This makes it soo much easier to compare gear. As for the lost stats (defense, for instance), they are given back to you with “mastery” which is spec dependent. If you’re a tank, your mastery points lend towards your ability to defend yourself. If you’re a healer, it adds to your healing abilities. There’s still a ton of theory crafting on which stats are more useful than others, so if you enjoy that sort of mathematical calculation it’s still there in abundance.
9. Random dungeon finder. No guildies online that want to run Mana Tombs for the 64th time with you? No problem. Queue up in the dungeon finder and away you go. Yeah, you’ve got to deal with random people who are jerks, but mostly you get pretty good people who make the run fun and easy. Recently, Blizz added cross-server queues for those people who are on Real ID with them. So I can easily grab my friend Kesh to tank our run, even though he’s on another server. This is also a perk for people who have all 10 character slots filled on one server and wish to level a new toon by dungeon-ing with friends who reside elsewhere.
10. Vanilla flying. all I can say on this: there’s nothing like sitting on the top of KZ the day it launched. Did you know from the top you can almost see into ZG? Brings a tear to me eyes…
Now the stuff that blows…..
1. In my opinion, Blizz has seriously forked the end game content. My husband started the same time I did and quit 5 months ago, just as our guild got to Nefarian/Cho’gall. In his words the raiding isn’t about how well you play your toon anymore, but how well you can pat your head/rub your belly counterclockwise/jump on one foot/blow bubbles with your nose/stay out of fire. He was mainly annoyed with the mechanics of the game seeming to cater to the hardcore raiding guilds who complained LOUDLY that Wrath was too easy. So instead of handing us bosses hit harder/more often Blizz added a bunch of stupid gimmicks to the fights so you never really feel like you’re playing your toon so much as “OMG get out of the fire and the traps and the swirly crap and avoid 450 adds and watch the stairs or the floor…..then heal or dps. Oh! Don’t forget the tank swap!” And EVERY fight is like that….makes you long for a straightforward Patchwerk fight. Tanks take dmg. Healers heal. DPS dps. I know how he feels (and I miss raiding with him :( ), but since I tend to split my time between pvp and raiding, I’m far less burnt out than he was when he left.
2. Restricted talent trees. You HAVE to reach the bottom of a talent tree before you can choose a secondary tree. Don’t like the bottom level holy priest spell? Too bad, you’re gonna have to take it so you can put your points into discipline. Gone are the days of wacky hybrids and experimentation. Which leads me to my next point:
3. Homogenization. The longer I play, the more noticeable this becomes. It kinda peaked with DK’s….they were supposed to be big and bad but they just ended up feeling like “all the best skills” shoved into a single toon. They have shields like a frost mage, a battle rez, a pet like a hunter, plate armor like a warrior tank, heals while taking damage like a bear, diseases that work like ‘lock dots/rogue poison, etc etc. I understand WHY Blizz is making so many duplicate skills….it makes dungeon and raid groups more forgiving in regards to class requirements. Need Heroism? No problem…either a shammy OR a mage can do it. Need a battle rez? Got 4 classes that can do it. This really helps in the random dungeon finder but feels kinda “meh” in regards to having unique and special classes.
All this said (told you it was going to be a long read), I still play. Most often daily. I log in to check the AH, work on an achievement, ransack Warsong Gulch, or raid. But mostly? I log on to bullshit with my friends. It’s the PEOPLE there that have me logging in day after day. I love blizting Vanilla content with them, I love raiding with them, I love pvp’ing with them. If my WoW subscription was singularly based on the game itself? I wouldn’t play nearly as often as I do.
On the Cons first since they’re shorter
1. I can see this being frustrating. My biggest gripe: the GRIND. I have yet to finish Firelands dailies because I can’t stand doing the same dailies 500 times to unlock one vendor, doing them again for another, and so on.
2. That’s only partially true. You have to spend 31 points in the base tree before you can branch into the others. You don’t necessarily have to spend the 31st point in the final talent of the tree to open up the other two. It’s still a bit restrictive though, sure.
3. It’s only really noticeable if you’re big on stuff like raids and rated BG. It’s harder to notice if you focus on solo or 5-man content though.
Now to your pros
1 and 1.5: Definitely agree here. I like long and involved quest lines, I don’t enjoy having to go here for one part then go to the other continent for another, then back over and on the opposite side of the continent for another… Also agree with the BoAs. Sometimes I use them and sometimes I don’t. Depends on the mood I’m in.
2. It’s also great if you want to experience all the quests in the particular zone and you don’t want to ridiculously overlevel it.
3. Not a big PvPer myself but I can definitely see the merits of this. It’s nice to not have to worry about getting stomped by a level 19 when you’re a lowly level 10 stepping into WSG for the first time.
4. Oh god yes. My favorite perks: Mount speed, Mass Rez, and the one that lets you skill up professions faster.
5. My main hunter is sitting at 8905 and counting. One of these days I’ll work on Loremaster. I love achievements.
6. Yep. I just picked up the Halberd of Desolation from BT along with the t6 shoulders, chest, and legs. Just need to con people into running Hyjal to get the gloves. (The helm can go DIAF. Good god the t6 helm is atrocious.) Also need the Golden Bow of Quel’thelas from Sunwell.
7. The new map is awesome with its Questhelper function. You can also now track multiple things at once. Track ALL of the things!
8. Also agree here. I hated Armor Penetration when it was around because it was so finicky. If you were under a certain amount it was completely useless.
9. I also love the RDF. The queue times for DPS can be a bit atrocious but that’s what I get for not enjoying tanking for randoms.
10. Also agree. I hated hoofing it around everywhere before Cata.
Ahaha oh wow, this is a pretty extensive post right here! I have played a bit since Cata (Loooove the new zones) but thank you for all these details and suchlike! Vanilla flying is especially delightful.
I really dislike the new talent system. I mean, I think it’s well-executed and last I saw the balance wasn’t terrible, but I want more talent points and more places to put them, not fewer!
I prefer raiding being about multitasking rather than just trying to manage a simple priority system while standing around for 5 minutes. I’m sorry that some people feel disenfranchised by a system that rewards cooperation, but when you use any system of progressive difficulty someone will end up as the weak link.
I agree on multitasking. There has to be some challenge in the fight, but there is such a thing as going overboard in silly mechanics to keep high end raiders entertained.
I’d understand if it was the weak links that were falling away, but it’s our highest dps and healers that are scaling back from raiding. From the posts on our forums, they are just getting burnt out and feel the rewards aren’t worth the trouble. :(
Fig-
The GRIND should have it’s very own category of ruthless horror. Dailies. Justice Points. Valor Points. Honor. Conquest Points. Tokens. Shards…..
Eve always pulls me back in. I start reading battle reports, and want to play again.
Then I realize I won’t ever see those major fights that happen.
It makes me sad.
Guild Wars and Golden Sun are my addictions of choice. (Also, Dark Dawn is an AU fic.)