My Hunter is now level 63 and I have completed all of the ‘vanilla’ WoW content that I wanted to see before the world is torn asunder from the Cataclysm. Although there were only a few new things to see such as the goblin town in Dustwallow, the majority of the leveling experience was well worth it.  Now I’m in Outlands leveling through Hellfire Peninsula and juts about ready to move on to Zangarmarsh or the Terokkar Forest.  I find myself actually wanting to reach level 80 now.
Watching Graev play (hard to miss given the fact that he plays on our 52” tv next to me) has been very educational. He started doing his PvE grouping for dungeons with nothing but blues from the basic WotLK dungeons. Each day it has been his goal to run a few. Little by little he has worked his way up to full T9 gear and many other epics that have put him at a place where he’s ready to easily transition to the 10-man raids. The entire process looked very, very painless and he can only count on 1 hand the number of ‘bad groups’ he’s experienced.
The random group finder was easily the greatest decision Blizzard ever made. It turned a very tedious process of looking for a group — which included problems with server populations, class bias/balance/pop, cliques, drama, etc. –into something that does not drain the player’s mental stamina anywhere near as quickly as it used to. Back when I resubbed to WoW in September 09 it became very apparent within the first few days just how themepark the game had become; I even wrote a blog post about it. It’s only fair to use the word “themepark” against them in a negative way if the process sucks like it used to — now the themepark tag doesn’t have to be thrown at them maliciously.
Several members tried leveling up but couldn’t do it, which I totally understand, but isntead decided to transfer characters that were either max level or in their 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s (some even 80 and geared with ICC stuff). We’re going to have quite an amazing blend of players ready to form 10-man’s (and perhaps even the occasional 25).  It will be just a matter of time before Arthas dies to the Happy Fun Guyz. We’re always welcoming more members if you want to join.
Casualties of War on Rexxar has experienced the same thing, where several members just got to 80 and we are now doing 10 mans successfully. I’d go as far as to say that the dungeon finder tool is the most successful design ever put into a multi-server mmo. Like you’ve said, it’s done wonders for helping people level up and get gear necessary to begin doing 10 man raids. They just need to make server transfers and faction changes free and it will make the multi server division almost non existent.
i agree. while the random group/dungeon finders might take socialization somewhat out of the game, it fits WoW – the way the game is supposed to be played (an arcade mmo) – perfectly.
oh and my prediction is that when you hit grizzly hills/dragonblight in Northrend, you will stop playing. it get’s really grindy about then.
My prediction is the dungeon finder have him skip right past grizzly hills altogether. He’ll want to dragonblight for the wrathgate questline.
yo keen im thinking about buying this game but from the freetrial i just played the game feels like a grinder such as kill this or kill that is it really worth buying.
I agree that the dungeon finder is hands down the best thing Blizzard has ever implemented in WoW. I remember looking for groups for ages back in the day for instances, but now that they are so easy to pop in and out of it really is a whole new experience and a much improved one in my opinion. Instances were always my favorite part of the game, but due to the previou lfg system it almost felt like punishment to get a group rolling.
The Dungeon finder doesn’t have to ruin socialization either it’s all in what you put into it. Group up with 2-3 friends on vent then pop into the dungeon finder and have a blast. If that’s not enough incentive to socialize, it turns out Blizzard didn’t dissable chat or text communications to other when in random dungeons so you can still talk to those random people who appear in your groups *gasp*.
If you don’t want a “kill this then kill that” game then you really shouldn’t look at MMOs at all, most of them are just that. I reckon someone will come along and set me straight sayig x game is not like that, but generally most MMOs has repetitive patterns all over the place, it’s part of being a “endless” game.
Damn, you guys have made me want to resub so bad.
If I didn’t have to drop 60 bucks (lost my CD’s a while ago) just to patch the game I would totally join you.
@ Mcface – You can download the clients from Blizzard for free.
Grizzly Hills was one of my favorite zones. …and I find it almost laughable that anyone could call WoW grindy as far as leveling…maybe gear grind at end game, but leveling? I guess maybe it depends on your definition of grind…
@Bal
I always tell people if they think WoW is a grind they should go and play a game called Silkroad Online. Then, come back in 6 months after you finally got halfway through the level cap and talk about how grindy WoW is again.
@Shadrah 6 months and half of silkroads cap? HAH! Only if you spent your money out of your ass lol.
Grizzly Hills is by far my favorite zone, I love the music, the atmosphere, and not to mention the deep lore of whats really happening there. From (Evil) Worgen, a gigantic tree that is a connection to the ancient evil Yogg’Saron who is making the furbolgs fight, and not to mention the beautiful zone, I don’t see how even a little bit of grindy can turn you off.
Cannot wait until I am 80 again, but thats a bit ways off 😛
I love Grizzly Hills.
That is all.
Wow-
Popped on here after not reading your blog in a long time… I guess it is not so strange you are in a re-run of WOW. Glad you are having fun.
One thing that is sad is that you have been playing what 3 weeks? and are already well into BC.
The whole tone of the comments have changed.. it is like all the old gamers have just disappeared into the woodwork.. and replaced by many new voices.
I guess that is ok, but what you are playing now is not ‘vanilla WOW’, but more of a walk down memory lane. Classic WOW was really such a good game.
I’ll give you 3 more weeks? Just enough time for another month sub and then some regret.
More curious to hear what else you might be looking forward to… something not predictable… surprise me!
🙂
Hate to disappoint, but there is a momentum behind WoW and the guild that hasn’t been present in any MMO for the past 4 years. It’s going to be more than a few weeks.
I think you summed it up perfectly when you said WoW is now a themepark in a good way. Blizzard have removed all of the painful things and made everything so easy and painless (such as the Dungeon Finder) that the game just flows nicely. They’ve embraced the themepark motto but given everyone a chance to have a go on the rides without having to queue.
@Silverfly
Sometimes people make me wonder why they have to put bets on when people will stop an MMORPG, it’s a counterproductive way of saying “your wasting your time, stupid.”
Just ran a couple of the “classic” instances and had a blast. Never in the past 4 years of playing did I ever think I would form a group for Black Fathom Deeps without 5+ hours of LFG messages, but it popped in 6 minutes. I am a happy gamer.
@Dietx
Your comment is much more divisive than mine. I am genuine in hoping for everyone to have fun. All games are a ‘waste of time’ I supppose.
It is true it is easy to poke at Keen.. his track record borders on bi-polar… Just flip back through the last few months, but I mean it in a fun way.
Everyone has gotten so righteous in this new blogging frontier. Reflects on the lack of humanity.. the lack of society.
I miss the society of old school MMO’s.. themepark is great for what it is.. I too have run characters from 1-80 in thel last year and enjoyed myself.. to a point.
Defend WOW all you like, and by all means enjoy it to the fullest, maybe in about 7 years games will really turn a corner.
@Proximo
You should say “then you shouldn’t play Diku inspired MMOGs”. An MMO doesn’t have to be about killing x of y, but the most popular ones currently are all derivative of the Diku MUD model.
Dungeon Finder is a bandaid fix. Instead of fixing the core issues with the game they went with the easy option which as a side effect kills any community that existed.
Why not give players motivation to go to dungeon X at level Y? Why not create more effective tools to get there? Why spread out the game massively between differing areas to seperate players, why didn’t you design or redesign your game more effectively in the first place?
Dungeon Finder as effectively made WoW into a glorified MW2, where you join in with differing games whenever they need to fill a spot (automatically of course). You make no friends and you get nothing out of it which you SHOULD be getting out of it in terms of the game being a MMOrpg.
Of course, Blizzard ruined their game to the point where they NEEDED this addition. Did you need the Dungeon Finder in Vanilla? No, it was an adventure and a half traveling across the world to get to the instance. Instances themselves weren’t the core goal, the game was. Now with instance’s grindy nature, the instance itself is the only important aspect hence Blizzard needed to implement everything they could do instantly get the player to the instance where they can start grinding their top tier gear.
So I guess since Blizzard were heading in that direction anyway that the Dungeon Finder suits the new WoW anyway, doesn’t mean it isn’t a bandaid fix of course. Meh, enjoy your soulless themepark I guess (the soul being the community, which is now completely dead).
@Anne You get “NOTHING” out of it? I don’t discribe fun as “NOTHING”. I also don’t think that all the “LF2M tank and heals RFK” for half an hour- and hour followed by spending half an hour getting two people TO the stone, followed by grinding elites for ten minuets just to GET into the instance that we had in classic did ANYTHING for the community.
However the cross server and cross faction communication coming with battlenet 2.0 sure will.
@Anne… Killed the Community, or just made it bigger?…
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=69366&sid=1
Ive been seeing a lot of familiar faces! 🙂
Grindy? Quit in Dragonblight? Man, my experience was the complete opposite. When I made it out of the Borean Tundra and into Dragonblight I fell in love. That zone is so steeped in lore ( with all factions of the dragon flights representing ) that I blew through the content and reached “wrathgate”. After that event I knew I would be hooked until level 80 and beyond. While I am a huge warcraft lore nerd, keep in mind that I have NEVER reached end game in an MMO until Wrath of the Lich King.
If you think WoW is grindy, go play EQ, or Aion, or any number of other games. All MMOs are grindy, really, but there is something about the pacing of WoW that keeps me from feeling too down with the grind.
@ Tdawgs: the community that existed in classic wow wasn’t just found in forums. It was found in the game itself. When things were more difficult and things took time there was a need for people to work together, and a good chance that they would see each other again and again since they’d both be in the same place for a while.
@ Holgranth you don’t seem to understand the concept of community. You are talking about the opposite of community. Community is small. It is about banding together in the face of things. The whole global community concept (and its analogue in battlenet 2.0) is a bit of a misnomer
ok what i meant by grindy was that you stop caring about your environment or the game experience, you’re just hunkering down and staring at the quest log as you kill X of these, Y of those, collect Z thingamajigz, and Q doodads.
Vanilla WoW is nice and fresh to go back to, Outlands is ok for the first 3 quests, then quickly feels “grindy” (aka: i’m going into grind mode, just chewing through quests).
When you hit 68, around nagrand or god forbid blade edge mountains, you can’t wait to get away from it all, and rush to Northrend.
BT feels fresh again, and i think i was able to go through HF without feeling particularly jaded. I think once i got started on the dailies in Dragonblight, and Grizzly hills, i felt the grind clouding my head again.
Halfway through grizzly hills i’ll be in full grind mode, not giving a sh!t except for completing quests as fast as possible. The prospect of ZulDrak, Storm Peaks and Icecrown seem incredibly boring, and i force myself to think of the goal.. which usually leads to me starting to play company of heroes or something where you have fun from when you start playing.
@Office Jerk,
Honestly, sounds like you are just talking about your playstyle. Using “I,” “I’m,” and etc. Grind mode I guess is what comes with the kill X amount of Y, but in the end if you read the quest and immerse yourself, you can break from that context. Of course your going to grind, but that doesn’t mean you cannot add a bit of flare to it.
We all grind every day going to our daily/nightly jobs then coming home and fixing our routine. It’s the little flares we add to it (music, movies, games, going out for the night) that really make the day feel a little more special then getting up and working X amount of hours at Y job.
They’ve embraced the themepark motto but given everyone a chance to have a go on the rides without having to queue.
That is the key for good game design. Let players do fun part
-thats what the GAME part is about
MMO to date were more about grind to play mentality. Specifically designing time sinks and barriers . EQ is a shining example of that. Turns out people prefer less barriers to get to the fun part. Who would have thought!
Unfortunately for me the core wow gameplay is carrot driven theme park treadmill. And why it does this sort of things best in the industry I am just not that attracted to it (10 mill people are though)
I am attracted to a meaningful conflict and and all “pvp” mmo to date sport horrible design and technical problems. DF/SB are examples of both and. EvE is a perfect example of the latter. It could be made into a fine game I would enjoy if it was not so full of that boring filler void (literally and metaphorically speaking) separating activities which are actually fun
WoW “pvp” is completely meaningless , while I find the mechanics itself fun I just don’t see it fundamentally being superior to TF2/BC2/CS:S etc etc. It is completely meaningless in both cases, the edge WoW could have had if it was actually for world control, without instancing (and vanilla wow pre-bg pvp was very fun even without any game mechanics supporting it)
Make world pvp as painless as riding instance theme parks , but at the same time have meaning (and this is not incompatible goals- do not punish players , but instead provide rewards incentives). -for example regular events which promote pvp would occur in the world (such as npc caravans carrying resources, control points contest intervals), make it easy to join and organize ( advanced grouping and group control mechanics) . Minimize the time from logging in to meaningful action to 10 min
WoW does meaningless action in 10 min. Darkfall and eve have meaningful action only after several months of grind and hours after logging in (and its very few in between – for 5 minutes of good fight in eve/DF there is tens of hours of grind and time sinks)
@office jerk –
boy you hit the nail on the head as far as my experience too.. BC is a grindy nightmare, Northrend starts out a little better but soon falls into the exact same sitaution.
Classic WOW was so well thought out that waiting for your group for 30 min while spar PVP or working through elites was fun… at least for me.
I while I don’t mind people enjoying (and defending) WOW for what it is.. I wish they would stop glorifying what its not. The core social aspect has been obliterated for a lobby style game.
Keen mentioned his enjoyment.. but it sounds entirely related around the guild aspect, which was already well in place outside of the game. I think we can all agree that any game you play with a core group of friends will be much more fun than otherwise. I think often the 2 are confused.
@ Holgranth
Never said it wasn’t fun. But what about the next time? Or the time after? Is the fun going to continue again and again? Community brings extends to the fun more, the reason why the Wii is so successful is because people want to play games with their friends even with the most simplistic and basic games. Laughing, joking, knowing the players brings a whole new level to the game.
‘don’t think that all the “LF2M tank and heals RFK†for half an hour- and hour followed by spending half an hour getting two people TO the stone’
It only took so long after Blizzard started to ignore the content (post-TBC and WOTLK) and because other specific system itself was broken (e.g. smaller servers existed and no one wanted to go to them). Either way, you wouldn’t do NOTHING in that time which means that its only fault is the time itself that is required to wait and then do the instance AND that problem only existed when it wasn’t prime-time.
During the prime of Vanilla issues like this rarely existed in terms of time to get a group together. The only issue that existed I would say would be the LFG system, and even then I personally found spamming chat much more personal.
‘followed by grinding elites for ten minuets just to GET into the instance that we had in classic did ANYTHING for the community’
Most instances didn’t have this, nor did most instance have elites in front (they had normal mobs).
Yes, it was hard. Some of the time you could run in, otherwise Vanilla was built more around the Everquest philosopy of ‘group of die’ which encourged community.
@ Tdawgs
what palpi said.
I actually found “Vanilla” fun but hard to play as a casual player with only 2 hours a night most nights to play.
With the introduction of the Dungeon Finder I thought it was great as I could get most groups easily. I agree with Keen though as the community is what keeps you in the game and my guild was just too small to keep me playing.
Now that Keen moved the AO guild into WoW, I am getting that urge to resub and come join them in the game.
It is actually a horrible thing they have done to the game as of late and very unprecedented to boot.
You realize that they completely destroyed all incentive to enter any raid prior to the final raid on ICC? Now take note that this has happened DURING the lifespan of the expansion in which these raids are featured. They have hearded all the cattle into the final raid zone by adding a tier of gear before the final raid but above that which should have come prior. They chose the delivery method to be grinding random old bland heroic no challenge dungeons practically handing out the gear in grab bags in an effort to curtail slumping subscriptions. The Random dungeon finder would be of no use and nobody would use it. They had to concoct this entire scheme to get people to actually use their tool. Hereby destroying an entire expansion worth of effort and design before it was over.
Hope you enjoy ICC when you get there but too bad on them for destroying worlds in the process.
@Frago
It would be nice if some form of facts could back up your claims of “What they are really doing.” Blizzard is good at giving players what they want instead of what the hardcore audience “wants.” Instead of shoving down our throats extremely hard content that drives players away, they instead flatten out the slope of which gear is obtained making it an actually enjoyable experience.
I felt just as Epic slaying the Lich King as I did slaying Ragnaros in Vanilla WoW. I felt just as epic taking old-school Kel’Thuzad as I did slaying Yogg’Saron. So, in the end the experience hasn’t changed, the players view of how content is delivered (god forbid its accessible by the masses instead of a small percentage, which is the failings of other MMORPGs).