I’ve been taking a little break from WoW lately. Moving up to school and getting situated for the semester took a lot out of my game time. Now that I feel ‘at home’ here, I realize that (along with 90% of the guild) we’re sorta waiting for Cataclysm. There’s no real incentive to grind for gear — not interested. There’s no reason to stress out about trying to progress into harder modes because I don’t find doing the same fights just harder to be any thrill. I’m more of a ‘let me do the content and enjoy it then move on’ kind of guy and so are most of my friends.
Today the first events for Cataclysm came out. Operation Gnomeregan and Zalazane’s Fall for Alliance and Horde respectively. I did Zalazane’s fall and honestly I was underwhelmed. The whole event took 30 minutes max and felt rushed. Even the big event at the end was just a moshpit of meaninglessness. Zalazane is gone or something. Woop. So what. That’s the feeling I had when doing it. I was expecting something a little more… Oh I don’t know… epic maybe? Yeah, it’s just a pre-event but that doesn’t change my opinion any.
Most of my guild is waiting for Cataclysm now. I’m tempted to make an Alliance alt to pass the time. At this point it’s just a matter of waiting. Cataclysm will be a relaunch for me and WoW. I’m reading about the changes being made to the whole world — even the loot getting some changes in places like Scarlet Monastery. I plan to play lots of alts and level characters up. Goblin Mage and Goblin Warrior then maybe a Goblin Shaman. Yeah, my plan is to be an altaholic but at this point it’s more than that. It’s about enjoying the best part of WoW and the best part of the expansions: Leveling. I might raid or I might not. Right now my plan is to just do the content and dungeons and not even think about going further.
I agree it’s more of a waiting game at this point, I’ve canceled my sub for now.
The best part of the game is the leveling, it’s more fun and relaxed, the game changes so much at 80, it becomes pretty stale at a rapid rate these days.
Yup, I’m in the same mood. I’ve logged onto Kuwabara a few times, but just don’t feel like doing anything. I kind of want to make an alt, but at this point I just want Cataclysm. I want to make a Troll warlock or goblin warrior, or just experience something new.
I’m just feeling pretty burnt out. With cross-faction heirlooms though, I might just try leveling an alliance alt, because I’ve not played a whole lot as alliance.
The same here.
The WoW endgame was the place to be in Vanilla and perhaps TBC (although the leveling was just as good then).
But in WotLK endgame lost its appeal. Items are so obviously a grind that it hurts to try to imagine what Blizzard is thinking. The Tx,T(x+1) system is a terrible mistake.
So only leveling remains: It is still good. Let’s see what it will be with Cataclysm.
The event is indeed small, but it’s merely there to set up the lore for trolls/gnomes for cataclysm. I’m sure the actual events leading up the the Cataclysm itself will be a lot more “epic”.
Wishful thinking here, but if it’s anything like the plague, I’ll be very happy. The amount of casual tears I consumed could fill the ocean three times over! Ah the fun, the chaos… it was the best event I have ever experienced in any large scale multiplayer game.
I resub so I can apply my SC2 thor pet. And then realize how much I dread the while raid and token grind thing thay I promptly end my sub. I think im done with wow. Ready for rift or swtor or gw2 heck ill try DCUo
*Spoiler free*
As someone in beta, I can tell you my gnome has found his way to Arathi (level 27) from starting in Gnomeregan without ever running out of quests or content. Without wondering where to go next, it’s been a smooth ride so far and with quests of the quality from Wrath it hasn’t gotten dull.
After level 10 I never found myself waiting for the next level. 🙂
This is one of the issues I have with the game. When an expansion is announced, the added content to tie over the player is usually made obsolete by the expansion and consists of less then exciting moments to be had. I do think that putting in ICC was a good move and extended the life of WotLK. Then again, shouldnt the Instance containing the Lich King actually have been shipped with the expansion that was titled for him? Wow does make great expansions that can pull passed subscribers into the game. IMO, they really need to work on what keeps people around after those expansions become dull, time wasting, meta grinds that has rewards that will be erased by the new exciting content. Come this expansion, what is the point of any of the previous raid content?
At least this time around they have revamped the Vanilla (and still my favorite) experience. Going to suck having to go to Outlands and WotLK after 60 though. 🙁
I could probably take down the lich king in another month or so but don’t think its worth the grind. My gear will be useless when cata comes out. I am having fun in the beta with a worgen hunter since goblins continue to have issues. (A bug with the vehicle interface stops you dead in your tracks at level 4)
I’m looking forward to starting from level 1 in WoW. I’m tired of the end game tread mill. I want that “new” experience and it seems like Blizzard is the only one who can deliver on it.
Hey Keen, not sure if you play turn based strategy.. someone showed me an awesome free open source game http://www.wesnoth.org/ been playing it for last week non-stop
One of the problems with WoW now is the fact that the A-Team has moved onto to their secret-MMO. People like Jeff Kaplan are no longer overseeing WoW. Granted Rob Pardo is still overseeing most of their games (if you recall Jeff and Rob were the driving force behind WoW initially). WoW was left in the hands of Tom Chilton, whose previous experience involved killing UO. Chilton is also the person responsible for shoving Arena down the throats of WoW subscribers as well, even though less then 3% of their players wanted it, he still continued his death march of devoting time, energy and resources to an aspect of the game that most people felt killed PvP in WoW.
Yeah, i know what you mean. It was really disappointing and with no content it get´s boring pretty fast.
I´m in the Beta now for some time, and while the “new” old world looks nice, it´s just more of the same. Not sure if i will buy the expansion. I also don´t see a point (for me) to lvl another char again, oh well…i have other mmo subs anyway 🙂
I’m really dreading what Cataclysm will do to Azeroth – in the gameplay sense, not a lore sense.
I may be in a minority here, but I thought the questing in Wrath was absolutely horrendous and sterile. It was OK the first time through, with a couple novel gimmicks that were exciting for a time, but after that it was 100 times more soul-crushing than questing used to be from 1-60.
The quest design went from building this sort of big puzzle-world in vanilla, where you were rewarded for knowing the locations of quests and planning out quest circuits, to just being this mindless, hand-holding tour. In Northrend, every bloody sub-area is absolutely identical in terms of quest structure: Enter new quest hub, get 2 quests -> turn them in for follow-ups -> get final “bigger” quest that involves fighting a “boss” -> turn that in for larger reward, get sent along to next quest hub.
It felt completely soulless to me, stripping what little personality was left in the quest system. I hate to think that we’ll finally lose the last link to what vanilla WoW was about (actually going out and playing in the world) when Cataclysm comes along, and all the old-world quests get “upgraded”… The Linkin’s boomerang chain, the quest to get access to the nogginfogger elixer, the even more epic ones at 60 for class mounts, that were phased out before my time.
It’s a sad time for me. Either way, I’ve been done with WoW for some time now, but this is just plain depressing.
As much as there are some promising games on the horizon that might bring back the old idea of an MMO world to a degree – Rifts and GW2, in its own way – I don’t think we’ll ever see anything quite like vanilla WoW again.
My favorite thing to do in the earlydays of wow was to tell newbies in our guild that we had a guild house in Burning Steppes. And as long as they were in the guild the mobs wouldn’t attack them.
Or who could forget when newbies would ask for gold and telling them to target you and type /d for donate?
You should make a Alliance guild on Arygos US. Would be awesome, my warrior can help you guys out.
Hey Keen, just wanted to let you know that I quit WoW. Now that most of my friends that I would level with are gone, It just isn’t fun anymore. I don’t think I would be able to raid (busy schedule) and I probably wouldn’t like it anyway. If a PvP or Sandbox mmo comes out I’ll probably play that with you guys.
-Kastus
P.S. For some reason my computer wouldn’t let me log onto forums.
Like you, Keen, I’ve not played not much WoW lately mainly because I feel like I’m just waiting for Cataclysm to come out and there’s nothing I want to do in WoW in the meantime. It’s like being in limbo 🙂
@Sisyphean – i know what you mean, i had pretty much the same experience in LK. Being in the Cata beta, it was very similar, just with a lot more phasing, which isn´t such a good idea. It made the world feel a lot more empty for me (because people were in various stages of phasing), and with all the standard “grind” quests, the lore becomes uninteresting the 15th time you kill x types of mobs.
Maybe i will still get it, i don´t know yet…but if i buy the expansion, i don´t see myself playing it for long.
You know what guys? Maybe the game is just getting old. Its going to be 6 years old? How many video games have you played for 2+ years, let alone 5+. We all dissect and rip apart the game but I’m not sure there is much they can do at this point. Its the natural course of life: live+breed+die, right down to every single living organism. The game is old.
@Trimethicon: “like” (thumbs up icon here)…
I got to agree on getting bored of wow. Right now I only log on to do ICC hardmodes. I have 6 level 80s now and I’m trying to save Mage and shaman leveling for cataclysm. There’s more gear to earn on some of my 80s but I’m just too burnt out on heroic groups not too mention the snobbery of high gear score players in heroics seems to be at an all time high making gearing of an alt an exercise in dealing with d-bags.
I wish Blizz never would of made the first dungeon random reward frost badges. Now it’s rush rush rush, let’s skip as many bosses as we can, I’m just here for my 2 badges. I haven’t been in a heroic on my main in probably 6 months or more. I get so many badges just from 25man icc that I can buy whatever I need for any spec. If I chose to go to 10man I would have even more so I’m not sure why I see so many 25man geared folks still grinding out those two frosts a day.
Sorry for the short rant but I think it explains how the treadmill has gotten to me so I’m pulling back and taking a break from everything other than raids until Cataclysm.
WoW’s problem is that it is past the expiry date. This is the same thing that happened to EQ, it went stale after 6 years and had lost the soul of the game. Don’t forget, WoW is almost 6 years old now, we’ve been there and done that for pretty much everything. And as above, the A team that was the driving force behind much of the hook of vanilla and crusade are no longer involved with WoW. As a result, the B team process of dumbing down everything to mouth breather level took over.
I don’t really think that Cata is going to solve anything, the beta while interesting gets the same feeling that all the burnt out 80’s have right now – stale gameplay. The difficulty is ramped up a bit but the same style of content design of the B team is still apparent.