Terms such as pre-expansion depression are surfacing, people are losing their motivation to raid, guilds are losing members, etc etc etc.
It was SO much worse last time. Like WAY worse. Hell, I quit the game in disgust last time this sort of thing happened, and I had very good reasons to do so.
So, here is my list of things that are better this time around.
Raid size is staying the same!
Well thank your divine being of choice for that! 15 core raiders got bumped from every guild a few months before the last expansion, once the word got out that naxx was to be the last 40 man. Suddenly everyone was either guaranteed on the team, or guaranteed off the team, or the very unlucky minority of people who just didn't know if they would have a raid spot or not after the expansion.
We are all used to sharding epics by now!
"Oh noes all my epix are about to become DE fodder" Yes. This is true, no doubt about it. All your gear = about to become rubbish. Yes I know you spent months and months aquiring it, and thousands of gold enchanting and gemming it to within an inch of its' life.Still, how many years have you had your gear for? Oh less that one? Stop whining. Even though vanilla WoW was around only a few months longer that TBC, in Vanilla WoW epics were A LOT harder to come by.
No PvP epics except for the ultra-committed, and even then only after the first year and a bit. No badge loot. No epics in any kind of 5 man ever except for the ultra-rare and generally not that great world epics. Also no 10 mans dropping epics, let alone veritable purple rivers.... (ie Kara)
No, back in the olden days epics were next to impossible to aquire outside of 40 man raids. Tell me that sharding your epic wand from heroic UB is as heart breaking as sharding an Azuresong Mageblade from MC, and I will call you a liar. So suck it up. These epics you are about to shard came easy, and no doubt their replacements will come easier still.
I can't be bothered raiding anymore because the loot has a best-before date!
Well your attitude sucks. If you are raiding for the loots, there really is no reason to keep raiding. Quit your guild now, or just go AFK until WotLK. Don't worry, you might still have a raid spot when you come back at the end of the year.... (although not in my guild)
Now I'll never get a chance to raid MH / BT / SWP (or whatever) !
Yeah well so what? You aren't missing out on Naxx. How do you think raiders felt when they found out that Naxx was going out of style, before almost anyone had had a chance to get in there?
Naxx was possibly the greatest instance in the game, and also probably the one visited by the least number of people. This was due to its difficulty and also the timing of it's release - shortly before TBC. Suddenly nobody cared about raiding anymore so getting 40 people attuned and geared appropriately to have a decent crack at Naxx wasn't something the vast majority of guilds were capable of at the time, or have been since for that matter.
OMG new class must roll now, no time for raiding - busy levelling Death Knight!
Well you can start that death knight at level 55 can't you. Unlike your blood elf pally or draenei shaman, which of course you started from level 1 when TBC hit. 55 free levels FTW.
Which is also great if you really need to pick up some tradeskills but like me can't be bothered grinding an alt up to an appropriate level. Take one level 55 death knight. Spend a few days levelling, take your two brand new tradeskills to maximum level.
Easy.
Did I miss anything?
6 comments:
Well said.. many good reasons to calm down about the upcoming expansion and bag clearing.
Note: Comment codeword = botadps... is that like LF1M, dps Heroic Bot?
I wasn't around when it happened last time, but I can vividly imagine it was much worse. For me the gameplay right now is business as usual.
What worries me a little bit about the expansion is that many raiders have much more time to put into their gameplay than I do. The reason I've reached a decent gear level is that I've kept to one char instead of caring about an army of alts.
When the expansion comes and people start focusing on their main, speed levelling them to 80, I'm afraid I'll be left quite a bit behind and it will take me long time to get back to the thing I love most about the game - raiding.
I know, some players enjoy killing pigs in different shapes and I do to some extent, but it really can't compare to the adrenaline rushes you get in a raid. but that's me, I'm sort of addicted).
That perspective makes me a bit worried. Still I know there'll be loads of new five man instances as well, I guess they'll be fun and give me some comfort and challanges while I slowly make my way back to the raiding ranks.
You missed the mount cost thing; when they lowered that rather significantly and then tuned Outland so that you walked around falling into buckets of gold...
I feel your concerns Larisa. I got lucky with BC, 4 of my friends and I had re-rolled on our current server a couple of months before BC, and they had pegged their leveling at my speed. When BC came out we were only about 5 levels of entering Outlands, so we finished up in the oldworld then leveled together though the BC content.
This time around, I will most likely be absent for the first 2 months of WoLK, so my (now6-7) friends will most likely be level 80 by the time I join, and little inclined to revisit the 70-80 grind to help me out... and of course it will probably take me a couple of months of Friday nights just to catch up.
From this perspective I am not looking forward to it, but I figure I will just relax, and take it as it comes.
I share your concern about getting to the new level cap. I recall back when TBC came out it was obviously the guys who were at college or unemployed who hit 70 first, and in our guild they just happened to be the tanks and healers. So they were doing the level 70 5 mans when everyone else was still doing Nagrand. Then we were looking for tanks and healers in the 5 mans while they were doing Black Morass and forming a Kara group. They understandably got so tired of doing BM over and over that eventually unless they were getting ready for Kara they were always on their dps alts, and you felt guilty for asking them to log their tank or healer. It ended up creating a large us and them factor between the guys who hit 70 first and were starting Kara and the others who were slower and struggling to even find a group for the instances they needed to get Kara-ready.
Of course, remove the attunement requirements for the your first raid instance and that problem goes away. There are encouraging signs that Blizzard has learned this lesson.
Grinding 75k honor and arena points again on both PvP toons before the expansion will be the death of me.
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