World of Warcraft: being halfway up the stairs
Some things came into focus for me while browsing wow.com today, and in particular looking at an article about changes to the heroic instances in 3.3.2, forthcoming sometime soon. They're simplifying encounters. For instance, the priestess in Old Kingdom who calls acolytes for sacrifice will only do it once, and the mana entity in Nexus will only spawn void rifts once. And so forth and so on.
The problem for me is that there's no real level of challenge that is both interesting and accessible to me.
Below me (with my shaman, at least), there are the heroics. The thought of running enough to keep getting the emblems of frost needed for more tier 10 is, um, not appealing. And there are raids that I'm way, way overgeared for.
"Beside" me there are more raids, some of which I'm overgeared and some of which are really more tactically involved than I'm good at. There's stuff I want to see, but I'm figuring at this point that it's going into the hopper for some future zone after Icecrown Citadel stops being current, since it's absorbing attention. (And why not? Folks who can do the new stuff should.) There are hard modes for a lot of raid encounters, and they hold little appeal to me after my experiences with them so far. There's the Argent Tournament, but I hate jousting, partly because I'm simply bad at it. I've put in more than enough hours to feel comfortable asserting this: I genuinely wasn't any better after a hundred hours of trying. And like that.
And above me there are raid challenges that I don't see myself being able to rise to meet anytime soon. It's true that I have more energy now than I did a few weeks ago. But the problems facing me weren't ones of energy, but of coordination and timing, and those things really aren't any better.
The thought of leveling up an alt isn't especially appealing right now because it would hit the same gaps. There are loremaster and other achievements, but right at the moment I'm liking the thrill of discovery with CoH/CoV storylines. (I am well aware that they'll become old hat in due season.) The remaining quests offer a kind of bad mixture of tedium and difficulty-stuff I can do but is grindy and slow, or stuff I just walk through.
I don't feel done with WoW, at all. But I have a better sense of what needs to improve in me and/or in my interactions with the game to let me keep having fresh fun with it. That's satisfying-not a solution but a sense of what a solution will feel like.
The problem for me is that there's no real level of challenge that is both interesting and accessible to me.
Below me (with my shaman, at least), there are the heroics. The thought of running enough to keep getting the emblems of frost needed for more tier 10 is, um, not appealing. And there are raids that I'm way, way overgeared for.
"Beside" me there are more raids, some of which I'm overgeared and some of which are really more tactically involved than I'm good at. There's stuff I want to see, but I'm figuring at this point that it's going into the hopper for some future zone after Icecrown Citadel stops being current, since it's absorbing attention. (And why not? Folks who can do the new stuff should.) There are hard modes for a lot of raid encounters, and they hold little appeal to me after my experiences with them so far. There's the Argent Tournament, but I hate jousting, partly because I'm simply bad at it. I've put in more than enough hours to feel comfortable asserting this: I genuinely wasn't any better after a hundred hours of trying. And like that.
And above me there are raid challenges that I don't see myself being able to rise to meet anytime soon. It's true that I have more energy now than I did a few weeks ago. But the problems facing me weren't ones of energy, but of coordination and timing, and those things really aren't any better.
The thought of leveling up an alt isn't especially appealing right now because it would hit the same gaps. There are loremaster and other achievements, but right at the moment I'm liking the thrill of discovery with CoH/CoV storylines. (I am well aware that they'll become old hat in due season.) The remaining quests offer a kind of bad mixture of tedium and difficulty-stuff I can do but is grindy and slow, or stuff I just walk through.
I don't feel done with WoW, at all. But I have a better sense of what needs to improve in me and/or in my interactions with the game to let me keep having fresh fun with it. That's satisfying-not a solution but a sense of what a solution will feel like.