Oh Lord, please don't say it....*another* expansion....
Again, old news, but hey, takes time to work up a good rant these days, even for me.
Blizzard has struck again, announcing the not-so-distant release of "Wrath of the Money-whores"...gah, sorry, wrong title. I mean, "Wrath of the Lich King". I'm sitting here feeling like a long-standing player of City of Heroes. 15 "expansions", same boring grind. I find myself less and less enthralled by the day with the overall experience of WoW. Back in the day, when discovery meant something, you did feel like you were a part of a grand adventure. Now, everything is down to a preset formula of some kind.
Allow me to elaborate:
To level to (insert-level-cap-here) efficiently, you need:
A) A friend, or guildmate, who is already (insert-level-cap-here) to run you through VC, Stocks, SM, and ZF, at the very least, or suffer a few-whole-levels of EXP you must solo-grind, probably without any questing involved.
B) A previous lvl70 char of your own, to farm cash for your Mount/Epic Mount/Flying Mount/Epic Flying Mount
(Unless you take Herbing/Mining on *every* "alt" char you create, which is *boring*)
To continue to progress once you hit (insert-level-cap-here), you must
A) Join a Raiding guild capable and willing to do:
1) Heroic Instances
2) PvP "Premades"
3) Karazan+
- - - - - - - -
Ok, lets stop and clarify a few things before we go off-track:
A) Guilds, with any serious raiding intentions, don't recruit "n0Obs" in "greens", thus you need Blues or better.
B) But you can't *get any* Blues or Purples to properly participate in Instances/Raiding, without Guild-assistance.
So to sum up this quandary: The whole idea of "the game starts at 60/70/80/90" ...is a farce! You can go for the standard GM70 PvP Set, including the Veterans Gear, which is Blue/Purple, and will allow you to compete in end-game instances/raiding. Trick is, expect to spend over a month on that since the alliance win less than 25% of the time. And, as stated in a previous rant, you are *forced* to create/join an "Arena Team" to even *be allowed* a chance at Arena Gear. :Queue eternal hatred of elitist-bullshit:
Ok, so now you have the full GM70/Veterans set? Sweet! Prepare to wear your teeth around your neck until you do one of two things:
A) Join an Arena Team and spend 4 months collecting your chosen Tier
B) Do Heroics/Karazan+ to obtain Raiding gear. (The new 5-10 mans are hella-hard, so they are "raids" to me)
*cough*
Ok, slightly redundant arguments, but still, theres logic in me describing this madness. This -really is- what you do at end-game. You join huge, impersonal guilds, filled with 12yr olds and egotistical loot-mongering bastards, totally willing to screw everyone else to get what they want. You spend insane amounts of time where you are basically forced to click the same 6 buttons for about 3 straight hours, hoping you don't have to pee, and praying for a single drop amongst the plethora of -crap- that you don't need or can't use. Then, pray someMORE that you win the roll, or have the...:audible groan:...."DKP" to "buy" the item from your guildmates.
:Rant concluded:
-End of Line-
....and again, this whole soapbox-fest is a waste of time. 9 million people love the way WoW is and are more than willing to put up with this blatant time-wasting bullshit. MMORPG's are no place for a loner like me. I'm perfectly content with playing solo, or with a friend or two. But with WoW it's just cold-hard numbers. 5 uber-geared people for Heroics. 10 uber-geared people for Karazan. 25 demi-gods for Grull's Lair and God knows where else. Game or not, if getting just 4-24 other people to sit down, shut up, and do their jobs is this hard, it's a wonder mankind has been able to maintain any form of government for the last few thousand years....
An "Old School" Gamer,
DKnight2066