Today marks our first day of liberation in 2 months. Our game cards have expired, and this means we are free from the love/hate relationship that is World of Warcraft. In our last 60 days of play... we started up Lich King, each of us got 2 characters to 80, and we saw all the content available at the time. The Lich King expansion is actually pretty good, yet it seems that every expansion we fall more and more out of love with the game. Why is that?
It almost seems like there was a changeover in development from vanilla WoW to expansions. Not only that, there was a substantial loss in value. Vanilla WoW shipped for $50, included a month of play time ($15), and was a fresh, broad, and vast experience. Many of the horde and alliance areas were separate from each other and there were many different areas you could play at any given level (1-60).
Zoom over to the Burning Crusade expansions and you find that you are out $40 - but for what? Well you can now level to 70 (10 more levels). You get no game time as part of this deal. You get a handful of zones that you are walked over to from one to the other. And more and more you see that despite the new and interesting things brought about in the expansion, you start to realize that a) a lot of this is the same, and b) these people are slowly running out of fresh ideas.
With the Lich King, it's nearly the same. Out $40. No extra game time. 10 more levels. Handful of new areas. And 98% of everything is the same with a new name and skin (if you are lucky). One of the coolest things they did was add the hero "Death Knight" class. The class actually isn't that interesting (pretty much borrowing from various other classes in gameplay) but the quests you get to play as the Death Knight were really cool. What's really sad about this though is that seeing how fun and interesting quests can be makes you realize how retarded most of the other quests are. And even sadder is that once you complete those DK only quests (about 2 levels worth) you are back to the same shitty quests just like before. "Collect 10 of X for no reason. Kill 15 of Y for no reason."
Here are some examples of how the expansions in general fucked up WoW for good.
First, lore. One of the coolest things about WoW was that it had a believable medieval setting. There were tons of interesting stories, rules, and constraints that made sense. For example, Paladins were only part of the Alliance and Shaman were only part of the Horde. This not only made the factions unique, but it bonded well with lore. Then they said "oh, everybody gets Pallies and Shammies in BC". Then they said, "Oh and you know that whole believable medieval environment that made this whole thing work? Well, we're taking that into outer space just for shits and giggles." "Oh, and all that conflict and anger towards the other faction? Well, we're going to all share the same home city so we can all sing happy songs and ride fairy rainbows together."
Speaking of how faction conflict was ruined... back in vanilla, even if you were on a PVE server there was plenty of interesting action going on. Tarren Mill and SouthShore anyone? But then they decided, "Hey, we should make rewards for PVP even though people want to PVP just for fun." So instead of PVPing for fun, now people PVP as part of yet another grind. And now there are no more crazy epic outdoor battles.
One thing they did do to kind of help this was to add a reward for killing the opposing faction's key leaders. This does make things interesting from time to time, but because there is a reward people no longer care after the first kill. That and it takes a lot of the random boldness away from the idea of taking out a faction leader. "Oh, they're just getting their mounts."
Homogenization of classes. Back in vanilla, each class brought something unique and interesting to the group. Each class also has 3 different talent specs that allow for further customization and uniqueness. Just as an example, a shadow-spec priest is a caster dps. In vanilla WoW he had the unique ability to return a portion of his DPS back to the group as health. In BC, they also added the ability to return a portion of DPS back as mana. In Lich king at least 4 classes have the same mana return mechanic and a truckload have the health return mechanic. The problem is, they keep adding new talents but they don't have any new ideas. Things that made your class feel interesting and unique aren't so much anymore.
Anyway, it's the cumulation of these things that irritate me and keep bringing me back to the same conclusion - I'm wasting too much time doing the same shit and watching everything that made the game cool in the beginning dwindle away.
This game costs $180 a year plus software. Which is BS by the way. That $15 was supposed to cover development and maintenance. You get small patches, but pay $40 for big ones? Load. Of. Crap. But people will pay for it as long as there is a level cap raise. And they'll pay for server transfers. And name changes. And whatever other garbage they can charge you for.
It could be that now that I have a son, I really don't have the free time to dedicate to stuff like this. But I do feel that this game has been steadily moving away from being fun and that my time and money are much better spent elsewhere.
~Mark
