It’s been more than a couple months since we started talking about World of Warcraft’s Patch 4.1 around here, and all the chatter is starting to make me antsy.
I think I’m not the only one. Perhaps its just a spring lull, but I’ve been seeing more and more of my friends, including myself to a certain point, falling out of love with WoW. Yet with something big on the horizon, I can’t help but be hopeful that some revamped old content mixed with a splash of new will reintroduce a bit of that magic that always draws me back in to Azeroth.
Sure, there’s no Firelands raid (and no Ragnaros to beat up on), but the rise of the Zandalar tribe through revamped Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub are a huge draw to me. What can I say, I’m a sucker for trolls. Plus the Call to Arms feature should be interesting to see in action, as should a whole new caveat of balance, PvP, class and profession changes to consider. It’s a major content patch — and we’ve had many of these before — but somehow this one, for me, just seems to carry more weight.
I suppose in-game boredom can be an obstacle for all of us at one point or another, especially the hardcore players who zoom through the new content too fast for developers to keep up. The wait for them stretches even longer.
Heck, for a lot of us there’s still new content to get through from other release of Cataclysm nearly 5 months ago. Personally, I still have questing to finish, revamps of old zones to see and professions to cap off. But I’ve also been less hardcore of a player as of late. I’m hoping that 4.1 brings something that inspires me to turn that around. We’ll see — and hopefully soon. Not sure how much longer I can take the suspense!
Penitence young padiwon. One who seeks a means to an end, will only find the journey to be the purpose.
When the patch comes, as will the flood of player’s, once again. eventually, that will die down, and patch 4.2 will be around the corner, people will slow, it will release, and they shall return once more.
Just as the pack returns to the watering hole in the dry season, the cycle continues.
April 20th, 2011 at 2:27 pmQuote
gah! philosophy!
But kudo’s on the Star Wars referance.
April 20th, 2011 at 2:30 pmQuote
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5mK7dzyUkM
April 20th, 2011 at 2:32 pmQuote
Epic.lol
April 20th, 2011 at 3:24 pmQuote
Thought of the same thing Pixie.
April 20th, 2011 at 5:50 pmQuote
I think a lot of people get ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’ mixed up personally and it throws the whole shebang into whack.
If someone has pushed themselves to endgame and blazed through it within a few weeks of release, it’s no one’s fault but their own when they get burnt out. BUT even for us who don’t blaze through, Cataclysm has made it exceedingly difficult with only five levels to cap.
Yeah, there’s a lot of old content (and I’ve experienced it both at level on alts and burned through it on my main) BUT the argument I have is while Blizzard did SUCH an outstanding job with the questlines and revamping them, they took away the sense of danger since there’s really no way conceiveable to fail.
I understand the philosophy Blizzard has put forth but did we REALLY despise leveling so badly that it required them to make things so streamlined, so funneled and so easy that we didn’t learn anything along the way?
April 21st, 2011 at 7:41 amQuote
**edit**
Of course, now there’s Hydraxian Waterlord rep to farm! Did MC yesterday and got the left bindings so now I need the right ones.
Did someone say….?
April 21st, 2011 at 7:44 amQuote
THUNDERFURY, BLESSED BLADE OF THE WINDSEEKER!
>.>
…
sorry, couldn’t resist.
I got one of the bindings while farmin my t1 set on my paladin main and now the 2nd doesn’t want to drop. :/
April 21st, 2011 at 2:55 pmQuote
The more I think about it, the more I really do disagree with Blizzard’s philosophy towards new raid content at this point. They say they want to push it back because players aren’t done with the current stuff yet (read: we need more time!), but that doesn’t really matter a whole lot.
Those that have finished the content will be bored waiting for me, a majority of those that haven’t will likely grow bored after weeks of *trying* to clear it, and players that want to see non-current content will eventually find a way.
I think this leaves a relatively small number of players who would honestly be disgruntled with the introduction of NEW raid content. At worst you’re bored, at best you have more to look forward to. Where’s the harm? That they seem to be tracking BEHIND Wrath at this point, when the idea was initially to do the opposite seems rather telling.
April 21st, 2011 at 8:36 pmQuote
In a way, I agree Amatera. BUT remember the flack Blizzard caught for releasing ToC before Ulduar was even close to being irrelevant? I sometimes think Blizzard does an exemplary job walking the fine line of ‘not enough, quick enough’ and ‘too much, too quickly”. And then they went the route of giving us a gated ICC which really didn’t go over too well as I recall. If we, as players, could actually DECIDE on what we want, then maybe perhaps, Blizzard could accomodate us.
As it is, we’re inconsistent with our expectations of Blizzard and that falls solely on the playerbase.
April 21st, 2011 at 10:03 pmQuote
They didn’t “Push it back”, that’s a common misconception. There not Done with it.
There just release new content so we have something to Do waiting for the old content. Like when TOC cam out, but with less Suck. :P
April 21st, 2011 at 11:43 pmQuote
They initially said that was a big part of their reasoning when they first mentioned 4.1 wouldn’t contain raid content. Then they kind of redoubled and clarified “oh yeah, and we’re not done with it yet.”
Despite the massive staff and accumulated experience over the years, it seems like content is moving at a more glacial pace than ever.
And I think ToC got more flak for being a terrible, time-wasting dungeon than anything else. It was a stop-gap between real major content. Blizzard knew that and the players knew that.
April 22nd, 2011 at 5:42 amQuote
Which is Exactly why they Don’t want to do that again. You can’t see content through such tunnel vision and say “Oh yeah, they should totally release a new raid every month”.
This stuff takes more time than most people can imagine. It’s not just copy/paste.
April 22nd, 2011 at 2:39 pmQuote
For the last year, Blizzard let there player waiting for new content. In my opinion the let there players wait too long. I’m a casual player and there has been a lack of new content for me. If the waiting was the only disappointment, then it’s easy to ignore it. But because the also promise something to put in a patch and they just leave it out of the patch makes it even worse. This is only one front Blizzard is losing players. Thanks too the fact they have made the game on almost every aspect easier (because players are crying about it’s to hard/difficult). In my opinion the only part that is interesting is where you are playing with other players and that’s PvP.
April 22nd, 2011 at 4:23 pmI know some people disagree with me, but if you take WoW as a MMO standard you ain’t seen nothing yet. I totally agree with lorehound on this one.
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