First, about Vanilla WoW love. I don’t think the changes later on in the game have much to do with how you feel. When WoW was first out, for you it was “a world”. A place to explore, full of mysteries and unknowns. And most people were in the same boat. This is the same for every MMO. But as time grew, you have seen everything already. The immersion, the “worldness” of the game fades and you are left with a game to play, instead of a world to experience and explore. With all the websites and info and tutorials out there, the entire experience was demystified. That’s why I think you feel the way you do, for WoW and other MMOs.

From my fresh eyes, this is actually a good point for me to jump into WoW. I follwed the game since it was announced but didn’t play it. By the time it released I just didn’t want to get into an MMO anymore. I have a UO and EQ background so I know a thing or 2 about grinds and I was sick of it; didn’t really feel like paying a monthly fee to grind for months. So I waited.

Waiting was worse, since the more you wait, to more you are behind. When everythings been done, everythings been demystified and listed on websites, when half a server consists of near max and max level characters… theres even less incentive for a newcomer to join the game (at least for me). It’ll be a long grind to catch up. I notice that by this point, I’m already thinking about the endgame. Even without playing the game, the fact that the world is full of max level ppl who have raided the top dungeons many times, is in itself a factor that pushed the game towards “endgame focused”. The context of WoW changed because of its maturity. And even an outsider like me felt it.

But now, the level grind is fast, and from some people’s comments even fun. That, for a newbie like me, is a great time to join. I get to play through everything, with no aritificial downtime, and get to the endgame content in reasonable time. The last time I was this tempted to play was back when I was waiting for Blizzard to release new info on the game.

But then, now theres also Aion and a lot of Free games to choose from…

Run 5 mans while leveling? Why bother. Questing is easier, faster, and more simple. Don’t even need to run 5 mans or heroics to gear to run Naxx. Get crafted and you are good to go.

I guess my rant is about the wasted development time that was involved to design and build the 5 mans. But then again I’m starting to fall in love with the idea of 5 man instances and 10-12 (maybe 15) being the max number in any raid period. It just seems adding in the extra 10 to a guild is when you start getting the “Ugh who is this why are they here?” feeling.

I’ve ran both 40 and 25 raids (currently 25mans in Ulduar) and it seems more like a job of managingee a small company than playing a game now. But I love doing 10 mans they are much more fun to me atleast.

Is end game to important? To some yes. We had 4-5 leave because we weren’t progressing fast enough in Ulduar. We had only been in there a week well 2 days 2 for Ulduar and 2 for Naxx out of 4 raid days. We lost the first week of Ulduar to the various issues with the patch week. And we killed two bosses in those two days.

I guess they got the Naxx raiding is easy mode thing. But look at the WOW boards themselves they are ripe with “Your guild sucks you havn’t done XYZ yet” an “You don’t have this achievement lolz u suxor”

So yeah there is too much importantance on end game

Of course Vanilla had some major problems. 40 men was too tough to get going all the time, there were no tokens, so if your particular piece didn’t drop, tough luck. I went for weeks at a time without a single drop from MC, and it stunk. Thank god they added badges and the token system.

I’m not saying that it was the be all end all, but it was certainly different. Things seem perhaps a little TOO easy now. Maybe.

Vanilla WoW started out with very few initial raids, but as time went on it kept adding new ones. MC wasn’t even available right away, people raided LBRS/UBRS…then MC, Onyxia, BWL, ZG, AQ40, and then the first Naxx. (Not positive that the order is all right, I can’t remember where ZG fell, for instance.)

Over time, the dungeons got added, too, for those starting out. Things got easier, people started to twink back then even, people power levelled.

Guilds like my old one struggled with every step, never passing AQ. They seem to be able to do Uludar now, but I don’t think it’s because of a sudden influx of talent.

I’m not really saying much, but don’t over idealize old Vanilla WoW… It had a lot of the faults you’re laying at the feet of BC and WotLK. Those expansions are just distillations of where WoW was going anyhow.

Shopshopshop’s last blog post..3.1.3, or How Will I Tank With 20% Less Bonus Armour?

There is one very good change in WoTLK though. TBC badge gear was truly messed-up, since you could farm Underbog and Kara until you eventually picked-up gear that was way above your level of progress. I’m glad they fixed that. Still, gear is very easy to obtain.

Its way too easy to get really good epic gear, many items acquirable without ever having set foot in an instance. Ever. In fact, the next toon I level up (if I ever do another), I will intentionally *not* enter a single instance. I will get my entire kit from quests and the auction house, until the day I hit 80, at which point I will immediately begin doing heroics and PuGing raids. The problem to me is, I *know* that is a very cheap and easy recipe for success, and I will be successful.

As much of a pain as the Karazhan and lvl 60 Naxx attunements were, they were hardly so difficult as to not be doable. The attunement for Karazhan was the only reason many people ever saw the inside of Durnholde and Black Morass, not to mention Arcatraz. How about that there isn’t even a process for attumnement to heroics? That Frozen Orbs started out as BoE? That most “5 man” quests are easily soloable?

WotLK is the expansion devoted to instant gratification, and I think the game suffers for it. While attunements and finding 5 people to do a quest with was challenging sometimes, it expanded the social horizons of individual players a little, and it forced you to do something in the game that hasn’t been necessary since Wrath was released: think, plan, and prepare.

Trying to finish Loremaster on an alt has taken me back to Outland, and the old attunement quest chains leading up to BT etc. Doing this content over, it really struck me the difference with the WOTLK endgame lacking attunements (except Maly). And, I think Wrath suffers by comparison.

I think the changes in the expansion that have given people access to BOE epics rather than the tortured BOPs from TBC is good. Having the whole raiding cycle available to 10-man groups is also good – so many guilds crashed and burned on the transition from Kara 10-man to Gruul’s etc 25-man.

But having a quest-based attunement for a player adds a lot to gameplay, without being a huge hurdle getting into the end-game content. It lets people experience more lore, it gives them a sense of achievement. If you’re pugging a raid, but everyone there had to get attuned, you’ve got a guarantee of a minimum level of competence/seriousness, unlike the current state of Naxx/OS/Vault PUGs on many servers.

And finally, it slows down the whole raiding cycle just a tad = less raider burnout. Didn’t anybody get bored with running Naxx over and over waiting for Ulduar to come out? Or rehashing Sarth over and over, just with one more drake up this time? Blizz has bet a lot on hard-modes to keep us interested in repeating the same raids, but I don’t think it replaces different content.

So, yeah, they were a pain in the butt, but I miss attunements.