(WoW) State of the Game
... for me. Well, I do get my money's worth as far as play time. About two months in, however, I'm starting to flirt with burnout.
Progress so far: My main character is max level, and capped blacksmithing and mining. I've gone through all the notable reputation paths with her. Her gear is raidworthy via valor points in tank spec and LFR drops in DPS spec. I have a stack of motes of harmony on hand for whatever. I have not done much with alts at this point, though I have capped out alchemy, enchanting, and inscrption with tailoring not too far behind. I don't have the Pandaria/rep-based patterns for thos professions, but most of those are only directly useful to the alts I'm not playing that much. I've seen all of the heroics a couple times, though only about half the scenarios, and have seen through the first three LFR pieces, at least.
In progress: I'm making slow headway through the cooking ways. There are a couple Tillers yet who aren't "best friends" and I'm working on Tushui Pandaren rep (for completion sake more than anything. Gear is solid, though there's still room for improvement, hence I'm going through the effort of capping valor point weekly, and that's where the game is getting to feeling grindy.
I really like the variety of daily quests, and I love that they give VP rewards. It's also nice that each set has some variety. Even so, doing the same thing over and over gets old even in the best of circumstances, and I've reached about the point where they feel more "chore" than "fun." They have the plus of being soloable, so I can do them on the side while MUCKing or something, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it. So why bother?
Well... I was asked recently what motivates me in WoW. And coincidentally, it's something I'd actually been thinking about shortly prior. I am somewhat driven in WoW to keep in practice and gear myself up "as best I reasonably can," and that's largely because I feel like a linchpin in our guild. There are certainly other people who can tank or DPS, but I've been involved long enough that I feel obligated (self-imposed, I've not been guilt-tripped into it) to be available if/when the guild is ready to raid. That means 1) showing up Saturday evening unless something else comes up, 2) having some idea what I'm doing, and 3) having the best gear I can get for myself. Right now, the best way to get better gear without raid drops is valor points. And that means running LFR or heroics or scenarios or doing dailies. So, not capping VP for a week feels like a missed opportunity, like I'm letting others and myself down.
Now that said, I'm reaching a point where I'm asking myself "Why?" a lot. I'm above the level of expected gear to start in Mogu'shan Vaults, as are 5-6 others. So... do I need to push so hard to be as good as I can when we're not actually doing anything? Especially when we've thus far only been able to get together about one heroic group with one or two people left over. We did get into MSV once, but with folks undergeared and underprepared we weren't going to make any headway.
For comparison: Let's see... Cataclysm came out Dec. 7th, 2010. Discounting Baradin Hold, it looks like we got our first raid kills about Feb. 26th, 2011 - right around ten weeks. Mists came out Sept. 25th, 2012. As of tomorrow, we're at nine weeks. Of course, our roster has changed a little, and people who are steadily around are a little older and more tied up with life outside the game, it feels like. Times change, so we can't expect exactly the same performance as last time.
It's a little frustrating to want to move forward, but have the people you "need" to do so with being less motivated. It can breed resentment on both sides: "You're holding us back!" versus "You're pushing me too much!" It'd be nice if everyone were on the same page, but humans are fickle that way. Finding a middle ground with a small pool of players is tough. So... I haven't definitively been able to say "it's not worth my time," but there's constant doubt if I should be doing something else when I'm working to cap VP...
Then there's patch 5.1, coming soon (tm). It's... actually sort of fascinating because it's a serious departure from WoW content patch habits. There's no dungeons and no raid (thus no new tier of gear). So what is it? Phased changes to one zone and an accompanying reputation with new dailies for each faction. There's also the Brawler's Guild (which I'm not terribly interested in) and a few new scenarios. I'm curious how much new art there is - with no new tier of equipment and no new major zones, there may not be much. Or there might be new equipment models and mob models in the scenarios and on the map, I'm not sure.
Either way, that's a pretty light delivery for a WoW content patch. Even the no-raid patch 4.1 had a couple new/redone dungeons and a bunch of art assets to go with. The trade-off? Blazing speed.With a release candidate on the PTR, some estimates of a go-live date as as early as tomorrow. If not then, probably the next week or two.It's been announced as releasing tomorrow. 9 weeks from release to first content patch is pretty fast for an MMO and unheard of for WoW. Personally... I think I do indeed prefer more frequent content patches, even if it means they don't always introduce something I'm into. It helps keep a game feeling fresher rather than everyone waiting on new things to do for the better part of a year at a stretch. I'll be curious to see if it's an exception or a new rule.
Progress so far: My main character is max level, and capped blacksmithing and mining. I've gone through all the notable reputation paths with her. Her gear is raidworthy via valor points in tank spec and LFR drops in DPS spec. I have a stack of motes of harmony on hand for whatever. I have not done much with alts at this point, though I have capped out alchemy, enchanting, and inscrption with tailoring not too far behind. I don't have the Pandaria/rep-based patterns for thos professions, but most of those are only directly useful to the alts I'm not playing that much. I've seen all of the heroics a couple times, though only about half the scenarios, and have seen through the first three LFR pieces, at least.
In progress: I'm making slow headway through the cooking ways. There are a couple Tillers yet who aren't "best friends" and I'm working on Tushui Pandaren rep (for completion sake more than anything. Gear is solid, though there's still room for improvement, hence I'm going through the effort of capping valor point weekly, and that's where the game is getting to feeling grindy.
I really like the variety of daily quests, and I love that they give VP rewards. It's also nice that each set has some variety. Even so, doing the same thing over and over gets old even in the best of circumstances, and I've reached about the point where they feel more "chore" than "fun." They have the plus of being soloable, so I can do them on the side while MUCKing or something, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it. So why bother?
Well... I was asked recently what motivates me in WoW. And coincidentally, it's something I'd actually been thinking about shortly prior. I am somewhat driven in WoW to keep in practice and gear myself up "as best I reasonably can," and that's largely because I feel like a linchpin in our guild. There are certainly other people who can tank or DPS, but I've been involved long enough that I feel obligated (self-imposed, I've not been guilt-tripped into it) to be available if/when the guild is ready to raid. That means 1) showing up Saturday evening unless something else comes up, 2) having some idea what I'm doing, and 3) having the best gear I can get for myself. Right now, the best way to get better gear without raid drops is valor points. And that means running LFR or heroics or scenarios or doing dailies. So, not capping VP for a week feels like a missed opportunity, like I'm letting others and myself down.
Now that said, I'm reaching a point where I'm asking myself "Why?" a lot. I'm above the level of expected gear to start in Mogu'shan Vaults, as are 5-6 others. So... do I need to push so hard to be as good as I can when we're not actually doing anything? Especially when we've thus far only been able to get together about one heroic group with one or two people left over. We did get into MSV once, but with folks undergeared and underprepared we weren't going to make any headway.
For comparison: Let's see... Cataclysm came out Dec. 7th, 2010. Discounting Baradin Hold, it looks like we got our first raid kills about Feb. 26th, 2011 - right around ten weeks. Mists came out Sept. 25th, 2012. As of tomorrow, we're at nine weeks. Of course, our roster has changed a little, and people who are steadily around are a little older and more tied up with life outside the game, it feels like. Times change, so we can't expect exactly the same performance as last time.
It's a little frustrating to want to move forward, but have the people you "need" to do so with being less motivated. It can breed resentment on both sides: "You're holding us back!" versus "You're pushing me too much!" It'd be nice if everyone were on the same page, but humans are fickle that way. Finding a middle ground with a small pool of players is tough. So... I haven't definitively been able to say "it's not worth my time," but there's constant doubt if I should be doing something else when I'm working to cap VP...
Then there's patch 5.1, coming soon (tm). It's... actually sort of fascinating because it's a serious departure from WoW content patch habits. There's no dungeons and no raid (thus no new tier of gear). So what is it? Phased changes to one zone and an accompanying reputation with new dailies for each faction. There's also the Brawler's Guild (which I'm not terribly interested in) and a few new scenarios. I'm curious how much new art there is - with no new tier of equipment and no new major zones, there may not be much. Or there might be new equipment models and mob models in the scenarios and on the map, I'm not sure.
Either way, that's a pretty light delivery for a WoW content patch. Even the no-raid patch 4.1 had a couple new/redone dungeons and a bunch of art assets to go with. The trade-off? Blazing speed.
It's a little frustrating to want to move forward, but have the people you "need" to do so with being less motivated. Yep. Know that one.
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