Or: Wait, Is This A Post-By-Request Blog Now?
Cait asked me to bring back the blog. Since I am fascinated by the concept of someone enjoying my writing to the extent that they’d actually ask me for more, I’m willing to give this another try.
Let me start by attempting to explain why I’ve ignored this blog for the past several months. Quite simply, I’m getting kind of bored with WoW after four years of playing. I also haven’t felt any real motivation to raid regularly at 80. You see, I am generally only interested in running something so see new content, which means I get bored with doing the same fights over an over again. With the limited number of raids available right now, and the lower difficulty of encounters compared to previous raids, I feel like I’ve already see everything there is to see in terms of endgame, despite the fact that I’ve only been to a handful of raids.
In addition, there isn’t a lot of “replay value” in the current raids. Malygos, Sarth, and Archavon are all “zone in, kill boss, get loots, go home” style fights, which are awesome in that they don’t take over your entire night, but also aren’t particularly engrossing for me as a player (although Maly is my favorite fight in Wrath.) Nax is the big “flagship” raid right now, and it was designed almost three years ago. After clearing my way through two expansions’ worth of new instances, along with Kara and ZA, I can’t help but feel like Nax is lacking in a lot of detail and fun.
Plus, am I the only player left scratching his head in puzzlement over the total and complete lack of quests involving raids? One of the coolest things about Working your way through Kara in BC was advancing the quest line there. Heck, even ZA had a pretty good quest chain there. And yet you walk into Nax-or any raid instance, for that matter-with absolutely no motivation other than getting loot.
At least Nax and Malygos at least get some buildup from quests outside their instances, though. The first time I attended an Obsidian Sanctum raid, I asked why we were killing Sarth in guild chat, and got a bunch of answers along the lines of, “Because he has loot, but I have no idea what the lore motivation is.”
And all this stands in contrast to the rest of pve content in Wrath. I’ve gone through some very engrossing quest lines while leveling (*cough*Wrathgate*cough*), and as a general rule non-raid instances have been incredibly fun to run (to the extent that I have on multiple occasions passed on raid slots in the hopes of running a heroic to two instead.) So I’m left wondering what happened when I hit 80?
Hopefully that shed some light on why I’ve haven’t written anything lately, even it was a big more negative than I wanted. I will try to write more regularly in the future, although considering my past record here, I will make no promises.
p.s. If I do end up not updating for sevaral months again, feel free to hassle me in a comment here, or email me, or check my twitter to make sure I haven’t dropped off the face of the internet.
February 26, 2009 at 6:57 am |
Aye I too am annoyed by the lack of quests in raid instances. I want a *reason* to go into that raid, to kill the boss, beyond “phat lewts”.
Quite why the Horde don’t see Naxxramas as a threat I don’t know, why not a simple quest to get in there and take down Kel because he’s a bad man, in our war against the Lich King?
I think Malygos has some quest associated with him as a drop from the dragon at the end of Naxx, so maybe thats good enough.
OS, yes, no one I ask can tell me what the point of going in there is, beyond that in the Netherwing dailies there is mention of some badness happening with their eggs and the black dragon flight. But again no quest as such to go sort it out.
February 26, 2009 at 9:04 am |
Hey I’m glad to see you updated us with a bit more than just an “I R Burnt Out” line. It’s a shame that there aren’t more quests involved in the Wrath raids. I didn’t even know since I currently don’t even raid VoA. Normally after a lagergrasp there will be a PUG for it, but by that time I’m usually not in the mood. Being stopped in lag for 5 minutes to find out I died ages ago, isn’t exactly thrilling me right now. I really wish they’d fix it. My judgements should be instant, not 5 minute casts.
Anyhoo, have you thought about checking the lore on each guy you kill and briefly explaining it on vent or where ever? I think some people might be interested. “Hey guys, let’s get revenge for so and so, this jerkbag did such and such to him.” Might make it more fun – even if only for one more time.
Unfortunately it seems that the raid scene is where your fun resides and that requires more on the end of Blizzard than any of our suggestions.
If you’d like to know what other readers do instead of raiding, perhaps that in itself could be a post…or perhaps “What the hardcore raider does after Naxx”. ^_^
February 26, 2009 at 9:08 am |
I actually went looking for Sarth lore…and found none. What a letdown. I didn’t understand why it was so important; heck, I forgot about the netherwing egg business as well. I do miss the quests. I actually thought I was doing raids without picking up the quests and was confused to find there were none.
February 26, 2009 at 9:09 am |
Er, the above poster was actually me. >.>;;
February 26, 2009 at 9:54 am |
Doing the same raids/heroics over and over again does get boring, which is why I have taken the time to finally level my mage. Although, I am still trying to build a decent set of resto gear for my druid.
February 26, 2009 at 10:05 am |
Wrath has been a bit of a letdown for me as well. It seems really easy to become bored with the game at this point. There are some very, very good questlines but overall, it’s relatively boring.