Warning: Dork alert. Be advised.
I’ve been secretly following the development of the new expansion to World of Warcraft. While it’s true that I haven’t really missed the game since I quit several months ago (about 1 week after reaching level 60), I was afraid that the expansion would be neat enough to suck me back in. I’ve always enjoyed the cartoony style of WoW as well as levels 1-20, and thought that maybe the expansion would be more of that, with two new races and all.
But one of the new races is called the Blood Elf. It looks like the regular old Night Elf that has been in the game already. Except its red. Oooh boy. Since the other race hasn’t been released yet, I’m holding on to hope that its the Pandaren.
And then, I read this on the expansion website:
An increase in the level cap to 70
And I totally lost all interest in WoW. Not even drunk panda samarai could get me to go back. I wish game designers would learn to add more to the lower levels, rather than make the highest level harder to get too. I quit one week after my character hit the level cap. There was nothing to do. Why would I have any interest in leveling ten more times to be left with nothing to do?
yup, none of that for me either.
For some, the game ends at 60, for others that’s where it starts – I’m on middle ground. For one, I have several alts that I’m levelling, questing through areas my main wasn’t in and exploring other kinds of gameplay. And then, there’s the endgame content – Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire (Lower and Upper), Onyxia, the various world dragons and bosses, Molten Core, Blackwing’s Lair – I’m currently in the stage where I can just about dare to enter the Molten Core…
Yes, progress at lvl 60 is in items and not in levels, and it gets a whole lot slower. But it’s nothing like “nothing to do” 😉 – actually, I’d have so much to do I can’t do half of it. Gathering specific gear for encounters, doing endgame raids, gathering money and reagents to finance the endgame raids (the repairs there are evil), still questing (for items, and some dungeons require quests to get in too), gathering reputation with NPC factions, perfecting professions, and so on. Not to speak of PvP, which is a time eater of its own right 🙂
But then, it’s not for everyone I guess. I love the endgame 🙂
The large multi-person raids never captured my interest. They took too long, and were far too involved. You said it yourself. Gathering money and reagents, gathering reputation. Kill, loot, kill, loot, kill, loot, rinse, repeat ad nasuem. PvP on the other hand, was a blast, but I found I could not compete without the endgame, raid gear.
Long gone are the days of UO, where you could log on, throw on some affordable GM armor and go to town. I don’t think we’ll see another game where the player’s skill is more important than the character’s items.
I’m about to toss four million credits into Serji’s house and say goodbye again to SWG. Now there was a game which had potential, but was forced into a narrow ubertube of jedihood. Now it’s pretty much just a loot-gathering level-based combat game with no PvP content.
Puzzle Pirates for the win.