Case of the Humdrums

I find myself feeling.. listless.. when it comes to the gaming world, lately.

I have access to WotLK Beta and actually have my own toons there to play with now. As I said last time... the Death Knight area was so creative and fun that I found myself saying "wow!" a lot of the time. Blue mentioned that everything seems to come so easy...

I almost agree, and yet... at the same time it doesn't bother me. We are given the 5-minute cooldown blue Medallion of the Alliance/Horde within our first few quests. We also did, in fact, hit 56 within less than an hour's worth of questing. However, one thing to keep in mind is that Blizzard originally lowered the requirements for leveling from 20-60 by nearly 30%!

And they seem to have done it again slightly, with the advent of Wrath. From 60-70 the experience needed per level will be lessened again, and the experience gained per quest and mob-kill will be increased. This is to make it easier for people who are picking up the game from scratch with Wrath to get to 80 in a world where finding questing partners is next to impossible (re: Azeroth).

But anyway... as I said. Listless. I'm having a hard time drumming up the interest and ability to log into either Live WoW, WotLK Beta, or even Warhammer Beta. I'm not quite sure why. No, I know why.

It's the general antipathy that comes over players when an expansion draws near. We saw it with release of The Burning Crusade a year and a half ago - guilds fell apart, friends server-transferred, and people stopped logging into the game because they felt everything they worked toward on their character would swiftly become useless.

And.. it will.

I think that's my biggest beef with the MMO expansion industry today. The fact that most 'expansions' aren't really expansions at all! It's an entire reset of the game. Every hour we spent pressing keys to down Illidan, and every drop of sweat poured out downing Kil'Jaeden will be absolutely useless in about 2 months.

Well... maybe not entirely useless. Those players who did progress past Black Temple and into Sunwell are likely to see their epics last until the first forays into Naxxramas, much as their tier 3 Naxx gear lasted them to Karazhan in TBC. (Nice kind of symmetry there, don't you think?)

But those players who got through SSC or TK... were making their first tentative steps into Black Temple and Mount Hyjal will likely replace every piece of their hard-won tier 5 set in the first level or two. Or at least they assume they will. And so... people don't want to try anymore.

I can't really blame them. Can you?

Bums me out a bit, though. On the bright side, however...

That comic still makes me giggle every time I see it!