I expected to hear more about Wrath of the Lich King. Maybe I am reading an odd assortment of blogs lately, but it seemed like a huge weekend of “First level 80s! Congrats! Losers! Meta-whining! Northrend and Death Knight first impressions,” followed by very light WoW blogging. Hypotheses:
- I am reading an odd assortment of blogs lately.
- CoW is still going strong, so I am hearing mostly Heavy Metal stuff. Alternately, some CoW bloggers are ending after the first paid month, so I am seeing that instead.
- Everyone posted everything during beta. Nothing left to say during live (also why the last raid was done in less than 3 days).
- Everyone is really enjoying it and playing.
- Everyone is killing boars in the Outlands, and so bored with nothing new to say.
- Everyone is already finished with the grind/bored and not playing.
- There are bears. Bears ate people.
: Zubon
Yes I know: many people, many explanations, not “everyone.” Assume the qualifiers.
I’m guessing that besides the joy that is the starting area of the Death Knights, it’s just more of the same. What else can you really get excited about?
Well, I was kind of hoping for some MMO advancement… like legendary weapons?
“see neon, kill x number of rats, insert witty immersion breaking pop culture reference, hit cap, ezmode raid to further progress power rangers armor suit”
Only so many times you can write about that :)
I wouldn’t call it more of the same. I was worried it would be, but Blizzard really stepped up to the plate in terms of interesting quests. I thought the DK starting area would be the last I saw of cool quests to do in WotLK, but it turns out I’m seeing interesting quests at every turn. Just last night I had a quest to jump on a giant’s back and run around controlling him to smash hoards of undead and even pick up enemies and throw them like grenades. Sure, there’s a good amount of dud quests, but the pacing between dud and fun is acceptable in my eyes.
The instances also feel much more epic. They are much more streamlined too, it seems. I haven’t found an instances (i.e. Shattered Halls from BC) where it feels like you’re pulling trash forever.
I’m not 100% up to date on this information, but crafting seems to have been made more important as blue PvP gear is crafted, not honor grinded.
Some things like rep grind have also been made ezmode (who’d have guessed) with the inclusion of tabards you can buy at friendly which increase your rep gain while wearing them for each faction.
I also took part in a Wintergrasp siege last night (they appear to happen every 3 hours). It was sorta fun, though I think it’s going to lack the tactical possibilities of WAR just because it’s more focused on Alliance vs Horde rather than allowing for individual guilds to dominate on their own. I say this because the amount of vehicles each side gets is limited, meaning you’ll have scrubs taking up vehicle slots. This all seems to be focused on ONE area, so it’ll just be one giant battle every few hours. It felt more like a BG than the open world keep sieges that WAR offers. At least it’s looking like people will participate in it, unlike Blizzard’s other failed attempts at world PvP.
But yes, at it’s heart, I’d say it’s still pretty much WoW, just even more polished and fun.