Monday, June 14, 2010

What Matters to me in Cataclysm

So we won't see the Path of the Titan thing in Cataclysm, at least not at launch. And to be honest I'm not raging or shredding any tears over it.

Blizzard failed to explain the idea to me in the first place, and besides I think that the EJ thinkers would have thought out the Best Path for raiders anyway. So much for creating more individuality!

The second piece of major WoW news this weekend was that guilds won't get any talent points to set at their own will. They'll have to profile themselves in other ways, as they always have.

I'm not particularly disappointed about either piece of news and you definitely won't hear any the-sky-is-falling cries from your innkeeper. Those features were more in the category "nice to have" than absolutely necessary, and the lack or delay of them certainly what settles if I'll keep playing WoW in Cataclysm.

3 000 quests
There was also another piece of news that was released, something I suppose they expected the community to get happy about, but which leaves me completely indifferent. I'm thinking about the fact that Blizzard are about to add some 3 000 quests into the game.

I'm just telling you: I haven't asked for 3 000 quests. Being a mainhugger rather than an altoholic, I would probably be just fine with the few hundred that could take Larísa from 80 to 85. Yeah, like everyone else I quest if I get XP or valuable reputation. But when I don't get that, I find it pretty hard to motivate myself to quest a lot and an abundance of quests won't make me resubscribe.

I don't deny that there are many quests and questlines in Wrath were way cooler and more enjoyable than the vanilla quests. Who didn't love the battle for Undercity? Nevertheless - in my world questing is more or less a necessary evil. I don't think I've done even half of the quests that came with Wrath.

But if thousands of quests isn't a selling point to me - what is?

Why I'm still playing
The other day Ixobelle asked me a disturbing question. He is a bit bored with WoW himself and can't see any reason to stick around. So he asked me why I'm still playing.

Now, to be fair I'm not at all playing as much as I used to either. Things are really slow in the game right now and if you don't enjoy questing and other solo playing there frankly aren't many things to do, at least nothing that grabs my interest.

Last week I did some silly achievements, including leveling Larísa's unarmed skill to 400. But then I suddenly woke up from my coma-like state of mind, asking myself my life wasn't more precious to me than I would spend hours and hours on such a boring and pointless grind. I decided it was. No more junk play like that for me. Then it's better to just turn of the computer and get a life.

But yeah Ixobelle, as opposed to you, I'm still playing, still logging in a couple of times a week to spend a couple of hours online.

Take last night for instance, when we used the entire evening wiping on Sindragosa 10 man heroic. We learned to master the new twists pretty well, but didn't get any further than 18 percent. That dance has to be performed with perfection, the error margin was very slim and we weren't quite there yet. Next time. Maybe.

But even if we didn't down her, this was an entirely enjoyable night. And here's the answer to your question Ixo. It's because of nights like our Sindragosa wiping that I still play WoW, in a time when the between-expansion apathy seems to be all-time high.

I'm fine as long as I'm getting challenging raids as a member of a good team with people I know and enjoy playing with. And this spills over to my expectations for Cataclysm.

What I want in Cataclysm
My wish list for the expansion includes two things.

1. I need to have some people to play with. Not just "any" people, but good people, such as the ones in my guild. They're the real epics of this game and they'll lose interest in it and leave, I won't have many incentives to stay around either. I refuse to pug my way through WoW. To me the heart and soul of WoW is to build a great team to progress with. So Blizzard: please make sure to keep the players I care about happy. This includes my guildies as well as my blogging buddies. If everyone else will head for the Grey Havens, I'll go as well.

2. I want some good raiding. The size isn't such a big deal - I like 25 mans best, but I'll be fine to settle with 10 mans if we have to. What matters is that they put in some effort as they make the instances. Think Ulduar as opposed to the lazy ToC design. I also want them to make a good call on the difficulty level. I'd like to see something that will be a challenging but still possible-to-beat content for the top 10 percent of the guilds.

And basically that's it.

Good raid instances and a good guild. That's what I care about in Cataclysm, rather than about guild talents and Path of the Titan.

Am I asking for too much? I hope not. But the future will tell.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's not gamebreaking, but I'm a bit disappointed. Why promise things they don't plan to come through with? The Cataclysm looks less and less as a cataclysm, it's just more of the same.

Unknown said...

The 3,000 quests thing is pretty crazy to me. On my main character where I've made a bit of a half-assed attempt at loremaster/the seeker I think I'm sitting around 2500 (could be more or less, that's ballpark off the top of my head) quests completed and I have northrend, outland, and most of eastern kingdoms done with a lot of work to do in kalimdor.

I've heard the 3,000 quest thing mentioned in blogs and in game but haven't read anything about it officially. Is it 3000 new quests or a total of 3000 when the old world is redone? If it's the former, wow, that's a staggering number.

Gevlon said...

"If everyone else will head for the Grey Havens, I'll go as well." this is the first time in your blog you mention the chance of leaving in anytime soon.

I know why I'm playing: I believe I can find out something really important about the people. For me WoW is just a setting to research people's behavior.

Why are you playing on the first place? What do you want?

krizzlybear said...

Cata is not an endgame expansion. Of the 3,000 some-odd "new" quests, I would bank every last dollar that a good number of them have been added to the 1-60 experience. This probably COULD be the main-hugger's expansion, but they'll have to choose a new main to get the maximum experience.

Redbeard said...

I'm thinking about the fact that Blizzard are about to add some 3 000 quests into the game.

::quest love::

Anyway, they're probably going to take away about a good 2000 of them that don't make sense given the changes due to Cat and the lack of a Lich King. Almost all of Western Plaguelands' quests alone will be probably tossed in the dumpster along with Azshara and Desolace.

Also, they probably count the new Goblin and Worgen quests in with the total. The starting zone and adjacent 11-20 zone quests for Goblins and Worgen probably account for 200 quests by themselves.

Larísa said...

@Anonymous: Yeah, the way that they relese information boggles my mind too sometimes. I think they sometimes are doing it as a way to check out the reactions, but probably not in this case. They just didn't get it straight. Or maybe time ran out to them.

@Adam: I would believe that it's 3 000 including quests that have been removed. Anything else would be very surprising.

@Gevlon: I don't plan on quitting the game yet, no. But it really depends on what will happen to me and to my guild. If everyone I know quits playing I'm not sure I'll feel motivated to start from scratch again. Which I believe I've said before here at the inn.

The people I play with are a huge part of the enjoyment of WoW. And even if some of them have left now, there's still a foundation, it's "in the walls" as we there's a saying for in Sweden at least. But if the walls will fall, what will than remain? I honestly don't know.

Why am I playing, why am I playing? What do I want? Hm. Hard question. I tried to explain it, didn't I? I still enjoy a challenging raid encounter and the adrenaline rushes that comes with it. The sweet first kills following on wipe nights. I'm a bit addicted to that part of the game. But I also enjoy entirely different things, such as the guild anniversary event I wrote about the other week. Or two-manning an instance with my druid. However if it gets too hard to find people who want to do such things, if I end up lonely, leveling my unarmed weapon skill... Then I'm probably out of this in a not too far distant future. WoW isn't just the bosses, the zones and the quests. It's most of all the players.

Maybe it somehow goes back to my childhood as so much else. I never participated in any team sports more than very, very briefly. I wasn't any athlete at all. Now I've got the opportunity to experience what being in a team sport can be like. It's about time.

@Krizzlybear: Yeah. If you're picking a new main you've got a lot of fun stuff to look forward to. Way more than you have if you stick to your current main as I plan to do.

@Redbeard: it will be interesting to see what they will take away and what they'll keep. It seems by the interviews as if they won't take away quests that are considered to be "classic" and "iconic".

lonomonkey said...

For me this has the look of a company in a hurry to deliver content. Quests are safe to add but path of Titans less so. When in a hurry you go with "safe" before "new".

I can't recomment Lotro enough but if you do try it, try to approach it on its own merit. It's not WoW and it's not trying to be WoW and I know a few people who left it because they were looking for a new WoW

techdeft said...

You are fairly...dismissive?...of people who can't find a reason to log on lately. You state that it's easy to log on, you just need good people to play with. What I feel like you SOMETIMES forget, is that you DO have good people to play with. I'd still be playing regularly if I had a nice group too...but I don't.

Larísa said...

@lonomonkey: It's definitely not WoW. It's not as polished at all... but it has some charm in its own. I'll be back probably later this week with a report of my first impressions.

@techdeft: Oh, I'm not as well off as you might think. I have a wonderful guild, but player activity has gone down to close to zero outside of raids. The last week we've reduced the raids to 10 mans, with the result that a lot have to sit out. But when they do, they won't play, they'll just not be online.
And I don't have any people on my friends list outside of the guild either, not that are playing anymore. So... no I'm pretty much alone in WoW atm, apart from if I'm drafted for one of the raids of the week. Which makes me look into LOTRO now. Maybe I can find some friends there? Although what I've seen so far is a completely deserted game. We'll see if it changes when I level up a little.

Tam said...

I'm never leaving for the grey havens. Bizarrely, I'm not really interested in MMOs in general - just WoW, for some reason, captured my imagination and held it. I like the large scale development of WoW - the breadth available at endgame and the sheer vast ambition of it. Ulduar still blows my mind. I feel genuinely priviledged to have been able to explore such a place. Explore it, and kill it dead :)

Bronte said...

I came back to WoW after a six months hiatus, and in a different capacity as a casual player.

Since then I have enjoyed it a whole lot more than I did when I got fed up with it. And the primary reason for that is that the casual scene does not demand more than a half hour of play each day. Sure I play for hours on end if I am enjoying myself in the BGs or if I am clearing ToC25 with a solid team etc.

I am regurgitating, some more thoughts here:
http://arewenewatthis.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/30-minutes-a-day-or-why-i-continue-to-play-wow/

Larisa: casual or hardcore? Pve or PvP? Lore junkie or gameplay addict?

Anonymous said...

I agree wholeheartedly with your reasons for continuing to play and what will be important in the expansion. For me, this game is always about the people; it's when they're not around that I find myself bored with it.

DaNomie said...

You guys need to visit Draenor. Our Server is Crazy, we still get massive Dalran lag b/c so many people are playing. We have a few pugs that are doing icc 10 and 25 hard modes and alot of us are doing things like os3d zergs and maylgos for mounts and the like. Honestly, I think everyone has the pre expansion blues. They say, they are going to rip our world apart. Alot of people are nervous, excited and crazy about it all at the same time. Same thing happened to me PRE Wrath, and then I decided, I am going to stay, I am going to make an effort to make new friends, Random anyone? and I am going to spend as much time outside Azeroth as inside Azeroth. Your time, whatever you do, whatever you make of it is yours. If you are not happy with what you are doing now, take a break or change to something else for a while. Take up a new hobby to fill your time, read the lore books, learn to carve wood, IDK, but what I do know is that if your bored, you wont be happy. So either Work on those Achievements, PVP or only log on to raid and find something you love to do outside of Azeroth as well.

Sthenno said...

I left WoW twice. Once about six months before BC and the other time about six months before Wrath. I didn't specifically plan to leave before expansions, I just found that things were starting to get dull and when I logged in I would wonder why I had logged in and what I was going to do.

Both times I left for about three months, came back to the game fresh and started playing a an alt, then got into preparing for the new expansion on the horizon.

I don't know if that will happen to me this time because heroic Lich King is really, really hard. Once he's dead, though, I expect I'll see very few of my friends online until patch 4.0. Here's hoping for a beta key.