Category Archives: World of Warcraft

Is Warcraft Worth It?

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The Grumpy Elf recently wrote a post where he asked the question “Is Warcraft Worth It?”. For him he said it was, as he played far more than 15 hours a month, so the ratio of dollars spent to hours played, was very favourable. He said that his price point, was that if it was $1/hour, or less, then it was worth it.

I commented on the post, and I think that I probably didn’t make much sense. Basically what I was trying to say is that on a pure numbers basis Warcraft might be worth it, but does it feel worth it? With that in mind, I thought it would make a good basis for my post today. Have to write about something after all.

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Mists Post Mortem

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The Grumpy Elf just posted his ‘to do’ list before Warlords is released in November. That made me think, I don’t have a bucket list this time as I’m not playing the game. I unsubbed in March, for the majority of this year I won’t have played Warcraft. However, I did play Mists of Pandaria through from start to finish, I just didn’t stick around for the long content drought.

When Cata was heading into the twilight months I made a number of posts. I looked back at the expansion as a whole, I looked back at what had changed for me in game over that time and I looked at the raid bosses. Now I’m going to write several different posts, instead I’m just going to include all of that in this one. Time to look back at Mists.

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Enough is enough

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In my last post I said that everything I write about Warcraft is negative right now, meaning less said the better. Well I wouldn’t read this then, it’s hardly a ray of sunshine. When the pre-order announcement went live, all the Warcraft people I follow on twitter lit up in their enthusiasm, I just felt even more negative. I said in my last post that I was basically asking myself should I quit, the answer being rather obviously yes. I also said that I wasn’t ready.

I have tried to give myself time. I have tried to ensure that I’m not rushing into any decision that I will come to regret. I have waited and waited in the hope that something would change. Nothing has and I’m sick of waiting.

I should never have started playing other games.

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The Blizzard Blues

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I remember when I first started playing Warcraft. I looked at the subscription options and I wanted to take the 6 months one, or whatever the longest option was, as it was the best deal. My friend told me not to, he said that there may come a day when I want to unsubscribe for a while. If you’ve just paid for the next six months, then you can’t do that. I told my friend that I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to quit, but I took his advice anyway as the difference wasn’t huge.

Well now I can’t just imagine wanting to quit, I’m actively considering it. I won’t because I’m not ready to say goodbye. I like my guild, I like the in game friends I’ve made, I even like raiding just not as often as I currently have to. I’m not ready to quit the game but I’m really wishing that I could vote with my wallet. Complaining about blizz’s decisions and continuing to pay them money, after all gives them no incentive to change.

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Warcraft and Questing

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Another post! Crazy right? It’s even a Warcraft one. Yesterday I had several ideas for posts so I’ll be working on those and posting them.The Grumpy Elf did his usual Monday Random Thoughts post and in it he mentioned the level 90 boost, and what that did to trivialise what they did in Cata to reform the levelling zones, and indeed the whole levelling experience.

I replied and from what I said he got “there is one like you that hates it”, in regards to how I feel about levelling. I replied to that comment as that’s not strictly true, and I explained why. I then thought that my response would make a decent blog entry, so here is my post on Warcraft and questing.

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The Pursuit of Trivia

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I thought one more post before the end of the year would be nice, although perhaps I should do a special “Year’s end – The future” post. I haven’t decided and New Year’s isn’t for three days so I have some time. Anyway, for christmas I got Trivial Pursuit Warcraft style. Which seems a little odd I know as I don’t know anyone in real life who plays the game. This led me to playing against myself on boxing day and I thought that a review would make a nice post.

I also got Trivial Pursuit Star Wars style so I might do a little comparison of the two. Though they are different trivia games as the Star Wars one also utilizes DVD questions, whereas the Warcraft one is just on cards.

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After Warlords: Your Warcraft Expansion

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I liked this community blog topic – Pitch your Warcraft expansion – as it’s something I suppose we all think about. There’s things we like, things we don’t like, things we’d like to see. This is a chance to play dev for an hour or three and outline what we’d do if we were in the hot seat.

The post hasn’t been up that long but there’s already a few comments, just reading through the ones that are already there hammers home why the devs job is so difficult. People don’t just want different things, they want opposite things. This is why in my expansion I would try and emphasize choice. I went on about this a bit in my previous post because I think it’s incredibly important, especially for such a diverse playerbase as Warcraft has.

So after Warlords what’s next? I was stuck on a title, naming is hard and so for a working title I went with The Dark Below. I know it was a hoax which made it slightly amusing. However, I think I’ll call it World of Warcraft: Curse of the South Seas. It’s not great but it’s something.

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5 mans, LFR and Choice

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On WoWInsider they had a topic entitled – The return of hard heroic 5 mans. It referenced a blue post which said that 5 mans would be making a return in Warlords and that they would be harder than the Mists ones had been. I wrote a fairly long comment to the post, so it occurred to me that if I expanded on it a little it would make a good blog entry.

Let’s face it in Mists 5 man dungeons were sidelined. You could level in the normal mode ones, at the start of the expansion the 463 gear wasn’t bad and it filled in some holes. However, with LFR available and offering higher gear if you wanted to be optimal with your playtime, and were focusing on gearing, then 5 mans didn’t have a lot to offer. This only got worse as the expansion wore on and other options became available. True if you want to just play you can go run a 5 man, but if you want to play and achieve something at the same time than 5 mans don’t offer much.

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From Now Until Warlords

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The community blog topic at WoWInsider asked What are you doing from now until warlords? Now I haven’t been inspired by any of the previous blog topics but this one made me think, as actually it’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a while. We don’t even have a date for the Warlords beta so we’re looking at several more months of Mists. How to fill that time?

At the end of every expansion there is always dead time and we’re approaching it now. Siege of Orgrimmar has been out three months. Based on the schedule Mists introduced us too we should have something new soon but there’s no 5.5, nothing until Warlords. It’s hard to put a life expectancy on a patch as people’s mileage will vary according to their goals. My personal experience is not the same as anyone else’s so it’s impossible to say. However, it’s my personal belief that if the beta isn’t announced soon, this month soon, then Warlords is going to come much too late. Beta lasts six months looking at history, so unless they break with tradition we’re looking at almost being in Dragon Soul territory already, only it’s worse as there’s a third lockout in flex every week.

At the end of Cata I wrote a bucket list, a list of things I wanted to do before Mists dropped. This isn’t the Mists version, I’m not too sure I’ll even write a Mists version, as I’ll explain below.

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Warlords of Draenor

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It’s Blizzcon time and they did announce the next expansion, well obviously they were going to. So I’m going to compare what I predicted and what they announced. I wish I could do a table but I don’t know how to do that. The website for Warlords of Draenor is up, as well as the feature trailer that they previewed at the opening ceremony.

I started writing this post right after the opening ceremony but realised that I couldn’t publish while new information was still coming out. I was writing something and then having to delete it as they explained the answer to my question. So I’ll probably be late to the blizzcon post party but hopefully what I write will make sense. Blizzcon isn’t over, they still have that big Q&A later but I reckon all the announcements are over now, so I’m going to post this. It’s already 5000 words, I know hardly anyone reads this blog but that’s still probably my longest post by a huge margin.

There’s some changes coming in Warlords and as usual some people like them, some people don’t. From my point of view there’s good and bad and I can’t wait for beta. I got into Mists beta thanks to the annual pass, and they’ve confirmed they aren’t doing another annual pass. I guess I can see why, I mean I got the annual pass and extra stuff to sub for a year, which I was going to do anyway, so they made a loss in that respect. So I might not be lucky enough to get a beta key whenever it does come out. It looked pretty far into development so I’m going to go out on a limb and say beta will be in out December/January. They need to get started on it really as otherwise the expansion won’t be released, and Siege of Orgrimmar will be out for too long, especially as they’ve said there isn’t going to be a patch 5.5. Anyway I hope it will be soon.

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