Sunday 25 January 2009

Lich King Frozen

Today i froze my WoW account. Which after playing steadily since its European release means i find myself surprised to be doing so.

This made me think about what fundamentally has changed about wow which would make me want to stop playing.
As far as i can tell its all about the story.
Two types of storytelling happen in WoW the story the game tells you, and the story you create for yourself.
From 70-80 WoW excelled at telling you a story, the us of phasing really made the quests stick with you, what Syp says here i think amounts to pretty much exactly what phasing brings to the table a constant visual reminder of the quest progress .
Sadly all good things must end and after you hit 80 they pretty much do. To give them credit Blizzard tried hard producing some of the best storylines in the game in the final zone (icecrown), the problem is that these last 2-3 evenings in total at best and then the grind begins in earnest and the game stops telling you stories.

This is where in WoW the players own experiences used to take over, Raiding used to be about creating your own mythology, your own heros and villians. I can talk for hours to guildys about our raids in WoW and tbc but when i comes to Wotlk conversation dries up.

Its not that the dungeons are badly designed and i think for a 'entry level' raid they are very well tuned.
the problem is we are stuck at reception and not allowed into the rest of the building. Easy difficulty is fine if once you got past that there something else to do, but in wow atm the only thing to do is farm more gear, or try for achievements.

It was the challenge of defeating bosses which gave meaning to the my pre wotlk play in wow. We wern't the elite and we certainly didn't put in as many hours as many guilds did but that made us all the prouder when we got somewhere.
Making WoW casual friendly is fine imo, but what should go are gear check fights like Brutallus.

If Uldar had been in game when wrath launched i doubt id still be writing this.

Im sure i will go back to wow at some point(which is why the accounts frozen not canceled) but not until the endgame offers a real challenge again.