So lets talk about how things are running right now in the World of our Warcraft.
The first issue to address that everyone that I read has discussed is the speed of the content that Blizzard is putting out. Last round, at about 6 or 7 months into the expansion we were biting into patch 4.1. We are now almost to the point of guessing when patch 5.3 is going to drop. This means we are halfway through the second raid tier of this expansion, and in the previous expansion at this point we still hadn't gotten to the second raid tier by any means.
The bonus to this means that by the time that the dailies you are on working on have grown stale, you have a new quest hub about to open up giving you new content. Since account wide achievements are in place now, you don't have to get the rep for the new areas on your alts, unless they are tied to a raid or new gear. This really helps with the boredom that can pile up doing the same dailies for 6 months on end with no change.
Hard core raiders also have less time between content to keep them busy as well. By the time they have finished the current content, to and through heroic, there is a good chance that the new content will be close to opening up for them, alleviating the need to farm content they have beaten for months on end.
If you are a pet collector/battler there is also a good chance that with each patch you have more to add to your collection. I don't think I've seen a patch yet this expansion that hasn't introduced some new pets and achievement for you to benefit from.
And I am sure there are a lot of other benefits I can not think of at this time.
Now here is where I don't like this new speed of content.
I am an altoholic at heart. Lag is my main character for all intents and purposes, but just in case we needed to switch things up I have always had alts that were geared enough to step into the raid and help out if needed. So far this expansion I have one other alt who is really raid ready. There is so much time involved in getting geared and ready this time around that alts are much harder to level and keep current. At the end of the expansion in cataclysm I had 8 character who were ready to go if needed. Now keep in mind that was at the end of the expansion, so I had about a two year period to get them leveled and in place. Right now I have five characters at 90, but six are sitting there for the most part because I can't spend any real time on them without neglecting my main, whom I need to keep geared and current for raiding purposes. One of the nice things about a longer time between patches, is you get to the point where your main character can't get any more gear from anything but raiding, and the time you would use on your main would then go to getting alts ready to go. Now about the time I'm done with LFR and dailies, the new content is dropping and I have to go focus on it rather then working on another character.
With raiding, understanding I am a very casual raider, this means that if you are not pushing content you get left behind. Now there is nothing wrong with not being on the current content, and with LFR it is easier to get geared to and beyond the older content from this expansion which helps work through it quicker. That being said it means that if my team isn't downing content, we are getting further behind every patch. I think this build frustration with guilds who are slower to progress as the gap gets wider and wider every patch if their teams aren't keeping up, of have issues where they have to reform and figure out what they are doing. Imagine six months from now, when the next raid is out, starting fresh with a raid team where you have to get half the team geared. Not a pretty picture.
And that leads to the next problem, gear. Now, LFR has created a unique issue. We now have 3 ilevels of gear that comes out with each raid. LFR level, normal, and heroic. (Be glad that 25 man no longer has a gear difference, or this would be even more insane.) That means the different between gear is very pronounced. Mogu'shan vaults normal has an ilevel of 489. Heart of fear, and Terrace of Endless Spring have an ilevel of 496. This means that the newest raid, throne of thunder, to accommodate the new LFR starts at ilevel 522. That is a large jump from 496 when you add in stats etc... This means when the next raid is launched, (Theoretically The Siege of Ogrimmar) normal gear score will be about 548ish, that could be off though with thunderforged items in the new raid added to the mix.
Another side to the content coming in so fast and furious is the added chance of player burn out. There is a good argument that players get bored and stop subscribing when they have long periods in game with no new content to tackle. By the same token, I think people need some downtime between content to keep from feeling like they have to keep running without pause. It is exhausting to feel obligated to keep doing dailies, dungeons, and LFRs along with raids to keep up if you don't have periods of time where you can just relax and not worry about pushing you valor cap in game. It kills my change to just hang out and be social when I feel that every moment I am logged in I should be doing something that is productive in some way. I bet if blizzard was to take a poll... player exhaustion would be at an all time high at this point.
Now obviously it is easier to focus on the negative over the positive. It does seem to get more of a response when you make that your main focus. For now however, despite the negatives listed above I still enjoy playing Wow, and will probably continue to do so in the near future. There is a lot to this game that is amazingly fun. I love the lore, the players (mostly), and the feel of the world that Blizzard has created. So while someday I will log off for the last time, today is not that day.
Lag
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