Two and a half years ago, or thereabouts, I wrote a post called “Why I unsubbed to Warcraft?” In it I was reasonably certain that I would never play again. Indeed while I thought about the game a few times in the intervening years, I didn’t feel much of a pull to play. However, last month I got nostalgic. I don’t know why I had a sudden surge but I did and I guess it caught me at a weak moment. I decided to resub for a month and see how it went. I didn’t immediately buy the new expansion because I wasn’t putting more money than I had to into the game unless I was enjoying it.
That resolve lasted for about a week *cough* because well power talks. I knew if my main was max level it would make grinding in Warlords a lot easier. I admit it, I’m lazy, and I saw some 110 players one-shotting things in Tanaan and was jealous. Anyway, I just got my notification that the sub has been paid for the next month and it hit me that I’d been playing again for a month.
When I started I wasn’t sure if I was just visiting, or if I would continue to play. Out of interest I went and found my last blog post on the game “Why I unsubbed to Warcraft” posted April 2015 to see what I’d put and that sparked some thoughts, and I figured I’d write a blog post. After all I’m still playing after a month so something must have gone right.
I don’t disagree with myself
Every point I made in that old post was very valid at the time, and might be valid now for all I know. The point is – I no longer care.
In that post my point basically boiled down to the lack of gear progression outside raids. There was some other griping but basically I didn’t have my “carrot on a stick” and so I wasn’t satisfied. I took a long gap, over 6 months at least between Mists and Warlords. I’d cleared Siege (the final raid tier), on normal or heroic or whatever they were calling it then, and I had no interest in attempting to clear it again on heroic/mythic. I was burned out, it took nearly 150 attempts to kill Garrosh. I was done.
When I came back for Warlords I had no intention of raiding again. I just wanted to play solo (like I’m doing now I guess) but despite the break I’d taken I still had a raiders mindset I guess. I was focused on getting more powerful, on what the next piece of gear was. My reasoning was that I wanted to solo old content and obviously gear does help with that. Everything was random in terms of what gear could be obtained, but the progression was very linear. There were no points, dungeons were as worthless as they’d been in Mists.
I know if any Warcraft players read this they will probably laugh themselves stupid. Cataclysm has such a bad rep as an expansion but in terms of playing alts, man that was my favorite expansion. I had such fun especially in the last mammoth patch. I didn’t even notice that it lasted forever.
So yeah my mindset on my main, or on alts, focused around efficiency and gear. I was approaching achievements, and collecting mounts/pets etc. as if they were something to be ticked off a checklist. I know myself well, I do have that tendency to ‘over’ organize what I’m doing and basically suck all the life out of it. Sometimes it’s helpful because it means I know what I’m doing, but this was supposed to be a game and I’d just made it too much like work.
Right so basically my point is I don’t disagree with myself. The points I made about randomness and gear and lack of incremental progression etc. were all valid at the time. Are they valid now? To be honest I don’t know. Which brings me to my next point.
More is better
I took a two and a half year break from the game. In all my bitterness and frustration over how my pally didn’t feel right, over the random gear, over the ‘raid or die’ mentality I thought blizz had (I could go on), I barely touched Warlords. Then there’s Legion now. So there’s a ton of new content.
In my “I’m unsubbing” post I went on about gear, as I felt at the time that was the major problem. Like I said I don’t disagree with myself about how I felt back then, but I think gear was perhaps both masking the real issue and also a symptom of that same issue. Basically I think I wanted more play options, like you can raid, or you can quest, or you can do dungeons, or you can … etc. and I felt resentful that it seemed that blizz was trying to funnel everyone into LFR.
Gear and playstyle used to be very intertwined for me. I wanted more ways to get gear. I missed Cata really where I could run dungeons and gain points and every few play sessions buy a piece of gear. Obviously I know that there are other ways to play Warcraft but that wasn’t rewarding gear, so two and a half years ago I wasn’t interested.
Now? Now it’s a different story. I haven’t thought about gear at all. I did take a brief look at the priority of secondary stats, so I’d have a better idea when comparing quest rewards. However, I’m getting that gear as a bonus, it’s not what I’m aiming for.
I might have Legion but I’m not spending probably even half my time there. I’m back in Draenor chasing various achievements, leveling alts and professions. I’m flying around the world again for achievements, or because I felt like going after a certain mount, pet or toy. The other week I was struggling with writing and booted the game. In one window I wrote my story, in the other I flew around and did some archaeology and pet battles.
The new expansion generated a lot more content but also my mindset in two and a half years has changed. I’m not playing for gear anymore. In fact as I think I’ve already said I’m not even aware what the gearing model is. How is gear obtained? No clue. I’m just playing and I’m playing solo so my lack of gear affects precisely no-one. Well, I have queued for a couple of specific dungeons when quests called for it but I haven’t died yet or even come close. So gear isn’t a problem.
With the mindset shift suddenly content that was already there is worth exploring. In many ways it’s like a new game because I’m playing it in an entirely different way.
What Legion did
I’m saying Legion did it but I suppose in some parts it might have been a Warlords patch. I really don’t know. It happened at some point during my break.
Class halls are definitely a Legion thing and oh merlin – best thing ever! I’m serious. My love of Swtor comes from the class quests. I love the storyline, it makes me want to level everything because it’s new and different every time. Top of my wishlist for Warcraft has always been class quests. Well the class hall storyline is probably as close as we’re ever going to get and I am happy with that. It’s making me want to level all my alts so I can experience it with them.
Non-linear questing – again this is a Legion thing. You can pick the zone and it scales so if I do level alts I’m not going to get sick of running the same zone over and over. I can mix it up, I can do the main storylines or I can do the side-hubs. I can do different zones, in different orders, or intermix dungeons or battlegrounds, class hall missions and world events. I’m in no hurry to get to max level beyond the carrot of the class hall missions, so I can choose to play what I want, when I want and far more importantly – how I want.
Collection achievements – I’ve always been a collector but now the tab is 110x better and there’s a much bigger achievement tab. They’ve basically put a “carrot on a stick” for the entire game. Old content is a new playground and there is so much of it. It would be impossible to do even half of it on a regular basis so there’s no drive to try. It’s something to just think “oh I fancy that today” and so there’s no checklist, just a “have fun and make progress at the same time” kinda deal and that’s awesome.
World/time limited events – I’ve not touched timewalking dungeons yet but they come round for a week every so often. Going on right now is the “Trial of Style” and there’s the Darkmoon Faire every month. These things all offer something but there’s no penalty to not doing them, and they’ll come around again. They also offer deeper things. Like the Darkmoon Faire I did go this month and I managed some achievements, but couldn’t manage some (the races are hard!) and I found that fishing now provides a currency, and there’s toys/pets etc. to buy with it. I’m never going to be “done” so there’s no pressure to rush.
Professions – more achievements, there’s profession quests. I mean some achievements are stupid long, like the coin fishing one, but I think that’s a good thing. It’s not something I’m going to get frustrated on by trying to knock it out fast. It’s something to dip in and out of over a long period of time. It’s the kind of content that endures. I’ve still got the Warlords Nat Pagle stuff to fish for. Recipes are starred now which I don’t understand but it has an attached achievement. They’ve made so many things just deeper.
Just generally more – There’s that Chromie scenario. There’s also something in the Dalaran sewers that I nearly started accidentally with eye currency. I think it’s a pvp thing but I’m not sure. I haven’t even mentioned the World Quests yet, or that I’m scratching my head a little over how to complete Suramar for Loremaster because that zone just doesn’t seem to end. Also just bridging two expansions and many content options means things don’t seem stale. I’m not just looking at the same small part of the game over and over.
Conclusion
I’ve changed but I think the game has as well a little bit. Blizz have added lots more content outside of raids. They had been doing that for a while, with Pet Battles, the Brawler’s Guild, Proving Grounds etc. and now it’s just starting to add up. I feel like they added a lot more content with Legion than they did with Draenor. Like maybe they spent more time on it, or perhaps it’s because they had the opportunity. I mean they developed a lot of the technology behind the class halls with garrisons in Draenor. So they didn’t have to spend the time developing it, which meant that they could create other things.
Anyway, it’s only been a month so it’s only natural probably that things still seem fresh. There’s a lot to do right now because there is a lot to do. The true test will be whether I’m still having fun in six months, or if I’ve quit because I reached a brick wall in activities. I’m darting around doing a tiny bit of lots of things right now. I occasionally focus on a goal, like I wanted Draenor flying and I only needed Tanaan Diplomat for that as I’d apparently done everything else back before I quit two years ago.
Aside from that though I’m not sort of going “you have to do this or that” I’m just thinking to myself “you have some free time now, do you want to watch a movie? or TV? play a game? which one?” etc. If I pick Warcraft then I think about what I feel like doing. Do I want to quest, do I want to go for a specific achievement, am I looking for new collection items, do I want to play an alt? etc. It’s just a lot more relaxed and while still goal-orientated, there’s no pressure in it. Yes I pick things I want to do but I’m not racing to get anything done.
Like I’m toying with maybe playing later, if I get my fic finished as I have to go out tomorrow and I really want to post on Tuesday. I’m feeling like maybe I’ll play my druid in some battlegrounds. I’ve always wanted to get into pvp but two years ago in my “gear is primary” mindset, I never had the time or the inclination. However nothing’s stopping me so why not? I might not play though. My arms hurting and while the PC doesn’t seem to make it better or worse, the constant pain does make me tired. So I might just collapse on the couch tonight and stick a movie on. My time is my own.
*poke, poke, poke* Is this thing on..?
First things first, I’m sorry that we lost contact when you quit WoW, I guess the game was the main thing we had in common though.. =/ I actually only found this blog again as I was cleaning out my stored passwords in firefox and found this log-in so I just had to see if you’re still ranting here (nice to see that you are btw ^^) and see how you’re doing these days =)
Second of all…well I quit WoW as well like a year or so ago (guild drama and raiding went down the drain which made me lose interest) and I kinda regret reading this post since now you’ve reminded me of the fun parts of the game so I’m almost tempted to make a come-back…maybe in next xpac or something.. Come to think of it, that’s what I told Jo about a month before I resubbed last time.. -.-
Anyway, it was nice finding your blog again. Hope you’re doing great (despite the hurting arms) and also I hope we’ll get talking more again! ^^
//Your friendly neighbourhood DK-man
Oh heya 🙂 *waves* long time no speak, it’s great to hear from you! You know I was just thinking about you the other day. I looked up your characters on the armory to see how long it had been since you logged in. I’m sorry we lost touch, I am terrible at keeping in contact with people. I mean to but time disappears on me and then after it’s been a while it just feels awkward you know?
I keep meaning to do another post about Warcraft because I’m still playing. I unsubbed for a couple of months in between the summer and November because I didn’t want any distractions and then I resubbed again. I’m playing strictly solo, aside from occasionally when I feel like it queuing for a heroic dungeon. Achievement hunting, collecting stuff, levelling characters etc. I do what I feel like, I’m not on any kind of schedule, it’s fun 🙂
Strangely I’m loving my rogue, I used to really dislike that class but with the overhaul it’s now my second favourite. I’ve been meaning to do Horde Loremaster for ages to see the other side of the story. Using the level 90 boost from Warlords I got a Tauren Paladin that I was going to use. With the levelling changes in 7.3.5 though I think I’m going to use my new Goblin Rogue instead, or maybe I’ll split it and do some on the Troll Druid as well so I can hit every zone without outlevelling.
I hope you are doing great! I think we’re still friends on Facebook? I’d love to know how you are 🙂 – Sam
Ugh, ye, unfortunately I know that feeling all too well.. -.- For me it even goes as far as being true for “more important” things.. Like just last month I missed a call from my handler at the unemployment office (yep, I’m still there -.-). I noticed just as lunch was ready so I figured I’d eat first, but then I forgot about it until the evening but by that time they were closed for the day. And that was that, pretty much.. I somehow can’t bring myself to just apologize for missing the call, I just have to explain myself as well, and once I do I start rambling, like I’d first have to explain why I missed the call, then why I didn’t call back right away and then that I forgot about it and so on. So I didn’t call back the day after…which means even more things I feel like I have to explain…then came the weekend and all of a sudden even thinking about calling back makes my head hurt..! =S So I ended up ignoring it.. She called again the week after so…problem solved in my world! XD
Ah, ye I remember that NaNoWriMo (did I remember that abbreviation correctly?) was (still is by the looks of it ^^) a big thing for you =) Ye that sounds like the fun part of WoW ^^ I mean I didn’t level a second char for each class (third in some cases) so I could grind lfr more 😉 Though in levelling I did dungeon rush most of the times and it started out with a combo of my love for levelling and wanting to try all specs, but still. I made sure to take my time doing some grinding/hunting for pets/mounts or even just ore/herbs to send to my maxed chars or banker. Achi hunting is mostly fun as well, but that at least to me has nothing to do with my alt-army ^^
Ye I felt pretty much the same about my rogue. Didn’t go as far as starting to love it, but it defo ended up more in the middle, or pretty high as far as dps goes.. I love my tanks and healers far too much to let any dps near the top of my list XD I’m more like this with my rogue: http://www.darklegacycomics.com/594 ^^ Ooo! That reminds me, I forgot to include it in my initial response to the post, but first thing that popped into my mind when you talked about achi-hunting and lack of gear progression outside of raids (which I partially interpreted as gear feels pointless, which I know, not really what you were going for, but…) was this oldie but goldie: http://www.darklegacycomics.com/346 ^^ DarkLegacyComics really is spot-on a lot of the time =)
Oh right, horde loremaster….I think my horde dk is still chilling in his garrison tbh.. XD I think I’ve done the pre 60 parts on other chars, but tbh it doesn’t matter anyway, I did it just bit at a time and spread out far to thin to actually remember anything from it which is the main reason to do loremaster anyway imo so.. *shrugs*
Well, I’m surviving, not doing much living atm. Hoping 2018 will be nicer to me and that I can make myself do at least some of the uncomfortable things I should be doing to make that happen. ^^ We probably are, I don’t really remove friends there, but I’m even less active there now than I was when I was playing WoW.. I used to log in to check the guild’s fb page at least once a month, but I think I logged in like 5 times or so in 2017.. XD Come to think of it I’m not really on any social media.. I have accounts, but since nothing happens here in the middle of nowhere I don’t feel it necessary to post anything.. =P
Oh, I know! Still got you on steam! Technically probably skype as well but I’m never on there either and steam is at least useful for gaming as well as chatting so I’ll put it on autostart so I’ll be on there at least 😉
Oh, and wrong kind of reply ofc.. That’s what I get for thinking this site could read my mind and post things where I want them to be XD
Just noticed you don’t seem to be on steam, guess I could log fb just to chat, at least to look for something we can both be on XD Maybe it’s time to re-install Skype? =O
Awww *hugs* I am just like that using the telephone, I totally feel your pain. Yup you did remember the abbreviation correctly 🙂 Writing is (and hopefully always will be) the most important part of my life (aside from family obviously). Yeah I remember your alt army hehe. In Mists I was in such awe of your patience because I got utterly sick of levelling and in the end I think 3 characters didn’t make it to level 90. I’m in the process of getting each class to level 100 for the class halls/class quests. I have done everything except range I think, so what’s that? 8/12 at 100+. My warlock is the current one (level 97) and it’s painful, it feels like it takes forever to kill things.
Still I’m not minding the levelling, it’s just the class. Haha I remember that comic and it’s especially funny because I am playing the Outlaw spec. I really should try the others but I picked Outlaw to start with when I picked the rogue back up, my jaw then dropped because zomg it was so awesome. I went from level 80-something to 100 in … well I don’t remember I did force myself to wait for the rested XP but I didn’t even want to wait! I just wanted to play it 🙂 I’m doing the rogue legendary quest in Dragon Soul at the moment, it’s fun!
Yeah I know what you mean about forgetting the story. I’m going to be levelling a couple of new Alliance characters eventually as I want a race change. A new Gnome Mage which I’m going to take to 60 and then use the 110 boost for the insta-profession levelling once the next expansion is released. Also the allied races need to be levelled 20-110 for the achievement so I’m going to do a Void Elf Priest and as my paladin is a main, I can’t not do a Lightforged Paladin. I have 3 Level 80+ paladins in addition to Tai anyway, it’s the best class 🙂 So anyway my point is I’ll get a refresher on the Alliance story, and I’ll see the Horde one for the first time. With account-wide achievements, it’s not about the achi because I already have Loremaster on Tai. It’s just about the story.
I hope 2018 is your year! I’m rooting for you! Yeah I barely use facebook myself, only when I absolutely have to, same with Skype. The only social media I check everyday is tumblr. I am still on Steam I just don’t have it on auto-start so I’m not signed in. I very rarely play my Steam games to be honest especially with Marvel Heroes having been closed down.
Nice to hear you’re still at it =) Though I must say I was pleasantly surprised by your drawings! When I skimmed through the front page I assumed you’d be at my crappy level but as I’m skimmed or read some more of your posts and seen the pics you posted (especially liked the one where you compared beginning, along the way and current, I think that’s the one that ended in a big muscly orc-like dude) my first thought was that maybe you could include images in your books too ^^ Not like a pic for every page or a comic book (unless that’s where you want to go with it for some short stories or something), but I’ve read some fantasy books which has included pictures of things like newly introduced races/bad guys, beautiful scenery and epic battles, as a way of I guess guide the reader to how the author sees the scene playing out (though admittedly, one could argue that’s an excuse for not giving detailed enough descriptions, but I’ve seen it work and that orc looked damn good to me ^^) (also, world’s longest sentence much? I really should try to not do this as much as I do.. -.-). Anyway, that was just a thought, focus on writing while drawing for fun sounds like a good way of doing both.
Ye, iirc locks are quite weapon dependent.. so once you’re 110 with a good amount of, well, whatever that artifact xp is called, you’ll blast through things and at least by the time I left, do really well in both raids and m+ dungeons (not that you care this time around, but still ^^ It means you’ll solo like a god, iirc I rolled with the infernal talent and had that things aoe taunt on all the time and was pretty much unkillable while soloing world quests).
Hehe, ye, I remember outlaw as “the fun spec” assassin as the raid spec/st nuke and what was the third even called again? XD Rhetorical question btw, just making my point that I kinda went either of the others depending if I needed the nuke or just wanted to have fun goofing around ^^
Ah, ye I haven’t really paid attention to all of that yet, but I did see a post on the forums that kinda made me feel like coming back isn’t for me after all. I mean sure I could (or should) play through with the massive alt-army I already have, but I do want to play the new classes as well and if they make those require legion-rep to even start (some of which I didn’t even recognize so it’s probably from after I quit or only slightly before so I probably don’t have them maxed already) well, I’m not feeling farming old stuff in order to play new stuff.. =S I mean sure I do old content all the time I play, but that’s mostly a couple of xpacs back. Partly ofc because I want to be able to solo it but partly because it’s been a while since I farmed it the first time so I’m no longer sick of doing it =P I mean dreanor flying was something I didn’t get until a fair bit into legion because I got tired of the grind at the end of WoD and I really didn’t feel like doing it when there was a lot of new stuff to play with in legion. Iirc I mostly did it because we started doing mythic runs for the raid mounts with the guild and I got tired of being one of the lazy gits always needing a summon XD
Aye, I’ve got loremaster already as well, that’s what I meant by horde loremaster feeling pointless since I don’t remember any of it so there’s really no point anymore.. Although there’s always some merit to learn the most recent things at least, and as I said I think I’m chilling in my garrison, not having even completed the WoD loremaster for horde so I could do that + legion to catch up on the newer horde lore..
Hehe, same here.. I was on Skype all the time when I had 2-3 ppl I talked to regularly but now I mostly talk to one person about once a month and text some other friends whenever something semi-interesting happens which is rarely anyway.. Tumblr is something I’ve never had since I don’t need to.. I don’t know anyone with an active tumblr and even if I did, most of them you can view anyway.. Although now that I think about it same’s true about instagram and twitter, and I did create accounts there in order to view a friend’s accounts that’s set to private so I guess they’re basically the same.. I don’t even know if either of those can be used to chat without making it posts that your followers can read ^^ Oh well.. I do still have Discord installed, but I think we started using that after you left so unless you also have it that’s a dud as well… Though there are servers there for basically everything and most don’t mind lurkers, for instance I just googled ‘discord writer community’ and got a bunch of hits so that could be a place to share stories, get and give feedback and so on, network with other writers in a safe space (if the channels are moderated at least, as always there’s plenty of ass-hats and trolls in any community unless there’s rules and those are being enforced =P).
Also ye, fairly sad to see that go.. I didn’t play a huge amount but it was always nice to go back to for what it was.. Since then I’ve reinstalled Diablo II instead XD I really would’ve liked it if they released the MH game as a single player game though… I mean it’d be bigger since it’d had to have all the events stored locally, but it’d be nice to have it and be able to play everything but raids (unless those where scaled down but I doubt they’d make that transition great so just skip that) and let us grind through everything with a set event schedule, ofc nothing new or tied to movies anymore, but put the old stuff in the store for event currency or even leaving the shop open but connect it directly to Marvel would be fine by me and have the cycle of 4-5 events and then things like summer/winter/anniversery/halloween mashed in there for variety.. Then they could either have the game as something you can buy or maybe even free if you’ve spent X amount of cash on the game already or set up a kickstarter for making the transformation… I mean it’d require some more development, sure, but I don’t think it’d require that much.. most of the development felt like it was with the new events/features (wouldn’t happen), new heroes/costumes/pets (also wouldn’t happen) and bugs (would happen but hopefully only during the brief time they mashed everything together in one downloadable since a lot of the bugs/resurfacing of old bugs was due to them jumping from one version to another for every event and now they’d have to have it all in one place instead of in different builds and have the switch happen based on what time it was), and with a kickstarter they could say “we’ve estimated the cost to be X, if we reach the goal it’l be released as freeware/to the ones that donated” and iirc kickstarter refunds you if a project doesn’t happen so if they try and there’s no interest no one would really lose out.. Oh well, guess I needed to rant about that “a bit” XD
Anyway, where did we land on chat-platform? Both of us seems “meh” about fb, and tbh since I’ve got a lot of “friends” there I prefer to only be online if I’m actually available, otherwise my overthinking side start to think that they feel I ignore them personally if I’m online but never talk to them XD I’m a bit more open to skype and discord and I don’t really remember what other platforms I’ve used over the years.. We could go retro and use irc or icq! XD Otherwise I might have a WhatsApp account, I defo have a Viber account and a Signal account, but accounts are usually quick and easy to create these days.. In the mean time maybe we should stick to e-mail unless you want to keep cluttering your comments up with talk about what chat program we should use.. XD
Wow that’s a long comment! 🙂 Eeeeek no, no, that orc isn’t mine. I’m really sorry I thought I’d made that clear in the post. Those three images together of the female pirate, the female head and the orc were examples of art styles from a YouTube artist called Jazza. I hope to be able to produce something like the orc one day! For now the space digital painting is the best I’ve done.
Anyway, being totally honest it’s something of a dream of mine to be good enough one day to produce an online comic. I’m a long way off from that though. Still it’s all good practice 🙂 Heh you know it’s weird there was a debate about “farming old stuff to unlock new stuff” on BlizzardWatch and … I should probably make a post about it. Yeah Discord was after my time, it was all Vent, Mumble or TeamSpeak back then. I agree with you about Marvel Heroes being a lost opportunity but I think Disney yanked the licence so there wasn’t much they could do.
Heh I think you are the first person to comment in over a year so I don’t mind about the back and forth in the comments but sure email is good too 🙂 I’ve not heard of Viber or Signal. I have Skype and I can get Discord. Now I’m out more Skype would probably be better because I have that on my phone, so as long as I’m somewhere with wi-fi (and not in class) I can chat. So how about that?