Tenfold Hate

I’ve known guildies who have conjured up RL romances through their virtual avatars in WoW. To the best of my knowledge, it’s never worked out. Personally, I’d imagine it’s extremely difficult (if not impossible) to forge a legitimate adult romantic relationship within the context of an escapist video game where we’re all running around as dwarves and trolls killing warp stalkers. But to each their own. Now some wing nut decided to offer sex to anyone who’d buy her an epic flyer. We’ve heard of RMT sweatshops. What next? RMT brothels?

A good week-and-a-half into Warcraft’s patch 2.4 and despite the introduction of Magister’s Terrace I’ve gotta say–there’s not a hell of a lot keeping my attention. I guess WoW players jump through hoops with such willingness that Blizzard is just gonna continue serving us the leftover rep grinds of yesteryear (Timbermaw rep or Gates of AQ, anyone?) until WoTLK is released. Is anyone else getting bad flashbacks of the Silithus/Naxx grind they plugged in to satiate the masses pre-BC?

Part of Blizzard’s brilliance is their ability to recycle the same 5-10 basic tasks and make them seem fresh and new, whether you are level grinding, engaging in PvP, or dungeon crawling. When they succeed, they do so on a grand scale. But when they fail, they FAIL BIG. For every great thing about Warcraft, there’s a dark side–whether we’re talking about their chronically broken PvP system; the formulaic, dry, clunkiness of their raid scenarios; or the anti-fun rep grinds they seem hell bent on injecting into every aspect of the game.

But this has been a problem with WoW since day one–the huge discrepancy between the player experience from character creation to level cap and the drastically different, often regimented, playing field faced once max level is reached. There is little if any congruity between the two. I guess 2.4 just stirred up those old feelings of discontent in me.

It is stories–fantasy–after all, that got us here, and to sub out creativity and interactive storytelling with gear grinds, heroic key grinds, badge grinds, and any other sort of grind feels hollow as a suit of armor collecting dust in a museum, the hero who once animated its actions long dead.

Over the weekend, my level 60 undead lock on Sen’jin finally completed his epic mount quest–after doing all the required steps leading up to the Dire Maul run well over a year ago. The quest itself was not terribly difficult (our group consisted of two locks, a pally, a rogue, and a level 70 priest) but it did take a decent amount of time.

I had the fortune of finding a very good pick-up group. My horde toon pretty much solos. Lacking the extensive network of guildies I have on Eldre’Thalas, I’d pretty much dismissed the possibility of finding a competent group willing to run an instance that no one runs anymore.

I like how WoW post-BC still requires locks to go to Dire Maul and shammies and pallies to hit up Scholo for their epic mount quests. It gives new players the opportunity to experience some of that oft-neglected pre-BC content that is glossed over in their frantic grind to get to Outlands. With Blizzard’s ability to keep players hooked on repeatable content, I’m shocked that they haven’t done something with the pre-BC instances to keep them more lively.

There are simply beautiful instances (Zul’Gurub immediately comes to mind) that have turned into ghost towns simply because Blizzard has given new players zero motivation to make the trek into them.

I’d love to see Blizzard give players more motivation to revisit many of these wonderfully rendered yet ignored “classic” instances, whether by nerfing them to 5- or 10-man groups or creating heroic versions of the instances a la Outlands. The only problem I see with this is Blizzard’s love of adding grind where it’s not necessary.

I don’t want to haul ass to any instance, old OR new, to faction grind again and again–but maybe the occasional seasonal event–like the Headless Horseman in Scarlet Monastary–would be a good way to make sure some of these great instances can be more than yesterday’s news. I mean, think of the minute percentage of players who actually got to experience BWL or Naxx or AQ40 the first time around?

Take these places and put them in the hands of the casual players who may never have had an opportunity to see them the first go around. The hardcore will always have their flavor-of-the-day conquests and fresh raid content to gnaw on that Blizzard throws their way. It’s clear that a lot of work went into each of these dungeons. Yesterday’s hard work and artistry should not be ignored just because there’s a new kid on the block.