Where the FUCK are the wolf flanks!?
I was thinking today as I spent a little time getting my Warrior alt (that’s the 5th now) to Lv 25. A lot has changed. I haven’t really taken the time to go back through the old photo album so to speak, and revisit all the places I first leveled. I started playing this game as Alliance and so when I trek through zones like Westfall, Redridge, and Duskwood; they evoke some real emotion from me. I started to think back today on how much really has changed versus how much we feel has changed since the game was released.
- I remember when people actually ran Gnomeregan to quest and level, and that there’s actually something like 5 different quests part of chains involving the dungeon for Alliance.
- I remember when my Warrior’s Execute ability could only be used when the target was at 20% health and you had to be behind the target and it would dump all your rage in that one attack.
- I remember when Fury was a 2H weapon tree that revolved basically around chain killing targets, and hitting Lv60 in the Burning Steppes off black dragon whelps as a fury warrior.
With all the advancements and changes it’s still a very similar experience. There’s still the agonizingly horrible drop rates for animal parts in Westfall, Redridge, and even Duskwood. Apparently, Alliance really like to eat boar parts and through the years all the pigs on Azeroth have stopped being born with livers. Or snouts. Or ribs. Spiders don’t have ichor, or legs it seems. You can ride a 60% speed mount at Lv 20 now which is pretty fucking obscene. Going through zones on foot for so many years and then suddenly being given a mount is a little hard to adjust to at first. I’ve found myself running so much when I could easily mount up on my Blizzard Bear instead.
So if you’re doing what I’m doing, answer me why. Why’re you going through the game again from Lv 1? What changes from the first time you leveled have completely surprised you? What are you enjoying, what do you miss, what do you remember?
You know, whenever I start an alt, I rarely if ever do the same race lol. I MIGHT do it but if I start it, I never keep motivated to go very high. My first was a human mage and when I go back to the human starting area, it’s kind of boring to me. Maybe Cataclysm will change that for me?
I dont think Ill be starting another alt until Cataclysm hits. Ive done Loremaster (pre-nerf), cleared all the quests, run all the isntances, and its not something I really want to repeat. :p
I do remeber levelling my rogue as assasination, and the fun little stunlock/crippling poison dance I used to do so I could get to the mob’s back so I could use my mutilate. Good times.
I remember grinding out the twilight cultist in Silithis for hours, taking a photo on Nefarian’s throne the first time we downed him when killing a raid boss actually meant something, or working hard in pvp so my rank would go up the next week. I feel WoW has lost that sense of accomplishment.
I miss the sheer joy that you used to get after downing that boss your guild was wiping on for close to a month *cough cough C’Thun* and then the over whelming feeling of knowing you’ve just taken out what so many consider impossible.
There aren’t any bosses like that anymore… =\ I was quite disappointed actually when my guild did down algalon… getting the 4 hardmodes prior to him was more difficult than him. Unfortunately though thats just how blizz has worked the game since SWP. all the final bosses of dungeons anymore really seem like pushovers compared to some of the bosses before them.
Nefarian, Rag, Hakar, C’thun, Osiran, and Kel’Thuzad those 20 and 40 man bosses were what gave hardcore raiders nightmares in their time =\ (not to mention a few others like blood lord, twin emps, chromagnus, and ofcourse the dreaded 4H 40 man).
But yeah. really thats what i miss is the true difficulty of the final raid bosses.
All I can do now is pray for the Lich Kings sake =\
oh and also /sigh when death wing doesnt just up and curse the planet to death when we kill him xD
I actually miss something else. I miss the old skill trees, the time when you had to show some skill to kill something, not to mash on buttons. I miss the time when i was 70 subtlety rogue and mostly miss when i took me a minute and bust all my cooldowns in order to kill a warrior. The dance was something amazing and not a lot of rogues could finish the whole thing. I was feeling proud. Now…so much have changed, every class has so much mechanics of how to escape stuns, how to lower them significantly, or escape CC in a matter of seconds. Do you remember our nice 5 minute insignia of the alliance/horde? 5 MINUTE not 2, like the one we get in WG.
Let me troll about the DKs a bit, has any rogue tried to do a stunlock (which includes SAP, blind, disarm, so on) successfully on a DK (till you kill him of course)? I havent. They are just untouchable.
WoW lacking a sense of accomplishment is my biggest issue with the game ATM. I know it all boils down to muttering how “back in the day” things were so much better, and while many things werent, the “high” you got from downing a hard boss, was definitely better, the sense of accomplishment was that much greater.
Nowadays Bosses come in 2 flavors: Faceroll mode, and “let me bend over and get raped by you” mode. So yes, while the challenge of hard yesteryear type boss encounters is still in the game, when you do bosses in “let me bend over” mode, by the time you get around to killing a boss in that mode you have already killed him in faceroll mode 20 times. So when you actually get that HM kill done, you are rewarded with an achievement ding, which lets you tick off another achievement of your list, and move on to the next. Nowadays guild progress is counted by your achievments, not what bosses you have killed.
I understand it from Bliz’ PoV, they dont want to create content that only 10% of their playerbase gets to see, but lets be honest, they can afford to have a 10man encounter team and a 25man encounter team – make those instances separate, the bosses unique. Dont make Arthas killable by a 10man raid ffs. -_- They could do IC like AQ was, have a wing for 10man content and another one for 25man, and make those bosses unique – is that so difficult, is that too much to ask for?
I guess it is, Im done chasing the dragon (literally
) for bosskill highs in WoW.
I miss days long AVs that had npcs to avoid, when pvp ranks Marshal+ used to mean something, when people had to actually do the hunter epic bow/staff quest and knew what true trap kiting was. All the fighting/pvp just to get to MC. The awe when you saw someone in complete T3 gear. Hard to know what the hell people are wearing now.
Back when you could tell who the good player were by the gear they wore…..
i finally decided to go back and play my tank from vanilla wow and in my first grp someone asked me if Quel Serrar was a pvp reward!!!!! i booted him before the first trash pull.
i miss vanilla wow. 60 cap, the grind meant something. youd grind mats all week just to run MC and BWL. get 40 ppl to work together for 6-10 hrs and still wipe on the boss….. Wotlk is easy mode and cataclysm is going to destroy the game, not just the world.
/wrists
and 4 hr AV matches
I have two things to say:
First off, I miss the simplicity of the gear and the fact that you actually had to EARN your gear. Nowadays, Blizz is trying desperately to cater to their casual user base because they are the ones who are at highest risk of not renewing their subscription once they hit 80. Now it’s hard to tell whether a character has actually achieved enought skill to deserve the gear they’re wearing or if it’s simple welfare badge gear. I mean, how do you tell the difference between a pre-teen drama queen who got badge gear and a seasoned vet who still has T9 helm because nothing better has dropped yet? ONY is a joke now, so all that gear (fail gear imo for tanks) is useless when determining if a PUG player is viable to fill an empty spot in 25m HM Northrend Beasts.
Secondly, I miss the exclusivity of end-game raids guilds. There was once a day in Vanilla WoW, when people would scramble to join on of the few successful guilds to get a 40m Temple run or Naxx run or Ony. Every server I played had only a handful of guilds to apply to and it made it easy to build a well rounded and skilled raid to get good attempts on hard bosses. Now our servers are completely oversaturated with fail flash guilds. Players with end-game potential are getting sucked into 10 EoE or 10 Naxx when they could easily move onward and upward to the real End-Game stuff. They get lost in those guilds, then they shatter and they move onto another fail guild. That means that the actual skilled raid guilds are left to depend on the lowest performers, there is no choice, not much of an option to switch them out if their dps is slacking, extra healers… Personally, I love being the guild pally tank (because more than one is overkill) and I get first pick of the gear… but it’s hurting our raid economy on our server, its hurting progression and competition.