Tuesday, July 22, 2008

The good, the bad and the ugly

Well my mind is all over the place with all the planning to do for alts, my current 70's and the beta news so I decided to just split this post into 3.

The Good

I now have two characters at 70 and am once again at the liberty to pick a new character class to bring up all the way to 70. With my recent adventures into pally healing / shocking I have a strong hunger for a true spell damage / healer hybrid and the elemental shaman seems to be the way to go. But on the other hand my druid is coming along nicely sitting fully rested at lvl 52. I am also rather enjoying my hunter for the fast-forward levelling it can do and the ability to be a complete huntard and still manage to survive quite easily.
I enjoy alts tremendously. Learning the basics on each class really makes me appreciate the effort blizzard put into giving each class and even each spec a unique feel to it. Not only that but with every character I learn pvp seems to get easier.
So many choices to look forward to.


The Bad

70 Kind of feels like the end of the game. With limited time to play, no guild and the prospect of spending the next 10 years in a bg grinding for gear the appeal of a lvl 70 character is a lot less than that of a new one. There's a lot of things I take my 70 out to do such as soloing instances, exploring the world, picking up recipes and generally fooling around but my characters lack tangible goals.
Gear has never been a priority to me. Sure I'd like to have a set of full merciless or vengeful gear but then again there is no real need for it. I was able to level to 70 in outland greens and adding more gear at this point is only helping to reduce the challenge of the game.
There's still plenty of things to do, but it's down to my own creativity rather than following a beaten path.
At any rate you know you're in trouble when your first 70 is considering a carreer in banking.


The Ugly

This whole beta WotLK thing is getting out of hand. I am fairly sure it was the same before tbc but reading a cross section of various wow forums and blogs it's absolutely mind boggling how many people are screaming bloody murder. The complaints range from their classes becoming obsolete, to other classes being OP, to not being able to start all characters at lvl 55 and can even go as far as outright demanding to not have features in the game such as the achievment system that's apparantly being considered.

Now I don't mind a bit of healthy speculation. I am sure the people over at elitist jerks welcome the chance to sink some math into the topic but why in the blazes would anyone get angry over things that aren't certain yet?

The problem is partially that people put the new beta stuff into context with the current TBC environment. We don't even know what most of the new lvl 70+ mobs in northrend will behave like let alone any of the bosses. What strikes us as OP now might be completely trivial when we're actually standing in northrend.

So I guess we're looking at a troll-paradise for the next 4-7 months or however long it takes for WotLK to release. I am not sure what's worse... inviting a community of trolls to live on your blog because you decided to post some WotLK stuff or people that actually believe what is posted (and there's some strange stuff out there already).

This would be an ideal time for an april 1st kind of post.

4 comments:

Larísa said...

The Good:

I really feel poor having just one main at level 70, envying players with a whole stable of chars to choose between. I guess I feel even more stuck having a mage, if I had a hybrid it would be a different thing. The raid neels a healer rather than dps? Well, just go and respec… (provided you’ve built multiple gear sets ofc).

Finally I’m levelling a rogue and I’m SO looking forward to learn how to play it. And you’re so right – the feeling of another class is totally different.

The Bad:

You said it yourself. Find your own path in the game. There must be other ways to enjoy it than hardcore raiding, if you haven’t got time for that. Find other creative people to tie yourself to. Build a community off the normal scripted roads that most players wander.

The Ugly:

I’m totally happy that there’s so much crap and speculations about the WotLK. Because then I don’t have to feel bad or lazy about not reading much of it. I’ll catch up when the actual release is coming closer so I feel that I have a clue about what to do when I enter the new area for the first time. What talents I should pick, what stats I’ll be looking for when they’ve made up their minds about what to do with the mages. But thinking about it too much right now – it will just give me a headache and really not much of information.

Anonymous said...

larisa, you worry about having a character that is stuck in a role, and then you choose a Rogue to level next!
At end-game Rogues are pure dps; they bring virtually nothing else to the table.

Regarding WotLK, I am not going to bother reading up on any of it. I will wait for the game to come out, try out the different talents/spells for myself, and come to my own conclusions.

Captain The First said...

If you want all the good feel of a rogue you may want to try a kitty druid.

They're the only class so far that offers melee dps, ranged dps, tanking ability and healing power all neatly rolled into one.

With a bit of creative gear switching and respeccing you can practically do anything you want at any time.

The significant disadvantage is that you'll be dragging 3+ sets of gear around :P

But I suppose you're right. I was overdramatizing the whole beta thing. Honestly though I got a little sick of opening 10 of the blogs I read regularly only to see nothing except beta stuff :)

More annoyingly googling anything wow related for research purposes now practically always turns up some wotlk stuff that I can't use.

Still I can heartily recommend a druid because if you get tired of melee dps you can respec and be something completely different.

Larísa said...

Hm... Yeah, it doesn't make sense, does it? :)

I was recommended to try a rogue by someone I know, he thought it would be a really different thing to do (compared to the mage) and that it would be great fun.

And he was so right!

I can't help it, but I'm childlishly fond of seeing this little black haired gnome sneak around with her swords ready to cut enemies into pieces. The way she kicks, the animations... they're fun to see! I kind of like her sneaky ways.

Still you're right: I could get all of this and a lot more from a druid. Why don't I roll one, I really would like to take the challange one day to actually raid heal or tank?... A druid could offer me everything!

I guess the answer is that it looked a bit complicated to me. I'm not the most awesome player ever, it's taken me a while to learn to play my mage properly, and I think rogue will probably be a bit easier to handle (no offence now all rogues, please!) than a druid.