Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Played Lately: World of Warcraft

  • Patch 3.3 landed today for World of Warcraft and I'm feeling the irresistible urge to play again. There is something about a new patch that makes every old feel new again. What's there to look forward to? Let's look at a few patch notes and see. Won't this be fun? (You in the back, shut up. I wasn't talking to you.)

  • Icecrown Citadel: The Frozen Halls - One of the coolest parts of this update (and not just because it's in Icecrown! /rimshot) is these three new five-player instances. I hoping they play out like Magisters' Terrace did for The Burning Crusade. The instance made a nice end cap for non-raiders like myself by allowing us to take down Kael'thas Sunstrider. I don't expect to take out Arthas, but I hope for a major victory to really finish off my personal storyline.

  • Cross-Realm Dungeon Finder - I think this is my favorite update. A cross-realm looking for group tool plus a random dungeon option are going to make finding an instance group so much easier. There are instances in Northrend I still haven't seen because finding PUG groups is so difficult. Considering how much cross-realm battlegrounds helped PvP, I can only imagine this will be a success.

  • Getting Started... - While my recent acquisition of heirlooms already had thinking about running a random alt up a few levels, these changes have put me over the edge. I can't wait to see what all these improvement do for a new character. I'd even like to test the dungeon finder on the low level instances. And yes, I did say rolling an alt before Cataclysm was a bad move. I never said I was that smart, did I? (Did I? Hmm.)

  • ...and Quest Tracking - Of all the new features in this patch, this is that one that I'm most "meh" about. Here's my problem: I really want to run quests the way they are meant to be. I want to explore and discover the world through quests. I'm also very, very lazy. If this is in the game, I will be unable to resist the call of highlighted areas of interesting. I'm weak, I know.

  • So, there is a lot to look forward to this patch cycle. How long it will keep me interested, I'm not sure. Cataclysm still looks a long way off. Blizzard better have something very interesting up its sleeve if they don't want me to take another vacation from Azeroth.

5 comments:

  1. I felt exactly the same way when they added a quest tracker to LoTRO. Months later, I've come to the conclusion that the slight hit to my immersion is more than worth the frustration the tracking system eliminates. In a way it enhances your immersion by elminating the need to alt tab out and hit a website for clues every five or ten quests.

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  2. @ Yeebo - You've caught me there. I spend way too much time in Thottbot, WoWhead, WoWWiki, etc. as it is. I much prefer this.

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  3. I will admit that there are times when I feel the desire to go back to WoW, but I hold strong and suppress the urge. WoW is a really great game, but I am tired of the PvP and the endgame circus, so that's the main reason why I don't go back.

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  4. @ Jayedub - I so, so, so, so get that. While I think WotLK is actually a better expansion than TBC was, I've spent a lot of time unsubscribed during this game cycle because I'm not willing to put up with those problems. That said, I'm in the middle of writing a post about how much fun I had last night. New patch FTW.

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  5. I was very excited for TBC, I even did the midnight launch thing to get it. Wrath I wasn't so excited for, probably because I was not looking forward to another gear reset and ten more levels to gain.

    I will be interested to read about this fun you speak of.

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