I last wrote about my current frame of mind regarding World of Warcraft on October 24, 2015. Since then, I think I have logged in to WoW a total of perhaps twice. The interesting part is that I haven’t really missed it.
After playing the game since launch – coming on over 11 years now – nobody can question my devotion to the game. As I’ve said many times, it is a fantastic game and I have enjoyed my time in it. However, as life goes on and life priorities change, so do gaming priorities. Times change, and I have changed with it.
I had a good discussion on Twitter with my friend Vosskah. I agree with him that I believe that I have just out-grown the target demographic for WoW. While at one point I could do the extended gaming sessions to achieve my goals, I’m now looking for games where I can have brief matches to do what I want to do, then be done. There were many times when I had full-day gaming marathons full of WoW. I have been a subscriber to WoW for longer than I have been married or had kids. Where I am now is completely different than what I was back in November 2004.
As of February 1st 2016, I will cease to be a subscriber to WoW. I cancelled my recurring subscription, and it feels a bit liberating. This has been a thought of mine for a while now – I considered cancelling when it was previously up for renewal in August of last year. I remained subscribed at the time, which ended up being a waste of money. If I did log in, it was for a couple minutes at most, and more often than not I would just play Heroes or something else.
As the usual Blizzard fanboy that I am, I still am playing the other games – and WoW will never not be installed. I’m sure that one day I’ll be back. Going forward, I will continue to focus on getting not as crappy at Heroes of the Storm, and I’m very excited for when Overwatch is released later this year. My PS4 is getting good use, and my kids will never let me rest.
This is a bittersweet moment for me. I feel like I’m breaking up with a partner that I’ve had for the past 11 years, but after having slowly drifted apart. We’ll still remain friends, but we’ll see other people. Farewell for now, friend.
I don’t remember the last time I logged in to World of Warcraft to do something other than check my garrison. It’s been months. Unfortunately, I don’t really miss it either.
Right now it’s in that wonderful period between WoW expansions where people as a whole get bored. This started for me shortly after patch 6.1 was released, as I found that I wasn’t really getting what I used to out of the game. Things for me have changed quite significantly since I started the game, so it’s not entirely surprising that I’m not enjoying it as I did before.
While it’s understandable, I must admit that it’s a little bit sad for me to admit this. I’ve had a subscription to WoW since day one. I got my Wolfrider statue in the mail last year for the 10 year anniversary, and it is displayed in my house with pride. I have every single novel written, I have a bunch of other merchandise that shows how much I absolutely love this game.
At the moment, however, I don’t see myself returning until Legion. Even then, I’m not entirely sure if I’ll return since I don’t know what my frame of mind will be.
Don’t worry Blizzard, you still have my money.
In the past months, I’ve been keeping occupied with other Blizzard properties – actually, most of them. Heroes of the Storm has taken over most of my time, along with Diablo III and recently StarCraft II in preparation for the release of Legacy of the Void. Cities: Skylines and various PS4 games have rounded out my current playtime roster. Overwatch beta starts next week, and I’m really hoping I can get in on that load of awesome.
Having limited playtime, I’m finding that I want to play a game but I don’t know entirely what game I want to play. I play a few matches of Heroes and I’m done with that for the night. I play some Cities: Skylines for a bit, but not for an entire night. When I started WoW, I could play that game for hours on end and not get tired of it.
I realize that not all games can have that level of time associated with them – in how long it’s been out for altogether, or the long storied history it has. WoW is a unique game, and I’m pretty sure that the only thing that will come close to it again will be something made by Blizzard.
As I’m writing this, I’m listening to a Heroes of the Storm podcast while watching a Twitch stream of Heroes on my second monitor. For the moment, this will do fine. I really do hope that one day I’ll get back to WoW and enjoy playing it again.
Tonight I decided on an experiment. I’m going to queue for the Molten Core LFR and list my accomplishments through it, or lack thereof. As a reminder, I’m a Feral Druid, and all times are Mountain Standard Time (MST) – the only time zone that matters.
8:12 pm: queued for LFR, approximate wait time 9 minutes.
8:13: queue is ready, looks like a fresh run. Huge sigh to try and get ready for what is ahead.
8:13: zone in, first pull is already under way.
8:17: first tank drops group.
8:19: first complaints in chat of the fact that it’s a fresh run.
8:28: first core hound pack pulled.
8:29: Lucifron engaged.
8:31: Lucifron killed.
8:33: core hound pack respawn.
8:35: Magmadar engaged.
8:36: Magmadar killed, with no fears. Creepy.
8:45: Gehennas engaged.
8:47: Gehennas killed.
8:56: Garr engaged.
8:58: Garr killed.
9:02: Baron Geddon engaged, along with a mob pack.
9:04: first wipe of the night. I am shocked and amazed.
9:07: Baron Geddon engaged.
9:10: Baron Geddon killed.
9:13: first non-boss death. Lava Elemental aggroed me, tanks were busy.
9:16: Shazzrah engaged.
9:17: Shazzrah killed, with 11 people left alive.
9:31: Sulfuron Harbinger engaged.
9:35: Sulfuron Harbinger killed.
9:39: Golemagg ninja aggroed by a stupid mage.
9:41: second wipe of the night.
9:43: Golemagg pulled by a rogue randomly dropping from above him.
9:44: third wipe of the night.
9:48: Golemagg pulled properly.
9:51: Golemagg killed.
9:54: Majordomo Executus engaged.
9:57: Majordomo Executus defeated.
10:02: Ragnaros summoned.
10:07: Ragnaros defeated. Hatespark the Tiny collected, huzzah!
As a whole, I am actually very happy with how it all went. the group that I ended up getting was very organized – the tanks marked the targets, healers were fantastic, and DPS did an excellent job. The only wipes we had were from a few people being stupid, and not the raid as a whole failing.
This was my third time trying to complete this, and I am very glad that I never have to do it again.
Typically, the term “crossing the floor” is used in politics. It is where a member of a political party leaves their current one and goes over to another.
Similarly, I have crossed the floor for only my second time in my World of Warcraft career – after spending about nine years a Horde, I’m back to playing Alliance on my main. Korath the Tauren is now Korath the Night Elf. (It still feels weird and a bit dirty saying that out loud.)
It all started almost a year ago, shortly after the Siege of Orgrimmar started. I had stopped playing consistantly, and was playing more Diablo than Warcraft. There were times where I went over a month between logins. On my Horde Main, I did the LFR stuff to get achievements (not actually getting my Garrosh kill until a month or two before 6.0 dropped), yet it felt that I was doing it for the sake of completion and nothing else.
At the same time, I was working more on my Alliance Mage that I had transferred to play with some friends that I had met in real life a while back. This was mainly due to the fact that I wanted to see the Alliance version of Mists of Pandaria, and to play with some other friends.
Shortly before Warlords was launched, I found out that my guild had decided to merge to get prepared for Mythic raiding. I was definitely surprised at this, but since I wasn’t logging on very often it wasn’t shocking. There were a bunch of new people in the guild that I had never seen or heard of before, along with the familiar faces that I have known for almost ten years.
I’ve gone through a guild merge before, which ended up being decent at first and ending up not awesome. If I was a regular core raider of the guild, it might be different – but as a casual player who doesn’t do any raiding apart from LFR, I was feeling quite left out. I didn’t even feel comfortable speaking out in guild chat.
After weighing all of the options, I made the decision to move my main character – Korath the Tauren Druid – over to the Moonrunner server and faction change to Alliance, so I could play with my friends that I knew and was comfortable with.
A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to meet up with some people that I had met through blogging: specifically, Fannon from Dwarven Battle Medic and Ophelie from Bossy Pally. It was fantastic to meet other WoW bloggers and just to get to know other people.
I’m a very shy and introverted person. One of the scariest moments of my life was getting out of my car and walking into the pub where we all met.
However, it was one of the best choices I ever made. Through this meeting, it set up a get-together with other bloggers: this time with Vidyala and her husband Vosskah, and a few others. Instantly, my wife and I formed a friendship with them and were able to have great conversations.
There was only one downside to all of these people. All of these people were Alliance, where my wife and I played Horde exclusively. (My very first characters were Alliance, but around the original Zul’Gurub patch I switched to Horde.) At that time, I server transferred my then level 60 mage to Moonrunner just to talk to them, and left it at that.
Now, all this time later, it paid off. Unfortunately I did have to spend more money to do the server and faction change, but it was most definitely worth it – along with the fortunate timing of getting it on sale. The group of people I play with are fantastic, I’ve been able to meet a bunch of new people who are just a whole lot of fun. I know I’m still in the honeymoon phase, but I really don’t have any complaints as of yet.
The only downside of my WoW time right now is that my wife isn’t playing anymore, but that’s just due to her complete lack of free time with looking after the kids during the days and working at night. Ah, the life of a young family.
In a political sense, crossing the floor can be a disaster. Constituents feel like they were misled or betrayed, and it can cost someone their career. However, in this circumstance it has been one of the best choices I’ve made in a while. Once again, I’m excited to play WoW and habitually log in to check my garrison missions. Right, and actually play and have a crapload of fun.
On September 25th, something very interesting happened. Mists of Pandaria was released to a horde of fans who were eager to have something different, and hopefully better than what Cataclysm had been. They were chomping at the bit, desperate for something more than running a raid for the past 9 months.
Blizzard Entertainment did an extrordinary thing. They delivered, and then some.
Most people I had spoken to were completely done with Cataclysm. Dragon Soul had been out for about 9 months, they had cleared everything and had all of the mounts and achievements they could get or wanted to get. All of their professions were maxed, they had all the reputations they needed, or whatever their case may have been.
Personally, I wasn’t playing as much as I had before. I would log on a few nights a week to do a couple randoms, maybe a Raid Finder group (if it didn’t blow up). Leveling alts only stays exciting for so long. Not having time to raid took out the only regular thing I had ever relied on in previous expansions. The only thing I was doing was leveling my Alliance Mage on my friends’ server.
When Mists launched, all of a sudden I had so much stuff to do again. True to what I had been expecting, the very first thing I did was do some pet battles. I had only done a little bit of them in beta, and they were just as much fun as I remembered. Memories of playing Pokemon in junior high school came back in a very big way.
For the first time since Burning Crusade, my wife and I decided to level our mains together. I play a Feral Druid and she plays an Enhancement Shaman, so we were able to power through most mobs without much problem (except for some of the rares that we stumbled across). We hit 90 this past weekend, and really enjoyed all of the zones that we quested through.
Overall, the quest design of this expansion is absolutely amazing. There were quests where we laughed – mainly the Hozen quests, especially Riko expressing his undying (see what I did there?) love for Kiryn – some quests that were quite touching, but the most important thing is that pretty much all of them were a lot of fun.
There is one thing that I keep coming back to, something that I find myself saying all the time, which is how absolutely beautiful the new content is. It’s hard to believe that the engine running this is over 8 years old, yet we’re still given these amazing views. Everything from the grand temples and structures, down to the small little tumbleweeds that blow around Kun-Lai Summit. The environment is gorgeous and incredibly immersive.
At the moment, I have yet to find something about this expansion that I don’t like. The closest thing that I could label as a complaint is that there’s just too much to do. Once I hit level 90, I have at least four different factions that I want to raise my reptutation with immediately, and being the completionist that I am, I want to eventually get them all up to exalted.
I still have yet to fully do many dungeons or scenarios – the only ones I’ve done is one run of the new heroic Scholomance, and one instance of the Arena of Annihilation.
All I know is that I’m more excited about this expansion than I have been for any other, possibly having Burning Crusade for the exception (only because at the time, it was the first expansion). One last note: a few friends of mine were extremely critical of the Mists of Pandaria announcement after BlizzCon. They were complaining about how much it looked like a very weak expansion without much content. Now, after talking with them after the release, they have completely changed their stances and are quite happy with the result.
Over the past little while I’ve had a big case of the whatevers, in the fact that I have had not much drive to work on my blog. However, thanks to the friendly pestering of some fellowbloggers, I’ve decided to try to get back into the swing of things.
Also, I’ve had a little something – or someone – that has kept me busy for the past week.
The Spawnling at a day old
Meet The Spawnling, born last Saturday. She is absolutely adorable and is totally in control of our house already. She’s going to have her daddy wrapped around her pinky so very quickly, I’m sure.
The Challenge
Go into your image folder, open the sixth sub-folder and choose the sixth image. Show the image, and share some thoughts about it. Challenge six new bloggers, and link to them.
Fannon at Dwarven Battle Medic started to complicate things a bit by making it more than just one folder, which Aidrana from Miss Pew Pew followed – and since they bugged me, and I want to write, you get more for your non-spent money!
1 – World of Warcraft (852 pictures total)
My Tauren Druid main, as a baby character
I used to have more pictures, but unfortunately after reformatting a few times there were some that had been lost. Thankfully this one was saved, which was my very first screenshot of my main character. At the time his name was Asok (after the Dilbert character), and is now Korath – the closest I can get to my usual name as I could on the Thrall server.
As you can see, he is very much a baby character. This was during Burning Crusade when I was leveling up with my wife’s new character, as she had just recently bought WoW and was leveling her way through it. Back in the day, you had to go all the way to Silvermoon just to train Jewelcrafting for the Horde, as you had to go to Exodar for the Alliance. Those days sucked.
2 – Muse Concert (6 pictures total)
Muse concert in Edmonton, March 2010
Unfortunately, these were very bad pictures taken with my old mobile phone. Thankfully it is now dead, and I have a new fancy iPhone 4S to replace it. However, amazingly enough the pictures are somewhat recognizable. Muse is my favourite band, and my wife and I were fortunate enough to see them in March 2010.
3 – Blog Stuff (144 pictures total)
What I do is whenever I have anything specifically for the blog from something else, I would usually save a copy of it in my Blog folder, renamed for whatever purpose. However, in this case since I’m using something that I’ve already done… then I don’t bother.
I have only a few sub-folders: one specifically for third party images, so I know which ones are mine and which ones are not; one for my Screenshots of the Week (which is definitely not weekly anymore); and a sub-folder of the SSOTW where I move over the images that I have used.
Why hello, Archaeology survey tool from my Archaeology 101 guide.
4 and 5 – Third Party and Screenshots of the Week (52 pictures total)
Moon and Aurora in Howling Fjord
As mentioned above, these are just pictures from my separate sub-folders.
Howling Fjord is still one of my favourite zones for many reasons. It was one of our first tastes of Wrath of the Lich King, and it really sets the tone for this Northern land. Living in Canada, I’m fortunate enough to see the real Aurora Borealis from time to time, and it never gets old. I just love it so very much.
Verming concept art for Mists of Pandaria
The Verming concept art was one that just made me laugh so very much. We were watching the BlizzCon live stream this year, and they had this during the Mists of Pandaria preview panel. I can’t wait to kill these guys, as I’m pretty sure that they’re the new kobolds or murlocs and we’ll hate them soon enough.
6 – The Spawn/The Spawnling (1964 pictures total)
The Spawn
What parent doesn’t like to take pictures of their kids? If anyone follows me on Twitter, they’ll know that I refer to my kids as The Spawn and the new one as The Spawnling. I’m a bit paranoid so I prefer not to use their real names, as Fannon from Dwarven Battle Medic frequently uses the same idea with the Dwarfling.
The Spawn is two and a half years old, and The Spawnling is a week old now. We have our hands full with them, but as I’ve said many times – being a Dad is the best job in the world.
This picture happened to turn out really well. I was trying to get a picture of The Spawn with my iPhone, and of course he was running around. I figured I’d see what happens, and it ended up being one of my favourite pictures.
Bonus – Too much cute to handle
The Spawn holding The Spawnling
It’s quite handy having a phone to capture some great moments. Of course, when The Spawnling was first born we weren’t sure how The Spawn would react. Thankfully, he’s been an amazing big brother – we just really hope that it continues.
Challenging Others
The last part of the challenge was to tag six other bloggers to do the same thing. Unfortunately, most of the bloggers that I know have already done this challenge, so I’m going to call out a fellow Band of Thorns member to get off his butt and update his blog. Sharden of 15 Minutes of WoW – I hereby challenge you!
Next Steps
Thanks to my blogger friends, I should be back into the swing of things. With having two children under three in the house now, updates will most definitely not be as consistent as I would like, but I will try to keep things going as much as possible.
Here’s to a new chapter, I hope that it turns out to be as good on paper as it is in my head.
We now have confirmation that the world truly will not end in December 2012. How, you ask? Because Blizzard has told us that BlizzCon 2013 is going to happen.
This morning, it was made official that there will be no BlizzCon in 2012, predictably giving a lot of people room to complain. After five years in a row, why this year? Why not have such an amazing experience? Bashiok gave us a very good reply, which in essence said: “Well, we’re kinda busy.”
Now remember, there actually was no BlizzCon in 2006 after the first one in 2005. At the time, it was understandable as it was shortly before Burning Crusade was being launched, and there weren’t really any big announcements at the time. Since then, the conventions in 2008 and 2010 could be seen as a bit lackluster since there was no new game announcements at either. In my opinion, that is one of the reasons why they decided to forego this year.
Plus, as Bashiok said, they are busy. This year we have the possibility to see THREE games being released. We know that Diablo III is coming sometime in the early part of the year, and it’s very likely that Mists of Pandaria and Heart of the Swarm will be released later on (the current thoughts are late summer or early fall for Mists and late fall or early winter for Swarm). Because of all the things that are involved, Blizzard can only stretch their resources so thin.
Not only do they have to organize the convention in the first place, but actually setting up, running it, and taking it down takes much more time and effort than the two days that BlizzCon occurs. I’m sure that they have people devoted to events like this, but there will definitely be volunteers from other departments. Every person taken away from their desk is one more project that will take longer to complete.
In the end, I’m definitely disappointed. Once again, like every year since we went to BlizzCon 2008, my wife and I have been looking at our finances and seeing if it was possible to make it out this year. With it not happening this year, we will definitely be trying to make it out next year. After a year off, I can’t imagine how big of a party that it will be.
Meanwhile, there are other events that go on. PAX Prime and East, Nerdtacular, Dragon*Con, and a whole lot more that I don’t know about or have forgotten. Nerds shall unite and party!
Over the past while, I have to admit that I haven’t been playing much World of Warcraft. It’s not that there is nothing to do – far from it – but there just really isn’t much that can keep my attention lately. I find that I’m logging on for a random heroic or two, but after that I’m finding that I can’t keep interested.
I’ve come to realize that finally, after over seven years of playing, I’m mostly bored of WoW. There have been times where there have been some gaps where I haven’t had as much fun, but it never has been like this before. Even though there are things coming up with Mists of Pandaria that look really cool, at the very least we’re around 6-7 months away from that. When the time comes, I’ll definitely pick it up and play it, but there’s just the problem about the time from now until then.
Previously, I had a solid raid team that I would work with twice a week and work through the raid content. Not having this sort of anchor has affected me more than I ever thought, as the only person who I spend much time with when I’m playing WoW at all is my wife (not that this is a bad thing, it’s just that I would like to have more acquiantances). Even though I have joined a guild on my Death Knight that has a great number of people, unfortunately I have yet to find a suitable raid team that works with the times that I’m available.
With all of this being said, I’m playing other games and having some fun doing different things. I purchased Terraria and Portal 2 during the Steam Christmas sale last year and have started playing them again, and this year I’ve purchased Skyrim and Bastion, along with being fortunate enough to get into the Diablo III beta. Between these five games, I’m keeping myself quite occupied and not really missing WoW very much.
As I’ve said many times before, I’m a Blizzard fanboy and will continue to be one. I still really enjoy WoW, but as many other people do, I think I’ll just play it less than I have in the past. When the New Spawn comes in February, it’s quite possible that I might be doing some Archaeology at three in the morning while feeding the baby.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and get into a raid team that works for me, because I know that it will re-kindle my interest in the game. The future holds many unknown things, and what I will be doing with my spare time to have fun is most definitely one of them.
It’s hard to believe that it’s almost been a year since Cataclysm was first released. There’s been a lot that has happened – good things, bad things, and things in between that people really aren’t sure about. The expansion on a whole seems to be controversial in the fact that some believe it’s been a big success, while others believe it’s been a failure. I personally think that it’s an experiment that was partially successful, but that’s for another time.
As of November 29th, the beginning of the end of Cataclysm is upon is.
Blizzard has said that this will be the last full content patch for the expansion, and that this will basically be the end for updates before Mists of Pandaria comes out. This could be taken two ways: the optimistic way, thinking that we’ll be seeing MoP sooner rather than later and won’t have to do this content forever; or the pessimistic way, thinking that we’ll be doing the exact same content for a year, as we did with Icecrown Citadel at the end of Wrath of the Lich King (Ruby Sanctum doesn’t count).
Unfortunately I don’t work for Blizzard, and I don’t know when they hope to release MoP. Like everyone else, I’d rather see it sooner rather than later, but we know that it will be done when it’s done. However, all that being said, I’d like to take the optimistic view.
The 4.3 content patch has a lot in it. Not only do we get the new raid on Deathwing, but there are three new 5-man dungeons, a revamped Darkmoon Faire, Transmogrification, Void Storage, the Raid Finder, a bunch of new items from the raids and other content, and a whole bunch of balance changes. It would take too long to go through each one, so I’ll suggest you check out WoW Insider’s guide to Patch 4.3 to get the details about many of the new features.
Briefly, I’m very happy with Transmogrification. The interface is incredibly easy to use, and I finally am rewarded for being such a packrat for all these years. I was able to have one of my favourite looks of the Tier 5 shoulders and Wildfury Greatstaff for my Druid, which really makes me happy and nostalgic.
Void Storage is nice, but unfortunately a bit too restrictive. I have a lot of stuff in my bank from the many holidays that have come around, and I was hoping to empty a bunch out to free up some room. The biggest thing is that items labelled “unique” or items not soulbound cannot be deposited to VS. Many tabards, as well as other holiday things are all unique, and some of the holiday items like the Brewfest and Winter Veil gear are not soulbound, but I wanted to keep them nonetheless. So I deposited what I could, and at least freed up some room.
The Raid Finder has been one of the things I’ve been looking forward to most. As I’ve mentioned before, my schedule is very weird for when I can raid, so now I can raid whenever I want – as long as there’s enough other people queuing as well. I was able to get into a group, and successfully get the four bosses currently available with little drama. We only wiped twice, and there were people taking charge of the raid to get things done.
We also got Tyrael’s Charger. It’s pretty.
All in all, there’s some great new content that everyone can enjoy no matter what you do. Raider, casual player, leveling player, there’s something for everyone. As I experience more of the new content, I’ll post my thoughts about some of them. In the meantime, happy exploring!
The words “DON’T PANIC” are inscribed in large, friendly letters on the front of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
When something new comes, there’s only a few different ways that people can react. If the new thing looks appealing and pleasing to the person, there’s a sense of excitement and anticipation. If the new thing doesn’t hold any interest to the person, there’s a bunch of apathy and boredem. If the new thing looks not good at all to the person, there’s a sense of doom, dread, and panic.
Something new came this week.
Earlier in the week, Blizzard released an early look at the Mists of Pandaria talent and spec calculator. It shows every class, what their new talent tree will look like, and more importantly what the different specs will look like come patch 5.0 and the release of the new expansion.
If you missed it, at BlizzCon it was revealed that talent specs are changing with MoP. Rather than just adding to a specific arsenal of abilities that every class has, each spec will become even more specialized. As an example, only Fire mages will have Fireball and only Frost mages will have Frostbolt, but every mage will have Frostfire bolt.
Between BlizzCon and now, there has been a bunch of speculation about how much each class would change. With the new calculator, it’s shown that every class will be changing, but each class has differing amount of change. The pure DPS classes seem to be having less change than the hybrids, which seems to give the impression that Blizzard wants the spec to do one thing and one thing only – which is what they spec into.
The big disclaimer that has been stated is that this is a “pre-alpha” build, meaning that the information given can and more than likely will change between now and release. Bashiok said that they are giving this information out because they want to get feedback from the players and see what can be improved or tweaked. If you decide to leave a note for Blizzard, just please remember the most important thing (and Wheaton’s Law): Don’t Be A Dick.
Since my main is a Feral DPS Druid, I thought I’d give my impressions about that class.
One big change to Druids is one that all hybrids who can do any sort of healing are experiencing. If you’re not specced into the healing tree, there will be very limited choice for what healing abilities will be present. Rather than having Healing Touch, Regrowth, Nourish, Rejuvenation, and Lifebloom – it’s down to Nourish and Rejuvenation that are baseline. All of the other spells will be available at certain levels if you spec into Resto.
On the other hand, the times when a Bear could do decent DPS while not tanking are long gone. Druids are having the distinction of being the only class that will now have four specs: Balance (Moonkin), Restoration (Tree), Feral (Cat), and Guardian (Bear). If you want to be a bear, you’re a tank and a tank only. Even though this is definitely a loss for Druids, it is bringing us in line with the other classes that are out there. A Protection Warrior isn’t able to do good DPS while still in spec, why should a Bear be able to shift to Cat and do well?
That was definitely one of the benefits of being a Druid in the first place, and we’ll still have a limited capacity for it with the level 90 talent of Heart of the Wild (there are somebloggersout there who think that it will not be very useful at all – which I’m inclined to agree with). However, Druid specs will most definitely be very specialized.
The biggest news that I’ve seen so far is the new level 87 ability called Symbiosis. The text reads: “Creates a symbiotic link which grants the druid one ability belonging to the target’s class, varying by the druid’s specialization. In exchange, grants the target one druid ability based on their class and combat role. Lasts 1 hour and persists through death.”
On first glance, this looks absolutely amazing. Of course, this likely means that it won’t be as amazing as we hope it will be. Lissanna at Restokin gave a really good writeup about how she thinks it will work, and I think she has the right idea. It will probably take a specific ability from each class, rather than taking a random one, and since it will last an hour and persists through death it shouldn’t be left up to chance. Unfortunately, this won’t be able to be properly tested until the beta comes out, so until then we’ll be left with speculation (unless Blizzard decides to give us details about how it exactly works… /wink).
As with expansions in the past, we just have to get used to the “new normal”. There are things we may not like, but at the moment they’re not set in stone. If this is how things look when MoP is launched, then there might be some other words being used at the time.
I think that things are going in the right track, but will definitely need some tweaking. While we see the specs make the player focus on a specific role, there are then talents which encourage us to do other roles… but we won’t have as many tools to do said roles. It just doesn’t make much sense to me now. We’ll see how things go as time progresses – just remember, the game isn’t even close to being out yet.
I last wrote about my current frame of mind regarding World of Warcraft on October 24, 2015. Since then, I think I have logged in to WoW a total of perhaps twice. The interesting part is that I haven’t really missed it.
A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to meet up with some people that I had met through blogging: specifically, Fannon from Dwarven Battle Medic and Ophelie from Bossy Pally. It was fantastic to meet other WoW bloggers and just to get to know other people.
Corath's Blog 