Getting back (however briefly) into World of WarCraft exposes me to all sorts of WoW related things.
For instance, the Steelseries World of WarCraft MMO gaming mouse, which has no less than 15 programmable buttons.
Which is a lot of buttons, but I guess enough buttons to be the official World of WarCraft mouse. Continue reading
Azeroth, of course, being the mythical land that World of WarCraft is set.
From a purely technical standpoint, they’ve streamlined a lot of things. I’ve played a Warlock to the mid teens and was surprised at how much they’ve removed from the experience. Just as an example, they’ve removed demon trainers from the game entirely. Previously, you would have to purchase grimoires to teach your demon minions new skills. Now, they just learn them as they level up with you.
That makes a lot of sense to me, from a gameplay standpoint. I can definitely spend that virtual money on something else, and it removes another treadmill from the game. I’d rather be cursing things and setting my demon minions on them. I don’t have the time nor the impetus to teach them how to do that.
Also, from a sound design standpoint, they’ve decided to give them voices, instead of text chat, so that was surprising to me when I heard my voidwalker speak for the first time. In a way, I preferred them to be silent and creepy, but this new characterization of the voidwalker isn’t a bad thing.
I haven’t gone back to my level 44 rogue, I just feel like the rogue class is something I’ll have to ease back into. With the warlock, I didn’t have anything to unlearn from having a mid teen warlock from before. On the other hand, trying to figure out the gameplay differences from two expansions and dozens of patches for one of my highest level characters would have been something else.
They did seem to speed up the leveling process, as I have only really played for a couple of sessions, and having leveled up two entirely different characters past 10 is fairly exciting to me. I definitely ran into that wall the last time I played WoW.
They drag me back in.
Well, in for a 10 day trial anyway. Playing a bit of World of WarCraft. 11.5 Million people can be wrong. I just want to see the changes and then see if my characters are still there.
So far, it’s still fun and there’s a lot of streamlining that’s gone on since launch. I may pick up a time card and hang out for a bit.
Still have a sweet spot for the aesthetics, it’s beautiful.
I finished World of WarCraft a couple of years ago. The end boss wasn’t too bad, you just had to remove your credit card info and wait a month, then you beat the game.
There were numerous reasons why I left. The core audience just wasn’t anything I was willing to put up with. The main reason was that I was just not willing to put in the extra forty hours a week to keep up with my friends, the people I would have wanted to play with.
I recall that when I was playing, it was difficult to get up level 60. It was an event. I mean, you got there and you took screenshots and opened a bottle of champagne because you earned it.
Now, not so much. Especially with the pyramid scheme they have going on. Continue reading