Last updated on November 30, 2014
So yeah, I hit level one hundred. It didn’t take very long, and I am very grateful for that! Let me talk some more World of WarCraft, some more Warlords of Draenor!
I am absolutely surprised at how interesting and surprising the leveling curve actually went. Half the time, I could tell you I was not at all paying attention; the story and lore, this time around, propels you through the zone at a breakneck pace. At the same time, they always love to pop things onto the map to pique your attention to a random reward or a neat little boss encounter. Frankly, you could explore for days and still not quite see everything unless you research areas outside of the game.
It also helps that there’s so many avenues for gearing up, no matter what part of the game you personally like. I love five man dungeons, mostly because they force each member of the party to do something important. In this version of the game, most of the five mans require coordination, as well as introducing raid mechanics (such as “don’t stand on things on the ground”) to newer players. I’d say most trash pulls require actual crowd control, a return to Cataclysm style if not quite as gut-wrenchingly difficult. At the same time, there’s no strange specificity of item drops in each instance; every boss has a chance to drop any item for any slot for your particular spec, meaning you can queue for a random and not be worried that you’re running the wrong instance.
This is incredibly helpful, although it does mean that the instance don’t have that charm of searching for the one awesome drop. I ran Heroic Mechanar for the epic The Sun Eater weapon so much that, when it finally dropped, I was pretty amazed. The “special” drop, then, remains strangely absent from the gearing experience – it has been relocated elsewhere to the actual world of Draenor, although that doesn’t have the same kind of thrill regarding a difficult boss encounter which finally, FINALLY, drops the best-in-slot item you so desperately desire. So yeah, you miss those moments, but convenience wins the day in my book for normal five man content!
From my experience, the gear that drops tends to be stuff you actually need to upgrade. Sure, you get repeats or same type here and there, but since the statistics now work for multiple specs, they never feel like a total waste of bag slots. And if that doesn’t work for you, Apexis Crystal daily quests allow you to buy stuff you need. Or crafting stuff via your profession or garrison lets you fill empty slots. Or maybe you kill a rare spawn out in the world somewhere. Or maybe you participate in a world boss kill with lots of other players. There’s not a true “bottleneck” as there used to be for gearing up and raids. That goes for PvE content, at the very least; PvP retains the same honor system as before, but that’s not a bad thing really.
On the other hand, there’s a bit of a grind to be had, as in every MMORPG. Since garrisons basically destroyed the economic viability of many trade items and trade manufactured stuff via professions, Blizzard instead makes a giant load of these resources worthless. Most every items you craft to make epic gear (say, Truesteel Bar, which require True Iron and Blackrock Ore to make) come attached with a daily lockout; you can only make so much of the item a day, so you get all your resources, make the thing, then wait for the next day. Work Orders alleviate this somewhat, but it still takes a ton of time to craft any of the items you want. Just for example’s sake, most of the plate epic gear requires 100 Truesteel Bars each, and you can make probably 4 by yourself and maybe, MAYBE 10 a days otherwise. All of them are Soulbound too, so you can’t trade these lockout materials to other characters; every one must make them the slow, time-consuming way.
I wonder whether this is preferable to tons of people mining every single node with their flying mounts for hours on end, and I think this is intentional on Blizzard’s part. They would rather you explore the world they created, rather than scope herbalist materials via the sky. In this respect, I think it’s great that I don’t need to spend hours and hours looking at profession screens every day; I harvest stuff, I make it, I wait until the next day to do more exciting content. Although you could call it an arbitrary barrier to entry of the game’s higher-level content (and thus squeezing subscription money of your pocket), I don’t see it as the primary intent of said systems.
Rather, they want you to play with other players! There’s plenty of new people playing, and plenty of people searching for rare mount spawns out there just waiting and talking for the chance to get rare, exciting stuff. Hundreds of people on my battlegroup were waiting for Poundfist, who drops a new mount model; it was kind of scary to see how long some people just sat on that one spot waiting to tag the thing and get a new mount. All this little content that adds zero to the overall game keeps the areas spontaneous and lively; yes, this includes when the opposite faction camps low level questing areas too, although it seems the opposite faction quickly balances the odds. For the first time in a while, the game feels alive, and not just like a bunch of people grinding because they have to do it. That’s probably why they waited to release that raid.
Of course, I am writing this prior to the release of the first raid, Highmaul, so things may change when it does actually open for the people who already hit the item level requirement (translation: not me). As for now, though, I played way too much World of WarCraft over Thanksgiving and I couldn’t be happier.
