If you look back at my blogs since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King and compare them to my collection of thoughts from the The Burning Crusade days, you may notice a trend. During
Illidan's and later
Kael'thas' respected reigns my posts were more often focused on news and game updates, rather than discussions and dissections about our favorite MMORPG. The reason for this is quite simple really, I wasn't participating in World of Warcraft as much then as I am now. For the longest time I couldn't pinpoint the exact reason for is. It had nothing to do with
why I quit WoW in the first place, and I still
followed the lore almost as closely as I do now, yet, I was hardly ever
pulled into the game.
It took me a
few months of play,
up and downs and
a new guild, but I had an epiphany while biking around Philadelphia the other night. The reason I am more drawn to WoW now is that I don't feel left behind. Thanks to the new expansion Solidsamm was put on a level playing field with every buddy else. No longer was I three tiers of gear behind, thousands of rep in the hole or penniless because I hadn't been doing dailies for over a year. Solidsamm was on equal footing, grinding his way to level 80 with the majority of players and entering the same raids that many other toons ran on a weekly basis. Sure, he still hasn't seen
Ulduar yet, but it's only been available for a few weeks.
The irony here is that this ability to catch up was one of the reason I was annoyed with the first expansion. TBC's opening quest rewards were good enough to replace some of the AQ40/
Naxxramas gear that players - including myself - had spent
months collecting. As a hardcore raider I felt that all the time I had put into the game would be tarnished since a player with less than a third of my playtime could now be as geared as I. How naive I was.
It was odd being on the exact opposite end of the spectrum for the second expansion, but it made me realize that the changes are necessary if the game is to grow at all. That being said, I would argue that the replacement rate of The Burning Crusade's gear wasn't nearly as drastic as vanilla WoW, which was a
very smart move by Blizzard.
Now that we are almost 6 months from Wrath of the Lich King's release, how is it treating you? Are you enjoying it more than The Burning Crusade or is it pretty much the same to you? Personally I think the questing is far better than TBC, but itemization at the high end (normal vs. heroic vs. hard mode loot) seems to be a bit screwed up. What is your take?
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