“The Grind”
With Wrath of the Lich King arriving last week it only made sense to jump into the new content “Lich King” style. Although we had initially reacted to the beta, playing the final content was much more fun with all of our guild and friends to play along.
It only took a few hours to get my new Death Knight to level-58 beyond the starting area and into the real world of Azeroth. Upon reaching the main city (Ogrammar as we’re horde) I picked up two new professions to make me a bit of dime: mining and skinning. This is where the beauty of the Death Knight fell apart…
A level-58 character has a few options open for exploration with the Burning Crusade content being the most desirable starting point. However, quickly it became apparent that my professions of mining and skinning were useless in Hellfire and other Burning Crusade areas. Why? Professions start with a value of 1. The last expansion requires your professions to be roughly 300 before you can utilize them.
My level-58 Death Knight has no experience in the ways of skinning and mining, what has he been doing all his life? Apparently killing innocent people in small villages throughout the Eastern Plaguelands. My anticipation with leveling my Death Knight died knowing I’d spend the next few days hunting mines and killing animals as if I where a level-10 toon.
There I was, a high level character trolling Crossroads and Thousand Needles hunting for copper and tin and skinning all the low level creatures I could find. Why didn’t Blizzard consider this when they allow you to create a level-55 character on day one? If we don’t go off and grind our way to a profession level of 300 we might as well not even pick professions at all.
I was not alone in these findings, along my path I found several Death Knights with skinning knives and mining tools looking for open opportunities to cut into the earth or the dead animals skins all around them. Sure, we can kill a cat in seconds flat but the “grind” is what we wanted to avoid, this is what characters spend their first twenty levels doing!
After three sessions of mind numbing grinding I’ve managed to reach a skill of 340 in skinning and coming upon 200 in mining. Mining is still too low for high level game content so I must whisk myself away to noobville every so often to catch a few mythril nodes and pray for a gold deposit along the way.
This may not be a bug in the Wrath of Lich King expansion but it sure is an annoying design flaw.
Quake Live Getting Subscription Option
If I were a subscriber, I’d leap at the chance to be a Human Hunter, but … no. Just… no. Every time I get the urge to play World of Warcraft, I realize I’d be grinding again, trying to find parties, deal with 10 year olds, etc. and I’m instantly cured of the desire to play.
Previous expansions didn’t get me back into the game (and if anything, made the default game feel less worthwhile to me), so… no. This won’t win me over. (But in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve never stayed with any one MMO long enough to run out of unfamiliar content, so the whole MMO expansion issue is a moot one for me personally.)
On an unrelated note, I believe it was called “fog of war,” not “cloud of war.”* (At least where Warcraft II was concerned. Also, disabling didn’t show you where the people were, it just stopped indicating [via shading or lack thereof] how far you could actively “see” at any given moment. [Unless you’re referring to the cheat that revealed the entire map. Which you couldn’t use during multiplayer anyway.])
(* – Though it should be noted that Warcraft III had a quest called “Cloud of War”, which is probably why it’s referred to as such in World of Warcraft, even though I don’t recall there being such an effect in the MMO. [This clarification add after some brief Googling…])
In Regards to the Question of the Week
I have a few friends that play WOW, but the question for me is: Is this enough to make you buy WOW?. Yeah =/ I missed the boat on that one. The Reason wasn’t that I dislike the game at all, I think blizzard is a awesome game developer, I just got caught up in another MMORPG which took a couple of years to get out of the addiction. The game was indeed runescape (pretty bad ay). Why I choose cutting wood and Crit for 41 instead for 4100 I don’t know. I guess the main factor was RS and WOW is a very time consuming game and I didn’t want to Start such a massive game from scratch so late. I’m a little hesitated to start another MMORPG cuz I don’t know if I have the time anymore and forever evolving game are hard to beat or be satisfied with your character. But then again is WOW better than playing Final fantasy/fall out for 100’s of hours by your self?
So my question to you is: Is WOW a experience that I should experience? and what are your Pros and Cons about the game? In the mean time I’ll will hold my decision and paly fire fight ={)
The difference between 100 hours of Fallout 3 vs. 100 hours of WoW is that you’ve got a very impressive character after 100 hours of Fallout 3. (WoW, not so much. Unless you’re a veteran of the game [in which case, include THOSE hours], or are helped out by someone else with a ton of hours logged.])