I've been playing World of Warcraft ever since it came out and I've had ups and downs with the game though I've always kept my subscription. I did a lot of old world raiding but my guild was unfortunately one of those who didn't survive the Karazhan/Gruul hump. Still in general I was very happy with the single group content in the Burning Crusade and was estatic at the PvP content. In fact during the last 6 months I've been doing mostly arenas and battlegrounds with a scattering of heroics. World of Warcraft is still one of the best designed MMOs I've ever played but its pretty much ran out of content for me.
While Magister's Terrance and the daily quests were nice additions they are just not enough to make me stay until the expansion. Sometimes the high standards of Blizzard and their devotion to polish creates a weakness in actually creating content quickly. I mean what happen to the one expansion per year estimate that was repeated in several magazine interviews? I think Blizzard might have been juggling too many projects at the same time and underestimated the number of developers it would take to get Wrath of the Lich King out of the door. They also have Starcraft 2 coming out along with their new generation MMO which is still very mysterious.
Whatever the reasons for the expansion delay, my friends were also starting to get the MMO wanderlust. I've had it ever since the summer and its why I went through trying out LOTR, Rise of Kunark, and Tabula Rasa last year. However, none of those games appeal to my friends and the time just didn't seem right. Now with Age of Conan coming out and still no release date from Blizzard it became time to leave World of Warcraft. Still we wanted to go out with a bang so we gathered up who we could and decided to visit some of our old haunts.
The first stop was Zul'Gurub which was one of our favorite raid instances and really made the impression on us that smaller raids could be more fun. I was never really happy with the class balance and coordination required by Karazhan which made it seem a lot harder then old world raiding. I have better hopes that the 10 man raid progression in WotLK will be much more friendly. In the meantime here's some shots of us getting revenge on some old bosses.
After Zul'Grub there wasn't a lot of time left since I was unsure if I would be booted from the server at midnight as my account expired. Thus in relative quickness we made our way to where we had some of our worst raid wipes back in the day, Onyxia's Lair. We had some close calls and actually had problems keeping aggro on the tank. Luckily we managed the kill her and had a lot of fun remembering how it used to take most our guild to take her down.
Later on we tried to figure out where we should log off and finally decided to go back to old world raid central, Blackrock Mountain. Between Molten Core and Blackwing Lair we spent more time in this place then anywhere else in the game. Thus it was a fitting place for us to log off until we return.
9 comments:
I salute you brave warrior!
Onyxia was always my favorite raid :)
The warrior Rhey is wearing the tier .5 and duel wielding Two of Lord Blackwoods Blades. Which dropped during the scourge invasion for Naxx. I figured that I would put her best looking armor on before I logged her off. Because why retire her looking like everyone else in the world. With 4/5 vengeful and the tier 3 BS mace. That would just be too tacky for me.
Relm you and I were in the exact same place with WoW I think. I could not think of another reason why I wanted to log on and do the Quel'denas quests one more time, or bang my head against the walls of the arena. I haven't raided regularly since Karazhan was popular either. Just like you, some of my old friends and I seemed to have more fun goofing off in MC and ZG than trying to run ZA or something new.
Nice blog man, I feel like you and I think alot alike on some of these mmo's. Glad I found your blog, I've got you in my blogroll now. Check out my thoughts if you have time, peace!
I could not see myself logging out in anything other than my Lok and Rok. I put a ridiculous amount of time for those, I even beat the demons during the period after the pre-BC talent change when they were bugged to hell. Was sad to leave but at least we went out with a bang.
I hope you'll still keep us posted on whatever game you do play!
I'm feeling the same WoW burnout of late, having played consistantly since just prior to the Burning Crusade launch. While AoC hasn't caught my attention, it'll be interesting to read about your experience as you head to new frontiers.
Well I'll be keeping my eye on World of Warcraft since I still think its one of the best MMOs out on the market.
However, I'll probably be away for quite some time while trying out Age of Conan and Warhammer.
Kara finally killed my Alliance Guild a couple of months ago (we were stubborn buggers) and it was not a pleasant collapse. I gave up on Alliance and rolled Horde to spend more time with my sister and her family (they defected to Horde a couple of years ago).
It's like a breath of fresh air and rediscovering WoW all over again. Of course I'm a typical Explorer (ESAK) so new quests and zones (where guards are no longer trying to kill me on sight) are always a good thing.
Make sure you tell us all about AOC. I'm interested in it, but not enough to slap down the cash just yet, and it would mean leaving WoW completely. I can't support a 2-MMO Habit :(
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