I’ve been meaning to write a different perspective after reading these well written posts from Pike, Faeldray, and Nina. With the exception of Pike who has recently discovered endgame, the latter are happily taking their time getting to 70 and enjoying their experiences in the process.
I by no means agree nor disagree. The beautiful thing about WoW is that it can be enjoyed by a wide spectrum of players. They can be casual or hardcore. Male or female. Student or teacher. The waiter at that classy Italian restaurant or the bartender at that shady bar. Blizzard gave us a world. The game is how we interact with it and enjoy it.
One of my first characters was my Paladin. She’s the first healer I had to hit level 60. I never raided with her and it took me nearly 6 months to get her to 60 (not played timed, mind you). Like many of you players who went through WoW the first time, I was soaking the fun and experience. I’m a huge Blizzard fan. I played Warcraft 2 back in the day, tried Warcraft 1, and enjoyed Warcraft 3. I poured over game manuals repeatedly because I wanted to learn more about this world. When WoW was released, I now had the chance to experience Azeroth first hand instead of directing and commanding units from a top down interface.
When I rerolled Mallet and Saphfira later on, there were some things that made me want to max my level out.
Been there done that: Every peninsula, explored. Every crack, investigated. Every instance, run. Every battle, won.
I’ve gone to Silithus, to Darnassus, to EPL and back again. I felt like I had accomplished everything there was to do. I completed every quest.
When I created my new characters, I had no desire to do all of that again. I wanted to hit end game and hit Molten Core and see Blackwing Lair. It seemed pointless to me and a waste of my time. Especially when you have more than 1 character.
Social ability: I enjoy playing with friends and meeting new players. In fact, if my friends stopped playing WoW and switched to Age of Conan or something, I would most likely do the same. That being said, my friends would level at a super human pace. I didn’t want to be left behind. It’s no fun being level 45 while the rest of your friends are already level 70 and raiding Karazhan. They offer to help you if you’re under attack by opposite faction members, but rarely do they come out. Why?
Because they’re raiding.
I didn’t want to get left behind. So I rushed to catch up to them.
The Holy-Crap-He’s-70-Don’t-Mess-With-Him Factor: You’re in Hillsbrad foothills and you run into a level 21. You squish him. Then a Warrior comes out of nowhere who is level 33 and he stomps you.
And so the chain ganking continues, but there is a limit.
Level 70. While you can still step on lower levels with ease, there IS no bigger fish that can kill you while you’re doing your thing (questing, herbing, etc). There’s no level 75 to gank you in front of Karazhan. There’s no level 80 holding down the fort in front of Tempest Keep. When you get to 70, the playing field is declared even. Victory is decided by skill and gear instead of huge level differences.
Achievement: Perhaps the only instance I will never step foot inside and conquer is Ahn’Qiraj. I’ve been in there a few times and got a feel for the first boss. But I will never know what it’s like to beat the rest of the instance.
That cannot be said the same of the 25 man’s in Outlands. I joined a progression Guild for a reason: Because we all want to progress. We embrace the PvE challenges that Blizzard has thrown at us. Mountains are made to be climbed.
What irritates me a lot is the fact that casual players wave their whole “well u hv no lyfe bt prple epicz” (Don’t worry Nina, not aimed at you =)). I tend to get thrown into that category because people see the items I wear and somehow come to that conclusion that I don’t have a life. Just because I spend my time wiping and working on instances instead of doing 5 mans and daily quests doesn’t mean I’m that much worse of an individual.
I like to have fun and play WoW, too. But just because my idea of fun is different then your idea of fun doesn’t make me any worse. I relish killing bosses with 24 other players. I like figuring out the technical aspects of boss fights and beating them within the rules. I like to make up my own kind of challenges (like time trials on bosses). My Guild comprises of a lot of players from the west coast to the east coast. We can’t devote 5 hours an evening to work on bosses because it’s not possible with our players.
Take an example from GMW. A while ago she made a post writing about the individuals within her Guild. Carnage has some high school students, university students, masters students and so on. We also have adults who are working full time. I don’t know what kind of occupations they have (although that’s a good future blog post, so I’m going to write that one down) but I know someone who works at Amazon.com. Another works at a corporate IT firm.
I apologize for my mini rant, but I’m just tired of hearing it from players in greens and blues who call us with purple wearing players with having no life.
I put in the effort, I dedicated my time, and I play hard every raid. I work hard, I study hard, and I party hard. Why should WoW deserve any less? Our raiding atmosphere is light and relaxed. My one wish is for casual players to experience at least one raid in their entire WoW career to understand what it’s like. You may not enjoy it, you may even detest it. But at least you can say that you’ve tried it.
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