Tobold's Blog
Monday, April 21, 2008
 
WoW Journal - 21-April-2008

I haven't played all that much World of Warcraft this weekend, I'm feeling a bit burned out for the moment. Having problems finding groups for 5-man dungeons, the only thing I did with my level 70 characters was doing a couple of daily quests for the Shattered Sun Offensive with my mage. I reached honored with them, and bought the two enchanting recipes you get from them at that level, one of which is Void Shatter, which transforms one cheap void crystal into two expensive large prismatic shards. But although I could learn that recipe at my 360 skill, when I tried to use it I couldn't. The recipe requires a runed eternium rod, which can only be made at 375 skill. Why on earth does the game have lower skill recipes requiring something you can only achieve with a higher skill?

Fortunately the other recipe was more useful, as it was orange at my skill level, and required "only" about 40 gold worth of materials. So I used that 15 times at a cost of 600 gold in materials (most of which I had in stock) to get to 375 skill in enchanting. And that on the same day where by making my second shadowweave item I also reached 375 tailoring with my mage. Great! Of course then I spend another fortune to make that runed eternium rod, which uses 4 primal mights among other expensive ingredients. All that financial effort certainly wasn't worth it for the Void Shatter, but that wasn't why I did it. Rather I thought that having your tradeskills maxed will be important for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, as you probably can't get the new recipes without having reached the old skill cap.

I spent more time on my other server playing Alliance, but even there my new gnome rogue only made it to level 16 yet. But an extremely well equipped level 16, having run the Deadmines several times with the help of my wife's level 68 rogue. In return I used my level 60 priest, who I moved to that server, to run her level 18 shaman through the Deadmines too. Can you believe that after over 3 years of WoW that was only the second time she saw a dungeon? But as there are quite some nice pieces of leather armor and weapons for rogue and shamans in that dungeon, it was well worth it, and fun. As the wife and me have radically different play styles, we don't play together all that often.

So I'm still doing quests until level 20 in the Draenei starting area. Only that every two levels I have to hearthstone to Shattrath, and teleport to another Alliance city to train my rogue. Exodar, the Draenei city, doesn't have a rogue trainer. And the rogue class quests (I just learned lockpicking) are also in the old cities. I'm keeping my World of Warcraft playing at low activity for the moment, I just don't feel like playing more. But I don't want to play other "old" MMORPGs either. I signed up for the Fileplanet Age of Conan open beta, and pre-ordered that game, just to give it a chance. I don't really have high hopes that this is the game for me, but at least it is new, and I can't judge a game without having played it. I'm a bit nervous about how their release will be, because Age of Conan is made by Funcom, whose previous MMORPG Anarchy Online still holds the record for the worst MMORPG release ever, and I was right in the middle of that one. Here's hoping they learned from their mistakes.
Comments:
My short and dirty view of Funcom is something like this:

Awesome artist, great talent and imagination. Poor discipline to nail key deliverables.

After too many years of playing AO i doubt there will be any big change from this.
 
In fact, i would gladly accept bugs and miss of polish if it is fun and have a potential on the long run.

An empty content and repetitive thing like PotBS will not work. I would say something very similar than Wolfe on funcom.

I hope they will buy themself some reel QA department and they would be more than great.

They have been precursor and a lot of things is from them (and SoE and others) not from Blizzard.

Bizzard is the best for polish and mixing others idea (and they really do this great), not for inventing them (They did not invent orcs and elves :D )
 
I also pre-ordered Age of Conan because of extreme boredom with World of Warcraft. I mostly just run arenas and battlegrounds nowadays and only play about ten hours a week. I still get my money's worth but Blizzard is frustrating me with their lack of information and slow release schedule. I really think working on SC2 and their next MMO has moved too many developers from the expansion.
 
I'll be watching to see what you say about conan. I'm not buying another box till it gets rave reviews. After 3 years of duds i'll let other people feel it out.

I'm kind've in the same boat. I started a new priest to get to end game and at 48 I've fizzled. I log in occassionaly look for a group if no group is available I log off. I was going to cancel my account and my wife got upset because I wouldn't have my account and my healer to help her when she wants a group...LOL.. so I guess I'll just log in when she wants a group till she outlevels me. But the fun factor of the game is just not there. If original launch when everyone was excited and happy was an 8...I'd say it feels like a good solid 3 right now.
 
LOL.. last night I posted thoughts on WoW burn-out .. MMO burn out on my blog. I think I am tired of the MMO formula ..it no longer feels RPG. No magic. LOTRO is fun because it’s new.
I may quit both WoW and LOTRO and get back to some single player RPG.. Oblivion .. Never Winter Nights 2. If I do com back to WoW I wll wait a moth of so after the expansion. Tried of crowded zones .. people all “farming” PvP and instances to get gear so we all look the same!
I go to a instance once or twice and then I am done .. I come to understand I hate the end game.
Guess I am in a deep state of burn-out.
 
"I log in occassionaly look for a group if no group is available I log off. "

I'm leveling a Rogue at the moment, and I haven't bothered doing any instances or group quests. All I really want to do is get to 70 so the game I enjoy can start.

We have about 4 solid months before the expansion starts...after that, people will stop doing anything except leveling alts or working on professions/gathering mats. My main is post-Kara/post-T4/T5 and I'm getting nervous about seeing BT before it's too late.
 
"We have about 4 solid months before the expansion starts..."

and by 'starts' I mean people start preparing for the expansion, not that it will be out in 4 months.

I have little hope that after that, anybody will be doing much end-game raiding. After the expansion actually launches, TK/SSC/BT will be just like BWL. And I'll miss it again...
 
My main is post-Kara/post-T4/T5 and I'm getting nervous about seeing BT before it's too late.


I've had a couple of frustrated friend trying to get me to hurry up and hit 70 thinking it'll fix all my problems.

I pointed out to them that as soon as I hit 70 I have to farm 5 mans and mats for gear to be Kara ready. Then because I'll never have the time to be a tier 1 raider I'll have to be the backup healer and get my stuff slowly. the honest truth is by the time at my pace I get my gear to be ready for kara the expansion will be here and I'll never experience the existing content. And since world PVP, and original AV were the only PVP I ever really liked. I'm pretty much out of the loop on anything. I'm almost to the point if WOTLK doesn't have a /level command to let me skip to 70 I don't think I'll buy it.

If they want to invalidate all the old content thats fine. But they shouldn't force me to grind through it to get to the new relavant content.
 
I was in the AoC tech test a couple of weeks ago and even though I only got up to lv 5 or so, it seemed alot of run. I didn't get in gamespot pvp weekend but have been watching vids and reading about it. They still have some possible balancing to do but it seems to be a fine game for a few months at least. No idea if it will hold up after that but have to wait and see.

so yes, I got the preorder with the Rhino and will be there trying it out. I won't be in the fileplanet beta due to a business trip so Tobold write away, looking forward to your thoughts/opinions.
 
Actually the AoC UK Pre-Order seems to be pretty messed up, not by Funcom, but by Eidos...

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=68519

Socnoc
 
Issues seemed to be solved, preordered today with high hopes...

Socnoc
 
A lot of people I know are dumping Tailoring, and retraining.
Not sure that's what you want to hear now you dinged 375!
 
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