Tobold's Blog
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
 
Drifting

If I observe my own gaming habits, I must say that I tend to alternate between two distinct phases: One phase where I'm highly attached to a single game and play it nearly exclusively, and another phase, in which nothing really excites me and I drift from one game to the next. Obviously the first phase is more fun for me, but for the blog that phase has a drawback: I write about what I play, and if I play only one game for several months, there will be mostly posts about that one game for months. Right now that game is World of Warcraft, so my apologies for swamping you with WoW posts, and not writing much about other games.

On the internet, several months is a long time, and people start believing that I'm writing a World of Warcraft blog. I do not. I fully expect to become bored of World of Warcraft long before the third expansion will be released. I tend to blame Blizzard for that, but objectively speaking the problem is simply my speed of consuming content being higher than Blizzard's speed of creating it. I might wish Blizzard would release an expansion every year (and so, incidentally, does Blizzard, or at least their financial managers), but apparently that isn't possible.

So in an unknown number of months, I'll be back into a drifting phase, looking at various games. I might check out how Warhammer Online developed with their "added" (that is cut and then put back in) 4 new character classes and the Land of the Dead. I might have a look at free-to-play games like Atlantica Online or Runes of Magic. I might check out Chronicles of Spellborn or even Darkfall, although it's not likely that I'll stick to those games. Or I might try out any other MMO released in 2009. At some point I'll stop drifting again because I found a game that holds my attention for a longer timespan. And chances are that somewhere in 2010 the third WoW expansion comes out, and knowing myself I'll get hooked on that one again.

As you can read in any funds prospectus, past performance is no guarantee of future results. The same is true for this blog. I am under no obligation to either cover the same game for years, nor am I obliged to review every game. The deal is that I play what I want, I write what I think about it, and I offer you those thoughts for free. It's the "free" part which makes this a good deal for you. :) I am aware that my "phase changes" result in a change of the content of this blog, and I apologize for that. But that isn't going to change. You can just drift in and out of my blog depending on whether I cover a game that interests you, just like I drift in and out of games.
Comments:
You don't have to apologize for posting what you like. It is your blog and you should definitely do as you please for your own satisfaction.
 
I'm doing the exact same thing.

Played TBC expansion exlusively for a few months. Got tired of it and went through a big list of games I missed. Quite a few fun games but nothing that could keep me interested for more then a few weeks.

Now I'm again playing the Wotlk expansion exclusively. Only a matter of time before I get tired of it and start playing through the list of games I missed.

When I'm playing WoW however, there's no space for any other games.
 
I wonder if WOW expansions will become the equivalent of a new series of the Sopranos (insert your own preferred TV programme here). i.e. something that makes a big impact when it comes out and is great for a few months, then you have to wait a while for the next fix. Running through the content again (a.k.a re-runs) isn't quite the same as new content, so you look for something else to do in-between.
 
Do you get a lot of idiots complaining about what you're posting about Tobold?

I find that very strange, considering it's free.

If I stopped being interested in Wow I might visit less frequently, but I wouldn't try to get anyone to change their topics according to my preferences. Sheesh...
 
So strange, I was just thinking this blog has been WoW-heavy of late, and here today is this post. Odd.

I would not say play other games just to write about them, but what about mixing in a more general MMO post between WoW enchant prices and 'coming soon' spec posts? I think enough 'news' type stuff is happening in the MMO space now that you could throw out an opinion or two, right?
 
speaking of expansions every two years, hopefulyl tobold doesn't run a bit low on his predictions of the future WoW expansions Swimming (Jewish holy war) and dreaming (Zoroastrian holy war, assuming these types actually exist.), predicting 10 more levels, more crafting, etc.
 
It's hard not to write about wow right now, especially with all the controversy over pvp changes and the expectation of new raid content. Lots to talk about!
 
Strange that I was thinking about the same thing today (drifting from game to game) and then you write a post about that very thing. Inspired me to write a post in my own blog (click my name, link at bottom =P). Also funny that even though I haven't played WoW seriously in well over two years, I still read much of what you write about WoW. I guess because it's still fun to keep up even if I'm not playing. Is that weird?
 
I wouldn't worry about it, Tobold. You should just write about what you want... people enjoying reading what you have to say regardless of what it is! A blog is a 'web log' and thus, by definition, stuff about your life and what you want to say. Your not a WoW magazine so don't stress it!
 
I'm just like Carra a few posts up... played TBC for a year, then went away to play all the games I missed. Now playing WOTLK for a year (or slightly less), then plan to drift off to other games. Most likely it will be Guild Wars I drift back to again, with its slow dribble of new PVE content being added in during the interminable wait for Guild Wars 2. With any luck GW2 will come out before the next WoW expansion and prove itself a worthy challenger, though without a single screenshot or other evidence of an alpha release, I have my doubts. But wherever I go I will still be reading Tobold every few days, just to see what I'm missing elsewhere.

I wonder how many more expansions WoW has left in it. Blizzard has its work cut out lore-wise to carve out new territories to explore. Who will be the "signature" killable mob of the next expansion like Illidan in TBC and Arthas now... Sargeras? Deathwing? I don't see Blizzard building any new lore/mystique around either of them like they did for Arthas, and I'm not convinced the Great Sea and Emerald Dream make for enough new acreage to explore.
 
Great sea definitely has enough stuff for an expansion. There's that troll island in the demo that gets overrun, Sea giants, the Naga (big villains here), all sorts of sea creatures, etc. Keep in mind that a lot of the stuff in Northrend and Outland didn't exist in warcraft 3 (most of the WoW classic stuff didn't either), and an ocean supplies an enormous amount of possible creatures and environments for players to explore.

(Time for some shameless self-promotion: Great Sea ideas. It was written before Wrath of the Lich King was announced, so there's a lot of stuff in there that would not be included in a new great sea expansion.)

Emerald dream does seem a bit iffy, though, at least in terms of the time it will take, since the emerald dream would have to be started pretty much from scratch. It would also seem iffy to kill of the burning legion, since blizzard would probably want to keep the franchise going in future games, and without the burning Legion it would be hard ot come up with a good, difficult villain that could measure up.
 
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