World of Warcraft post #2 – The present and future!

Hello again, another World of Warcraft-related post. It won’t be 3 like I promised, I’ve decided to slam together the present and future into 1 post instead, so let’s get started!

My present commitment with WoW is that I currently play on the realm Doomhammer (EU) with a group of awesome people from the Digital Cowboys community, most of us were in some way involved in the 24 hour WoW marathon that Alex Shaw of the Digital Cowboys that I wrote about a few weeks ago. We are all approximately the same levels on our main characters and we run dungeons together a few times per week. And also play around with some alt. toons aswell to get some variety and to stay around same levels on our mains. Having a great time, I might add.

My current thoughts on WoW and Blizzard however are less happy, with all the microtransaction bullshit (the Japan charity pet not included, that was good in my opinion!), nerfing the raiding content into the ground which creates a very poor standard skill level on players and the utter lazyness from Blizzard when they rehash old content.

I don’t wanna get too ranty with it, but Blizzard are making a lot of decisions that are making me question how much they actually care about their players. Recently they’re just bringing out more and more microtransactions to milk every penny from their current subscribers instead. Like for example charging for some of their fully automated services such as realm transfer, name change and now, being able to group with other players from different realms. Is our entire subscription fee going towards maintenance and as soon as Blizzard “create something new” (aka steal it from some other game) we have to pay extra for it? Blizzard is a business and need to make money, I get that. But I think they’d make more money in the long run by treating their customers better and not think about the “quick buck” all the time. “Don’t be a dick.” – Wil Wheaton. (…I really was trying to not rant, promise.)

As far as the future goes, I’m really looking forward to patch 4.2. From what I’ve seen it’s looking good, a tad grindy in the pre-quests and dailies but whatever. It’s fresh new content (well.. almost, Hello Ragnaros.), I’m guessing microtransactions will continue since people are buying mounts and pets left, right and center but whatever. I really think that realm transfer and faction change etc. (with a long cooldown!) should however be free of charge because sometimes it is necessary to be able to play with your friends if a bunch of your friends quit playing and you have a bunch of other friends on another realm. The systems are 100% automatic and require no other attention from Blizzard then what any other server they look after on regular maintenance, don’t be a dick, give it for free Blizzard.

To end this post on a happier note, I must say, I’m having the most fun in WoW then I’ve had in a very long time, but that’s not because the game is anything amazing. World of Warcraft is a terrible game to play alone, it’s all down to the people. So if you have a group of cool people to play with, it’s 1 of the most fun experiences you’ll have. If not, you’ll be bored to death before level 10. Anyone who wish to start playing with us, give me a message somewhere and we can set things up. We level a lot of alts so there’s always someone starting a fresh character. We’d love to have you.