World of Warcraft: Current Year

Caeden said:

I wasn’t quite that bad but from about 05 to 18, WoW was the vast majority of my gaming

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I know the feeling, EQ ate up nearly all of my game time from mid 2004 through mid 2008. I don't think I beat a single video game in all of 2005. The only games I took any real detours to play over those four years were Metroid Prime 2 and WoW Burning Crusade.

This meant I missed out on a ton of stuff from the GBA, DS, and PS2 eras. I gradually caught up, but it caused a domino effect where I've never actually "caught up" on the games I want to play. At this point I'd say I'm up to 2015 or so in terms of being caught up on games. There's a ton after that I still havent gotten to. I blame those four years of hardcore EQ.

Caeden said:

I do have a tendency to get attached. I leveled all my FF2 (4) characters to 99 on snes before I allowed myself to beat it. I don’t know why. It made the final zones a joke. But it took serious perseverance and poop socking.

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I did the same thing last time I played FF4. I was trying to get the ultrarare Adamant Armor (the one thing I've never done in FF4). Took eight hours to get to the final area, game's mad short in retrospect. Then I started grinding for the drop. By 15 hours in, I had everyone at level 99 and still no drops. By 20 hours I just gave up.

Yes, it took more time to grind for that one drop than it did to beat the entire rest of the game, and I didn't even get the drop. That felt like a total waste of time. I did go destroy Zeromus with level 99 characters and it was amazing how easy it was. Which begs the question... what's the point of getting a really OP armor drop when by the time you get it your characters will be max level and OP anyway?

Malkav said:

Some of the WoW playerbase has such an unhealthy relationship with the game it is mind-boggling.

Recently saw a Quaazi vid where he said he was catching up on a lot of games he never played because basically he's played ONLY WoW for the last 15 years. And it"s not the first time I heard something like that from WoW players.

You have a bunch of now early late 20s / early 30s people who started WoW in their teens and basically have been playing only WoW since then. Like, who the fuck does that? These are not gamers, they don't play games, they only play WoW.

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I don't understand how anyone can play WoW that extensively and not run out of things to do. Over the four years I hardcored EQ, we were getting two expansions a year PLUS I was catching up on all the stuff I missed (Luclin, PoP, LoY, LDoN, GoD). I never ran out of things to do, to the point I had a massive checklist (not unlike the achievement system that now exists) to help keep track of what was left. Every play session I'd pick out a few things and get them done. Just a wild amount of content.

In comparison, WoW has long spaces between updates and expansions. It takes WAY less time to level-max a character, plus there are no AAs on top of that.

I just don't understand how WoW has enough content for people to play it for 10+ years as their sole game and not run out of things to do repeatedly. Unless they've got characters for every possible class, maybe every class/spec combination? I guess it's possible then but damn.

Shadowlands doesn't have a physical release? Yikes. I have big-box copies of a bunch of the others on a shelf somewhere.

Does Shadowlands ever go on sale? Not keen on paying $50 for a digital-only version of something so poorly-reviewed.

I'd still like to play through it once, but I never got around to it, and it's seriously like #87 on my to-do list.

Do you get previous expansions for free like you do in some other games, hence I could just wait and order Dragonflight and get SL for free? I'm not in an hurry to play it anyway. Could just play it over the few weeks before DF comes out and segue right to DF.

I'd like to give DF a once-through also. I've always kinda treated the WoW expacs like the latest sequels in a single-player game series. Get them, play them to the end, quit.

yall don't understand... Dracthyr transcend gender, faction and even azeroth as a whole.
Dracthyr are fearless stars burning bright and being them fierce selfs into the upcoming expansion.
Yall are just so jelly.

Play WOTLK if you don't want to be a Dragon Nueroqueer. 50% exp boost right now.

Daidraco said:

You can buy SL's for less than $30, but you may find a Deluxe with 30 days of game time that is roughly around the same price. I personally would say wait until Dragonflight pre-patch comes out. Thats usually when the prepurchase of the next expansion includes the previous expansion. But right now, you'd have to buy them both separately - which even a WoW fanboy will tell you not to do.

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Yeah, I'll get the DF pre-purchase and get SL out of that, then blast through it before DF. Would feel less like a waste of money if I got both of them for the price of one.

Happysmiles said:

EQ didn't trivialize content every patch. Well into POP there were still fungi tunic camps. The loot, money, exp, and challenge always remained. In WoW, why do older content for anything other than transmog? Even within the same expac, why do the Kyrian quests once Zereth was open? Once I got into Zereth, all the dailies in the other zones were useless since the gear was pretty much always worse than Zereth. Why do heroic dungeons or LFR once you can't get any upgrades? I stopped playing once I was out of things to do without a commitment to mythic dungeons or raids.

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That's another thing I wanted to mention in my "how do people get that much content out of WoW" post. When it trivializes all previous expansions with every new one, it significantly limits the amount of content.

When I went back to EQ in 2004 I had like four expansions to catch up on and all of them were relevant.

Fucker said:

It is even worse than that. Every patch is a gear reset. Throw everything away and start over. The story has been trash for a long time, so there's no reason to plug along to see it. There are no interesting things to get from any one patch let alone an entire expansion unless you like mounts or transmogs. There's almost zero social aspect left in the game...not that it matters because the game on some servers is completely dead. Prime time gaming on a weekend in the biggest zone in the game? Just 1 person from my faction there...ME.

Borrowed power has been a PITA for a few expansions, but they've gone more absurd. Regifted power. They are repacking the talents we've had forever and making us earn them again under the guise of new. They've also gotten weird with this expac and hiding travel points behind rep grinds.

None of this is exactly new, and that's Wow's problem. They have no smart or creative employees left, so all they can pinch out are mindless and pointless grinds.

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"Borrowed power" is that like, artifact weapons and such that give you temporary power increases while the current phase of the game is going on?

Cause I hate that shit.

In EQ you can quit for a few years and come back and you still have all your AAs and relevant gear and the game plays the same. In WoW, every time I go back to check out a new expac, everything's wildly different. I don't know how long-time players put up with it.