They’re just trying to be good to us – take that hand!
“Sometimes you just can’t seem to do it right” – that’s what Blizzard-Employes must think each patch day. And very much more so on a pre-expac-patchday. Yes, we’re grateful for the new talents. For the Glyphs. For all kinds new stuff. It’s great. So what’s the problem? Problem is: The game, right now, is so ridiculously easy, it’s not even a joke anymore. But why is this? Is it their fault, or is it ours? I say: Let’s get deeper down the reasoning-highway and find out.
Training is a good thing
I think the pre-expac-patch has two reasons. First: Give the players some time to get used to all the new stuff before leveling starts. Many of us are past and beyond the point of “hitting the level cap”. We’re about to max out our gear, to grind for those last remaining mount or tabard, get that one recipe we’re missing – stuff like that. We’re out of the leveling-game with our main chars for quite some time. Now with all that new stuff hitting us at once it’s hard enough to figure out how those mechanics work at all, but I bet it’d be even harder if we were not only given all those new toys, but a whole new environment to test them, too.
It’d be too many variables, nothing would be left to compare to, nothing could lead to a conclusion like: “Ok, I can now use ability X and probably shouldn’t use ability Y anymore on mob Z in situation A” – because we know Y, Z, A and now can try to make things work with X instead. We can train the new behaviour for four weeks, without any pain about it (because, as it is as of now, wiping is quite difficult to achive). We can experiment, play around, do unusual things.
Go. See. Stuff.
Now the second reason in my opinion is to get players into as much content there is as possible. Do some good to the really, really casual guys.The players who don’t spend a lot of time with the game and have never seen a heroic, because all they got are 3 or 4 blues from questlines. Now for those people the “patch-buff” just feels as overpowering as to us. Just for them it means: “Wow, I can now run heroics! How cool is that?!“
Do some good to stressed raid guilds. I’m not even close of having seen a lot of content, Karazhan, Mag, Gruul are about where I’ve been, nothing more. But now our small guild will be able to give Zul Aman a serious shot, to get to those encounters and to see that cool dungeon. Some of you will, all of a sudden, beable to see Black Temple, or Sunwell Plateau.
It’s our fault, really
The offer and gift is that we can now tackle stuff we couldn’t even think about a week ago. But what we do instead is the usual human behaviour-thingy. We do what we’re used to – we go to the same instances, raids, areas. No, we go lower-level places, because it’s safer to try there – imagine we’d wipe!.
Stop that.
If you’re at T4 content right now take a shot at T5 raids. Or scale down and see how far you can push it. 5-man-Kara? 5-man-ZA? How about a 10-man Gruul? How about a 3-man Zul Gurub, or soloing Molten Core? Blizzard handed us a four-week “all you can eat” voucher here, so let’s bury our teeth in some fresh meat!
A 10 man Gruul sound really fun. Also for the ones that never got to see Ony. This is a great time to get in there and see this once AWESOME raid.
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Farming content, be it old or new, is what this patch really opens up for many players.
A lot of people think it will be like this at 80, but really we are overpowered & playing on existing content that wasn’t originally designed around the new skills & talents we now have access to. Things will change, and it will be good. It will be better.
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I quit raiding hard core earlier this year when my second in as my guilds fell apart. It just was not worth the headache being a guild offers and a raid leader wore me out and as a MT it was hard to find a part time position with another guild. My goal now for the next 3 weeks is to push through and see some content (BT mainly) that I have not seen before.
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It’s all good!
Due to server problems, it really messed up my casual hardcore guild’s two weekly raids, but we finally pulled off half of Thursday’s raid. We had just downed Mother (7/9 BT) the previous week, so most of the content was familiar. Still, in just two hours, we went 8/9 and had a couple Illidan attempts before pumpkin time! We realistically would have been unlikely to see SWP pre-patch nerfs, but for now, it’ll be fun to poke our heads in (yes, I saw it in my previous guild, but current guild has not been there).
We’re also running the many old world 40-mans with 10-15 people, which is pretty cool for guys like me that started playing after BC and never got past Sunken Temple.
Have fun!
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