I figured i’d give it a shot, especially cause my guild was so enthusiastic about the new patch (most of them somehow really enjoy retail WoW).
As always with modern WoW, the art is absolutely gorgeous, the sound effects are so high quality, and the music is super atmospheric.
Those teams are blowing it out of the park everytime, and inspire me so much.
Nazjatar feels really cool to be in, and i’ve yet to explore the whole place, but i’m looking forward to get to do it and see how the story unfolds!
However…gameplay wise , i still really don’t enjoy WoW anymore.
It’s just mind numbing to do quests to go from A to B to do the thing or kill stuff, without having any meaning behind it other than collecting currencies so i can do something cool later on for just a moment.
On top of that, there aren’t nearly enough challenging encounters happening that would let me know that i’m a player here in this game that pushes back on my ability to progress through it.
Instead i feel like a tourist that’s just on a very easy ride, getting to see all the new stuff without any real strategy needed to approach this new land. Just follow the signs, that’s pretty much it.
And even if i do have to group up for something, i’ll probably never see those people again, which makes them feel like tools to do the job with. Instead, for me to care and have a good experience, i’d need them to feel like players who matter in this World of Warcraft, that have their own reputations and social significance in the world and community.
Also, i wanna have a good experience when i’m playing the game, not sometime after i went through boring, anti social chores in that “game” and time gating, all for having 1 interesting moment at the point where i finally got through all the unpleasant obstacles, and receive a cool item or something for “pushing through” (in a game? am i not supposed to have fun all the way…?)
That type of “reward” in itself is just completely not worth my time anymore, cause i’m not having fun chasing some item that doesn’t mean anything to me, and very clearly shows to be a carrot on a stick. I’m not even made to believe it’s got any real worth to it, because in order for it to have real worth, it would need other players to confirm that things have real worth in the hands of MY character.
Instead, my items are much more interesting than my character, because i’m just Druid #1235235 named “noonereadsthisbecausetheywouldntbeabletoremember” from the realm <again,noonereadsthis> , but if i have a rare item..that item stands out, for a couple seconds until it becomes old, because it’s the only thing that matters, and no item is interesting enough to really make you think “wow, that was a cool experience” and make you remember this experience in any way. There’s no story to it, nothing. No good times, bad times, just something popped up and it looked cool. Very underwhelming and insignificant.
The player that has this item has to matter so much more overall, and have the ability to make an item cool. But they can’t have that ability without having a proper realm reputation (which gets destroyed by CRZ/sharding).
The item itself got no significance, not to me, or anyone else for more than a moment.
If i get a cool item/mount, people envy the mount. Not my character.
I don’t matter, i’m just one player in a massive pool of players constantly interchanging into the world through sharding/CRZ.
If anything, my item matters more than me, and that’s just wrong in an MMORPG like WoW. I need to feel like my character matters, and it’s name can leave a lasting mark, and others should also feel the same way about their characters, and their actions they take with it in the World.
Regarding my experience specifically so far in 8.2 again: a real lowpoint was when i was in a cave for 30 mins trying to finish a quest, only to find out it was bugged and nothing i did to try fix it helped.
The only thing that saved that experience was a gnome who also was stuck, and he showed me around to try to at least finish one part of the quest. That was cool and pretty funny, too.
Changed my opinions on gnomes slightly, which was unexpected…![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")
The simple fact of having the quest bugged left me stuck there long enough to seek help from other players and start interacting with them. It also gave us time to talk and figure this stuff out together.
But normally, none of the quests ever are requiring that i’d personally have to start interacting with other players like i had to with the bugged quest, because they are done quickly and present no challenge i can’t overcome with 1or more random invites from the group finder (and the people i inv are gone the moment the quest is done, probably without having said 1 simple hello because it’s not worth it).
The encounter i had with the gnome was so much more interesting and enjoyable than anything i could ever loot. But i probably will never see him again (CRZ/sharding), and i’ll just go on randomly finding very quiet people who will just do that 1 quest with me cause it’s more efficient to do it together, and then drop off again never to be seen because the deed is done, and that’s all that was needed to go on and grind further.
If they will need someone again for a quest, they can find any of the thousand players ready from group finder to join them at their convenience.
They don’t need me, i don’t need them. Efficiency clearly is the priority here, not the players who are, with this efficiency priority, only good for making things even more efficient in some cases.
It’s so anti social, and because it is, it feels really bad. For an MMORPG i’d really expect this aspect to matter a lot more, but it doesn’t.
It’s such a shame the game doesn’t foster bonding with your realm community anymore… it would improve the experience so much, and make any grind fun because you do it together with all kinds of other people, and the reputation you gathered feels so much more meaningful and worthwhile than some mount or whatever. Yes, even a sparkly underwater Unicorn mount.
But that’s really it (for now). Aside from greatly enjoying the art and music, i’m only gonna do the raid with my guild when it comes out.
Other than that i’ve got no reason to log in personally, and in fact feel terrible just thinking about doing any grinding, which is what this whole patch seems to be about in terms of gameplay.