I also enjoyed my original playthrough, but that was before Cataclysm. It is nearly impossible to repeat that now thanks to the way the game has been redesigned for lower level characters. Blizzard doesn't want people to play at any level other than the daily grind level (85) because grinders pay them to grind.

It's just a game where doing anything "wrong" will get you trolled off the server (as I found out, I've only been a player of WoW for about 1 year).

You can still enjoy questing you know that right? Turn off xp gains if you want to. I enjoyed leveling a lot more in Cata than Wrath.

Just BC and Wrath content is a snore fest.

No, BC and Wrath content is painful to level through, which is definitely why you want the XP boost of a leveling guild.

Are you not getting that the end game content is not what everyone wants to play right away?

Are you not getting that Blizzard has intentionally designed lower level content to be quickly abandoned in favor of shoe-horning all players into grinding mode?

I loved questing, but since Cataclysm was released the quests have become dull, fast-paced, streamlined, and unimaginative. They want all players at level cap so that they will be grinding.

Wait, wait. Did you ever play pre-Cata old world?

THAT was torture to play through.

It wasn't so bad. It was nice to be able to do all the quests and actually use the gear for more than 1 or 2 days.

It was also nice to be able to actually explore and find quests in out of the way places. Now you have 2-3 quest hubs in each region and they send you to the next one in sequential order. All of the magic has been drained out of the process in order to streamline you to level 85.

Massive Grinding Time Sink. It's definitely not worth it, but it's easy to get svcked in.


I'm waiting for Guild Wars 2 before I get back in MMO's.

Been playing since vanilla. Had four lv60 characters in vanilla, five or six lv70 characters in BC, got most of them to 80 in Wrath.... got a couple to 85, and started getting the others up in Cata, but I got distracted by the two new characters that I leveled up by questing through the updated "old world". Seeing all the new questlines was fun. (Almost all of that leveling was outside dungeons or battlegrounds. I think I did under a dozen dungeon runs in BC, and less than 20 in Wrath. Total. And I've done a grand total of about 4-5 raids - all pickup-groups for the "boxed" raids in the first round of Wrath.... the first Wintergrasp boss, and Sartharion 0D.)




Then, like the other poster, I've apparently spent an awful lot of time not playing WoW. :shrug:

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I guess what I'm basically saying is.... sure, it's fine if you evolve to the point of "grind character to level cap; study class guides; keybind everything for Max Efficiency!? Raid, raid, raid..."

But to suggest to a new player, unfamiliar with MMOs, to immediately adopt that playstyle as "the right way"? That seems wrong. Just because you think that's "the right way" to play, doesn't mean everyone else will.

Well yes the magic and wonder of exploration and discovery has been removed from the game but it has been replaced with a number of small story-lines for each zone and a few cut-scenes and such which I guess are nice.

I do value exploration and discovery more but I also kinda like the new stuff, something good has been removed for something that is quite okay too. It′s of course a bummer when you remember how awesome it was a few years back but by the point they started streamlining everything I myself had been playing for a long time and had already seen most everything so I suppose I may be extra lenient on the changes since the sense of exploration and discovery was already gone for me.

I suppose you have to look at WoW as more of an action game like God of War now than as an RPG with exploration such as TES. The new formula is worse than the old one but it doesn't svck entirely.

WoW could be played for longer back in vanilla without getting old but as it is now it becomes old the moment you've finished all of the questing zones. So it's okay for a while even if it's not a long while. I've never been one to play alliance but the quest-stories and the in-game-scenes actually drive me to finish up doing what few horde quests I have left and then switching to Alliance for a while to do the zones from their perspective.

WoW = Waste of Wonga

15 bucks a month is nothing if you purchase no other games.

This. I played the trial and I quite enjoyed the game's lore and many of the quests had nice stories to them. Going into that game with a completionist attitude will all but guarantee you'll fall victim to the addiction. Just play it and enjoy it, preferably with friends.

Sounds fun.

Yes, saving money by not purchasing new games is fun.

Your paying $180 a year. That's 3 games. I need variety, I can't survive on one type of game alone