Are we really going to go through this again?

Francis sits down and opens his browser to the homepage to catch up on the latest news from MMO Champion.

“Oh my God, WoW lost 1.3 million subscribers since last quarter! I knew it, I knew it! I’m bored, Bob’s bored, this dude I hang with in guild is bored, so WoW MUST be dying, it’s all over, this is the death spiral down the toilet bowl, I bet Blizzard won’t ever even put out a new expansion, because WoW is so dead! I knew it, I’ve been saying it since Pandaland released, this game sucks, man.”

Joey wanders into the room, holding a Red Bull. He’s been Francis’ roommate going on four years now, and he’s used to hearing shouting coming from the game room. Joey sees Francis has MMO Champ up on the screen. Again.

“Hey Joey, are you going to go to Blizzcon this year?”

Francis spins his chair around, scraggly facial hair bristling in frustration. “No, the damn tickets were sold out 5 seconds after they went on sale, and I couldnt’ hit refresh fast enough to get in the queue. Totally sucks, man. I so wanted to go and get drunk with the rest of the guild, most of them are going to be there.”

“Whoa dude, the rest of your guild got tickets?”

“Naw, but a bunch of them are going anyway, there’s gonna be a lot of parties and stuff with people that play. All sorts of parties away from the con. I ought to go anyway, man, like, I might be able to meet Anne Stickney and get an autograph!”

Ahem.

Let’s get down to the core fundamentals, here.

“WoW is dead”, and “Blizzcon tickets sell out in 5 seconds” are not necessarily mutually exclusive headlines.

Still.

A reasonable person might want to take a deep breath, and try not to read too much into the subscription figures. Just maybe kinda possibly.

When something like subscription figures are released, you have a fine example of news that can be used by anyone to trot out their own personal opinion and spin some kind of bullshit about the numbers proving whatever they happen to believe in.

Before you get too caught up in the whole thing, here’s what I think we could all stand to do.

Stop, take a nice cleansing breath, and ask yourself this simple question.

“Am I having fun playing WoW?”

If the answer is yes, then congratulations. The numbers don’t mean shit to you. You can go. Toddle off, have fun, see you in game.

If the answer is no, and you want to blame something outside of yourself for the lack of fun, then congratulations are also in order. Now you’ve got some numbers to ‘prove’ that however you feel about the game, there are 1.3 million other people out there who share your feelings, and that’s why they quit.

Oh yeah. World of Warcraft is dead. Stick a fork in it.

And while we’re at it, for those of you going, have fun at Blizzcon, I wish I was able to join you! I’ll be watching from the streaming online video feed, so wear a bear tank shirt for me!

I might be doing something a little different, in preparation for patch 4.3…

Worst thing is, trying to adjust to long cast times and dealing with spells getting interrupted by moving after the insta-destruction of the Warlock. Run and Gun or Extra Big AoE modes should be standard talent choices for every ranged spellcaster, damnit.

I haven’t spoken much about raiding recently.

The reason being, I haven’t been doing it. No, LFR doesn’t count. If it did, I would not simply be a raider, I would be it’s king.

I finally gave up on being part of a regular raid team to cut down on how many evenings I had where I simply had to be sitting at my desk all night. I don’t need to go into that again, you know the deal. Most of the time, my character may be logged in, but I’m not actually at my desk. It could be argued that even when I am sitting there, I’m not really there, but let’s not go there.

Um.

So, I stepped back from being part of a regular raid group or schedule.

Instead, I’ve became one of the ‘backup’ DPS players on the bench for Team Wanda, the progression raid team in Band of Misfits. Nothing can go wrong there, right? Backups never get called up from the bench. Right?

Right?

I expect this will mean I play less in the future. Someday.

In the short term, I’m spending more time playing than ever before, because I feel the need to do everything I can to be geared, prepared and ready to step off the bench at a moments notice.

Yep. That means I’m trying to Valor Cap and get full clears of all three Throne of Thunder LFRs as early into the week as possible.

Good news! At this rate within a few weeks I’ll be about as geared as I can from LFR, and I can back off the push.

And then comes a new patch! Gah! Okay, just kidding. The next patch won’t have raid gear. Whew!

It is nice, though. All kidding aside, I only have one commitment in the game; Being as ready to go as possible on my Warlock, and waiting for the call.

As long as everyone in Wanda is good to go each week, I might never get called up off the bench. Right?

You never know when the lightning might strike. Check my Twitter, check my Texts, am I raiding tonight? Do they need me? Or can I log off and read The Man Who Saved The Union; Ulysses Grant in War and Peace by H. W. Brands?

You just never know.

Case in point.

Last night I’m strolling along, minding my own business, and about 45 minutes prior to regular Team Wanda raid time, I get the whisper. “Super can’t make it, he’s got something really important happening, can you step in for raid tonight? 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM your time.”

Um… sure.

 

Stepping foot for the first time into a fresh run of normal Throne of Thunder felt amazing. To see it somewhere other than LFR. To put into practice the good advice and strategies learned from Fatboss videos and by listening to the Convert to Raid podcast.

And of course the most important bit.

The stress of hoping you’re not the reason the raid wipes by standing in bad.

A two hour normal Throne of Thunder run, and in that time we blasted through the first five bosses, each killed in one attempt. Nice and smooth.

The thing that stood out for me was how calm everyone else was in vent. It was farm content for them at this point, what you have to plow through to get to the good stuff; Flight Team Alpha and nest smashing, maze dancing and blood pool soaking.

Wednesday night was what they had to get through to get to the good stuff.

For me, last night WAS the good stuff. :)

You know what cracked their jaded voices, and sent a surge of enthusiasm through vent?

We were entering the Megaera area, and just past Tortos in the tunnel was a massive gold explanation point meaning a quest was there to be had, a quest called Rocks Fall, People Die.

It was a quest… to kill an NPC in the Megaera trash area, an NPC named Rocky Horror.

That’s right, the ICC weekly random raid quest challenges are back! Genuine enthusiasm was felt at the prospect of killing Rocky Horror.

Chron had a horrible pun… so I’ll repeat it.

He said that while fighting Rocky Horror, the monster fears people, and that fear should wipe away our buff cooldowns so, yes, you guessed it, we could all do the Time Warp again.

Yes, I know. I suffer, so you have to suffer too.

Okay, secretly I think that would have been a great idea. Shh, don’t tell him I said that, it’ll only encourage him.

Looking back on the crazy that was last night, I don’t have a recap so much as a few flashbacks.

Whirl Turtles are either a LOT slower on 10 man normal than in 25 LFR, or they nerfed the shit out of them. In LFR I move my butt as fast as I can, and it seems like I get hit no matter what I do. There I am running like hell, and boom, Whirl Turtle right up the butt. Normal, not so much. You have a chance to move if you are actually trying to, like, move.

There is just too much trash on the bridges. We could stand to have two fewer of the hags on each stretch of bridge. Plus, holy cowpatties the floaty trolls knock you back on normal, stay out of those blue circles, I kid you not. Respect to the trolls, I thought they were just silly in LFR.

Horridon is a lot of fun on normal, as long as you remember to target the mobs that JUMP DOWN and burn them down first. The guys running in through the gates? I swear those scrubs are LFR bait to sucker you into targeting the wrong stuff at the start.

Does Blizzard hate healers this expansion or what? Or does it just seem that way to me?

You can tell what a raid leader fears most by what gets called out on vent. Most of the run was fairly laid back without much in the way of announcements. On Council, Every time that Loa Spirit was up, it was called in vent. No exceptions.

Megaera… ah, Megaera. Green Red Green Red Blue Red Green. Or something. I hear tell you can have fun switching up the order any way you’d like to get different effects, depending on your groups strengths. Just doing it on normal one particular way was fine with me. Cinders on you! Run away, little girl. Run away.

An amazing night, lots of fun, good times with good people.

So, I was called up off the bench, did my job, now I’m back to the minors again, satisfied that whatever else can be said… we never actually wiped.

Better yet, I don’t believe I ever once heard anyone exclaiming “bear! bear!” in that “I’m calling you out for not doing what you’re supposed to be doing without saying what you’re doing wrong” way. Always makes for a good night.

I just got an email from someone wanting me to check a website out.

I get those a lot, people wanting me to let them post content on my blog, post ads, and of course I get spam on the blog.

Ah, spam. Thousands of spam. A day. If we didn’t have a filter, we wouldn’t have comments, I shit you not.

This email was different.

It was successful because he cleared the table and dropped his pitch right there in front of me.

This is what I got, and this is what it does. Check it out.

He gave me his website purpose in one simple sentence, and holy shit, are you for real?

RepCheck auto-magically™ summarizes all the faction items your character has the reputation to purchase.

Wait, what?

Imagine the tears of joy when you discover the mounts and other cool stuff you didn’t know you could purchase!

That’s a BOLD statement. I have a lot of reputations on Bigbearbutt, hard earned and full of tasty items. Surprise me.

I checked it out. It’s true.

You put in your server and name, RepCheck checks your character reputation levels from Vanilla all the way to right now in patch 5.2 up to date, and it will show you every single item in the game your reputation would let you buy.

Better yet, if you play with the filters it’ll show you everything you COULD buy, everything any other profession could buy, all the stuffs for all the expansions.

Holy crap.

There are a lot of expansion out over the last whatever it is, decade, I dunno how long, and I’ve forgotten more than I remember, ye ken.

I had, for example, forgotten there was a vendor for Hydraxian Waterlords. Just as one example.

Or that there were so many Blacksmithing recipes scattered around the factions.

Yeah.

I can see myself using Rep Check a lot, and having it drive my next rep grind. I can see logging onto my Blacksmith and checking to see who has what, and where I can go to get ‘em all… and in one easy place so I can be lazy and let the website do the research for me.

Well done, Namzad. Well done.

Kasmina asked a question in the comments last night;

“I am wondering how long it takes you and your wife to do the daily quests on Isle Of Thunder (along with killing a few rares along the way)? I am trying to figure out if I have enough free time to enjoy playing wow again. I have tried to find other games that didn’t feel so time consuming to accomplish improvements or a feeling of success. I am wondering if the new daily quests are time consuming like the previous daily rep quests were.”

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but in my opinion if you don’t have much time to play every day, and if you don’t like the feeling of falling behind, then this is not going to be the time to come back to World of Warcraft.

You specifically asked about daily quests, but it’s all part of the same thing.

The current patch brought two factions, one that you gain rep with from daily quests (or paper chits of awesomeness you can loot, or by championing them while doing scenarios and dungeons, or by working on your farm doing commisssions, etc) and another faction you can ONLY gain rep with by killing bosses (and until Friendly, trash) in the new Throne of Thunder raid (all versions).

It’s not hard to get to exalted with the questing faction. It’s really not. But you will not be able to advance in the new raid faction unless you actually run the raid, all wings, every week it’s out consistently. And ALL the iLvl 522 Valor gear comes from the raiding faction.

Once you’re Exalted with the questing faction, and most of the consistent players in my guild are Exalted already, you don’t have to ever go back to the Isle of Thunder as far as I can see. You can do whatever you’d like.

They’ve even made it easier for players to decide to cut out early if they want. If you remember Golden Lotus dailies, at the end of the chain they gave you a loot bag. The problem was, the further you advanced in the faction, the more quest hubs you unlocked, and the more quests you had to do to reach the bag.

With the new factions, each stage of the Isle is unlocking more quest hubs… and there is a loot bag. But last night, the first night of the new stage, there were two loot bags. After I finished the first two hubs, they gave me my “go kill this badass dude” finisher quest that rewards a loot bag and other stuffs… and ALSO gave me a breadcrumb quest that led to two more hubs, and at the end of those, ANOTHER finisher quest with another loot bag.

I know, it sounds like I’m saying it’s too much and it’s just enough both at the same time.

It’s the raid faction that is the sticking point.

Your daily quest faction gives you some options for valor gear, but it’s all stuff appropriate for the 5.0/5.1 patch raids. The big reward for reaching Exalted, and it’s a BIG reward, is a triceratops mount.

All iLvl 522 Valor gear comes from the raid faction… and there will be four wings of the Throne of Thunder LFR raid.

Doing all the daily quests on one character as it stands now, with two stages still to unlock on the Isle of Thunder takes me about an hour, maybe an hour and a half when you count in rare runs.

Doing just ONE WING of the new Throne of Thunder LFR takes about two hours.

I’ll be generous. Let’s assume you either are a healer OR a tank, can get a fast queue, or you are friends with one that will queue with you.

One wing still takes an hour and a half. Three hours plus to do two wings, and that’s if you’re not spending time in queue. And there are two more wings yet to be unlocked!

The big problem isn’t the boss fights. I’m finding them to be really fun. I especially love Horridan. I know Cassie hates it, because as melee DPS she has to try to kill adds with bad stuff on the ground while a bazillion spell effects are going off all around her. It’s a melee mess. Me, as a ranged player, I LOVE Horridon, it’s just neat. Every time the raid warning “Double Swipe” goes off I grin, because it means impending dino destruction as Mechatriceratops goes nuts.

It’s the trash. There is just too damn much trash.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the common consensus, you gotta have some trash as a palatte cleanser and to tease you with a taste of game mechanics yet to come.

But what it feels like is Blizzard said, “Lei Shen is a total badass ruler of all of Pandaria and a legendary villain. To impress everyone with how powerful and awesome and all-encompassing was his power, his palace must be massive. It can’t be a shed in the back forty.”

So they built a huge honking palace for Lei Shen.

Then they had a shitload of empty space, and they had to fill it with something.

Bring in the trash!

I’m not seeing a solution to it, either. Reducing it leaves too much white space, nerfing it makes people feel like the whole place should be zergable, and actual boss fights will hurt more by contrast.

If you look at the loot tables, the trash on normal can drop a ton of really nice gear, but I don’t think any of it can drop in LFR, so there isn’t even that monty haul feeling of possible impending lucky lightning. And if there were, everyone would need on it anyway, unless somehow they made the lightning loot work like the personal loot bags.

Whatever the case, there will be four wings of this stuff. On one character, only doing LFR, I expect that to leave you with 6 hours of raiding a week if you want to feel like you’re ‘keeping up’ with your fellow gamers on drop possibilities and raid faction rep development.

Six f’ing hours.

I’m already trying to decide who to cut on my roster. I’m down to only playing two character ever, the Warlock and Hunter. And I’ve been trying to keep them both evenly maxed as much as possible so both are raid viable.

I just don’t see that being possible when another wing opens up. It’s to the point where, with the time I’m willing to play, I have to pick one and only one. And yes, I do play every day, and even I’m saying it’s just too much.

I’m not looking forward to the decision. I like both characters a lot, they’re packed full of fun.

And here is the kicker; they just released the next patch for the PTR. We don’t even have everything in THIS patch released yet, two stages are still locked and two wings are still closed on the Throne of Thunder LFR, and the new patch with tons of new, cool stuff is on the PTR.

To sum up; if you are playing right now and staying up to date, then it’s a great time with tons of stuff to do and new things right around the corner all the time, to the point of being overwhelming trying to do everything.

If you haven’t been playing for months because you felt exhausted by daily quest and faction grinds in 5.0… no, I tell you in all sorrow, please no.

On the other hand… there are so many cute battle pets coming! Did you see? A little pet Barry the dino! He’s sooo cute! And a pet Valkyr! And a Fel Reaver! And more pets from old school raids!

If you want lots to do, and you can distance yourself from feeling like “I should really get my faction rep up so I can buy valor gear”, then there is lots of other fun stuff to do.

Just… fear the faction grinds.