This past week, my family experienced a tragedy. Specifics will be left unsaid because, frankly, it still hurts like hell, and it will for a long time. However, I will say this... life is fragile and short. If it can be helped, don't let a day pass without letting your loved ones know that you love them. Stop procrastinating. Because...well...just because.
Ok, now, indulge me in my avoidant coping behaviors as I write about some gaming stuff!
At BlizzCon, they announced the new expansion pack for WoW and gave us the cinematic trailer for it....and it was amazing!! Now, aside from a couple of random blood elves I've definitely been 'for the Alliance' all the way...but, c'mon...you can't see the trailer and not fangirl over Sylvanas in banshee form, not at least a little bit! If you haven't seen it yet, check it out!
It looks like Blizzard is shifting the focus of gameplay back to the faction vs. faction rather than both sides fighting the Legion.../shrug meh, okay. Sure, I suppose it will be a decent change of storyline...I'm hoping that means that they'll wrap up everything in the Legion expansion first, though. I'm currently crawling my way through Argus, confused, but curious to see where the story goes. [Not really a huge fan of Argus, tbh. Haven't played much of it since that patch came out.]
Another big announcement pertained to the development of Blizzard-operated Vanilla servers! Now, I'm one of those who played 'back in the day'...my first toons were during the original, vanilla days...the fabled days of hardship where quest tracking was an add on, you didn't get mounts until level 40, talent trees were complicated, and leveling a toon to max cap was truly an accomplishment! I can easily see where people are enchanted by the idea of revisiting the good ole days of WoW...before all of the expansion packs and simplifying of game play...but there's one particular feature that I've noticed that players are split on and quite unabashedly vocal about...
LFR/LFG [stands for 'looking for raid' or 'looking for group'] is a tool that came out in one of the expansions that allows players that are looking for groups to run dungeons/raids to be quickly grouped together...thus, allowing you to get to the gameplay fairly quickly! Now, before the implementation of this tool, it could be quite a chore to get a group together. Typically, you would have to travel to one of the major cities [larger city, larger population, more potential players to join your group]. Now, this would take you away from whatever questing or solo grinding you were working on...meaning, while you're waiting to find a group, you can't earn xp and you can't work on leveling. [Definitely a drawback, in my opinion]
Now, unless you had a guild that was 'good' about running dungeons and such...most players were left to 'spam chat channels' to try and find players for the group. This consisted of 'LFM DM' or 'LF Tank, SM'...essentially, you'd be left to constantly type your 'advertisemnent' into the chat channels, over and over again, until you ended up getting enough people to notice and join your group. I found that venture to be painfully time consuming! It wasn't uncommon for it to take anywhere from 30-45 minutes, sometimes over an hour, for a group to come together. And! After you finally managed to get a group assembled, there was no guarantee that all of the group members would stick around to make sure the dungeon was completed! Quite often, members would bail and that left you to start the whole cycle all over again.
My fiancé posted a video about this on YouTube, yesterday, and the amount of crap that he’s gotten is a bit mind boggling. Anti-LFR players are vocal almost to the point of being rabid about their ‘if you use LFR, you’re a cissy noob that needs to stop playing’ mindset. It’s annoying.
I mean, I’ll concede to point that it can’t be ‘100% vanilla’ if LFR is involved...that’s true! But is a tool that streamlined the gaming process and gave you more time to *gasp* play the game, the actual, literal ‘worst thing that ever happened’ to WoW?!?
/shrug. Maybe it is. Maybe it is and I just don’t get it...but I seriously doubt it. I mean, did they not play during Warlords? Garrisons. Hello?? I, personally love the LFR tool! I’m not terribly social, and that carries over to gaming...so if I was ever in a guild, it was probably because I had real world friends in it, and I’m there for the guild perks. Because of that, I didn’t do dungeons or raids. I just didn’t! I didn’t want to waste the time I could use grinding experience standing around looking for a group. Plus! As someone with social anxiety, I didn’t want to risk ‘messing up’ and causing my group to fail [I actually still struggle with this, but not to the same extent] LFR kind of takes that social anxiety edge away, in regards to finding a group. I still get crap, sometimes, because I play a hunter and most other classes kind of hate us...but now, the game puts me in a premade group of players who all want to run the same dungeon, and I don’t have to worry about being ‘picked’ to play!
Also! As a working adult, parent, and family oriented person, I just don’t have hours and hours to waste sitting at my computer! Most nights, I don’t even log into WoW...but when I do, it’s usually during that magical little pocket of time after dinner and household tasks are done and before bedtime...I’m sure at least some of you know what I’m talking about! So, no! I literally do not have 45 minutes or an hour to wait for a group to form! One person commented that only ‘old people’ are so pressed for time...well, maybe! But most of us that played during vanilla (I was in college back then!) now have families, jobs, and many obligations that we simply didn’t have back then! Is that our ‘fault’? No, I don’t think so...rather, I think it’s pretty cool that despite the years passing and our lives evolving, we still find ourselves able and wanting to remain in the gaming community! WoW is often a huge part of who we feel that we are, and I truly appreciate being able to experience most aspects of the game, even though I can no longer spend countless hours playing. (Which wasn’t a smart thing to do, even back then...trust me!)
Anyway. When it comes down to it, if someone wants to utilize a brilliant, convenient tool to play content in the most efficient way available, shut your mouths about it and let them use it. If not, stand around and yell at other players to join your cause...either way, aren’t we all just trying to play and enjoy the same game? There’s no need to be assholes about it ^_^
Very well written blog!!! <3
ReplyDeleteThank you!! ^_^
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