WoW losing its wow.

My cell phone was abuzz when the recent WoW pre-expansion patch came out last week. I was given a list of new sick and wrong things that characters could do. I also listened to the wails of my roommate trying to find 7 gigs of stuff to delete off of his hard drive so he could get the patch to install on the archeological relic of a computer that he uses.

Hunters can train elite mobs that were untamable before and finally got their 5 slots to keep pets in the stable that they had been begging for for years. The pets still shrink down to their old punyness but some, for the now, keep some of the effects from the parent object that they came from. Some dinosaurs from Ungoro Crater still shake the earth (and thus your screen) when you train them. Lowby pets autotrain to level 65 instead of being largely untrainable and unlevelable pieces of suck. Gorillas, recently a gimp pet with low armor, are pretty much the power pet now with the new pet training system and their aoe stomp. Hunters actually have tools to help keep their pets in control of aggro after the third shot.

A Retlol pally can three shot battle Shaman. Profanity abounds. Pally's have always been knocking at the door of being a class that can do insane damage and the door appears to be open finally. New crafting is in for runic inscription.

I gave up on WoW a few months ago even with the new expansion in the works. I didn't just stop playing. I deleted a good 3.5 years of characters. Even the level one place holders. The wow of WoW just wasn't wowwing me any more and I don't see it getting any better without a major shift in what the game does.

Sure a new expansion is coming out. I've seen that before. It goes like this:

New gear that makes the gear that you farmed, crafted, hustled and swindled for obsolete.
New money and time sinks to make you think there is still a game going on.
New powers that top off the incessant need for uberness that runs their marketing position.

You still get the joy of running about in different areas and killing new stuff that will become the same old stuff soon enough and percipitate a new expansion soon enough. With the new expansion coming out in November the groans of "this sucks" and "my class got boned" will resume in December.

Surely like City of Heroes has nothing in the end content besides beating up more loiterers and chasing after badges, WoW really has nothing but more Alterac Valley and more programmed encounters that take bolt on mods to run effectively. And run them for what? More gold and gear that will top out eventually to everyone and drive the need for a third expansion coming out in two years to start the cycle again.

Oh and in a vain attempt to make the old world areas still relevant somehow when people are now 5 manning and in some cases soloing Kara, they have badges now too. That's a sure sign it is time to keep moving and not to look back. Badges are the ultimate time sink for time sink's sake.

I am glad that I ditched WoW a couple of months ago and I plan to keep moving down the road and waiting for something that isn't heavily steeped in the MUD paradigm and worth my time as something new and exciting to waste my scores of hours and fifteen bucks a month on.

jof