Okay, so I got frustrated at poor leafshine’s post today. Why? Well, I’m really just not sure.
Honestly, for as much as I like WoW, right now I am absolutely bored out of my mind with the game. It’s not that it’s too easy, but that there isn’t enough content that is catering to people (like me) who enjoy raiding but don’t like the current hard mode raid design. “Lawl they designed hard modes for you” doesn’t hold up as an argument in my case – because my guild can’t clear hardmodes because (as a group) our guild isn’t willing to put in the time & effort required to clear them. At the same time, we can steamroll through the current non-hard mode content & we don’t run Ulduar anymore because not enough people are interested in it.
I’m frustrated because raiding is what I do. It’s what used to make the game fun for me. Ever since I first stepped foot in Molten Core, I became a raider. I hate PvP, I’m bored out of my mind with running the same dungeons I ran in Beta of WotLK just because Blizzard calls them “heroic” and put in the badges I need to buy my tier 9 (and soon tier 10) gear. I’m bored with the dailies for Sons of Hodir, and for the Argent Tournament. I’m bored with questing. I’m bored with leveling. I’m bored with normal-mode raids. I’m frustrated that I can’t do hard-mode raids because the hard-mode raids aren’t interesting or fun for my guild.
I don’t want the hard-mode content to be easier, because that’s not fair to the people more hard-core than me who are currently enjoying the hard modes at their current difficulty. So, I’m stuck being trapped in the middle – where people tell me I’m too hard core because I’m bored – but I’m not hard-core enough to actually enjoy the hardmode instances designed for hard-core people. It’s not just the super hard-core raiders that are bored. It’s the people who can’t bring their guilds to be motivated to wipe a bunch of times on a boss they just killed yesterday just because it’s called “hard mode” the second time around. That’s not progression – it’s wiping on what feels like old content already. The hard mode bosses are harder to kill, but they’re not more intrinsically motivating or fun in any sort of way unless you are in a guild where you really are at the most hard-core (top 5 guilds on your server) sort of environment.
In Burning Crusade & Vanilla WoW, there were enough new and interesting things I could find to do that I was hardly ever bored with the game. However, I think WoW actually killed progression – right now, everything is sort of stagnant. You can get nearly the best gear in the game just by re-running the same exact heroic dungeons that I have been playing in for the last year. That isn’t progression – that is running old content.
Then you ask “what about TOC? They just released that dungeon!”
The answer to that is – ToC takes about maybe an hour for my guild to clear on normal mode, and my guild doesn’t enjoy attempting the hard modes, and would rather just not sign up for raids than attempt hard-modes. We’ve been trying to get a raid together for Yogg+3 for the last month, and any time that our guild leaders put Yogg on the calendar, 5 or 6 people magically find other things to be busy with just so they don’t have to go.
Well, you ask, “why don’t you just quit?”
The answer to that is… because it gets fun again when Blizzard puts in a new tier of raids, and if I let my guild down by not being here for them now during the slump, then I’m giving up my spot in new content when it is released. See, there is always the lure of new content down the road. I’m hoping that ICC will be designed well enough that it will feel like raiding used to feel again. I’m hoping that defeating a boss will feel good because it’s new and interesting – a feeling that I didn’t get from ToC’s 25-man raid.
I also really enjoy the WOW community. I can’t leave you guys just because I’m bored with the game. I enjoy writing this blog. I enjoy posting on the forums, and I’ve even started to enjoy posting on twitter (as @restokin). I will actually sit at the computer with my web browser open and the game closed. I can’t bring myself to log into the game, but I’m perfectly happy to write about the game, search websites for info about new content, analyze possible new content, and work to shape new content to be fun again.
Why is it my fault that the game doesn’t cater to me right now? I really just want the next patch to come out soon so that I’ll have something worthwhile in game to do for another few short months until I run out of new & exciting things to do there, too.
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oooh, and i forgot to mention: most of the people who say “the majority of WoW players…” usually are basing it off their own guild polls or server polls. from what i gather, several servers are behind progression as far as hardmodes go, and several others are full clearing ToGC25 without issues… it all depends on where you look.
my server, twisting nether, is behind the curve as a whole. we have 3 guilds server-wide (two horde and one alliance) that clear ToGC25 and only one of those guilds makes the chest run with more than 25 attempts remaining.
– Poras
this is why i decided to ‘take a break’ from wow for a month or so. it took me a lot o thinkin’ to do so. i felt like i was abandoning guildies or friends, and i told them all why i was taking a break for a while and i can only hope they’ll remember me when i get back into it.
it just got flat and boring. it didn’t feel like i was advancing my toon in any way. i tried leveling an alt, but it didn’t cut it.
i plan to go back for sure, but a little break was needed.
I hear you Lissana. Glad to be in a guild with you. We all recognize raiding ATM sucks. I, as you, want to keep progressing, keep having new challenges. We own 25 man normal stuff. But cannot get 10 of our best raiders for heroics, that is disappointing.
For the moment we wait for new content, because we like our guildies and know in the future we will progress in 25 man content.
I barely log on these days myself, mainly due to boredom. I feel bad for the guild, but I’m having fun not playing as much. I still do sign up for raids, but I log in maybe at most 4 times a week.
Hello there,
Not to sound totally depressed and everything but doesn’t the current state of World of Warcraft and its social mechanics resemble our current society?
Ofcourse the real life is much more complicated and diverse but for me it comes down to the same – we are all looking for a goal in our lives – let it be family/friends or carreers. I have however never heard anyone find… a real answer(why the we are keeping ourselves busy) and everyone just keeps going on… doing what life offers us next(new content) in the hope we somehow…. get closer to the truth. It does really sound depressive but i assure you it is not. I believe there will never be a game or real life activity that will truly satisfy our needs. In the end the fun and satisfaction only derrives from the people which you share it with(guildies).
So for me, as i often have the same doubts/issues you experience, it only matters that the people i play with are going to keep playing with me. Sometimes i meet new people(guildies) but i tend to fall back on my oldest gaming buddies again and again.
I guess i am trying to tell you to find out who the people are who you enjoy playing with and set some sort of goal together so you can keep having fun together. Even if some of them are not able to meet up to your standards of skill/availability there is always a way
– i say this from personal experience! 
I’ll reply in a full post tomorrow, but I think you massively, massively misrepresented what I was actually saying in that first paragraph. Apparently I didn’t get my point across very well, if that’s what you think I was saying.
And, uh, I’m a he. I just play Leafy in a game.
I agree with you totally. I recently quit wow because
1) It was beginning to take up too much of my time and
2) The fights were getting old way too quick.
It’s hard to stay excited about hard modes when they’re technically the exact same fight you just did, tuned slightly differently. It’s not like it’s a new boss or a new tier of content like BWL or old school Naxx was. It’s a lot harder to stay motivated about it. I hope you’re able to find more things in game to be excited about, or are able to find a different avenue for enjoyment!
This was really well said Lissanna. Hard modes are, in essence, the same boss but with much less room for error. Oh wait, in Lord J you have to DPS something you don’t have to in normal.
If your guild goes in to try 25 normal mode and it’s some kind of challenge that first week. Well, good luck trying to make them come back a couple months in when they are bored and the whole raiding game is in a slump (waiting for new content) and telling them, ok, this time it’s gonna be harder and we’ll wipe a bunch. Want to stick around?
You actually need your raiders to be extremely competitive (driven by ranks) or loot hungry (driven by 258 gear). I don’t think this is most guilds.
And on Barthilas there are a LOT of guilds in your situation. I see at least one recruitment msg in Trade each day that reads like this:
WeRock, 5/5 ToC25, 5/5 ToGC10 LF raiders to fill roster
Posted a response to Leafshine, you, and Fluid Druid on my Blog: http://thinkzalot.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/11/wow-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly.html
I’m very, very bored. And I do hardmodes, I do PvP, I have 3 80′s, I level, I quest, I do dailies.
I AM BORED OUT OF MY SKULL.
And yet I really hope they don’t release ICC until I’m back from my winter break…
I think my next post is going to be about why raid instances actually need trash mobs, even if we think we don’t like trash. That’s what ToC is really missing & why we clear it too fast.
I think there’s definitely something to be said for the “rhythm” of instances, the switch of pace between trash and bosses.
Personally, I think the ToC probably started out as a great idea when it was on the drawing board, but I feel that it has really failed to deliver for a select group of raiders.
Personally, I think defining raiders as just casual and hardcore does not provide enough categories. Most of the time when I see people referring to casual and hardcore they are referring to the amount of time that people are playing each week. Which in the BC raiding is good enough to classify raiders, but with the advent of hard modes in WotLK that is no longer enough. We now need a different classification.
Site seers — Raiders who want to see all of the raid content. Hard modes bore you because you’ve been there done that.
Challengers — Raiders that want to be challenged. These are the people that hard modes and achievements were really designed for.
Elitists — My ePeen is biggest in the universe! Hardcore only!
Now we have five different categories of raiders.
Casual Site Seers — These guys spend 1-2 nights a week progressing through content and have either just finished ToC or are about to.
Hardcore Site Seers — They’ve finished ToC for a month or two and are bored out of their mind, but still have no desire for hard modes. ToC has probably destroyed more then a few of these guilds.
Casual Challengers — They’ve finished quite a few hard modes in Ulduar and possibly even a few of the fights in ToGC.
Hard Core Challengers — Ulduar hard modes, check. ToGC, if not complete then we getting there.
Elitists — Yogg + 0, check. A Tribute to Insanity, check. PTR raids, check.
I can see why you become bored with the game – you’ve been playing since it came out.
I found myself in the same situation with RuneScape, an MMO I used to play since 2002 up until last year. RS doesn’t have raids or instanced dungeons like WoW does, but there was enough grinding content for each of the 24 skills, and always a community of people trying to improve them in the same way. Even lengthy story-line-esque quests, minigames and PvP content. In the later years of RS they’ve added more and more bosses, better drops, stronger equipment… but I was still bored. Eventually I migrated to WoW and rediscovered a boredom-cure.
I find myself doing this with every game I purchase for my console systems. You just eventually get bored with the content and/or delivery of said content and get immersed in another game.
Of course with WoW, I find myself learning new things about the game every day, and how to improve my class/role techniques. Just the other day, as a tankadin, I just realized I had an ability called Divine Sacrifice, and that I could have potentially saved many wipes using it. Learn something new every day.
You could always try using different classes with different specs and other things. I know that you like to heal a lot with your restokin builds, but have you ever tried tanking? Paladin, warrior, DK(bleh)? Or maybe you could try for personal achievements like I tried when I was leveling. Soloing each instance alone, or soloing/duoing vanilla raids. You could even try to gain as many of the in-game achievements as possible.
Again, I’m just throwing some suggestions out there.
Maybe you could even run some instances with me from time to time. Or you could teach me how to heal! I’m a noob at healing.
My solution has always been simple although apparently that won’t really help you.
I divide my time between doing things in big blocks: one month I might just do professions/money, another I might be gathering achievements, some month I’m working on mounts, …
And then sometimes I tank for a month, DPS for a month, …
Now that you can gear up in less than a week for normal mode content you can easily switch whenever you feel like it – and get somebody else in the guild to switch roles with you.
The cyclical nature of WoW with content patches caters to this playstyle perfectly.
Tanking is fun again, even the heroic 5-mans, for me now that I haven’t gotten hit in the face for a few months…
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[...] well WoW is targeted at its core audience right now, and Lissanna replied with a post saying “No, WoW is boring right now.” I actually agree with both of them, because they’re not really talking about the same [...]