Thursday, July 1, 2010

Beta is coming

The closed beta has been finally announced and the NDA ban has been lifted from Friends & Family alpha, so a ton of information is now available on the net. Yet again I won't apply for the beta. In the last expansions I was still busy running current content, but now I'm not doing much: some dailies, some alt leveling, raising my fishing skill on some characters, but my gameplay level has decreased. As commented before I'm burned out. If my guild was still raiding I'd be more active. And yes, I know it's a vicious circle: if I'm not there other people will also consider not showing up, but raiding has been scarcer and scarcer (we don't even place sign ups in calendar since we don't even have enough active members). Still the other day we were asked to help our friend guild with an alt run into ICC and I brought Valaak, my enha/resto shaman there, since they needed an offhealer, and managed to kill Festergut (something I already had done with my pally Turnak) and Rotface (first time for me). We also had a pair of attempts at Vampire Council. I really enjoyed being in the fray again and this time without the responsability of leading the raid. I wish I could do more raid runs without heavy responsabilities, either leading or tanking (even tanking isn't very complicated nowadays to be honest), even on known bosses like ICC's first wing it's great to be there and help others to get some gear (or even better, get some ICC gear for me too :D). Heck, I even would like to go back to Ulduar, possibly the best raid zone thanks to its diversity on boss strategies and go past Hodir.
Going back on track: I won't be applying to the beta to avoid being burned with the new expansion. I'm ok with reading about new areas, changes, skills, etc and seeing videos, but I prefer to reserve the real experience for when the expansion hits the streets, just like I did with TBC and WotLK. Having so much alts (already 11 at amx level) means I'll be visiting the same places and doing the same quests again and again and again... so I already have an "alt burn factor" I must consider. Wether the expansion will have enough power to hook me up like TBC and WotLK, only time will tell, but I fear it will be less than WotLK, but that can be due to several reasons: with each expansion you've been around for longer and it's harder to get any interesting surprises on each expansion or patch. Also I think Blizz did several mistakes in the way of delivering content, specially the Trial of the Crusader, the abuse of LFD for badge farming... intentions were good, and necessary, but execution has been somewhat deceiving.
By the way, I will try the new races, that's for sure. I've already tried or have characters (even if they're low level alts) with the existing ones, so I'm looking forward for worgens (specially) and goblins. I'm still wondering which class will fit better each one. Worgens look savage, so feral druids look appropiate for them. I'm not sure about goblins... typically in fantasy realms they're usually cannon fodder in the hands of bigger greenskins, but in the Warcraft world they've been (until now) a neutral race dedicated to commerce (or should I say to gather tons of gold). Warlock may fit well the goblin race, since shaman is not available (so I could create some kind of Warhammer Night Goblin Shaman), but rogues also look good for such a sneaky race.

2 comments:

  1. FYI
    http://www.wow.com/2009/08/21/blizzcon-2009-cataclysm-race-class-combo-matrix-online/3

    Goblin shaman? Its there

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  2. Darn... I was looking at a table (I think in WoWWiki) and I'd swear it wasn't available...
    Now I'd need some hood like the warlock T10 headpiece to be perfect.

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