Originally posted at http://winterbearer.blogspot.com/2009/04/what-do-you-remember-of-burning-crusade.html
Achievements are by far the best aspect of the game, and kept me from
quitting WoW. And perhaps I should have quit. Damn you, inane goals
everywhere and the mania they induce.
What I remember of The
Burning Crusade was that by fall, 2008, when my interest in the game
was diminishing, the ethereal spring and summer promise of a Wrath
expansion pack was not enough to be encouraging. Wrath, even unnamed at
the time, was long talked-about and a never-ending wait. But it seemed
only to promise more of the same. I was tired of my toons, having only
a fledgling alt, and I wanted to dump the main hunter or quit. I was
bored to the point of giving away my hunter and focusing on a priest
healer instead.
Several things were wrong at the time:
- Grinding
- My hunter—perhaps the most common first main—had done everything I
could think of and everything I could get to: mount grinds, rep grinds,
titles, etc. Fast flyer training cost had driven me to repeating
dailies to point of mind-numbing repetition. I even paid for my son's
paladin's fast flyer training. After giving away the hunter, the priest
faced the same challenge.
- Prejudice - The only unexplored
frontier for me was raiding and arenas, but Hunters in 2.2, 2.3, etc
were at a stage where they were of little utility in raids and I was
too slow to react in arenas well. In raids, hunters could not hope to
match the ranged output of a mage or a warlock. Additionally there were
so many bad ones that getting any guild to take you seriously was
impossible. So T5+ content was largely out of reach. And Sunwell was a
legend only dreamt of. My hunter was doomed, but my priest had promise.
I only needed to find a guild.
- Play style - With only a few
Horde raiding guilds on the server, I could not find one that matched
my play style and schedule. While committed, I was not hardcore and
could not see getting bawled out over vent for the occasional mistakes
and, conversely, I was too old to be interested in the boyish guyfests
of a too-casual guild. My schedule, more often than not, left me
tooling around outside the instance on standby—in three months I
acquired only 2 pieces from anywhere in t5, t6 raids. While Karazhan
became a habit, since we could muster the 10 needed, the regularity of
finding the 25 required to do Mag's or Gruul's often enough to get all
the possible gear never happened either. Both toons fiddled around for
months limited in what gear could be found.
- Professions
& Auctioning - The tools in these areas were crude. Professions
involved a lot of hawking and first-hand interaction with other
players. This was not my favorite thing to do and my profession of
tailoring on my hunter was just idiotic since the BOP items were
useless. The BOE items were not profitable and only the cloth
cool-downs were profitable. The other professions were useful but it
was difficult to sell remotely (e.g. no scrolls for enchantment
existed) and it was an unending hassle to explain to another player
what recipes and designs you had (no professions links existed).
Running auctions was a pain in the ass, but necessary still to
participate in the economy at large. In the end, generating gold for
your toon through crafting was just frustrating and time-consuming.
- Inflexibility
- I did not appreciate enough the value of multiple gear sets or
respeccing. As I learned about the hunter class and acquired new pieces
I had thrown away alternate pieces that were marginally useful, not
realizing that balancing the spare gear to the fight at hand would have
been useful. Respeccing was a costly annoyance I had not adapted to,
except for the purpose of PVP, which I only enjoyed in large groups.
Both toons suffered from my lack of flexibility in gear and specs.
In
the face of these issues I was at a loss as to what to do next in the
game, even with two level capped toons and their supposed variety. The
hunter, my first serious toon, had originated in February, 2007 at the
emergence of The Burning Crusade, although it would take a while for me
to take advantage of it. With my flagging interest in the game within
the year, I was only buoyed a little by the utility of my healer alt
which I had rolled over Christmas, 2007. It did fast become my second
toon, equal in interest and progress. I leveled capped it quickly
enough and put it through all the paces that the hunter had gone
through. But what to do with my time other than the gold grinds was a
mystery.
What followed however was the realization that the
exhaustive work of "doing everything" including professions, on two
active toons was even a bigger drag. My hunter was done—I had hit the
ceiling in every aspect and saw no future for it. In summer 2008, I
gave my hunter away to my son, five months before Wrath was released.
Worse, my sense of futility of the game was only delayed by this change
of mains. Again, having run out of things to do on my holy priest, I
considered leaving the game. I was after all spending too much time on
the game, whether I kept the hunter or not.
However, as patches
preparing for Wrath became reality, there were new things to do.
Achievements arrived but were largely ignored by most players, where
instead I took delight in them. Raids and dungeons were nerfed, in
order to allow more players to have a chance to see content one more
time before moving on to the expansion. It was possible to run almost
all heroics in one day and to clear a raid in one night. Suddenly there
were a million things to do.
The game fundamentally changed with
these Wrath-prep patches. All the inane completist itches I had over
reputation, events, and “obscure things to do" came to life in
Achievements in particular and all at once I was filled with a great
mania for the game. This was the stuff of addiction for sure. I re-ran
all the content I did not have credit for, I topped off any reputation
that counted for something, and I did all the goofy general things to
do and of course explored and I completed zone quests. The nerfed
dungeons made everything go faster. And the deadline of an impending
expansion release of new zones, new dungeons, new raids made the
urgency of finishing the standing content and "old" achievements all
the more urgent. No would want to fiddle around in old content or
obscure BC achievements when there was a new level cap. Once Wrath hit,
I was level capped again in only 15 days and then I resumed the pursuit
of the Achievements. I found a great guild and was never left out of
opportunities for going anywhere because I was a healer and a fair one
at that.
Thus was occupied my first 21 months in the game.
Having done everything I could, mostly without reward or fanfare—even
reaching level 80 within the first two weeks of Wrath—I was at the
turning point of a new approach to the game. The pursuit of new raid
gear would be first up, since I was for the first time in a guild that
was at the forefront of the leading game content. Along with this would
come the unending chase for all aspects of Achievements—those
questionable markers of progress—many of which promised a pleasantly
long and varied pursuit. I was restored to the game, despite its
triviality, and had found new aspirations. The old level 70 bosses were
a shadow of what they had been and like their level 60 predecessors,
only offered novelty now. The Burning Crusade was over.
Thanks
Winter
