WoW Aside
Blizzard was running a free weekend of WoW just a few days ago. This was basically me:
I still have the Curse Client – or the Twitch client now, but Amazon owns it? – so I was able to get all my addons updated and the screen to basically look the same as it did the last time I logged in. Which might have been 400+ days ago?
Blizzard has made a big deal about some of the artifact appearances going away permanently with the next expansion’s pre-patch, which itself is going Live within a few weeks. I looked through them, and pretty much the only ones I would conceivably care about were the Feral and Guardian druid ones. My average ilevel was 840 when I left, and 910 is basically the floor for attempts. Some guides have mentioned that you can reach that ilevel with about a week of dailies and such.
No thanks.
Cosmetic rewards in gaming is in a weird place for me. As rewards for completing content, I feel like it’s a good choice over straight (gear) power. As a means of funding games (e.g. cash shop), it is probably the least offensive, provided they do not come in loot boxes. But eventually… does it not just end for other people? Like, you enjoy the way your character looks and that’s that?
I spent years and years trying to get the Raven mount out of a TBC heroic, and I eventually did. And now I’m done with land mounts – any other mounts I ride are due to utility (flying, water-walking, etc). It doesn’t matter what other mounts Blizzard releases, and so mount-chasing just ceased to be compelling for me anymore. Same with transmog, really. Once you get a good set going, whatever else gets released would need to be way better than my current one in order to move the needle. You can only wear one costume/ride one mount at a time, so why both acquiring multiple ones?
Thus, with Mage Tower unlocks not being a good use of my time, I’m left with… well, too many things, actually. There’s two full raids worth of bosses to tour with LFR, plus an entire demon planet to quest through, and a half-dozen Allied races to unlock, oh and flying is a thing now which requires a whole bunch of assorted tasks and reputation grinds and, and, and etc.
Yeah, that’s gonna be a no for me dawg. I’m out.
Well, out is probably optimistic. I never uninstalled WoW in my life, and I am sorta interested in the train wreck of an expansion (lore-wise) that Battle for Azeroth is shaping up to be. There is just too much shit I have to shift through and prioritize and decide on at the moment. When a new expansion is released, things are much easier. Go quest, gain levels, unlock abilities, repeat until level cap. Once you hit said cap, things go sideways in terms of shit to do. Each patch adds more and more and the only way to keep your head above water is to have been treading this whole time. Makes it a bit tough to come back after an extended break.
I dunno. This may come as somewhat of a shock, but I sometimes overthink things. But I figure if I’m going to need to dedicate some time to (re-)learning some things, I should probably take that time to learn something new, e.g. playing something else.
WoW will still be there later, as always. Waiting.
Posted on June 29, 2018, in WoW and tagged Analysis Paralysis, Artifact, Free Weekend, Legion, Patch, WoW. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
In An Age 
I think I’m kind of in the same boat with cosmetics. However.
They do work well for alts, because if you have a lot of different characters, presumably you don’t want them all to wear the same outfit and ride the same mount. I think the time I spent the most funny money in SWTOR’s cash shop within a short amount of time was when they had an event that encouraged you to roll extra alts.
There’s also a certain “art imitating life” aspect to it, where gear in MMOs has become a bit like real life fashion, with some people having the urge to change their get-up all the time just because that’s what’s “done”.
Finally, there’s the appeal to collectors, who’ll never use all that gear or ride all those mounts, but they just have the urge to own them all. They used to be a minority in the past because bag space limitations and such naturally discouraged this sort of behaviour, but as games have trended towards moving more and more things to collections tabs instead of having them count as items while at the same time adding achievements for feats like owning 500 mounts, it’s become a more dominant play style. I’m always baffled by how many WoW players for example seem to consider “farming old raids for mounts/pets” an integral part of their gameplay these days.
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For sure, specific cosmetics can make you do all sorts of things. Even now, there are a few items that I feel like I must get when/if I get back into WoW. One of those pieces is leather shoulder armor that essentially adds dragonfly wings to your character. It only drops from a Mythic raid boss in the previous expansion (WoD), and I have tried several times in Legion to go back to kill that boss solo. Unfortunately, I was not able to do so – I might not have been geared enough by the time I left Legion. Jumping up another 60 ilevels might do the trick, especially with the recent artifact weapon power increase… or I could possibly wait until level 120 in BfA.
In any case, I agree that cosmetics can work for a while, and are very useful for alts. But again, to me it always felt like a very finite endeavor. Needing to collect 500 mounts to unlock a specific achievement reward mount is a legit reason to go collecting. But if that achievement unlock mount isn’t as cool to you as, say, Raven Lord… then you can find yourself being “finished” rather quickly. That is in contrast with power progression from gear, which will be in-demand for as long as you are interested in playing (until the end of an expansion).
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