My subscription lapsed this morning. Since I am Canadian I opt not to buy monthly subscriptions due to exchange rate shenanigans (we are close to $20 a month here to play) – especially since you can buy three month game cards for half the price at various retailers. I didn’t have one on me, but I do have a couple WoW tokens. I still paused. Do I want to keep playing?
The fact that crossed my mind (and still is – I haven’t said “yes” yet even as I write this) is telling to me. Legion was awesome (except for the mid gear reset). Battle For Azeroth has taken storytelling to the next level for WoW. That is great. The first time through. The thought of levelling with alts through the same content is kind of putting me off right now. How did I get here?
I finally hit 120 on my Druid. While the story was good, Guardian Druids are in a most boring playstyle place – especially coming from Legion. The scaling issues and fact they are trying to tanks more like tanks meant that I could kill 10 mobs at a time, but it just took a long time. The story was great. Slogging through mindless mobs to continue the story wasn’t.
My Horde Paladin is all new content, however, so that is promising. She is only level 113 now but it is “fresh and new” – the tanking playstyle is much more fun on a Paladin but still the same M.O. Gather as many as possible, kill all slowly. Although, to be fair, it feels like the Paladin kills things way faster.
I’m already back in my Legion style “maintenance” mode. I log in, do the daily emissary quest on my max level character, and then log them off. I have a full quest log that I’m not even sure if I get rep from, so should I even bother finishing? The rep grinds to do anything else in game are real, but I am not going to bang out all the World Quests I can find to do so (especially now that they add more several times per day – you can literally play 24/7 now, just to move a bar.) It could be a shame that in an expansion that did a great job on story that it feels like WoW is a never ending to-do list meant to trap the completionist side of everyone. Maybe it was always that way.
I am pretty sure I will stay in to finish the Horde Story Line. Come to think of it, I think I am missing part of the Alliance story line too – don’t think I have rescued Jaina. Confused why that’s not front and centre…
After that, who knows. Do I “suck it up” and level an alt? Throw myself into LFR raiding? Professions are poorly done this expansion and not worth doing and all I can think of is huh, this might be a short one for me until more is put in. I might try something crazy like just levelling through dungeons with DPS classes and grinding out mats for free time – the ZEN style of it all, but right now I just don’t know of my future with BFA. Weird because of how excited I was to get to level cap, and be thoroughly disappointing that the destination doesn’t feel like it did the journey justice.
Update: I did resubscribe. I will at least finish off daily emmisaries on my Druid as I work (ugh, I said work) to complete the Horde story line.
Update #2: Glad I am not the only one feeling this way
And now your watch can end.
I can relate. Having such story telling follow us through while levelling, to then result in World quests is bound to cause some kind of, what now. Then it also sounds as if one easily gets lost up there at max level because there is so much to do as well, but no clear path. I’m not sure what I will do.
That horde headpiece looks awesome! That is worth it to keep questing over at that side 😉
As for Jaina, I think, think, you have to do all the quests and reach a certain reputation in order to continue on them?
My concern here is the additional focus of “on-rails” with the mirage of options. The Jaina storyline is near impossible to detect until you complete all the main story quests in all the zones. Apparently we’re at war with Sylvanas too, but you wouldn’t notice from anything but the ship/champion missions. A whole lot of “you have to do X 1,000 times before Y opens up”.
Where legion had multiple options at a given time, BfA currently has WQs. Which could not be more mindless. Combined with the fact that you get no variety from 110-120, no skill increases or different playstyles… it just seems like less of the same.
Reminds me of an Eddie Murphy joke about crackers. If you’ve been in the desert, a cracker seems like the most amazing thing. But eventually you realize it’s a cracker. The step from the WoD experience to Legion was like that – everything was better. Legion to BfA, that large step transition just isn’t there.