Let me begin by saying that I started playing WoW literally the day after Wrath came out. However, I know the frustration that comes with major, systems-changing patches (see: City of Heroes).
That said, I’m also not the type to cry DOOM! the day after a patch laden with nerfs to my class smacks me like a freaking Mack truck. I mean, seriously, we’re only two days in and already there are people threatening to ragequit over being “assraped” in terms of usability. (Also, can we please, please stop it with the use of sexual violence terms to refer to changes made to classes? I’m not saying this because I was repeatedly sexually harassed on the bus during high school… but it just sounds so tacky and overdone.) As much as it is hip to hate on the developers for not fixing bugs and disparities RIGHT HERE AND NOW, I’m sure they’re working on those as we speak. And before anyone puts out the “but they’re getting ready for Cataclysm’s launch” bit, please remember that they have this thing called a “marketing department” which handles all the promotional shenanigans. Say it with me, “Marketing =/= developers.”
Oh wait, I forgot… this is an MMO. Doom, gloom and alleged dev conspiracies to drive away the player base are as common as chocolate chip cookies. (Mmm, cookies.) Bleh. Yes, we will all have to learn to play our classes again, in some cases nearly from scratch. I’m fine with this, as I am the sort who doesn’t mind changing things up after awhile. I’m just weary of all the doomcrying and threats to ragequit, the latter especially within my freaking guild.
Really? You would throw away valuable friendships and memories because you aren’t willing to relearn some things? *sigh* I’m sorry, I have a thing about people just up and ditching people on a whim. I’ve had it happen several times in other games and this sudden absence of commitment for the smallest reasons is a total morale-killer and leaves the rest of us second-guessing ourselves.
Seeing as I’m on a kvetch blitz, let me address another annoyance, sadly also encountered inside my guild: this notion that using Healbot or other raid healing add-ons is somehow a “crutch” and that I need to learn to heal without them. Um, all my love to boss, but NO. Absolutely no way will I abandon Healbot— my reflexes suck so much that when I was first learning to heal as Phil and was doing it with normal UI, it was, quite honestly, a trainwreck. I could not target and fire off heals in time to keep people standing, and thus I had a lot of angry party members. If Healbot and its ilk allow me to do my job effectively, and so as long as they function within the rules set by Blizzard, what exactly is the harm in using them? If they are a “crutch,” so be it— I can’t help that I get mental lag when I have to tend to 10-25 people (including myself). :(
Blah.
Raids appear to be at a standstill for the moment, and understandably so as people try to figure out which way is up. On a happier note, I am enjoying the scaled ground mounts— I missed old man Phil’s black horse and now I can ride it around at a usable speed. No more of that “hurr durr, armor makes my horse run faster” nonsense that comprised epic mounts. I also think it’s cute that in character select, you now get to see idle animations (casters use a spell, melee and ranged attack). What would be even more awesome is if you logged out on a mount, said character appears mounted on character select next time you log in. Sure, that could make for… interesting issues with the extremely large mounts; this is why you would also need to enable zooming in/out.
Final note: it’s never been stated whether or not Cataclysm is adding new hairstyles. I sure would like some more, even if they are transplants from other races. Can old man Phil please have the long hair from night elf dudes? And Yoshi would look plenty awesome with some of the blood elf hairstyles, too. Just saying~
