Whatever happened to WoW?

I've recently come back to WoW after a break of seven months or so, and suddenly find myself a member of not one, but two static groups. Both groups are running all the old instances, before they're gone forever when Cataclysm hits. Not that Blizz have said anything about removing/changing the original dungeons, but y'know, it's the principle. That minor detail aside, it's all quite appropriate I guess, considering I resubbed in the first place under a wave of Onyxia-inspired nostalgia.

There are three of us in the Horde-side group - the classic Tank (Prot Warrior), Healer (Resto Druid) and DPS (Enhancement Shaman, yours truely). Technically we're making things tough for ourselves from the off, as these instances were designed for a full party of five players, but we like to think that after four years play, we know what we're doing. We rocket through the first few dungeons: Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns, Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deeps. We even manage to barrel our way into the Stockades instance at level 25-ish with only 17 deaths each and the cunning use of 'resurrectional positioning'™. It doesn't really occur to us that we're not only completeing these dungeons at 60% party capacity, but that we're doing it at way under the intended level.

By the time we reach Scarlet Monastery, we're 5-6 levels below the mobs we're fighting. Not only that, we're pulling 3-4 groups at a time and blasting them down. This is where I start to get confused, because I remember running SM back in the day with a full party, at intended level range (higher actually). In those days double pulls were frequent due to closely packed groups. If you weren't careful to pull your targetted group back, chances were a runner would agro some nearby buddies, which almost certainly led to a wipe.

I can't explain how it is that we're doing what we're doing. Admittedly our tank has a couple of heirloom items (essentially, epics that level with your character, for those not in the know), albeit leather rather than mail armour. Aside from that, the gear we're using is whatever we're picking up along the way. WoW has changed a lot over the years - restructured talent trees, gear itemisation, improved threat generation, our own knowledge even, but I can't believe these factors alone explain, well, just how easy it all is. As much as I'm loving the nostalgia trip, the most frustrating thing is that we're limited not by our own skill, but by the game system itself - we can barely hit mobs more than six levels higher. It feels rather false that our progress is halted by some arbitrary game mechanic, as opposed to the difficulty of the actual content.

The Definition of Irony

Your best mate manages to secure you a ticket to the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational. This highly anticipated (not to mention limited attendance) event takes place just ten days after your subscription to WoW expires for the first time in over three years \o/

Game Feature vs Barrier to Fun

Interesting post over on Doom's blog advocating the functionality to store more than one talent build so that you can respec easily but still incur the respec cost. I pretty much crap myself every time I respec, I'm sitting there alt-tabbing between WoW and some form of online talent builder, desperately trying not to misclick. Add to that the factor of your instance/raid/arena group impatiently tapping its foot as you fiddle and you have a surefire way to throw away 50g. So of course I wholeheartedly agree with Doom's suggestion, and it got me to thinking, what does it take to make the devs realise that their precious 'feature' is actually just a royal pain in the arse for everyone else? I mean, this is supposed to be a game right? Fun, right? So why in the name of heaven do I have to jump through hoops to get to the fun?

Another case in point: gear sets. On my druid, I have:

• PvE Tanking set
• PvE Kitty set
• PvE Healing set
• PvP Healing set

And don't even get me started on my warrior:

• Raid tanking set
• 5 x resistance sets
• Grinding tanking set (stacking shield block)
• Dual wield DPS set
• 2H DPS set
• PvP sets? Lol, bigger bank plix!

Now, I use Itemrack, which is a godsend, but (and it's a big but), it only works for the gear I have in my bags. Why why why why why don't we have some kind of wardrobe interface for gear sets, instead of all that stuff taking up valuable bag space? Yeah I know it's not quite realistic carrying eight sets of gear around all the time, and swapping between them in less than a second, but it all boils back down to that feature vs fun thing again. Besides which, we play in a world where the dead walk and cows can speak for god's sake, so forgive me if I don't buy the 'reality' card.

Let me elaborate a little. My warrior, Varakkys (no prizes for guessing who my main is here), usually wears his full tanking gear, and carries his DPS and block gear with him, taking up 1.5 bags. He's fully eighteen-slotted up, four inventory bags and all seven bank slots. Six of the seven bank slots are taken by the other gear sets mentioned above. Now the other day I was called upon to tank heroic Arc, for which I like to take my Shadow Resist set for the first boss. Except that my hearthstone was on cd, which meant a five minute wait for the group while I flew back to Shattrath to collect it. So I have all these tactical options available to me, but actually taking advantage of them initiates a level of inconvenience that just completely detracts from the game. Not to mention the annoyance of continually shifting things around in my bank to make room for new bits and bobs.

Incidentally, why isn't the respec interface built so that we can tinker around and then click a confirm button? It's ridiculous that I have to do that using an external app, then there's still the chance I can bugger it up within WoW.