Challenge? What Challenge?

By -
  Deathwing says, "I'll give you a challenge."

In the year since I last played World of Warcraft there are only a handful (I think 2) new 5-man dungeons.  5-mans are my favorite since they can be run quickly but still take skill and thought.  Raiding is too time intensive for me, so 5-mans are perfect bite sized chunks of group activity.  I always liked the cooperation and challenge it took to get through 5-man dungeons.

Imagine my surprise to resubscribe and find that the challenge is gone.  Everyone is so over-geared for the old dungeons that they just blast through.  One of the tanks in a group the other night said, "Ugh, we've already taken 10 minutes, hurry it up guys."  I couldn't believe it!  These used to take a slow, measured, thoughtful approach and were run in about 30-45 minutes.  Now 10 minutes is a long time?  I guess when the dps can just AOE everything to death then the whole run goes a lot faster, but I think it's less fun then it used to be.

One thing I'm loving about running random heroics is the dungeon finder.  Where has this been all of my WoW career?  I can't believe how much more efficient it is at finding groups then I used to be.  Instantly teleporting my character into and out of dungeons is a major plus as well.  I really hope Blizzard ends up patching in a raid finder, that would just make my day.  Such a huge chunk of time raiding is spent in the organization stage that if a raid finder was created I might actually have time to run some raids.

I'll run a few more random heroics with my 80 druid for old time's sake and to build up some justice points, but the fast-paced, no thought dungeons are wearing thin.  I'm much more excited for December 7th when no one will be over-geared for the new Cataclysm dungeons.  People will actually have to think and talk to one another again, and I think that would be great.

Until then, I'm going to have fun with my brand new level 4 Paladin!  I can't wait to explore the 1-60 leveling game that's been completely redone.  Also, I rolled this character with my brother so we can play together, which makes the whole experience more enjoyable.  I'm sure that will tide me over until Cataclysm's release in a few weeks.  That and League of Legends.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Latest Board Gaming

By -
Image
Besides video games I also regularly play board games when I'm hanging out with people face to face.  My brother, my wife, and I end up playing a lot of 3 player board games, but sometimes we get other players involved too. I realized I haven't talked much about what I've been playing in the world of board games, so here goes: Ticket to Ride - We own 3 different base versions of Ticket to Ride, 2 expansion sets, and an extra map set.  We love this game.  This is the game that gets the most overall table time when I'm playing board games with friends.  It's super accessible but still holds fun for people who have been playing the game for a long time.  I recommend this as a great beginner board game for anyone. Masquerade - A hidden role game where roles are constantly switching hands.  You're limited in actions on your turn and can only take one action.  This means that a lot of the time you're not entirely sure what role you currently have.
Read more

S2E22 - E3 2017 - “Who doesn’t want to be a dinosaur?!”

By -
E3 Hype! E3 2017. Not comprehensive. Not VGNN.  Only talking about things we think are interesting enough to talk about.  You have video game news sites for the rest :) We’re talking about Press Conferences, if more news comes out throughout the rest of the week it won’t be here because we’re recording on Tuesday night! http://e3recap.com/ has been my friend Overall trends Esports being forced onto games that aren’t even out yet “Influencers” being put front and center BJ: torn on the current “influencer” boom. Feels like a bubble that’s totally disingenuous Shorter press conferences with less big game announcements Really hard to tell what is actually exclusive Microsoft “Console Launch Exclusive” Most of these press conferences would have been better pre-recorded as just a series of trailers instead of having a stage show, honestly. Updates on games we already knew existed.  This is what we get for so many years of announcing games way ahead
Read more

Games of the Year 2022: In Conclusion

By -
This running Games of the Year list has been an interesting experiment.  I decided to start this series right as we were shutting down the Geek to Geek podcast as a way to keep creatively broadcasting some gaming thoughts out into the world.  I learned a few things from sticking with it this year. The main thing I learned is... I just don't have as much desire to broadcast my thoughts out in public as I used to when I started this blog or when I started podcasting.  I still love to have in-depth discussions about current games and general geekery, but I feel less and less need to broadcast those thoughts widely.  Honestly, it's been over a decade of blogging and podcasting at this point.  It would be more surprising if my relationship with the media landscape hadn't  changed. Around mid-year I started trying to use Twitter as more of a microblogging platform to do very short quick-hit thoughts about games but didn't get much traction or conversation going which was wha
Read more