This versus That

This morning, as I made the rounds of various WoW blogs that I read, I was struck by a trend. Almost every subject talked about devolved into a “this” versus “that”.

This: They’re revamping Onyxia! How cool! Adding new life to a classic encounter! Updating the gear! Etcetera.

That: Oh, Blizzard’s lazy! We want new content!

This:  (and I’m summarizing this one from several different angles) Instances have become about nothing more than running through killing bosses as fast as you can to get that new gear. Give us some of the classic style back, where you took a couple hours to get through, and had a chance to really get immersed in the experience. How about those tough encounters where we had to do crowd control, thereby giving non-tank, non-healers something they had to think about besides spamming a rotation to do Max DPS?

That: Oh, we don’t want to have to spend more than about half an hour. That’s all the time I have in my busy schedule. I’m not interested in a storyline, or quests, or other aspects. Just gimmee the loot. We don’t want crowd control! We hate trash pulls. It takes too long.

I think anyone reading this can figure out which perspective I sympathize with, but let me put it clearly:

I don’t give a plagued rat’s ass about “your schedule”. I don’t care that you don’t have more than an hour to play because either a) Mommy tells you to get off the computer, and get some sunshine, or b) your spouse/kids/family can’t amuse themselves for more than an hour at a time without you around to lead them by the hand. I don’t care if you can’t run an instance because it takes too long. I don’t care if you don’t enjoy every instance, and can’t get every piece of gear you want. Guess what? There’s 11 million people to play this game. It’s not all about you.

This versus that, and the proponents of “that” always seem to believe the game revolves around them. Someone comes out and expresses a liking for older content, and would like to see it revamped and revitalized, and re-enjoyed. What’s wrong with that? No one is saying “stop making new content!”  But immediately, someone’s gotta come on and start in about how lame the old content is, how Blizzard is ripping us off, how much better the “new way” is, and all the reasons – centering around THEM – that Blizzard shouldn’t refurbish old content. It was lame. Blah blah blah.

Guess what? Blizzard’s giving you plenty of new content, cranking it out pretty damned fast, with lots of shiny gear to keep your attention.  So who cares if they save some money by revamping some old content? Guess what? A lot of us haven’t seen a great deal of the old content. If it’s too boring for you, don’t do it. It’s a big game! There’s plenty to do!

It doesn’t have to be either/or. It can be both.  There’s absolutely no reason that Blizzard can’t cater to more than one type of player. I want an experience, not an exercise. I want to play a class where I have to think, and increase my skill at more than spamming a series of keys over and over again. You know what I’d like? I’d love it if  Blizzard implemented different versions of all the old instances, with level brackets, similar to how they do battlegrounds. The group I play with has been leveling so fast – in part because we play together – that half the time we go to do an instance, we’ve already outleveled it. I get a kick out of doing instances at level. It’s a challenge. It’s fun!

The other night, our usual four tried Strat, live side, at level, and got our asses handed to us several times. We cut it short at Crusader’s Square, because of some of us having to get up and go to work the next day, and I came out with my overall durability at 24% – and the only reason it was that high was because I’d just gotten a blue drop from the Postmaster.

And I loved it. Encounters were a challenge. When we played smart, we survived. When players did something less than smart – like drooling over loot, not noticing that Timmy was incoming, even though I was yelling “Timmy! Timmy!” – we wiped. I had my own share of boners as well, I might add. In the end, I got some gear, but that was almost an afterthought. The fun was in the play!