Naxxramas

[Ashock]

Well, I'll take that as a compliment. ;) And, as someone who scrimped and saved for their mount,  I am truly impressed by your gold accumulating talents. (Still, given the real importance of gold in the game, I can't resist asking: Is this "World of Warcraft" or "Ages of Arbitrage"?) But I agree with many of Jarulf's comments in another thread. I do think WoW is really well done, and perhaps one shouldn't expect it to cater to an anti-social online game player such as myself,  but why not?

I really enjoyed coming across some of the out-of-the-way places (like Newman's landing off the coast of Stormwind,  or a little Murlock camp north of the Swamp of Sorrows with a treasure chest that never seemed to respawn) . Yet Bliz seems to have done so little to reward players who might be interested in doing something else other than 40-person raids  (not to say that people who enjoy participating in such raids shouldn't be rewarded), or even smaller instances where if it happens  you have to  leave in the middle,  you are ditching your group.

Anyway, it seems to me to that there is a lot more room in the game for all kinds of different players than Bliz has currently satisfied, but I'm not optimistic that they will explore it (unless the profit motive dictates otherwise, not that there's anything wrong with that).
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Yes, it was a compliment :D Your assessment was pretty much dead on.

As far as getting gold, it is no big deal. If some of the better items were accessible throguh the AH, I have no doubt that I would own them soon enough, but as you probably remember, they are not. Between what I have right now, my mount, my 2 blue swords and 2 blue items that are waiting for me (through the AH) and the lag accident that caused me to bid 50G on 5 Sup reds, I'd say I have about 800G at lvl 46. If I wanted to continue, I'd probably double my money by lvl 50 or earlier, but I see now that except a few semi-decent items, the AH is really not going to cut it, so I will stop actively trying to make money there. I could write a guide to the AH (to go along with the other AH guides out there (that mostly suck), but really... who cares about the AH. What is the point to try to get some money together, if a few trips to some of the end-game instances will yield better items than one could get through the AH...

Yes, the game is very well done and that is why I want to keep going, at least until lvl 60. At that time I will see if I could get into some instances late at night. If I can, well.... I do not need the *best* items, just something that will let me compete. I guess something in-between AH items and raid items will do. If not - I will be gone at least until the expansion, although I doubt it will offer the type of content that caters to those that simply can *not* spend their whole evening gaming straight through. That's the biggest problem. It is not the total time spent, it is the fact that it needs to be continuous. 3 hours/day is not a problem. 3 hours/day in one shot is. Funny, I thought I was paying the same 14.99 as everyone else is, so why am I only getting about 5.99 worth of content?

PvP is also nice, and I have spent some hours in the last 2 weeks in the Warsong Gulch BG which were mostly fun. Unfortunately, at the higher lvls again you need better gear, and ultimately at least to me the BGs are fun but only as part of the game, not the *whole* game.

The game is definately too biased towards gear and not skill. Yeh, there are skilled players out there, but their skill is often overshadowed by the quality of their gear, and those who are unskilled can get away with it as long as their gear is nice. This is annoying. In D2 and and especially in D1, you could play with someone and if they were good, you could feel it and see it. Here, you can see that they have nice gear and they are not incompetent, but that is all. This is also annoying. The game almost wants to achieve parity among the masses on the one hand, but through the fact that not everyone is simply available to raid, it fails to achieve that.

Anyway, I should stop the ranting. Besides, it has achieved it's purpose of fully waking me up ;)



-A