Sunday, June 21, 2009

Enjoy the Ride in Patch 3.2

When looking at what is coming down the pipe for Warcraft patch 3.2, Call of the Crusade, there is certainly a great deal to get excited about. There is a new Battle Ground, the Crusader's Coliseum, an expanded Argent Tournament, profession buffs, and the return of Shamans just to name a few.

There are also big changes coming to transportation in World of Warcraft with mounts available at lower levels for less coin, a new airship, and a couple new portals. Though level 80 toons will occasionally take advantage of some of these transportation changes, they are largely aimed at facilitating quicker, easier leveling. What effect can we expect these changes to have on Azeroth and will our game experiences be better for it?

For those of us who have already made the trek to level 80, especially those who have been in Azeroth since Beta or vanilla WoW, these changes are largely positive. Though there will always be "I had to work for it" bitterness whenever something one person has done the hard way can be completed by others with less effort, that is an argument as to fairness, not fun. For players with level 80s, these modifications mean faster alt leveling which translates into less time wasted in content we have all seen a dozen times before. Hopefully you have already taken the opportunity to savor the scenery in the Barrens or Dark Shore and are now ready to blow past it at record speed.

For new players, the changes certainly make things easier, but that might not be for the best. Blizzard has gone a long way to make Azeroth a complete world and experiencing it on foot is a World of Warcraft shared experience that I am a bit sad to see go. It is certainly not efficient to run all the way across the Barrens, but the task has a certain nastolgic value that newcomers will now miss.

On the whole though, I appreciate the changes. Though that may simply be because I am addicted to alts.

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