I have to make some pointers to interesting blogposts that have popped up within a few days now. First of all, Tobold makes a very nice and -I think- precise review of WoW after 5 years of gameplay, pointing out the good and the bad and the ugly, though being IMO a bit soft on the bad side. For example he doesn't point to the gearing game which has changed the end game over the time, even though he mentions that the content is too easily overcome to the hardcore gamers. I also found the mention of an average gamer a bit odd... makes me feel that I'm something not so average anymore and my sense of being average somehow degrading. Oh, well. Keen from Keen and Graev's Gaming Blog pours even more salt to the wounds in his excellent post about how the developers want us to perceive the game world our avatars explore. Really made me think about how I have perceived the game worlds I've visited and what has been missing I have not seen in them.Great reading.
And after I read Gordon's post (We Fly Spitfires) about raiding being the end game of MMORPG's I realized that the angst I have had with my newly capped lv80 isn't just mine or affecting me alone, but is a more widely perceived 'problem' of sorts. This combined with Kyrilean's (Casual Hardcore) notion that the new emblems are making the new raid content more accessible but are making the old raid content obsolete summarises nicely the feelings of a newcomer lv80 in WoW, who wants to experience the content the way it was supposed to be experienced. Instead of voiding the content Blizzard should -IMO- create systems which would reward people to progress the toons and make that progression more accessible. Matt from Wildwhine writes about the same thing.
There was yet another post I was trying to find to complete this recap, but I couldn't find it. To be honest, I don't even remember anymore what it was about after reading all the posts mentioned up there. Needless to say, they are worth the read.
And the blogs mentioned are worth their place in your reader, in case they aren't there yet.
