Tuesday, March 30, 2010

What a Rush

Updated today, the ICC buff has been increased from 5% to 10%. I know it’s meant to give more casual players a chance to see the latest content for the expansion, but at the same time it feels like anyone not on the bleeding edge is in a race against the clock. The race between guilds for rankings and first time kills is one thing, pitting skill vs. skill, but now it seems like there’s a countdown timer in-game to do the content while it still presents a challenge.

Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely worse things that can happen, especially considering you can turn it off if it’s really such a point of pride. But the fact that you have to pick between going E-Z mode and rejecting help when available for the sake of pride gives a sense of urgency I’m not overly thrilled with. The higher the buff gets, the more you lose the sense of good old fashioned accomplishment, and turning it off just has this sense of vanity that doesn’t go away.

This just goes to show you can’t please everyone. When looking at it from an outside objective point of view, I have to admit that I can’t think of a better form of compromise between hardcore and casual. But I just wanted to make note of a sense of dissatisfaction from somewhere in the middle. I’d love to see some minor reward for those going without the buff so it’s more than just a vanity thing. Extra frost badges at the end of a wing, or maybe another tier token, or some sort of reward between heroic and buffed regular. Something to say “Hey, you did it on your own time, but you did it on your own two feet.” Or 50 feet as it were.

We’ve gotten a good amount of new recruits, so with luck we won’t have attendance problems Wednesday and Thursday. Killing the king would definitely appease me. Since it’s so rough getting our 10 man together at any solid time slot, we’ve saved our raid ID from last week to at least take him on there. I look forward to that a LOT.

Really, I guess it’s not that big of an issue overall. It’s the end of an expansion, and things are going to be winding down. We’ll take out the Lich King, hopefully at 10%, and that will be good enough. I just need to remember my own priorities. 1) Witness the awesome that comes after killing Arthas. Really can’t wait to see what happens. And 2) get the white tier or tier reskin so I look like a freaking priest again. If those two things happen, I will be super super happy, and I will have done what I wanted to do before Cataclysm. I’m hoping the new raid has some fun stuff as well, and maybe some pretty new gear skins, but that’s just a bonus.

One bonus to blogging I have discovered is this – having a place to air out my irritations and frustrations where I can pretend somebody is listening really helps me feel better so I get over it and have a much easier time staying positive. I’m optimistic for this week, even though I have to abandon the raid on Thursday for family stuff. Today and Wednesday we will totally kick some ass and it will be super fun.

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