The race to 80 in Wrath of the Lich King analyzed

Simon, agreed. I'm bored too, i've been pulled into too many things in WoW. 4 different sets of friends started characters on 4 different servers, half horde and half alliance. I have 4 active mains, have leveled them all to 70+, i've done borean tundra now 4x.

To me the game always seems like a rush rush rush mentality. At first I started a few weeks behind my hardcore guild because i was busy doing RL stuff. When I got back, the hardcore raiders were all 80, and I got to grind to 80 while they were getting guild and server first achievements. (were #1 or #2 in alliance progression). Then I got to 80, did a total of 4 raids, decided I hated raiding now with my life the way it is.

Then! My horde guild decides it wants to do Naxx too, and I am the raid leader. So rush rush rush to 80. I'm now 75 and they are doing Naxx10 without me this weekend (sounds great to me).

Anyway main point is that I see several flaws in blizz and especially Wraith, and i predict that this is the last great expansion of the game.

1) The leveling time is far too long for a person to pick up and enjoy. The game has been out 4 years, but instead of doing horizontal content, they do vertical content. Granted it's shorter now, but we're still looking at 6+ months for a newbie to pick up and hit 80 in (as a first time, i could probably hit 80 in a month if i put my mind to it).

2) Wraith zones are far too narrow. We have quest ranges within zones that are only valid for characters in the back half of the zone requirement. For example, in ZD at level 75, you can only do half of the quests. You need to be 76 for the rest. Shol. basin? Need to be 76. What this means is that friends cant play together readily, unless they are the same exact level.

3) Problem with the game as a whole. Given that players are char levels 1 to 80, the likelyhood of your friends being at a similiar level are quite low, and in general unless you work very hard at it, its impossible to level together. The only way to actually play with your friends is only play that toon in the others presence.

Yes, recruit a friend helps, but that requires starting a new account. And sorry, not retroactive either. A friend recently picked up the game but didn't ask me about it, and thus didn't know about recruit a friend. By the time he told me he was already entrenched and didn't want to throw away a month of play time to start up with the recruit a friend method. This is a serious flaw and makes playing with friends that much harder.

4) Wraith is far too easy. Everyone just facerolls the content, and multiple wipes on bosses is rare unless people are truely clueless. Then people hit 80 and think they can stroll into 80. This is a mindset problem that blizz encouraged by totally lifting the rep requirements for heroics. Further, the attunements have been almost totally lifted in wraith (and they have no plan to bring them back). Yes attunements were a pain, but it was a roadblock meant to slow progression.

Now many guilds are done with all content and are focusing on achievements such as 3 drakes. This is far worse than TBC when guilds spent months struggling through kara, then had a whole another tier to look forward to (SSC/TK), and attunements to make sure people were prepared for that content.

Anyway, WoW is the best thing going, but all things end. After playing a game for thousands of hours its quite natural to be bored and want different things. But now the issue becomes how do we get our friends to try new MMOs?

Thanks for calming down. :D

However, I still disagree that Xfire stats are meaningful and I think you're reading too much into them. I don't recall the content of patch 2.3 and 2.4 or any other patch since and without knowing that it's impossible to analyse WHY the figures dropped. It's very easy to draw false conclusions from that.

And I'm not saying raiding equates to winning for all players. It's one thing MANY "win" gamers like but for others, completing all the PvE non-raid quests is "the win." For others simply reaching Level 60/70/80/200 is "the win" and once they've done so, they stop playing.

I don't understand why you're so adamant this isn't happening though, especially as Blizzard themselves have issued press releases stating people are "coming back" to WoW. You have to have gone somewhere to come back!

You're still quoting Xfire figures. You're only showing "no exit of players WHO USE XFIRE."

Because hey, I left a while ago. My guildmates all left a while ago. Guess what? None of us used Xfire, so by your logic we're all still playing...

And please, tell me where the players "went" that Blizzard announced had come back... Or were they just "hollow words?"

You can quote Xfire stats all you like but it's not an accurate measure of the current number of players playing WoW and until it's mandatory for every player to use it, it never will be.

And again, if nobody left - as you seem to be trying to say - why the Blizzard "Everybody Came Back" press release?

And finally, calm down. I know you enjoy WoW - and why not? - but seriously, all you're doing is making yourself look like some obsessive fanboy.

You need to calm down a bit Tom, I prescribe a daily dose of Ritalin. Oh and maybe get that xfire thing looked at, must itch like a bitch.