Hello, my dear companions in suffering. While I am melting here in the heat of the blazing sunlight, I am looking a bit sadly at a game that has captivated me for almost a decade now. But somehow, the current World of Warcraft Patch 6.2 has made the game as boring as never before. At least for me. And it should all be getting better…
The Tanaan Jungle: Grinding Without Purpose
I had been looking forward to the Tanaan Jungle for a long time. The story of Draenor was supposed to finally reach its climax and reveal the last secrets that needed to be solved. Unfortunately, the reality is different: All story quests can be completed in just about an hour, as there are only a handful of them. Sure, the garrison campaign continues every week, but it is not satisfying. What really bothers me, though, is that Tanaan is a loveless collection of grinding areas for Apexis Crystals.
For about an afternoon, it is exciting and new until you have killed all the rare spawns and looted the treasures. After that, the new zone is no different from all the other Apexis areas that Draenor already has. Daily quests also make their return in a way that frustrates me. It is not possible to accept all quests at once. Instead, the first task tells me: “Go to the Iron Harbor and kill 25 Orcs!” … alright, no problem! When I return from this task, a new mission awaits: “Go to the Iron Harbor and collect 15 sea maps from the Orcs!”
Seriously, Blizzard? You send me to the exact same area, to kill the exact same enemies twice? That has never happened even in Classic.
The Bonus Events: Intended as Motivation, Ended as Demotivation
The second very annoying point is the weekly bonus events that have now been introduced. While I find some features, such as timewalking, really nice and successful in presenting older content appropriately to newer players, other events ruin my enjoyment of the game.
To give an example: When I had “nothing to do” in WoW, I always liked to level my pets in pet battles. That way, I could pass half an hour, and I’m excited to see my pet score on warcraftpets.com slowly increasing. However, with the new patch, there is now an event that comes every 7 weeks and triples the experience from pet battles. My thought process should be clear now: Why should I level my pets now, when I can do it in a third of the time next weekend?
And that is exactly my criticism: If you introduce a bonus event for every available content, it means that these contents will only be approached during the times of this event.
I have not felt the desire to log into World of Warcraft for a long, long time. Tanaan has disappointed me. The new events have disappointed me. If they do not provide logical explanations for the current lore now, this was the worst patch in my WoW career – and that is long. Very long. Even patch 6.1 entertained me better. And it barely had only new pets in old raids and music tracks for the garrison.
What do you think? Do the new content motivate you? What do you think of Tanaan? Or am I just getting worked up (as always) completely unnecessarily?
