Pre-Launch Burning Crusade Thoughts

As everyone already knows, the release date is the 16th, this Tuesday. In theory my copy will arrive from Amazon on the 17th. I figure the whole game will be unstable Tuesday anyway, so why go crazy trying to get in on the first day?

Originally I was thinking that while everyone was busy making their Draenei Shamen and heading to Outland that first day, I’d head out and mine ore for jewelcrafting while waiting for my expansion to arrive. However, I have a new theory: I think that on the 16th, no one at all will be able to play. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if we’ll really be able to play much at all this whole week.

I tend to cut Blizzard a lot of slack. I mean, come on–who could have predicted WoW would end up with 8 MILLION players in this short a time?! There’s no way they could have been prepared, and that means a ton of growing pains. I shrug and work around them. This game costs me less than the price of two movie tickets per month and I get a lot more entertainment out of it than that, so I figure I can take a few hiccups in stride. I have to admit, though, even though they’ve repeatedly pushed back this release date, they don’t seem at all ready. The pre-release patch has caused so many stability problems it’s amazing. I’ve been knocked offline or unable to log on for most of today due to various problems. I know at this late date they can’t realistically push back the release date again, but I can’t imagine they expect to pull this off without some major downtime.

Technorati Tags: Burning Crusade, Warcraft, World of Warcraft

I’m not going to play a Draenei Shaman (or Blood Elf Paladin). I’ve never particularly liked playing Shamen/Paladins, and let’s face it–everyone is going to play one. I do prefer the Draenei models to the Blood Elf models, though, so I suppose I’m glad I ended up playing Alliance on my current server. Since I’ve wanted to make an ice mage just to play around with it, I’ll make that my Draenei. And yes, of course I’ll have to play with Jewelcrafting. It’s a toy. I’ve already stockpiled a number of recipes and ore/gems.

I also got my arcane mage to 58, which is just high enough to visit Outland, so I have three characters capable of going there to explore (my combat rogue, holy priest, and arcane mage). I look forward to the new content, but I have one major reservation–it’s all supposed to be PvP no matter what server you’re on?! Us folks who are on PvE servers are there for a reason–because we’re sick and tired of ganking, generally. We want to be able to quest and farm and such without also having to watch out for the other side. I understand Blizz thinks that removing the ability to gain titles through killing for honor will reduce ganking, but most of the truly annoying ganking I experienced while on a PvP server had nothing to do with gaining honor toward ranks–it was high-level twits ganking folks who were so much lower level that they weren’t getting any honor out of it, just because they thought it was fun. So I have a sinking feeling about this whole PvP thing. I can only hope that either it works out better than I think it will, or it fails so spectacularly that they rethink the whole thing.

I’ve definitely hit the point, though, where I need some new content. I’ve seen the old stuff a few too many times and it’s starting to lose some of its charm. I still enjoy the game, but my play-times are shorter and fewer between.

So I have my doubts as to how well the launch will go, but I do look forward to trying out the new material. I intend to keep a sharp eye on my favorite blog of WoW commentary, AFK Gamer, for Foton’s thoughts on the expansion. Since he’s a raider/PvPer and I’m not I sometimes disagree with his feelings on things, but I can rarely fault his reasoning and logic, and he often makes points I wouldn’t have thought of.

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