World of Warcraft

Me vs. World of Warcraft

I’m somewhat of a latecomer to World of Warcraft, as I only picked up the game a few months ago.  As opposed to all of those crazy players with multiple level 70 characters, I’ve only got one at 57, and a handful of under 40 alts.

However, I do think that I’ve played enough to offer my own pretentious observations about the game and the virtual environment that I inhabit during my free time.  Feel free to disagree with me, vehemently if necessary, in the comments.

As an opening column, this isn’t going to offer many insights, but there are a couple of things that I have been wishing for so far.

• I wish crafting skills like leatherworking and tailoring felt like they were worth the time and effort that I have to put into them.  Gathering professions make money hand over fist, but the crap that I make with low-level engineering, tailoring, or leatherworking isn’t worth much and there isn’t much that I can use out of it.  Jewelcrafting seems to be more effective in that I can create things I’m happy using myself – maybe Blizzard is just learning as they go.
• Everyone complains about Trade chat in the cities being used for non-Trade related things, but I’m the opposite.  Sometimes I love just sitting in Ironforge just reading the chat, and most of the time I don’t even join in.  I wish there was an opt-in so that I could join Trade chat from anywhere.  It would certainly lift some of the boredom inherently involved in grind quests.
• I’m enjoying the recent lowering of the mount level, as it has made leveling up through those extra ten levels much more fun.  It really helps me since most of my alt leveling is done solo, so walking around from place to place can get really tedious.  However, I do wish it was more evident as to which mounts I can purchase – I know it takes more rep with certain factions, but there isn’t anything I’ve found to reliably tell me in game what I have to accomplish to buy any other mounts (other than PVP mounts). Maybe there is an addon I haven’t managed to find yet?
• Mostly this item will be laughed away as more QQing, but I wish battlegrounds were less frustrating.  Since it seems that most of our matches entail the Horde team being full of twinks and my team scattered across all ten levels, my experience in the BGs tends to be just running around dying a lot because I don’t have a character necessarily designed specifically for them, twinked out to ludicrous standards.  I wouldn’t mind a better skill-set limiting or something on the BGs, though I wouldn’t know where the first place to start would be.

I think that’s pretty good for a long winded whiny opening post.  I’ll try to come back every week with more of my notes from in game.