Warlords of Draenor: My Experience
Warlords of Draenor: My Experience
World of Warcraft came out with their latest expansion, Warlords of Draenor, on November 13th, 2014. Many veterans, myself included, saw before Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King as their best expansions due to their rich storylines, challenging content, and the endless hours of alternate activities. When Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria came out, many could tell that Blizzard was steering their flagship franchise in a direction for much more casual players. Suddenly every major event came with a very easy victory and the story lines became thin and somewhat awkward. Many players who once played World of Warcraft for 6 to 8 hours each day now stopped playing altogether, myself included. Many blame the new partnership with Activision 
for these terrible changes, others say it was Blizzard’s attempt at a cash grab. Regardless of how it happened, World of Warcraft was bleeding customers at a significant rate.
When Warlords of Draenor was announced many representatives from Blizzard praised their new expansion while also admitting their failures with their previous work. They made the promise that their new expansion would bring back the savagery and challenging content that veterans all knew and loved while still having the convenient features that new players were used to. The hype for the expansion was huge. Everyone and their mother seemed to have resubbed to play, so many that there were horrendous log in issues at launch that lasted up to a week or two before getting resolved.
After that whole mess was resolved, everyone was able to explore the world and begin their journey to the new level cap: 100. The questing, the first time ever, was actually something players looked forward to as they were chalked full of cut scenes, voice actors, unique quests, and even limited player decisions which revitalized the old grind. Dungeons were also updated with new battle mechanics, impressive scenery, voice actors, and a new loot system. Along with new quests was the garrison system that allowed players to have a land of their own and then fill it with buildings of their choosing to offer even more convenience from a portal to the faction hub to being able to assign NPCs to farm crafting materials for you. Once you reached 100, you could experience their first raid, participate in their new PvP event and so much more. The first few months of Warlords of Draenor were incredible!
My friends and I formed our own guild, raided every weekend, experienced all of the new things that this expansion offered and then we all unsubscribed and so did everyone else. What the heck happened? Well, this is a difficult question. the only answer I can give is why my friends and I left. Although the expansion was fun, everything quickly became repetitive. In the old days of WoW the only people who mattered were your guild mates and the events that they participated in. Over time, Blizzard added in dungeon finder, cross realm playing and looking for raid. All of which allows the player to participate in activities without the need of a guild.
The main reason a person plays a MMO is to be surrounded by other players to interact with. By introducing all of these new features, it kills the guild community. Now, hardly anyone wanted to raid with the guild due to having to deal with our progression, whereas they could simply join in Looking For Raid and jump into someone else’s raid then refuse to raid with the guild, or even worse, convince others to ditch the guild’s raid in favor of these LFR runs. The point of a guild is to create a community of players that join together to do things no one player can accomplish. Nowadays, they is hardly an incentive to join a guild. So by there being no point to do events with the guild, people began signing on and doing what they wanted, by themselves and then logging out for the day without ever talking with other members of their guild and as I said before, MMOs are all about community, once you remove that the game pales drastically.
I feel as though they shot themselves in the foot with these new convenient features. Everytime they add one, the game dies just a bit more because they are killing the reasons the game was fun to play in the first place. My favorite memories are about fighting off Alliance at the gates of a raid so that my guildies could get in, traveling on land mount to the dungeon and meeting new friends who also made the journey, getting lost in dungeons and having to work with my fellow gamers to find a solution, getting invited to events solely based on my class alone, and so many other aspects. Now traveling to a dungeon is instant, dungeons are shortened tremendously, I can do an event without every talking to anyone, every class has pretty much the same abilities and thus it feels as though I am now a cardboard cut out, I am no different than anyone else and because of that, no one wants to play with me because there are others that are far better.
I took a break for two months and recently came back. Now that I accept my fate that I am nothing more than another cog in the machine, I shall play the game under a new mindset. No longer will I hope to play the game I first fell in love with, I shall accept this as a modern MMO and the only reason I play this game rather than the others is simply because I have invested the most time and energy into it.
What were your experiences with Warlords of Draenor? Post them below!Â
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