I’ll start by saying that Magister’s Terrace (MrT) is wonderful from start to finish. It’s beautiful to look at, the music is great, the bosses are fun, and the gear potential makes me want to bring all my characters there. If it were none of those, it’d still be a new place to go with my guildmates. But it’s great, so kudos to Blizzard.

(Also, the in-game cinematic should be something that they do ALL THE TIME. Not just in instances, but quests. ALL THE TIME. When you create a soulwell, or a ritual of refreshment. You should get an in-game cinematic when you click your hearthstone. Just get that world of warcraft narrator talking, and you feel epic.)

The game mechanic corrections and tweaks are all welcome, as always. New crafting rewards are welcome, new faction, new zone. New combat log, new portals coming. New zomg epics. I was glad to see the excitement of my guildmates as they purchased Nether Vortexes (Vortices?) and upgraded their crafted gear.

All good fun.

Maybe I’ve been following the game’s development too much, but I’m still underwhelmed. Not by what’s been given, but by the long barren months between here and the next expansion, which is presumably six or more months away. The new 25-man raid instance is going to keep the high-end guilds happy for a while, but it means absolutely nothing to me and my wife, as well as our guild. I’m guessing that it took Blizzard a while to make.

The dailies? Well, they’re mostly kill X quests. Yes, the quests eventually open up new parts of town, and it’s fun to progress as a server and feel actual community with all these people I’ve been bumping shoulders with for a couple of years. But the Ogrila quests themselves were more fun: you have a roping quest, a bombing quest, a portal quest. Here, you have a bunch of kill quests and one bombing quest. I’m just saying, we could have some story quests mixed in with the unlocking of phases.

Oh, a note on the Sunwell bombing run: get a partner. Otherwise I don’t see how you could do it in one pass (it’s taken me three tries every time when I’ve tried it solo). With my wife, we did it in one pass.

I’m really looking forward to Wrath of the Lich King. It’s a long way away. In the meantime, I’ll be doing the dailies and enjoying Magister’s Terrace.

The game indicator of winning in WoW is receiving an epic item.In vanilla WoW, the vast majority of epic items came from 40-man raiding. Granted, there was an epic hunter quest, and a few limited crafting bits, and world drops, and a top-level pvp set that only a handful of people could get. But in all, the reality was that if you wanted a reliable way to get epic gear (and win), you hooked up with a raid guild and started raiding… whether you liked raiding, or not.

Compare with the current WoW, TBC. The reliable ways to get epic items include:
25-man raiding
10-man raiding
heroic five man instances
crafting
participating in arena
participating in battlegrounds
purchased at a vendor with tokens (Badge of Justice) obtainable from 10/25-man raiding or even daily questing
and also the world drop/auction house

People who play in hardcore raiding guilds miss the days of when they were the only ones with epics. Despite their complaining, Blizzard has consistently introduced more ways to get epic items, not less. They’ve made the game more accessible to those who can’t or won’t hardcore raid. This is great for players like me: a new father, full-time working, and so on. If I get spend one or two nights a week online, I’m happy and will continue to keep my account active. And the game will reward me for it. And when I do participate in raids, my gear won’t be a liability, only my rustiness.

With 2.4, every last crafting profession yields BoP benefits akin to useful epics, even alchemists. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next expansion, Blizzard expanded the BoJ purchasing scheme even further, allowing (in essence) crafted Badges of Justice.

The best part is that these paths to success aren’t finite anymore, either. Now when a higher-level of loot is released to 25-man raiders, a waterfall of upgrades cascades down to those who aren’t involved in 25-man raiding. New heroic loot, new badge of justice rewards, a new arena season, upgraded battleground gear, another tier of crafting or relaxation of material requirements. Basically, they’re giving everyone new ways to continue improving, without ever having to set foot in a 25-man raid. You’ll never have gear as good as all those dedicated raiders, but you won’t be left in the cold, either. Blizzard now adds loot across the board.

In short, there are many ways to win.

This hurts guilds trying to build up to 25-man raiding (including my own), because in vanilla wow you had a lot of players who were in raiding guilds solely for the loot (again, like my own). The primary reason the people are in my guild stick around is because they like each other! This makes my guild more fun, and therefore the experience of playing the game more fun.

I’m looking forward to the next expansion to see how this trend continues.