Why am I Not Feeling It.

There are a lot of things coming with mists that I am looking forward to.  Even the redesigned talent system that I was originally against I have warmed up to.  I like that reputations need to be worked on again instead of basically given to you just for wearing a tabard.  I like that the tabard is for exalted again.  Not sure why, I just like the BC version of reputation grinds better.  To each their own right?  There is a lot that has peaked my interest.

I love that there will not be a daily quest cap.  Probably that more than anything else is a quality of life change as I see it.  Sure, it was extremely rare I ever hit the cap anyway but those few times I did it would have been nice to be able to do more if I wanted to.  So I am really liking that.

I am looking forward to there being a new class to learn how to play, the monk.  I plan on making at least one and possibly more if I like how they play out.  I'm going to make a female pandaren monk.  Female because I think the males are way to big.  They are bigger than draenei males and I have no male draenei for one reason and one reason only, they are too big, so I would never roll a male pandaren even if someone paid me too.

I am looking forward to having a connected world again.  I really felt lost, if that is the right word, in cataclysm because I did not feel I belonged anywhere.  The disconnection of the zones really took away from the full world feeling in ways I don't think blizzard ever considered it would.  The return to a world were we are on a continent is fantastic and needed.

I am a huge supporter of the no flying until 90, although I am sure on alts I will start hating it, but I think there is something to be said about making your way walking or riding while leveling.  I leveled in vanilla content walking even until 44, I leveled in BC with a ground mount, I leveled in wrath on the ground too (until 77 or 78 at least if I remember correctly), and I leveled in cataclysm flying and for someone that loves to level and does it a lot I can tell you that leveling in cataclysm was horrible in comparison to the others.

Ground mounts give the game a different feeling, one that flying loses.  Like I said, I can see me not wanting to do it on too many alts, but maybe they will make a book like in wrath that will be BoA to get flying earlier for the alt issue.  Either way, ground mounts are a winner of a decision if you ask me and I am looking forward to leveling on the ground, it makes it feel like more of an adventure to me.

I like that the first raid will be pushed back a little.  Not like my guild will ever be world first or realm first, we are not that type of guild, realm 20th works for us just fine thank you, but if it were there it would feel like I needed to get into it sooner.  Now I can take my time and enjoy the ride a little.

I know you would say I could have done that before and sure I could have, but if the raid is there I would feel it is my job, as a good raider and a raid leader even more so, to be completely 100% raid ready as soon as possible.  I like that there is a small wait.  It takes the decision away from me.  Not saying I will take any longer to level.  I am sure by September 26th I'll have at least my main at 90 but now it will be a choice and not a feeling like I have too.

I like that you will need to finish the first raid before going to another.  While everyone seems to hate attunements, when three raids are current raids, there should be some sort of set progression.  Think of it as one big raid and that first one has the first bosses, the second one has the middle bosses and the last one has the end bosses.  It makes for a real progression and not a choose which one we think we can beat thing.

I like that there are a massive amount of reputations for me to go for to keep me busy.  I like that there are mounts to save up for.  I like that there are lots of different materials for me to grind for.  I like that there will be more to do and it should take longer to do it than it did in cataclysm where I was exalted with everyone within a week of release.

I like the new mount with the reforging vendor, I wanted one of those.  I like that there will be a portable forge and anvil an engineer can make.  I like that new blingtron thing, it will be fun and something you can drop before a raid as a gift for those that showed up for the raid.  I like that there are other quality of life things being added like those things.  Fetch for my pet, so I never need to go loot again.  AoE looting so my pet gets it all at once.  So many little things to be happy about there.

I like the new areas.  They actually feel new and not like reskins.  With the exception of the underwater zone in cataclysm all the other zones just seemed like reskins, like no effort was put into them.  They cut from here and pasted there and then cut from some other place and paste it next to it.  It looks like we have a whole new world to explore and that is something you can get excited about.

I like the idea of challenge modes even if I do have some worries about them.  Being able to assemble a group that works well together with enough CC, burst, and played together long enough to work perfectly as a team can be a great deal of fun and I am really looking forward to assembling my group.  Even have them in mind already.

I am a little worried however about this creating a little divide in guilds like mine.  We have some fine players but there are some that are just good enough, if you know what I mean.  They are good enough to raid, good enough to even get heroic modes down with, but I think challenge modes will be harder than heroic raid because of the gear standards and no one being over geared to help cover up for someone, at least if they are made right.  How do you tell this person they can't go with you?  I am sure it will not be as bad as I make it.  But it is something to think about.

I like the idea of scenarios.  A way for any group of three to get in and out and get their valor nice and easy.  I consider valor part of the grind and you have probably heard me say it here many times, a grind should be a time investment, not a skill investment and in randoms it is a skill investment and most players do not have enough skill to invest.  I also like the idea, from all I have seen and read, that as a hunter I can basically solo every scenario easily myself so I will not have to count on those other two people to do their job right.

I like the concept of giving people more ways to get valor.  Like from quests, challenge modes, scenarios, LFD, LFR, raiding.  The more the merrier.  It is a great idea to let people play the game they want to play and not make them feel like the way they choose to play effectively means they can't have everything in the game.  Loot that can be bought at a vendor should be capable of being bought by all that play.  This means valor gear.  Now even someone that just quests and quests only can buy it and not feel forced to dungeon or raid. Good move in my opinion.

Even if I never played pokeman, never desired to play pokeman, and could not be bothered to give a crap about pokeman, I am looking forward to pet battles.  They will fill a nice place when things start to slow down in other areas like rep grinding and mat grinding.  It will do what archeology did at the beginning of cataclysm.  Give me something to do when doing nothing.  The archeology thing went by fast however.  I did it while in queue, got a lot of what I wanted, and once maxed and I got everything there was never a reason to do it any more.  Pet battles will live longer than that because you can always battle, you can always level up new pets, you can always do it just for fun.  No one does archeology just for fun.  So once I am done with the archeology filling the time in queue I will move to pet battles.  A nice little way to pass the time.

I am also looking forward to the farmville of wow.  Not sure why.  Never played farmville and never cared to but once I heard I can get materials from it, it moved to the top of my list of things I wanted to do.  Another time waster way to pass the time and I can dig that.  Even more so for a game like this that has nothing to pass the time otherwise really.  Anything we can do once in a while is a good thing.  This could be one of those things in the end.

There is a lot I could say I am not looking forward too as well, don't get me wrong, it is not all rainbows and unicorns but that is another post and not the point I am trying to get at.  For as much as there is for me to be looking forward to, as much as it seems I will want to do, things that I am even mildly excited for on their own, the expansion as a whole just doesn't do it for me.

Why am I not feeling it?  I just do not have that feeling like it will be good even if there are many things I am looking forward to.  Perhaps it is just another thing cataclysm destroyed besides azeroth.  It destroyed my faith in the game and the game makers.

For all that looks good on paper I've learned that does not translate well into action.  I was excited for cataclysm.  There was a lot I was looking forward to and I had high expectations.  On paper cataclysm seemed awesome, even with the lack of a decent end character.  I was never into deathwing, never seemed like he would be a good baddie.  But I was still excited as all hell when it came out.

A few dungeon runs with people that could not understand the most basic of basic mechanics and waiting 3 months before we even had one healer willing to heal so we could start raiding really ruined the entire expansion for me because it all just got worse as the expansion went on.

I was hyped for it, I was excited about many things, and in the end it just felt like blizzard spit in the faces of everyone that was fool enough to keep playing patch after patch.  When the zul patch came out I almost quit, it made what was already a bad random dungeon experience into a horrible one when the average player is the type of person that could not chew bubblegum and walk at the same time.  I almost quit then and if I had liked rifts graphics better I would have left for it during that point.

I think what it comes down to is that the emotional investment of excitement I put into cataclysm was all for nothing.  It was horrible all around and I do not feel that connected to the game any more and I am unwilling to invest my excitement into something blizzard puts out again.  Once bitten, twice shy.

I think that is why I am not feeling it.  I had so many expectations for cataclysm and got let down every patch that came out more than I was the previous patch.  I am not feeling it because I don't want to get let down again and even if there seems to be so much I will like about mists, if I do not build it up in my own mind I can't be let down.  Simple as that.

For me, and maybe others, this is the make or break expansion for blizzard.  My guild mates kept me around for cataclysm, barely, I was going to leave for rift.  Another disaster like that and I don't think my friends can save me from leaving.  Sorry, friendship is one thing but letting blizzard take advantage of you by releasing subpar content extremely slowly and charging me for it is another and I will not pay for garbage again.  If mists can not live up to what I expect from a game, it will be my last expansion.

At least as it stands now, with no real expectations, no real excitement, no emotional investment thinking how great it will be, it should be impossible to let me down.  If I expect nothing to be good, it can only go up from there.  Right?