The cycle is the same whenever a massively multiplayer online role-playing game gets a healthy dose of expansion content: Weeks of glorious excitement followed by a slow descent into lassitude. It’s all a matter of when it hits. For me and World of Warcraft’s Legion expansion, that’s right about now.
It’s sort of like finding a new restaurant nearby. You stop in for a curious visit and discover you really like what they are serving. The menu is an exciting array of undiscovered tastes that brings you back again and again. Then maybe you have a dish you don’t like, or you find yourself eating the same thing over and over again. It’s a cycle we go through regularly in life, be it a fast food restaurant or a relationship or Blizzard’s latest MMO expansion.
I had a good month. I levelled a whole bunch of characters. I collected a couple dozen powerful artifact weapons. I completed hundreds of story and world quests. I did all of the dungeons on regular and heroic. I even started in on mythics.
But now, eh. Not a bad eh, just eh. I’ve seen much of the content, from core story or class Order House questlines, and most of what I’ve not seen involves wading through that which I have in order to get to the different bits. The dungeons are getting repetitive while the random people I play with grow less forgiving of small mistakes.
I’ve found myself fiddling about in non-Legion content as a means of keeping things interesting. I’m levelling a Shaman, trying my hand at healing. Some of my guildmates in Exalted With Taco Bell have taken me on some old-school raids, which I have a blast tearing through. I’ve begun experimenting with random plugins, trying to give the game I’ve been staring at constantly for a month a fresh look and feel.
I probably just need a little break.
I don’t hold the post-expansion ennui against Legion. My review of the new content stands. It is some of the most exciting and divergent stuff I’ve seen in World of Warcraft. I’ve played more of the game over the past two months than I have in years.
It’s just time to relax a little bit now. Get some low-level healing in. Catch up with some other games. Save up my energy for the 7.1 Return to Karazhan update whenever that hits.
My time in Legion isn’t over, it’s just no longer urgent.
How are the rest of you World of Warcraft players faring? Still full speed ahead, or losing steam?
Comments
20 responses to “World Of Warcraft: Legion Post-Expansion Ennui Sets In”
Pretty interesting from Fahey. This could be a good idea for a movie.
It’s a WOW-nderful Life.
No mention of the raid that’s been out for 2 weeks, that LFR is up now, Mythic +…
Still plenty of content not mentioned above that can go be done. Hardly getting stale. Think the burn out problem indicated here is more related to going crazy playing a ridiculous amount of alts rather than anything. Try just playing one character and getting the best out of it first. I know that play style isn’t for everyone but it stops you losing interest from repeating the same thing over and over.
i’m kinda in the same frame of mind and haven’t got an alt past 103 even though i’d have a few at max level by this point in older expansions, the sheer weight of getting an alt to playable (and not being able to chain dungeons to do it) is daunting. i think i’ll be slacking off and just doing the daily world quest set, a couple of the biggest ap quests and raiding on my main for a couple weeks. man, that really doesn’t sound like taking a break.
From BC through to Cata (didn’t have an alt in Vanilla) I’ve always leveled my alts through questing as it’s faster than dungeons. I’ve never tried to level an alt within a couple weeks of my main hitting cap. I just don’t see the point. Why level an alt when there’s still the majority of progression for your main to do? Alts come in once progression on my main has slowed down.
I’m a little behind everyone this xpac as I started 2 weeks into it and had to level from 85 (skipped MoP/WoD). Currently 840 ilvl on my main and raiding Normal EN with my guild. I still haven’t set foot in a Heroic let alone a Mythic or +. Have done the vast majority of quests, still need more rep with Nightfallen to continue theirs.
My current progression when not raiding is to get into some Heroic/Mythic dungeons, do WQs and farm crafting materials. Still have more to do than time available to do it, probably a month away from starting work on my first alt.
questing hasn’t always been faster than dungeons, it used to be pretty much on par till they nerfed the heck out of dungeon xp this expansion
Dungeons were only on par if you had rested xp and if you had a group constantly to run them. Other than that they were slower, I tried both methods myself in BC and WOTLK.
No wonder its getting repetitive if you’re replaying it all over again on different characters. Choose one and get into mythic + and/or the raid IMO.
So instead of grinding one thing you tell him to grind a different thing? That’s why people have stopped playing. Every xpac they expect the second coming of Jesus and get bored when it all comes down to the same grind last xpac.
Don’t get me wrong I don’t dislike the game infaxt it consumed my life for years. It’s just every time it is the same rind in a different backdrop.
Well if you just look at it as a grind, then yes every last thing you do in any MMO is a grind.
It’s more repeat the same thing over and over with a different character or jump into different content with a single character. Fahey doesn’t even mention raiding so presumably he hasn’t seen that content. Mythic + are also a whole other ball game and are an alternative path to raiding…there’s quite a lot of variety in those dungeons.
Personally I’d get bored and burnt out a hell of a lot faster playing 10+ characters through the same content and seeing no “unique” progression on any of them versus playing one character and pushing progression in every aspect of the game I play.
This. I am actually enjoying the mythic+ dungeons more than raiding. Seeing how far I can push it each week. The affixes are both terrifying and rewarding. Lots of end game content isnt being mentioned here. Even the review glosses over it. Fahey appears to have just levelled all his characters through to 110, heroics are barely scratching the surface of end game content. I too am an altoholic. But may be best to hunker down on a favourite and explore new content instead of taking it from the top for the 10th time.
Having not played since early Cata I’ve noticed a large change in the WoW community in regards to alts. In WOTLK/Cata I was considered odd for playing 3 characters, it wasn’t extreme but pretty unusual. The majority played 1 or 2 characters at most, maybe a 3rd for professions. the most extreme had around 5 or 6 that they played regularly.
Now returning for Legion it’s fairly common for people to have 5 or 6 characters and even up to 10 isn’t worth comment. Somewhere in MoP/WoD (I’m pretty sure it was WoD) people started playing a large variety of characters. they were able to maintain and play them all…then along comes a fresh expansion and suddenly they can’t do that so they complain or get burnt out and bored.
As far as I see it, WoD had a lack of content and it was advantageous for gold farming to have multiple characters. So to keep busy/have fun people leveled a lot of alts to max over the course of the expansion and had no issue keeping them all current as it didn’t take much time. Then the pre-Legion event comes along, making it so people can go 1-100 in a day and suddenly more alts boom.
Now Legion hits, people choose their “main” and level to 110. They notice some time gating in order halls and then start leveling their next alt within 1-2 weeks of release. They’re accustomed to having up to 10 characters at max level from WoD so why can’t they do that again now? Naturally, going through the same leveling process 10 times is pretty boring so now suddenly the entire expansion isn’t worth playing because they’re bored of repeating the same thing over and over rather than stretching that out over months as they did in WoD.
Things have gone back to normal and it’s caught out the people who became accustomed to it being different.
Its not all the same grind though. There are more options than ever to continue progressing your character once you reach 110.
there’s a lull sure, I do world quests on one character now instead of 5 on a rotation. i focus mostly on mythic+ instead of grinding every heroics and mythic.
it’s really just the character progression and real life at the end of the day now. there’s less incentive to grind instances because my main artifact costs over 50K for the next trait and with AK6 I only get about 1K per token. I play less characters because the less quarter of the year tends to be busy at work (budgets, preparation / general project planning for new year etc).
I’ll pick the game backup once the holiday rolls around
I wish I got a holiday lol.
you don’t get forced shutdown? well I guess it depends what industry you work haha
Problem is no work means at home and looking after 2 children. So not necessarily a holiday lol.
Got one of my alts to 100 first and now playing only an hour or two at a time. Means not getting bored and cranking out 1-2 levels on the other alts per day. Still haven’t decided on a main. Flaming balls flying around your head constantly is a big deterrent for playing a mage currently, no I dont want to mog it.
They added an NPC that gives you an option to “hide your balls”. Haven’t started playing on my mage but saw the screenshot on forums.
that’s in 7.1 if i remembered correctly, not on live yet
I mained Fishing for this expansion haven’t looked back.