Breakfast Topic: How do you keep WoW fresh?
by Andrew Ross 
Jun 11th 2011 at 8:00AM
WoW is over 6 years old. Newer, flasher games come out, are deemed "WoW clones," but still manage to keep a portion of their playerbase just because some folks are tired of WoW itself. How many times do people reroll, regrind, re-earn achievements on alts, etc, before burning out? While community certainly helps with retention, I'm sure a lot of us have some special activity that keeps us going.
On Dragonmaw, we have something called Friday Night Fights. A multi-guild, cross-faction group hosts usually one open server event per month, but the rest of the time, it's limited to only certain guilds, to keep the sides fair (at least at the start, till others see what we're doing and join in, hehe). Each week has us fighting in a different zone, usually over an interesting feature in the zone. We've fought on the Deepholme airship, on the Thandol Span that links Wetlands to Arathi Highlands, even got folks doing Halaa again.
Recently, we tried something totally different: nub races based on guild names. For example, members of The Earthbound ended their names with "bound," so "Leeroy" came to the event as "Leeroybound". First nub to die on the designated faction leader as their guild-nub got bragging rights for their guild, and the other participating guilds had to lavish praise on the winners. Cries of "Tigers!" and "Not the murlocs!" were heard all night, and guildies who didn't have time for the whole race popped in just to watch/kill the nubs during their epic adventure.
I burn through patches quickly, especially dungeons, but I always look forward to Friday Night Fights. Do you have some sort of special playstyle or event that you use to keep WoW feeling fresh?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
MusedMoose Jun 11th 2011 8:09AM
I keep WoW fresh by watering it regularly and making sure to put it in the fridge when I'm done.
But seriously, WoW rarely gets old for me because I know there's still tons of stuff I haven't done. If I get tired of playing one character, I just hop on another; the classes play differently enough that even going through the same content feels different. And while most of my alts are Alliance, I've recently been playing Horde-side as well.
Noyou Jun 11th 2011 9:48PM
I'm with you Moosey. My stable of alts keeps things fresh for me. Recently a guildy and I have been doing Tol Barad dailies every day. Just like the Argent Tourney the more you run it the faster/easier it gets. After we are done with that we go do random things. Some times working on guild achievements (Critter kill squad) or personal ones. Then sometimes there is the drunken snowball fights. :p
Fletcher Jun 11th 2011 8:11AM
I've been wondering about this myself, since I burned out on raiding in ICC, on dailies a few months ago, on leveling alts, and most recently on running heroics. I open up the Random Dungeon Finder window and in my mind's eye I see the entrance to the Deadmines, and close the RDF window again.
Earlier today I thought I'd have a go, see if I could bring myself to run a random again. Signed up, waited twenty minutes ... got Deadmines, of course.
So right now I'm mainly just running Heroic Sethekk Halls daily on my rogue, beating up Anzu until he doesn't give me the mount and cutting Ikiss for his nether vortexes.
Shoikler Jun 11th 2011 8:16AM
"Mom, does your WoW ever get that not-so-fresh feeling?"
"Sure, honey, all WoW players experience that. That's why I joined the MassenGuild."
"The MassenGuild?"
"That's right. About once a month or so, I log on my toon in the MassenGuild, and my WoW feels as cool and fresh as a swim off the Howling Fjord."
"Nice! How do I join the MassenGuild, Mom?"
"You can't. It's full. But you can join the new Extra Strength MassenGuild!"
"I love you, Mom."
"I love you too, Son. While we're on this beach, want to kill some murlocs?"
nataswar Jun 11th 2011 12:21PM
Most may be too young to remember those commercials, but not me. I lmao! Nice one...
loop_not_defined Jun 11th 2011 8:28AM
By not playing it so frequently. Although that implies I have a choice in the matter. ;)
Kiajinn Jun 11th 2011 8:34AM
Good Tupperware.
Othgan Jun 11th 2011 8:51AM
I either switch my playstyle or mess around on an alt. PvE has gotten boring, so my guild is starting an arena team and we are going to try PvP. And then recently I spent a good 3 hours room jumPing in SW on a new Worgen DK. Using running wild made it so much fun.
Othgan Jun 11th 2011 8:52AM
I also spam trade with "WTB edit button!"
Should be roof jumping not room jumping.
Tim Jun 11th 2011 8:51AM
Awww ya'll got jokes. Very funny. I haven't really been playing lately. Catching up on my comics and shows that came last year that I didn't get a chance to see. And movies. Basically anything not WoW related.
xyna Jun 11th 2011 8:55AM
Theres 10 classes in the game, each class has 3 diffrent ways to play, gess what >: D
Lissanna Jun 11th 2011 8:59AM
Honestly, I keep a second MMO on the side that I log into at least once on the weekends to break up my WOW playtime. It helps keep WOW from getting boring, because during non-raid days, If I don't have something in WOW to do, it gives me an escape from my primary game.
razion Jun 11th 2011 9:52AM
Yo, we heard you like escaping. So we put an escape in your escape so you could escape while you escape.
But seriously, this is a good recommendation. Even if it's only when the WoW servers are down for Tuesday maintenance, playing another game can go a long way to preserving your enjoyment of the other.
Lissanna Jun 11th 2011 11:12AM
Well, as an escape, having logged into WoW within a month of it's original release to now, without taking any breaks longer than a week (like when I went camping or moved cross-country) along with all the other game-related things I do (ie. being an officer of a guild, a blogger with a fairly large following, having a new podcast, maintaining two stickies on the druid forums, beta testing/PTR testing, et cetra over the years) ...
The best way I've found to keep WOW interesting is to sometimes log into LOTRO where I'm a total noob (I've been playing for a couple years and still don't have a level-capped character and I have zero responsibilities/obligaitions). LOTRO gives me a house to decorate, and the horrible travel mechanics remind me of why I love WOW so much. :)
DarkWalker Jun 11th 2011 12:16PM
@Lissanna
TBH, there are a few things about LotRO transportation that I sure would love to see WoW copy:
- Skills to teleport to faction cities when the character reaches Kindred (the equivalent to Exalted) with them (and, also, available for purchase earlier from the online store for 295 points, roughly $3).
- The main taxi routes being almost instant (players see the horse leaving, loading screen, player arrives).
- Players are able to jump off the taxi at any place in the route. I can get in a horse that passes close to where I want to go and jump when I pass there.
- The "hearthstone" is a skill and does not occupy inventory space.
- Players are able to buy 5 extra "hearthstones", independently bindable, in the store for 350 points each. Since subscribers receive 500 points each month, they can either save for 4 months to get all extra "hearthstones" for a single character for free, or spend roughly $17.50 worth of points to get them all at once.
But yeah, the interface for choosing taxi destinations is somewhat worse than WoW's one during Vanilla. There is no map (players pick from a set of names) and no automatic connections. I myself keep a map handy to know where to go.
JKWood Jun 11th 2011 1:17PM
I think what appeals to me the most about LOTRO is the in-game music system, something that I've never seen another game approach. I started playing about two months ago, and now I'm part of a group that gives two weekly concerts on two servers with music we've either transcribed or written ourselves.
I do miss interactive chairs, though (no job, no WoW.)
Quasi Jun 11th 2011 9:02AM
Duoing old content with my wife. We did twin emps and Cthun the other day, which was a combination of the most frustrating and the most epic experience we have had in a while, 1/2 way through the fight we lost control, were slowly getting destroyed by 2 jerks that were auto healing each other, both of us under 10% health and somehow we got it together and wiped the floor with em. Feels good man. Best part was knowing NOTHING about the fights going in, and figuring them out for ourselves. "Oh? so one is immune to physical and one immune to magic....oh but neat they share hp!" and "Ok, I think if we are both in the stomach he is auto killing us....this is bad"
We have started to plow through outlands now, we were doing kara a long time ago, but im more talking magtheridon, black temple, and sunwell. We wiped for about an hour and a half on Gruuls before realising....nope, not gonna happen, I think we could trio it though, the auto successful sheeping and fear are pretty lame, cant be resisted ftl.
Been having so much fun doing it I was thinking of frapsing all this, and starting up a site dedicated to playing as couples. In your face singles.
Garneth Jun 11th 2011 10:09AM
I'd love to watch those videos :)
raposo02790 Jun 11th 2011 9:04AM
We get our toons hammered on some fine grog we we go to cross roads, we stripdown and fight each other all while /yelling "to the pain"...
Luotian Jun 11th 2011 9:37AM
Personally, I just don't usually get bored sitting somewhere and talking it up with my guildies. Or running one of my many alts, though they are all starting to get high now. Re-rolling something I know well on a different server works too. At the very least I get a 'home sweet home' feeling when I return to Silver Hand, and suddenly Trade seems less annoying-- for a few minutes, anyway.