Posts with tag wow-discussion

These are terms that are bandied around a lot. Catering to the casuals, WoW has become a game for casuals, the rose-tinted spectacles of players who assert that the game used to be hardcore and has somehow slipped from its glory days into the mire of casual gaming.

But what do casual and hardcore mean? Certainly there are extremes. Nobody in their right mind could accuse Method or Blood Legion of being casual. These world first guilds are pretty much the epitome of the hardcore player. And yet, their Finnish cousins, Paragon, are accused of losing their hardcore crown by switching raid sizes. And at the other end of the spectrum, there are people who might log on once a week and run a heroic 5-man.

Of course, it's also worth remembering that your notion of what casual and hardcore are might not match those of your friends, your guild, your family. What is the cut-off point between hardcore-casual and casual-hardcore? How much WoW do you have to play to make the shift from a casual player into a hardcore one? Or is there some other measure, such as longevity, that qualifies some over others? Or maybe the whole thing is nonsense.

Now that the battleground blacklist feature has been around for some time, most of us have probably settled into a routine of picking out our two least favorite places. So I'm wondering, a while down the line, which battlegrounds do you blacklist? This feature has returned to the spotlight of late, with a little note from the systems design team in the recent PvP Q&A, suggesting, perhaps teasing, that Blizzard might consider cutting a battleground from the game. They mentioned that they had more information about the most and least popular BGs, and we had a good time postulating about which might be cut.

So which do I blacklist? I switch it around a lot, some days it'll be Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest, but a few days later I'll be fine with those and it'll be Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks, usually as a result of a bad loss which wound up with the faction I was playing being camped at the graveyard. Maybe it's better to ask which battlegrounds I never blacklist, and the answer to that would be Eye of the Storm. I love that place. I can't put my finger on why exactly, perhaps it's the long sight lines, perhaps it's the mixed mechanics, meaning there's a lot of varied tasks to be done. I'm not sure if the chicken came before the egg, but it's also by far my most won random battleground. Positive reinforcement!

But what about you? Which battlegrounds do you blacklist, or, if you're a more changeable sort like me, which do you never blacklist?

It occurred to me earlier this week, as I was doing another round of dailies on the Isle of Thunder, that I really had no reason to be doing them at all. I've been exalted with the Sunreaver Onslaught for quite some time now. There's nothing I need from the vendor. But something keeps me going back to this particular set of dailies over any other, even though I don't really need them anymore. Of course there's the weekly quest that's a pretty easy 150 valor, and the Treasure Vault to plunder, and of course there's the raid itself -- I really think the Throne of Thunder is the best raid we've had this expansion so far.

But there's also just something about that mysterious island. I love the saurok dailies, stomping bugs and jumping around like a maniac. I like going on the odd binge of rare-killing. I like the atmosphere of the area, which is odd in and of itself because the island is frankly, pretty gloomy -- but every time lightning hits a tree, I kind of have to marvel at how pretty it looks. As for the dailies themselves, they're pretty easy to complete, they send me on a circuit of the island, and they don't take very long. The dailies make it easy to rack up a quick 400-450g or so in a half hour, and I'm not going to complain about that.

I do wonder, though, if anyone else has a peculiar fascination with the Isle of Thunder. Are you exalted with your respective faction? Do you still do the dailies? Do you find yourself hunting for rares every week, or diligently making sure you get the Key to the Palace of Lei Shen? Or do you just head to the island for the raid? Will you head to the Isle after patch 5.3 arrives? Is there something on the island with enough of a draw to keep you coming back? And just because I'm curious -- what did you think of the Isle of Thunder dailies? Were they better than the ones offered in patch 5.1?