Re: Dear Vanilla Players, I'm Sorry...

I’m sorry you wasted 40 hours a week of your life so your Rogue can wield an axe (Weapon Proficiency).
Im sorry you had to grind 40 hours a week to get a mount.
Im sorry you had to grind 40 hours a week to gain one level.
And most of all, I’m sorry you were misled into believing that a long winded BORING grind made you feel like a special snowflake.

Get over it...move on, Wow is better now then it ever was.

;P

Dear High and Mighty...

Don't need your pity for something that was enjoyable for me. I never got epic riding, but I was fine with that. I got to raid UBRS while it was still a legit raid and got to see ZG. Would love to have gotten to do MC and BWL and such when they were current content, but then that's my problem because I started late in Vanilla. People say I didn't miss much, but I say I missed something I'd have enjoyed. And even if I hadn't enjoyed them in the end, at least I'd have gotten to try them. It took me months to level my first character to 60, and I enjoyed it. Now I level characters when I'm bored(and dang have I been bored without too much to do). When I leveled my first character, getting gear and working on professions were important and actually gave me something to do. Now when I level, I do it so I can keep up with others and not have someone go "u suk l2p" or such derpy derivatives or because if I skip doing them they'll be a pain to go back and do later. Back when things were slow, the game was an adventure and a challenge. Now it's all just go go go, rush rush rush. That isn't fun. I miss classic AV where there was some strategy and mobs to kill that mattered and calling Lokholar and so on. Now it's a zergfest, to see who can kill the other side faster. Frankly, if they did have Vanilla or BC servers, I would play on those more than current servers and leave all you entitlers behind.

And one thing to note... I consider myself a casual. I don't raid like it's all that matters to me, nor do I don't like hard modes and have no absolute need to do them and feel like I'm an awesome player. I don't really do arenas either, really, though I have two characters that I'd heal in arenas with if I had folks to be steady and PvP with. Simple as that. I can tank, I can heal, I can DPS, I have done all but one class up to full level, though my warlock's close. My point is I know what I'm talking about, and I have every right to feel the way I feel. Do I still play? You bet. Have I ever taken breaks? Maybe a week or two at a time, or cut back on my time in game, either because I was busy with life or I just needed to deal with some burnout. Am I going to keep playing? You already know I am because I enjoy the game for what it is. If this is too hard for you to understand, that's fine, I don't care. I'm gonna keep right on playin'.

And for the sake of saying, you ARE right that WoW is better now than it ever was, but was it bad then? Not from my point of view. You are entitled to your opinions about things, as I am about mine, but for me, I have my own personal facts that your opinions will never, EVER change. I'm not sorry for that, either. I'm not the only one who feels this way either, so it's your turn to get over it and move on. Good day.

Original post on the forums that was too full to respond to - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6308661972

Semi-OT but related - Rift

Alright, so, chances are that you have seen something about Rift, the latest MMO to hit the market, be it a banner ad, review, or what have you. One of the banner ads that I've seen on both Wowhead and Curse Client says "We're not in Azeroth anymore!" which obviously means to say "We're gunning for World of Warcraft, fear us, rawr." If you believe the mini movies and the banner ads and such, you might just believe they have a chance.

Honestly? They're not taking down Deathwing anytime soon. Does it mean they've got nothing? Hardly.

First thing to note, if you can trial run it, do so, both to see how you like it and to see if you can run the beast. In my case, my Dell Dimension 5150 with a Pentium D, 2 gigs of generic ram, and 7600 GT 256 meg video card ran it on the lowest settings. I didn't try to hike 'em up 'cause I had the second half of a weekend trial run, if that. Have 10 gigs free on your hard drive too. My DSL took around 16 hours supposedly, at around 140k a second for download speeds. And don't pause or stop it either if you don't have more than 10 gigs to work with. If you pause it and restart it, it will look at your current hard drive space, and if you are over its space requirement, it'll restart fine. If you're under, it won't, even if you have, let's say, 5 gigs finished downloading. Start with 12, pause with 7 gigs still free, nope, won't resume, gotta get past that minimum install threshold again. Lesson learned, have a free space buffer on your hard drive if you happen to be like me and have a stuffed drive.

So what about gameplay, anyway? What I really say? For the computer I played it on, the graphics were good, the gameplay was, I felt, a little numb, a little groping to get the proper things done, not unlike City of Heroes and Champions Online. Was it bad gameplay? Certainly not. If you get used to it, you're gonna be just fine. As far as things like gear and stats go, it's the typical, familiar stuff, a few vague stats and a few obvious good stats. One thing I did love was the talent trees. It was fun to figure out which combos work the best. In my case, I played a shaman, and I was makin' a mess of baddies. I forget which combo I was using, but I know druid was part of the trio. Since I started writing this a couple of months ago on my phone, the game has come down in price, extremely so. I'm seeing $20 prices in general, and I've actually got a price of $5 because of my former trial period. Since then, the friends I know have played the game have stopped or aren't playing at the moment, save for one, and those friends are still playing good ol' WoW. That said, it's not bad, but it's no WoW killer. I would play it again, but I don't really wanna pay to play when I play WoW and don't plan on stopping for the obvious immediate future.