As I inch ever closer to level 60, one thing is clear: Warcraft is becoming more EQ-esque. That might not be, necessarily, a bad thing, but the happy happy joy joy game that Warcraft was from levels 1 through 50 is being replaced with a “you damn well better find some more people to do this instance because what you got here ain’t gonna cut it and why in the world did you bring a warlock along?” game.
Making do won’t do much longer.
The rest of my gang of e-thugs seems to realize this also. We’re currently shopping for other guilds and players worth a damn for the tougher encounters. In a game where a large portion of the population are fresh recruits to the wonderful world of gaming, this can be problematic.
Frankly, we’re willing to settle for a few players that won’t rob us blind and will sporadically pop a heal or apply some DPS. That they would also know how to arrive at the encounter safely, timely and PREPARED seems too much to hope for at this point.
We’ve considered creating an army of alts to pick up the slack, but who has the energy for that nowadays and that’s so three games ago.
The transition has been every so slight … gently nudging us away from solo and duo quests into requiring full, balanced groups to get the uber … one day, we’ll login and it’s back to 2002 with scheduled raids and not enough damn clerics to get the show on the road.
Eventually, all games arrive at a state of EQness.
All games I choose seem to anyways. Maybe, therein lies the problem.
Oddly my level 58 Priest has only gotten 5 unsolicited non-guild invites from since level 1. Four of those since level 44. So I don’t think things are as dire as people say (at least not on Alliance/Silver Hand). Players get by just fine at the highest instances with two Paladins or a Paladin and Druid, the latter combo often claimed to be superior to the traditional EQ-like Warrior+Priest(Cleric).
But, that said, I agree. The higher instances and raids become more and more EQ-like as you approach 60. Blizzard invited many members from top EQ raiding guilds into Alpha and they have at least several staff from the same, or similar, EQ guilds. Blame them and the folks at Blizzard who listened to them instead of the rest of the Alpha/Beta testers … except when it came to Warriors and (Disc/Holy) Priests. The masses were listened to in those cases, nerfed them, and now Blizz can truly say that you don’t need Warriors and Priests in the high-level instances. “See? We’re not EQ!”
Bleh.