The absurdity of feat-of-strength panic

When I realized just how soon patch 4.0.1 was coming, I was hit by this ambiguous sense of panic I had never felt before about the onset of a patch. I'm sure others are familiar with it, though: the sense of urgency, the idea that we need to do whatever we can in what little time we have been given before it isn't available to us anymore. Leveling weapon skills, for example; once Cataclysm comes around, weapon skill will no longer factor into the game; they'll be gone completely. We'll start with our characters knowing all of the proficiencies for weapons they can use, and we won't have to go through the arduous process of level up a skill we have neglected. Of course, this means that Master of Arms and Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich? are going to become feats of strength. Things like that, the idea that certain aspects of the game won't be available to me anymore, set me into a panic as I wondered, should I level my weapon skills to try to earn those achievements before they go the way of the dodo?

As you may be able to tell by the title, I decided against it. I realized that this kind of panic was only brought on by the fact that these achievements aren't going to be available, and that fact was causing me to misjudge whether I should do them. After all, if I got any enjoyment out of leveling weapon skills as anything other than a way to pass time*, I would have gotten those achievements by now, wouldn't I? The fact is that I just don't think that leveling weapon skill is all that fun, especially when I know that, as a druid, weapon skill is completely irrelevant to my playing. Quite simply, I had no good reason to level my weapon skill, and the fact that these achievements weren't going to be available was the only thing making me consider doing them. I suppose this gave me a first-hand lesson in what Saniel was talking about when he commented on my post about reverse feats of strength by saying, "No one likes being told that there's parts of the game they'll have no way of ever accessing." I found out that I myself was not immune to this kind of thought.

I suppose the take-home message from this whole experience is that if your only reason for wanting to do something is because it's not going to be possible to do later, it's best to ask yourself whether you really want to do it before you commit a substantial amount of time to it. I suppose this advice could be applied to other areas of the game as well, such as content that will be available later, but that you want to do while it's still relevant. A friend of mine, who just downed the Lich King, seemed to be suffering from this kind of delusional motivation. He was burnt out from raiding, to the point where he feared logging in each night to try to kill Arthas again. He complained to me about how he just didn't enjoy the game anymore, and once he killed the Lich King, he was going to quit. Non-raider that I am, I couldn't help but wonder, is it really worth it? Is it really worth it to play the game long after it has ceased to be enjoyable for you, just so you can kill a raid boss while he still matters? Are the bragging rights and the satisfaction really worth the unnecessary misery?

I ask because, at the end of the day, the Lich King is just another boss. He may be the most difficult boss now, but new expansions will come out with even harder bosses, and defeating the Lich King won't seem so impressive then. I'm sure the same could be said about the weapon skill achievements: we may be able to smile when we see them in our feats of strength panel immediately after Cataclysm comes out, but soon they'll be just another box in our achievement panel, giving no more satisfaction than anything else in there, if any at all. So really, when we decide to go for these achievements, whether we be motivated because they are going to become feats of strength or because they are going to become trivial, the real question is, is it enjoyable? Because if it isn't, then we have only ourselves to blame for not enjoying the game.

*One example of a way to level weapon skills to pass time is to attack the enemies in Violet Hold for weapon skill before starting the instance. Before patch 3.3, when we got the ability to teleport into the instance through the dungeon finder, I spent a lot of time waiting for people to get there, so I'd just attack the enemies with my weapon to level up my skill.