Expand your horrizons to conquer the slump

Wrath of the Lich King is in its twilight hours, and many players are feeling bored with the game as a result. There are no new raids to run if one has already completed or given up on Icecrown Citadel, no new heroics or factions to grind reputation with, no new battlegrounds to fight in, etc. There's a real feeling of repetition that seems to permeate our play. At this point, it seems as if there is nothing for us to do aside from all of the things we have already done many times over.

There are, I'm sure, many who would suggest we break up the boredom by preparing for Cataclysm, but the things we do to prepare for Cataclysm are really the same activities we have done many times over dressed up with different goals. Making money for the new money sink? How do you propose to do that? Whatever method you choose, being it grinding, dailies, or playing the auction house, players have been doing it to pay for their repair bills since the expansion debuted. The last time new content was added that enabled players to make money in new ways was patch 3.2, which brought us the Argent Tournament. There's also the option to try to gear up to make leveling through Cataclysm faster, but that must also be done through the same avenues we have already used: heroics, raids, PvP perhaps, the occasional crafted piece, etc. Point is, anything we do in the name of preparing for Cataclysm will likely not relieve the doldrums we feel now.

So how to busy ourselves while we wait for the new content, while there's nothing else to do? Well, therein lies the problem: there is plenty to do; most players suffering from inter-expansion boredom have just dismissed the the things they could be doing to pass the time. And because those players have dismissed these activities, the idea of doing them doesn't even pop into their heads when they log in and ask, "What should I do today?" They are blind to any in-game reminder that these activities exist because those activities aren't within their realm of possibility. They skim past the relevant achievements, forget about players they see bearing the rewards of these activities, all because they once decided, "Nah, not worth it."

Let me ask you something: have you completed WoW? Because unless you are that Taiwanese man who earned every achievement, I doubt that is the case. There's plenty to do in this game, and you know that content is there. Some of it is obvious to you: leveling alts, fighting in battlegrounds, fighting in arenas, raiding, the kinds of things that likely take up most of your time now. But what about the other things you don't think about? What about farming old-world bosses for their rare-drop mounts? What about getting exalted with old-world factions? What about farming for rare pets? What about doing old-world quests? What about just going for achievements? These are all viable options of things to do to pass the time while we wait for Cataclysm to come out, things most people suffering from burnout have probably never gone for and can thus do to pass the time, yet I imagine many players dismiss these options. In other words, there are plenty of things out there for players to do while waiting for Catalcysm, and yet they aren't out doing them.

This probably seems natural to you. After all, who would bother with the activities I mentioned above when raiding can give better gear, dailies can give better money, and the rewards of all of the things I mentioned above are all cosmetic? That's the kind of thinking that keeps people from realizing all of the content that is available to them. But allow me to propose a potentially radical idea: raiding for high end gear and grinding for money through the dailies that reward the most of it is no more productive than any of the activities I listed above, and thus there is no reason for you be dismissive of the aforementioned activities as things to do while playing WoW.

Let me ask you something about that gear you get from raiding: what is it for? The only practical purpose gear serves is to allow you to beat more challenging content, so gear only allows you to move on to beat harder raiders, which allows you to get better gear, allowing you to beat harder raids, etc. I'm not saying that trying to get good gear is a waste of time; what I am saying is that getting better gear through raiding doesn't provide any permanent practical reward at all. The benefit provided by that gear is fleeting, temporary, and only as good as it compares to the current best gear. So why go for the gear? Because raiding is fun (at least, it's supposed to be). The gear we get through raiding is simply a tangible motivating factor to get you to raid if the fun of doing it isn't enough to motivate you to start. Once you do start, that fun should be enough to keep you raiding, since, as I mentioned, gear only provides a benefit for so long. In short, the only reason to try to get gear from raids is to have fun in the process of acquiring it.

And as for money? With each expansion, money has become progressively easier to earn; that's why the gold sinks keep getting more expensive. That has the added benefit of each expansion putting wealthy established players and poorer new players on more equal footing than they would be otherwise. But where exactly do we get all of this money? From the things we would do otherwise: daily quests that award reputation with a certain faction, one-time quests that we do to see the evolving story of WoW, the selling of materials that we enjoy collecting, the selling of items we enjoy grinding, etc. All of the in-game activities that reward money are things that are supposed to be enjoyable in their own right; the money is just a nice byproduct. Now, would there be fewer people putting up ore, herbs, and fish for others to use in their crafting if doing so didn't pay money? Maybe. But the point is that gold is just the reward for accomplishing our in-game goals and activities, not a goal itself. Those money sinks may be nice to have (I can tell you from personal experience that epic flying is a big time saver, and that the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth is quite convenient), but the fun is supposed to be had in earning the gold to buy them, moreso than in having them. It will be more fun to earn them after Cataclysm (more money earned for your effort; newer, more enjoyable content to earn that money from; etc.) than to collect that money before.

The point is, while there are activities in WoW that we view as "productive", they are no more productive than activities we dismiss for their perceived lack of productivity. Their only real purpose is to allow us to have fun, and if that is the only benefit we get out of them, then why limit what we do between now and the Cataclysm to things we consider "productive" and thus rule out other activities that may be fun? The fruits of our labor will only last so long, so the enjoyment of that labor is the only goal worth pursuing. If you are suffering from the pre-expansion slump, I invite you to try some part of the game you had previously dismissed as unproductive or pointless. Go for an achievement. Grind out a mount or a pet. Do some old-world quests. Get exalted with that faction you never got exalted with. Or try leveling an alt or hitting up some battlegrounds if you had previously dismissed those activities without trying them. As long as what you do is fun, then whatever you do in-game is time well spent.

Signs you are approaching burnout

I am currently suffering from WoW burnout, severe WoW burnout. It came as the result of chain-running heroics with the Dungeon Finder and thinking more about the loot than the heroics themselves. It was easily avoidable, but I missed the warning signs that let me know I was going down this path. While there are many posts out there on WoW sites that let you know what to do when you have burnout, I have seen fewer posts about how to avoid burnout, so I thought I'd discuss the warning signs here. If any of these are happening to you, be proactive and do something to prevent your burnout. Try another part of the game, level an alt, or just cut down on your WoW time.

You start thinking more about the results than the experience
There are many rewards in WoW. They come in the form of loot, achievements, mounts, pets, and other such items, but they all have one thing in common: if you make acquiring them your reason for playing, you will suffer burnout. Focusing on loot, titles, etc. distracts you from the main reason you should be playing WoW: to enjoy yourself. This allows you to easily fall into playing habits that lead you to burnout, like playing more often than you would otherwise or getting overly worked up about a wipe. As I said in my post on my issue with speed runners in random heroics, if you focus more on the results then the process, you need to re-examine your priorities.

You do things out of habit rather than out of choice
Like prioritizing results before the process, doing things out of habit rather than because you consider them fun (like running a heroic each day just for the badges or doing dailies just for the money) is a recipe for disaster. If you aren't thinking about why you are doing what you are doing in game, you probably won't cut back or stop when it starts to annoy you. By the time you ask yourself why you are doing that random heroic each day when you don't even like any of the heroics any more or why you are doing the Argent Tournament dailies each day when they really aren't that fun, the damage is already done.

You start resenting the parts of the game you "need" to play in order to play the parts you enjoy
If you are a raider and you hate doing a random heroic each day, but you do it anyway for the emblems of frost, you need to really think about why you are running heroics. If you do any sort of group content (raids or heroics) and you hate doing dailies to pay for the repair bills, why are you doing them? You may think of me as idealistic for saying that you shouldn't do anything in this game that you can't make yourself enjoy, but as someone who has suffered the latter problem, I can tell you that those kinds of thoughts are not unconquerable. If you still "need" to run that content, try changing your mindset to one that allows you to enjoy it.

You start doing things you once resented other people for doing
This was the final sign for me that I was playing too much. I can't stand when anyone other than the tank pull enemies. However, during an Ahn'kahet run that I was healing, the tank only pulled one enemy out of a pack of four. He had Death and Decay down, so I body-pulled the other three to bring them into his D&D, just to speed things up. When I realized what I had done, I knew it was time for a break. Becoming what you once despised is a sure sign of burnout, and also a sign that your pre-burnout self what not have approved of what you are doing.

If you recognize any of those signs in yourself, you are likely on the path to burnout, if you aren't already there. If there are any signs that I missed, let me know in the comments section.