Zone replay in WoW?

I was hit by a sudden realization today regarding WoW's solo content. In contemplating the "daily grind" I have returned to (a term I coined a bit over a year ago to describe the repetitive ritual of doing the same daily quests every day), I thought about methods that other games have used to remain interesting after being completed out of hopes that the lessons learned from these other games could be applied to WoW. Thinking about this took some time, for my stingy-ness regarding buying new games and my recent penchant for open-ended games (the last four games that have held my attention for any extended period of time were WoW, Rock Band 3, Minecraft, and Rock Band 2) means it has been some time since I played a typical game that could be "beaten" in any conventional sense. But when I looked back upon the games I have played which I was able to "beat" and continued playing, I realized that most of the time, I was simply playing these games multiple times all the way through, occasionally with some sort of "New Game Plus" bonus.

Thinking back, I realized that this was how I milked most of my old games for more play time once I had finished them; I simply played them again. Yet when I looked at WoW, I realized that there is no such simple "play the game again" feature. There is no way to replay entire zones that you enjoyed, unless you level an alt and do the whole level grind over again, a daunting thought for such a huge game (especially when some zones are horribly behind others in terms of their design philosophy). Outside of rolling a new alt, there is simply no way to experience WoW's solo content more than once.

And the truth is, I see the option to roll and alt and experience the whole game again as a less-than-optimal way to give players the option to replay the game. Why? An argument for this method would say that it is equivalent to starting a new save file in a console game, but that analogy doesn't really work, because WoW is no longer equivalent to one game. It is now equivalent to several, and forcing players to start from the beginning if they wish to re-experience a part of the game is equivalent to making them play multiple games in order to replay the one they like. Let me elaborate. In the beginning, there was vanilla WoW, which was equivalent to one game (we'll call that game WoW 1). Then Burning Crusade was released. Because we had to pay extra money for Burning Crusade, it was equivalent to another game (WoW 2), and ditto for Wrath of the Lich King (WoW 3). Cataclysm is an interesting case, because we got all of the new 80-85 content (WoW 4), as well as the remake of old-world Azeroth (a remake of WoW 1).

To provide an analogy, look at the side-scrolling Metroid Games. You had Metroid, released in 1986 on the NES; Metroid 2: The Return of Samus, released in 1991 on the Game Boy; Super Metroid, released in 1994 on the SNES, and Metroid Fusion, released in 2002 on the Game Boy Advance, all of which were chronologically related to each other in terms of story and all of which were great technological improvements over their predecessors, much like WoW and its expansion packs. But after Metroid Fusion was released, a game called Metroid: Zero Mission was released, which was a remake of the original Metroid that brought it up to speed with the technological advancements made after the original Metroid was released. Cataclysm is the equivalent of a game that packages Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission together, in that we have an advances fourth entry in the series, as well as an advanced remake of the first entry, while the second and third are still behind the other two in terms of how technologically advanced they are.

Why do I make this analogy? I make it because I think forcing WoW players to play through the updated Vanilla content, Burning Crusade's content, and Wrath of the Lich King's content before they can replay Cataclysm's content is equivalent to forcing a Metroid fan to play through Metroid: Zero Mission, Metroid 2: The Return of Samus, and Super Metroid before being able to replay Metroid Fusion, which just wouldn't be fair. Now, when you apply this analogy practically, it makes it seem like I am suggesting that people should be able to skip entire expansion packs when they roll a new character, which is not what I mean to suggest at all (although Death Knights can already do that, but they start out right in the least-advanced content, which is hardly an ideal skip). What I am saying is that the precedent set by other games makes it seem unfair that we should have to play through all of that old content just to replay the new content we enjoy.

It was at this part in my thought that I was hit with an idea: what if we could replay entire zones? What if we could go through a zone again and play through it's one-time quests a second, third, maybe even fourth time, and the longevity of the solo content could be extended that way? The precedent for it exists with the Caverns of Time; major villains could be replaced with members of the Infinite Dragonflight with similar abilities, and occasionally, a quest giver could be replaced by a member of the Keepers of Time. Or perhaps there could be one quest-giver from the Keepers of Time who gives a bread-crumb quest that starts you off in each zone. These quest-givers could be set up near the portals in Stormwind and Ogrimmar, and they could get their own portals that would lead to past versions of each zone. Thus these "replay zones" would be their own separate zones, allowing Blizzard to put in quests that wouldn't award items (to avoid flooding the dust/essence/shard market) or reputation (to avoid making faction rep too easy to farm), both of which would make sense due to the fact that you aren't actually doing anything to help any of the zones you play through again. To keep the sense of shared questing, the game could also show other players replaying the zones alongside you, preventing it from becoming a lonely experience.

What purpose would these replay zones fulfill? Aside from allowing players to play through a zone again without needing to level a character through old content, the quests in these zones could also award money, making them an alternative to the "daily grind" we have now. Because there are countless more one-time quests than there are dailies, this would probably be a more interesting experience than the dailies we have now, and would make it take longer for players to get bored with Cataclysm's high-level solo content (of course, the dailies would stay around to help players earn reputation). Perhaps they could also award reputation with a new faction comprised of members of the Keepers of Time, giving solo players something else to work towards. They would also allow players to re-experience key moments in the evolving storyline of WoW (in case they missed them the first time around), as well as give Blizzard an idea of what works in questing and what doesn't by allowing them to see which zones players replay the most.

But really, the important point is that these replay zones would allow players to experience the best of currently available content without needing to replay the old content. Raiders who roll a new character don't need to run Molten Core, Black Temple, Ulduar, etc. with that character before they can run Cataclysm's raid content, so it seems a bit silly to force us to experience old solo content more than once when we just want to re-experience the relevant, not-behind-the-times-in-design-philosophy content.

Scattered thoughts on Cataclysm's coming

It finally hit me this weekend that this is the last post I will write during the age of Wrath of the Lich King. Come Wednesday, when my next post will go up, we will official be in the era of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and the era of Wrath of the Lich King will finally be over. There are probably some who, in response to this realization, would write a nostalgic post about their memories from Wrath and what they will miss, but I can't count myself among them. In fact, before the Shattering came, I took no screenshots of the old world, did no final tours or looks around of Azeroth before it was changed forever, did no rushed leveling of any new alts to see the world one last time, because it has simply become stale. Wrath is also something I have put behind me, as evidenced by the fact that at this point, all I do in WoW is the Stormwind cooking and fishing dailies. The cookies dailies I do to earn recipies in preparation for Cataclysm, and the fishing dailies... well, I might not need any of the loot from those bags, but I like fishing, and the quests are new, so that's good enough for me. The point is, I could not be happier to be getting new content, for I lost interest in Wrath's content long ago.

You see, I'm a soloist. I play the game for the solo endeavors, and the last time WoW received an injection of good solo content was two years ago, when Wrath of the Lich King was released. Patch 3.3 brought no new solo content, and patch 3.1 and 3.2 brought with them the Argent Tournament in various stages, which I felt did not live up to the first round of solo content brought about by Wrath of the Lich King. Two years is a long time to play the same content, so I grew bored and started leveling alts, but that too soon turned stale as I realized just how far behind the old world had fallen in terms of quest design. It just wasn't as fluid or fun as Northrend or Outland, and the classes themselves evolved in very strange ways at lower levels. patch 4.0.1. did much to address the latter point, but the fact is that we alt-aholics have been playing the same content for a very long time. Given all of these facts, is it any wonder I'm ready to embrace WoW 2.0? Is it at all surprising that I have no nostalgia for the old world and no wistful longings for the glory days of Wrath? I'm ready for the new content, both in the lower levels and the higher ones.

You'll notice I referred to Cataclysm as "WoW 2.0" in that last paragraph. It's a nickname the expansion has picked-up due to just how much it is changing the game. Come Cataclysm, many claim, the game will have changed enough that it will practically be a brand new WoW, not just an expanded version of an old one. And the nice thing about it is that we don't have to lose all of our progress we have made on our current characters. If Blizzard were to release a proper World of Warcraft 2, a different game from the current one, I'd be hesitant to leave my pets, my mounts, my achievements, my trophies from conquests past, and start from scratch in a new universe. With the way things are, everything we have already earned carries over into this new WoW and can remain with us a few more years, while we still get to experience an almost brand new game.

But does Cataclysm really deserve the title of WoW 2.0? I hit upon this question as I was walking through Stormwind the other day and realized that, though the world has changed, it is not a new world. All of the old zones remain, even if they have returned in new forms, and though there are new zones and new content being added, they are simply par for the course in an expansion pack. The fact is that we are still playing on Azeroth, just Azeroth realized in a different light. We are still playing the same 10 classes; yes, those classes have evolved in some significant ways, but those evolutions are, again, par for the course in an expansion pack. Any significant change to class design I can think of that has come with Cataclysm is just a response to the necessity of adding a new expansion pack or a logical evolution of the class as the game and the expectations of its players continue to evolve. Not to marginalize Blizzard's efforts--far from it, I imagine it must have taken them a lot of effort to get to this point--but might Cataclysm be WoW 1.5 moreso than WoW 2.0?

If it is, then I'm ok with that, because WoW is a great game. We don't need a completely new game to entertain us, because WoW has a lot of longevity. As long as it can keep evolving to continue to satisfy the players and let us have fun, I'm ok with not getting a completely new WoW. Why demand something new if the old is still just as good?

So on this, the eve of Wrath of the Lich King, I say goodbye and good riddance to WoW 1.0 and and welcome in WoW 1.5, or WoW 2.0, whatever you want to call it. Tonight, I can go to bed with the knowledge that when I wake up, a game I have been looking forward to for a very long time will be waiting for me (I preordered the expansion digitally), and though I can see us players needing to wait for some sort of server maintenance or emergency patches before we can actually play, it's good to know that Cataclysm is almost here, and I'm willing to wait that time if we need to. After all, Cataclysm was officially announced more than a year ago; what's one more day to wait? Either way, I shall see you all on the other side.

A slump in both worlds

It seems the blogosphere is going through a phase where WoW isn't as central to public conscious as it once was. What I mean by this is that WoW blogs--at least, the ones written by people without beta access--seem to increasingly be less about WoW itself and more about... well, other issues. Between the considerations of the prevalence of killing in games and the consideration of gender stereotypes in the geek world, the game that gave birth to all of our blogs seems to be taking a back seat to other points of interest. And truth be told, this doesn't surprise me.

Take a look at the state of WoW itself right now. We are in the intervening months between two expansion packs, and the content of the current expansion pack is starting to feel stale after being experienced so many times. This is, of course, inevitable, so what are we players to do? Well, our choices are three-fold: stop playing until the next expansion comes out; keep doing the same content, in spite of our boredom; or try something new. Considering that our blogs are about WoW, our blogging activities are inextricable from our in-game activities. As such, our choices of what we can blog about are similar to our choices of what to do in-game: we can not post at all, keep posting about the same things we've been posting about, or post about new things we haven't discussed before.

Not posting at all is obviously not a very attractive option. After all, it's our posts that keep our readers coming back to our sites; backlogs and archives can only entertain someone until they reach the end. Even then, our blogging and writing styles evolves over time as we become more practiced, so if someone were to read back far enough into our archives, the posts they discover would probably read like they were written by a different author, a less experienced and skilled one. Some bloggers may have a lengthy enough archive to keep their readers entertained until Cataclysm comes and they start blogging again, but if your posts are enjoyable enough that people would want to read through your archives*, they probably already have. If people enjoy your posts, they'll probably want to read your past posts without you needing to prod them to do so.

What about continuing to post about the same things? Well, as long as there are people still doing the same content, this is a viable option, especially because there will likely be players who get to the game late and start that content after everyone else is done with it. The trouble comes from the fact that many players probably won't take this option for very long, so at some point, people will stop being interested in reading about content they have stopped playing. There's also the issue that you can only write so much on any given topic, and eventually, you're going to start repeating yourself. As you write more on a single topic, you need to either start scraping the bottom of the bucket for things to write about or get really creative when coming up with topics to write about. In other words, this option isn't sustainable.

What about our third option, writing about something new? This is an attractive option for many reasons, aside from the fact that the other two have been proven to not be very pracitcable. When we start writing about something we haven't written about before, we tend to write our posts to be very broad in scope, and thus more accessible to our readers than they would be if we were to write about more specific topics. This is especially important when writing about something that may not relate to WoW directly, like gender equality or video game ethics, since we build our readerships by writing about WoW. Thus, the only thing we can be absolutely sure our readers will be familiar with is WoW, and perhaps the general online WoW community. So in order to be sure that a post about a non-WoW topic doesn't go over our readers' heads, we need to keep it general, for people are more likely to find something that they can relate to in a general post.

Of course, we don't need to abandon WoW as a topic to write about something new, but the same issues of audience commonalities and exceptions apply if we write about a different topic within WoW. Most blogs have some sort of central theme in terms of what they write about; in my blog, that theme is anything WoW from a philosophical perspective. Other blogs may be based around a single class, a single activity within the game, etc. and they build readerships based on that topic by consistently writing about it. If a blogger spends his/her whole career writing about mages, it would be a bit of a shock for readers to see him/her writing about warriors all of the sudden, and the readership that blog has built up would probably be less interested in reading about warriors than reading about mages. However, make that post general enough, and people will usually be able to find something to relate to within it.

So it seems that writing about completely new topics isn't that big of a stretch in these few months between Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm. And besides, if we take the other alternative, continuing to write about the same topics, we'll eventually need to get so creative in deciding what we write about those topics that we'll likely end up just writing about new things anyways, if we want to avoid repeating ourselves.

*There are some authors whose blogs I enjoy reading but whose posts I don't enjoy enough to make me want to read their blog's archive. Then there are blogs like You Are Not So Smart, whose posts are so enjoyable and timeless that I enthusiastically did an archive binge upon discovering them.

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.

How am I conquering the pre-expansion slump?

A shared topic on Blog Azeroth proposed by Jaedia of The Lazy Sniper asks us how we are conquering the pre-expansion slump, a slump I am definitely feeling. Sadly, I started feeling this slump long ago with the disappointment I felt with the Argent Tournament. Having gone through all of the other solo content in Wrath of the Lich King, I put high hopes in the Argent Tournament to revitalize my interest in game, but with the lackadaisical design of the daily quests, I quickly grew bored and resolved to do it only long enough to acquire enough Champion's Seals to get the Argent Pony Bridle and the five pets. Once I had those, I quit the tournament forever, and have not returned. The dungeon finder briefly reignited my interest in the game with the way it made it easy to chain run heroics, but it had the unintended effect of making me burn out even faster, to the point where I realized that there were no heroics that I liked anymore; just those I didn't hate as much as others (and I had something to hate about each one). Thus the things that were probably implemented specifically to keep people like me (non-raiders) interested in the game failed to capture my attention.

So what's a soloist to do? Why, what we soloists have always done; roll an alt! Problem is, with the remake of Azeroth coming soon, there's less motivation to go through the process of leveling a character again, when we can only assume that it will be more fun when the expansion comes out. This is made worse by the fact that all of the content begins to feel a bit stale when you have leveled multiple characters, even though you may be going through it with a new class. As such, we need to find a reason to want to level that character, other than just experiencing that content again. With that said, though, experiencing the content again isn't that bad of a reason to level an alt, since it means that the old content will be fresh in our mind after the Cataclysm happens, allowing us to appreciate the new content that much more.

But if experiencing the content to be able to appreciate the new content isn't reason enough for you to level an alt, then why should you? What has worked for me so far is the goal of having an alt that is a "pet craftsman". I leveled my shaman with the goal of having a pet jewelcrafter, and I leveled my priest with the goal of having a pet alchemist, and those are the only two alts of mine (beside my Death Knight, who had an unfair start) that made it past level 25 (they have both made it past 60 at this point). I know I said in my post reflections on leveling a shadow priest that leveling an alt is more fun with two gathering professions, but if you usually level your alts that way and are looking for a change of pace, perhaps leveling them while also working on a crafting profession is the change of pace you need.

Do we deserve extensive previews of upcoming content?

As we all know, there was a huge leak of information off of the alpha test that got the whole community in a frenzy. There's something not quite right about the situation, though. The alpha is under a non-disclosure agreement, as I discussed earlier, so this should be the kind of thing that Blizzard would want to prevent. As a company with the resources they have (12 million subscribers times $15 a month equals 6 million dollar A DAY to spend on this game), if Blizzard really wanted to prevent these kinds of leaks from happening, they could. For that reason, some people (such as those who commented on WoW.com's post The Failure of Secrecy: The alpha, leaks, and the WoW community, the post that inspired me to write this one) suspect that Blizzard either approved of the leak, or at least were happy it happened. As commenter CrimsonEyedDeath said, "...it's good for them, in a way. Not that there was a massive leak, but that millions of people are so bloody excited for the next bit of WoW that they're F5ing sites like WoW.com/MMO-champion/etc over and over and over again. I'm pretty sure there's at least some people who have went out and pre-ordered Cata off these screens/info alone."

But whether or not Blizzard sanctioned the leak is not what I'm here to ponder; I think we'll know in time whether they did or not. No, what I am here to ponder is the very phenomenon that created this leak in the first place: the players' desire for information on upcoming content. For the past two expansions, I remember reading up on previews of the upcoming content eagerly, but something changed over the course of Wrath of the Lich King. When the data-mined audio files from The Frozen Halls came out, I listed to them, and they were awesome. But there was an unintended consequence of doing so; when I finally worked my way into the Halls of Reflection, the story that unfolded before me was not so amazing as it should have been. Because I knew what was coming, I was much less blown away by it, and I'll even go so far as to say that it was less fun because of what I knew going in.

That experience made me look at spoilers in a new way, a way that affects how I look Cataclysm spoilers today. Now, to be honest, I don't have much self control when it comes to heading the "spoilers ahead" warnings I see anywhere, but with a leak this massive, for once, I held myself back. Though I did pour over the new talent trees, new profession recipes, and other things, I abstained from looking at the screenshots of the zones. That's one of the things I look forward to the most about new content: just seeing it, and I refused to spoil that for myself.

But I digress. There's a difference between giving someone a taste to leave them wanting more and giving them the appetizer long before the meal, and I think this leak crossed that line. And the players? They ate that appetizer greedily. The real question is, do we deserve it?

The time between the final patch before an expansion and the next expansion definitely represents a lull in the game. With no new content coming out, players are restless, especially when they know that amazing things are just around the corner. Of course, Blizzard is doing a much better job this time around trying to keep us interested. We have the Ruby Sanctum coming in patch 3.3.5, as well as Operation Gnomeragon and the retake of Echo Isles in what will probably be patch 3.9. That's better than what little we got to tide us over between Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King (which, if I remember correctly, was only the zombie infestation, something that ruined the game for me). Considering the amount of time between now and when Cataclysm will come out, that may not be enough to completely hold our interests, but it's certainly better than nothing.

Of course, the lull is an unfortunate necessity; Blizzard does need to focus on developing the expansion, after all, and they can't give us content at their usual rate if they need to focus on developing content for the next expansion. As such, we reach the point where the current expansion has taught us to expect content to be released at a certain rate, but Blizzard is unable to deliver it to us at that rate while they develop the next expansion. Sure, they have certain elements to keep us playing the game long after the content has become stale, but when we know new content is coming, those elements just don't work as well, and players lose interest. That's a problem for Blizzard, for if people stop paying their monthly subscription fee, they lose money to spend on developing new content, and if they can't develop new content, then players lose interest and stop paying their subscription fee. It's a cycle that Blizzard can't allow to happen.

But how can they keep our interest if they can't develop new content? One might say that keeping us up-to-date on how Cataclysm's development is coming along is one way, but that won't keep our interest in the game itself alive. Their current plans for a post-Icecrown Citadel raid and two pre-Cataclysm world events seem to be on the right track, but it's clearly not enough to satiate player's desires for information on Cataclysm.

But is the problem that Blizzard isn't doing enough to keep players interested, or are we, the players, the problem? As I said in my post Por que, NDA?, and as we have seen with the frenzy of discussion that the latest Cataclysm leaks have generated, players tend to overreact to information that comes out about upcoming content, especially when we don't have the full story, and that creates a headache for Blizzard in trying to placate the community while still focusing on developing content. Frankly, I don't envy Blizzard for the job they have trying to convince players that they know what they are doing and that there is plenty of time to change things that do go awry.

However, this frenzy happened because the community grew restless with the lack of Cataclysm information coming out. We went through a pretty long drought of information after Blizzcon, and it was probably that long period of little information that lead to the players so eagerly looking for alpha spoilers. I'm sure Blizzard had their reasons for keeping further Cataclysm information under wraps, but it was keeping that info under wraps that lead to the leak being so eagerly received.

Perhaps the best thing Blizzard can do for now (and in the future as they develop future expansion packs) is to release a constant trickle of little tidbits of information about Cataclysm. The Cataclysm screenshot of the day (which they currently have going on their websites) is a good example of a way to give players a taste of things to come without spoiling the whole feast with appetizers (metaphorically speaking). It also has the added benefit of not giving players as much to complain about on the forums as releasing information on talents and spells does. Once the expansion is further along in development and more of the balancing issues have been worked out, they can release information on spells, talents, professions, and other such things to keep the player-base placated. (I know they've already released information on some of the changes coming to talents and spells, but we still got more information that they didn't mention, from the leaks, so we didn't get the whole picture. As such, there is always more to the story than they tell with the initial preview.) That combined with the new content we are getting between now and Cataclysm should keep the player-base satisfied, or at least more satisfied than the drought of information did.

New professions as the embodiments of each expansion pack

One thing I have noticed about both Jewelcrafting and Inscription is that they both embodied significant aspects of their respective expansion pack. I will go over each one in time, but this got me thinking: if this is true of the previous professions, then what can we gleam about Cataclysm from the new profession that is slated to be included, Archaeology? Let's find out.

Burning Crusade was a partial deviation from many of the ways Blizzard did things. Factions were emphasized much more, and Jewelcrafting reflected this by having many of its patterns for gem cuts (of which there were many) come from reputations. Burning Crusade also brought the advent of heroics, many of which dropped Jewelcrafting plans, encouraging jewelcrafters to run them. BC also had something for both new players and players at the level cap (with the inclusion of two new races and the new continent, respectively), but it was mostly focused on the level cap. This was reflected in jewelcrafting, which finally allowed for the creation of useful BoE jewelry for people who were still leveling up, but mostly found its niche in the the creation of gems to put in high-level players' gear. Because of all of these facets (pun not intended) of Jewelcrafting, Jewelcrafting reflected the spirit of BC: varied and with something for everyone.

Inscription, of the other hand, really reflected Blizzard's push for homogenization in Wrath of the Lich King (see my post on the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content if you haven't already). Blizzard pushed for a more straight forward way of players acquiring their recipes for professions, which Inscription definitely reflects, for all of Inscription's recipes are gained from either trainers or discovery, with the one exception of Technique: Rituals of the New Moon (seriously, that is the only exception). Wrath also made it much easier to level up professions, as anyone who leveled a profession to Grand Master level can attest. Inscription followed this pattern, with all herbs the scribe found being turned into ink, meaning that it didn't matter what herbs you found; as long as they were the right level, you would get the ink you needed to level the profession. Inscription also focused mostly on high-end content, since that is when the profession is at its most useful (with the third major glyph slot being unlocked at 80) and glyphs were really expensive when the profession was first implemented, so they couldn't be accessed by low level players. Thus the products in inscription were only available to those close to the level cap, like all of the new content in Wrath. Of course, glyphs have since come down to a reasonable price now that everyone has glyphs and the demand has shrunk.

So, what can we infer about Cataclysm by looking at Archeology? Let's take a look, going point by point on all of the information WoWWiki has on the new secondary skill.

-It will be a secondary profession.
This means it will be available to everyone. Considering that Cataclysm will change Azeroth to make leveling easier and also include new end-game content, it really will be an expansion for everyone, so this fits.

-Focused on locating artifacts unearthed by the cataclysm.
So the cataclysm itself will be an important part of the expansion pack. No surprises there. Perhaps Cataclysm will also result in us finding out something about Warcraft's past that we had no idea of before.

-Artifacts will go into a new artifact journal instead of your inventory.
Blizzard has put more emphasis on clearing bag space by making more things not take up space in bags (pets, mounts, emblems, non-monetary currency, etc.), so this is no surprise either. Perhaps Cataclysm will result in even more things going somewhere aside from our bags. Tabards, please?

-Placing an artifact in your journal will allow you to "study" it and progressively unlock new rewards.
Perhaps this points to a larger theme of going back to the same place multiple times. Obviously we will be doing that by going back to Azeroth, but perhaps Blizzard will also have us running dungeons multiple times in order to advance the dungeon's story, getting better rewards each time.

-Unlocks unique rewards such as vanity pets.
If Archaeology will not be just about the epic loot and the "useful" rewards, perhaps Cataclysm will be the same way. As a pet collector and a casual player, this pleases me.

-Unlocks paths in the Paths of the Titans system. This will give players a tool to change their characters even more than regular talents.
Path of the Titans, as far as I know, is slated to be a way for player to improve their character at the level cap without raiding or PvP'ing. It's basically end-game for solo-ers. We know that Azeroth's make-over will certainly be something for the solo-ers, but perhaps Cataclysm's end-game will also be more geared towards solo-ers.

If these predictions are accurate, they certainly make me excited for Cataclysm. Let's hope they are.

What I would like to see in Cataclysm. Part 1: Professions

We have all had some time to think about what we would like to see in the new expansion, and I especially have high hopes for this one. Because Cataclysm will remake Azeroth completely, it will basically be WoW 2. This means that Blizzard has many opportunities to do things over and improve the game in a vast number of ways, and I hope they take advantage of those opportunities. I'd like to discuss some specific ways I hope the game is improved, starting with an aspect of the game that I think has become particularly bland since the release of the last expansion: professions.

As I went over in my post on the homogonization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content, professions have become simplified, streamlined, and boring. Perhaps I feel this the most because I am an enchanter, and we get all of our recipes (excluding the odd raid drop) from trainers and the shard vender. That is an incredibly boring way to get recipes, and it quickly grows grindy. As it stands now, almost all professions get the majority of their recipes from some kind of currency vendor or from reputations. Alchemy and Inscription add some variety with their research mechanics, but I want more.

Now granted, I'm not going to attempt to glorify the days of limited quantity recipes in Burning Crusade, where you needed to visit Wowhead, look for all recipes sold by vendors, and fly around to visit all of them, and ditto for recipes that dropped from mobs. I would like a little more transparency in my recipe acquirement, but the current system takes it too far. What I would like is some sort of happy medium. Profession-specific quests are out of the question, for Blizzard has expressed a big aversion to quests that a limited part of the player population can see. But what if we had quests for professions that offered a recipe for whatever crafting profession(s) you have? After your trainer has taught you all they can, they can send you off to some artisan who you help in a way that would vary based on your profession (the only thing that would vary between the quests would be the specific items that would be the goals of the quest, such as a specific potion or enchanting a piece of the artisan's armor, so it wouldn't be that difficult to make different versions of the quests for each profession). The quest text could be very vague to allow for this kind of variation. For example, the artisan could say, "I seek to understand the more benevolent forces of this world. Can you help me with that?" An alchemist could make a spirit potion, a blacksmith could make a blue healadin armor piece, an enchanter could enchant one of the artisan's pieces for spirit, a scribe could make a few glyphs for healing spells, etc. He could also send you out to collect quest items to help him in his research. You would then turn in the quest and get a recipe as a reward. Perhaps an MP5 flask for alchemy, an epic healadin set for blacksmiths, an upgraded mooncloth set for tailors, jumper cables for engineers, etc. This could make acquiring recipes more of a challenge without making it difficult, and it would certainly make being able to craft said item more satisfying.

Another issue I have with professions as they are now is the lack of exclusive benefits for the crafter. I know that balancing these benefits was an issue in Burning Crusade, but as it stands now, every profession with the exception of Engineering and Tailoring gives the exact same stat benefits to the crafter, but it just gives them in different ways. Scroll down to the seventh paragraph in my homogenization post to see an example. While this makes balancing easier, the fact is that it's not enough. Crafter-specific benefits have been simplified to the point of irrelevance, and that makes professions suffer.

But what can be done without throwing the crafting system into imbalance? Many of the simplifications resulted from failed crafter-only benefits, such as potion chugging when combined with an alchemist's stone and BoP crafter armor. While we need simple benefits like the ones in the game right now, we also need benefits that will make the professions more interesting and make choosing a profession a more consequential choice. I'm talking about bringing back that fourth glyph slot for scribes. I'm talking about make the alchemist's stone a worthwhile trinket worth wearing into raids. I'm talking about bringing profession-dependent set bonuses back to crafted BoE starter gear (such as that on the heavy clefthoof set from BC). Yes, these kinds of things are difficult to balance, but when the alternative is homogenization on such a level that it makes professions almost irrelevant to the game, I think it's worth it.

So those are my thoughts on professions. I hope to go over some other aspects of the game I hope to see improved, such as solo-content. Until then, what changes would you like to see to professions in Cataclysm?

Should gear become obsolete after every expansion?

I recently read a post on another blog that discussed how WoW is a gear oriented game, and yet most of the gear we get becomes obsolete with every expansion that is released. This post was written during the Burning Crusade, and with the news that Blizzard wants to try to release expansion packs more frequently (about one a year), it is an even more relevant point now, since our gear stands to be viable for even less time. The main question posed in the post is, is it worth it? Is the time we spend grinding reputations and money to get geared up for raids worth the short amount of time we get out of our gear? This begs the question of why one should even raid in the first place, but I already considered that at the end of my post on why end-game isn't better than leveling (skip to the fifth to last paragraph). To recap, I said that raiding is more challenging, social, progression-based, and satisfying than regular 5-mans, which is why people do it, and that gear is a poor motivation to raid, as Daddy Gamer brought up.

Gear, however, is still what keeps people coming back to raids. I think it was wow.com that did a poll on whether people who run 25-mans would run 10-mans instead if they offered the same gear, and it was found that most people would run 10-mans instead in such a situation. Still, can it really be the gear that keeps these people running 25-mans? The gear may be better, but as I have said before in previous posts, gear only serves two tangible functions: allowing the player to access more difficult raids and representing the satisfaction that comes with beating those harder raids. The former is important in considering whether gear should become obsolete or not with each expansion pack.

Gear basically serves as the gate-keeper for keeping people from running into raids the minute they hit 80 and breezing through them. Gearing up forces you to put some time into your character before you can use him to see the game's content. I suppose that's really the true purpose of WoW's gear grind: to get you to spend some time on your character. It's an artificial barrier, sure, but it does allow you to practice before you go into raids so you don't make a fool of yourself. But what if you are already a veteran WoW player and already know how to play? Should you be forced to grind for gear in order to raid?

It's worth noting that the amount of time it takes to gear up for a raid without entering an instance is much greater than the amount of time it takes to gear up for heroic 5-mans without entering an instance. It's quite easy to reach the level of gear needed to enter heroics, and you can use heroics to gear up for raids while still seeing new content, so it isn't completely necessary to invest a lot of money in starter gear for raids, unless you want to start raiding immediately. Then again, starting with raids rather than heroics means you'll miss a lot of the game's content, so that's your choice.

Still, regardless of whether you get geared up for raids outside of heroics or in them, you'll still be investing a lot of time into getting gear for raids, gear that will quickly be replaced. In fact, that can be said of all gear you get once you hit 80; you'll invest a lot of time in getting it, but it won't last you very long if you continue moving up the raiding ladder. To quote Daddy Gamer, "If we should be inspired to try to get better and better equipment we need to feel the investment (of time) is worth the outcome (of gear) in accordance to its longevity (time to update making it obsolete)." It's a good argument, but if raids don't offer better gear, then they need to offer something else to keep raiders coming back. As much as I love raiding for the stories and the fights, those motivators won't keep me coming back over and over again. That's the role of gear.

If players like Daddy Gamer want their gear to have some longevity, then gear needs to last beyond individual raids. Many pieces that drop from Naxxramas have direct upgrades in Ulduar, which have direct upgrades in Trial of the Crusader, which will probably have direct upgrades in Icecrown Citadel. That gives most gear a maximum longevity of one major patch. The problem is that gear acts as the effective gatekeeper to make players run raids multiple times before they move on to the next. Should this be the case, though? Should raiders be forced to run raids multiple times? I'll probably muse on that question in another philosophy post, but for now, lets assume it's a good idea.

So, let's say we want gear to last us longer than just one raid. For starters, bosses would need to have much smaller loot tables, since players wouldn't be looking for upgrades at each boss. Perhaps each boss could have one drop that reflects their nature and is a guaranteed drop each time. That seems to be more realistic to me than the way it works now, but it would mean that players would need a way make their characters better so that they could move on to new raids at a reasonable pace. Blizzard could use skill as a gatekeeper, but that would make raids more difficult to balance. Some other system is in order

One way Blizzard can add a non-gear gatekeeper function to the game is to add a new leveling function by which raiders gain levels as they go through raids, and with those levels, they get better stats. This could be seen as giving raiders an unfair advantage in the leveling game when expansions come out, but Blizzard could make it a sort of level-plus system, so that everyone starts on the same footing when an expansion comes out. Basically, players would run heroics to get to level 80+, then Naxx to get to level 80++, Ulduar to get to 80+++, and ToC to get to 80++++, which would be the maximum since that would be enough for Icecrown Citadel, the last raid of the expansion. Blizzard could make it so that only heroics and raid dungeons grant experience for these new levels, and it would be a way for players to improve their character that wouldn't be dependent on random drops or costly crafted items.

These plusses would go away when a new expansion came out and everyone started leveling again. Why? Like I said, it prevents raiders from having an unfair advantage and getting to new content first. From a lore perspective, the idea would be that your experiences with the horrors of Northrend couldn't possibly prepare you for the challenges of the sundered world of Cataclysm. Those challenges were unique, and the lessons you take from them have no use in this new world.

Gear drops would play a minor role in this system, providing side-grades more often than upgrades. Such side-grades could include armor with procs on it, like the Signet of Edward the Odd, with the procs becoming more interesting with each raid. It could also include trinkets with more interesting procs or effects, and ditto for relics (the ranged-weapon-equivalent for Druids, Paladins, Shamans, and Death Knights). Tier gear could also have more interesting set bonuses, with intro-raid tier gear having flat damage bonuses and more advanced raid tier gear having ability-changing bonuses like those set to appear on tier 10 gear. In this case, the tiers of gear wouldn't really have improves stats but would just have better bonuses, allowing for more flexibility in gear choice.

To summarize, the point of this system would be to allow gear to serve a player for longer, which would alleviate some complaints of short longevity of gear. That said, under a system like this, gear would still become obsolete after each expansion pack, and that's exactly the complaint Daddy Gamer was writing about. I think Blizzard took a step in the right direction when they didn't make Wrath of the Lich King gear us much of an upgrade from Burning Crusade gear as Burning Crusade gear was from vanilla WoW gear, and with the level cap slated to rise five levels when Cataclysm is released, rather than ten, there is a good chance that our gear will last us even longer into the new content.

But what if Blizzard made it so that gear didn't get better with each expansion, which seems to be along the lines of what Daddy Gamer wants? What if the heroic 5-mans of Cataclysm dropped i-level 200 blues and epics? Would you really play through them? Probably not. I hate to say it, but WoW players like Daddy Gamer will just have to put up with the fact that gear in WoW will always be replaced. If you want to be able to acquire permanent best-in-slot gear, then maybe an MMO isn't the kind of game for you.

On the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content

If Burning Crusade was Blizzard's attempt to homogenize World of Warcraft in some way, Wrath of the Lich King was their success. We could see the beginnings of homogenization in BC: all elemental items were now primal [element], which were obtained by combining motes; starter gear could be obtained from badges of justice, gotten from any heroic instance; and many reputation grinds were done in instances, not by grinding various mobs. (There were exceptions, of course.) We also saw the advent of dailies, a reliable, albeit repetitive way to make money. Class balance was brought into sharper focus and actually attempted by Blizzard, and most classes had something unique to bring to the raid. Profession balance also become a concern, and Blizzard tried to give every profession something special to make it different from the rest and worth taking.

The problem with Blizzard's design philosophy during BC was that it was near impossible to keep all these things balanced. Some reputation grinds were immensely harder than others with worse rewards, some classes were more useless than others in raids (although, as I discussed here, I think that was a mistaken assumption), and some professions were much more useful to the crafter than others. Despite their best intentions, Blizzard wasn't able to balance everything in BC, but it was certainly a start.

Wrath of the Lich King changed all that. "Bring the player, not the class" became Blizzard's new design philosophy. Their goal was to make each class equally viable so that raids would choose to bring people based on the player's skills, not their class and spec. It was a noble pursuit, and for the most part, it was successful. Frost mages still fall behind in DPS and ret paladins were overpowered for some time, but most classes were on equal footing. Not only were the classes now performing more or less equally, but they were also given new abilities that had been exclusive to other classes for the longest time. For example, Leader of the Pack was one of the main draws of bringing a feral druid to raids. With the release of Wrath, however, warriors were given the same ability. This was one of many examples of class exclusive buffs being given to other classes. With these new buffs was added a new buff mechanic: identical buffs no longer stack. If you bring a feral druid with LotP and a fury warrior with Rampage, your raid members will only get a 5% bonus to their melee crit chance, not a 10% chance. Since buffs like these were also made raid-wide, there was no longer a benefit to bring multiple members of the same class to give the same buffs to different groups in your raid. Thus many classes lost the unique things they had previously brought to raids, and these buffs became viewed as mandatory, rather than a nice bonus to bringing along an atypical DPS'er to your raids.

Blizzard wasn't done there, though. They made reputation grinds more similar as well. Most factions now have their own dailies which grant rep, and for some you can also don their tabard and gain rep from any heroic or level 80 instances you enter. Compared to the old days where only certain instances gave rep with certain factions, this gives players much more flexibility in how they gain rep. I have bad memories of grinding Steamvaults to get rep for my Earthwarden. It was not a fun instance, and the only thing that kept in bearable was the fact that it dropped two pieces of the hunter dungeon set, as well as two pieces of the mage set, so I had a constant supply of DPS. With the advent of Warth, you can now run any instance you like and gain rep, allowing you to choose to run easy ones or ones which drop gear you want. All these changes makes grinding reputation easier, and as a result, the rewards from reputation grinds are less remarkable. Still pretty good, but not as remarkable.

It was worth it, though.

Speaking of dailies, they became a lot more prevalent in Wrath. Once the exclusive right of those with flying mounts, these repeatable quests were revered for the amount of money you could make with them. (120g was a lot back in those days) With patch 2.4, new dailies were added with the Isle of Quel'Danas, as well as the cooking, fishing, and PvP dailies, all of which did not require a flying mount. There were now dailies for everyone, but they were still a distinct, separate part of the game.

Nowadays, dailies are everywhere. Almost every faction has daily quests now, and most of what you do at level 80 that doesn't involve a group involves daily quests. Trouble is, there are only really two rewards from daily quests: rep and money. Once you have gotten your rep as high as you can with the various factions, the only reason to do dailies is for the money. (With the exception of the Argent Tournament dailies, that is, which also reward Champion's Seals, but those are incredibly boring. Patch 3.2 can't come soon enough.) The problem with this is that the different sets of dailies award vastly different amounts of money, so unless you have a lot of time to spend on them, you're only going to spend your time doing the ones that reward the most money. Thus you spend your time doing the same dailies over and over and over again, and unfortunately, they haven't got any more fun since Burning Crusade. Since there weren't as many dailies in Burning Crusade, they didn't need to be as fun and varied, and yet Blizzard still put in the effort to make them interesting. Now we have more dailies than we could ever have dreamed of, and yet Blizzard hasn't tried too many new things with them. I'd even go as far as saying they are less fun than they were before. Perhaps I just have rose-tinted glasses, but I miss the days of Bomb Them Again! and Disrupt the Greengill Coast. The only daily that really compares is Thrusting Hodir's Spear, though it is a pretty awesome quest.

Yes, that dwarf is in the dragon's mouth. This quest is a far better reward for getting honored with the Sons of Hodir than those shoulder enchantments are.

Burning Crusade also brought a lot of changes to professions that made them more viable and useful. However, this caused a lot of players to take professions only for their own self benefit and drop them when they were no longer useful. (Case in point: tailoring and leatherwoking had good starter armor for raiding that only the crafter could equip, but this armor was quickly made obsolete by raid drops.) When Wrath was released, the crafter only benefits were radically changed. There was no more starter-set BoP crafter armor and many of the old exclusive benefits were removed or made less useful (Example: with the advent of potion sickness, which prevents people from using more than one potion per battle, the Alchemist's Stone and its upgrades lost much of their appeal.) New items were added to most of the professions that gave stat bonuses that were exclusive to the crafter. They weren't that exclusive, though, in that with the exception of tailoring and engineering, they all give more or less the same stat benefits. The only thing that differs is how those benefits are conferred; enchanters get exclusive ring enchantments, leatherworkers get bracer enchantments that are better than the equivalent enchantments, jewelcrafters get gems which are better than the gems they can give to everyone else, alchemists gain improved effects from their elixirs and flasks, blacksmiths get to add extra gems to their gear, and inscribers get shoulder enchantments that are better than their Sons of Hodir counterparts. And unlike in the days of BC, these effects no longer apply to you if you drop the profession, so you can't level up each profession and then drop them to get all of their buffs on your gear, which most min-max'ers did back in the day.

What this means is that, with the exception of tailoring's cloak enchants and all of the engineering benefits being added in 3.2, professions are now less about what they give you and more about what you can give others. The unfortunate part of this is that some professions just aren't as useful as others. Alchemy sees a lot more use than leatherworking, and ditto for enchanting compared with tailoring. More importantly, the professions are all much more similar now. That's really the point I am getting at with this post: everything is much more similar in Wrath of the Lich King. Everything has been streamlined, simplified, and almost dumbed down.

How you acquire your profession's recipes is a perfect example of this change. With rare exception, all recipes for all of the professions are either obtained from a trainer or obtained from another NPC by trading for them with some sort of token or material you usually use. New research mechanics have also been added, but these are guaranteed to give you a new recipe, unlike the days of BC when you could discover a new recipe every time you made something. Gone are the days of checking wowhead to see which vendors strewn over the land sell recipes or plans that you need to buy. Factions also play less of a role in our professions. Maybe I feel that more than others because I am an enchanter and we get no recipes from faction quartermasters, but I find it a bit disappointing that getting all of our recipes is so simple and... well, boring.

That's really my main problem with the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King. Everything is more boring now. I still find raiding and instances to be fun, but all of the nuances of solo-ing have been lost. I find this especially ironic since this expansion was supposed to be the one for the casuals. From all of the changes made, I'd wager that Blizzard's intention was really to get casuals into instances as soon as possible, rather than improve their old stomping grounds. After all, the sooner we start raiding, the less time we spend on our own, and the less time Bizzard needs to spend on developing solo content.

In fact, all of these changes can really be traced back to Blizzard trying to get people to raid more. All classes were made raid viable, so no players can blame their class for not raiding. Reputations were made easier to get exalted with, so players can spend less time getting their raid starter gear and get into raids sooner. Dailies became more prevalent so that we would always have something to do to make a bit of money for the repair bills. Professions were homogenized so that players could pick a profession they liked rather than one that would have a positive impact on their raiding. It seems to me that all of these changes were made for the raiders, and not us solo-ers.

I see a parallel between these changes and the arena fiasco. When arenas were released, they brought class balance into sharper focus. Previously, the classes' individual strengths and weaknesses in PvP were glossed over by the fact that battlegrounds were so huge that players' individual contribution or lack thereof weren't easily perceivable. With arenas, however, classes were pitted against each other in a very direct way, and the sad state of class balance was brought into sharp focus. Because of this, Blizzard began to balance classes around their performance in arenas. This became a problem as classes that were perfectly balanced for raids were nerfed because they were doing too well in arenas (such as resto druids). This also applied to battlegrounds, where the battles are more objective based and longer, and thus emphasize survival rather than rapid killing. Because of this difference, some classes lost effectiveness in battlegrounds because they were too good in arenas.

This kind of thing still goes on, and what makes the situation ironic is that arenas are the part of the game with lowest player participation. There are even many die-hard battleground fans who hate them. Arenas used to be more popular when they were a source of easy epics, but now that all arena gear requires good ratings, those days are gone.

In the same way that PvP was balanced around arenas, I think that PvE content has been balanced around raiders. While this could be seen as a good thing for players who want to get into raids as soon as possible, those of us who don't are left more or less in the dust. Don't get me wrong; I do enjoy raiding, but some people just don't have the time for it, and it is those people who suffer the most from these changes to PvE. Solo end-game is dying. I would like to think that the new Argent Tournament dailies we are getting in patch 3.2 will change that, but even if they do, it's such a shame that they will only be available to people with the Crusader title, which will force players to play inferior content in order to get to good content. If these new dailies disappoint like the last ones did, we solo players will just have to go back to levelling alts; there's just nothing fun left to do.

Edit: Patch 3.2 has been released, and I have to say, I am pretty disappointed with the new dailies. With the exception of Get Kraken!, they are all typical, predictable, and boring. Come on, Blizz! Challenge your quest designers. Give us something new!

New abilities and talents I'd like to see in the next expansion

The news that Blizzard has applied for the trademark for "Cataclysm" has sent the player-base into a flurry of speculation. Many suspect that the next expansion will take place in the Maelstrom. Like the other expansions, we will likely see more talents and more abilities when the next expansion comes out, which got me thinking about abilities and talents I'd like to see us druids get. Think of this as a wish list, if you will. Note that I don't have a full list of all of the new talents that we could get, especially in Balance since I am not as familiar with that spec.

New Abilities
Level 81: Slink (Feral): Instant, 5 minute cooldown, requires cat form
The druid slinks back into the shadows, entering an improved prowl mode for 10 sec. Also breaks movement impairing effects.

Level 82: Gift of Thorns (Balance): 64% base mana, instant cast, Reagents:Wild Spineleaf
Gives the Gift of Thorns to all party and raid members, causing 73 Nature damage to attackers when hit. Lasts 30 min.

Level 85: Graze (Feral): 10 rage/25 energy; 15 second cooldown; instant cast; requires cat form, dire bear form
You graze the enemy with your claws, reducing movement speed by 50% for 15 sec. Also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 5 sec. [With the addition of this ability, the interrupt effects would be removed from Bash and Maim.]

Level 90: Propagate (Balance): 25% base mana/20 rage/50 energy, 10 second cooldown, instant cast (usable in all forms)
Causes your next area-of-effect spell or ability to apply a damage or heal over time ability to the targets hit. Effect applied varies by spell.
Hurricane, Starfall, Typhoon: Moonfire
Swipe (Bear): Lacerate
Swipe (Cat): Rake [will cause a combo-point to be applied to your main target]
Tranquility, Wild Growth: Lifebloom [no mana will be restored when Lifebloom runs out]

New Talents:
Balance:
Tier 1:
Barbs: You thorns causes (50/100)% less threat when cast on targets not affected by Defensive Stance, Dire Bear Form, Frost Presence, or Righteous Fury. Also causes thorns to reduce the target's threat by (200/400)% of the damage it causes when they are attacked if they are not affected by one of the aforementioned abilities.

Tier 11:
New Moon: (Requires 3 points in Eclipse) When you critically hit with Wrath, you have a (11/22/33)% chance of reducing the cast time of your Wrath spell by 100%. Effect lasts 10 sec and has a 30 sec cooldown.

Haste of the Earthmother: Your Moonfire and Insect Swarm damage over time effects have a chance equal to (33/66/100)% of your spell crit chance to critically hit and reduces their duration and the time between their tics by an amount equal to (33/66/100)% of your spell haste.

Feral:
Tier 10:
Howling Roars: Your Demoralizing Roar increases your dodge chance by (2/4)% for 30 seconds and your Savage Roar increases your melee haste by (5/10)%. Also causes your Challenging Roar to taunt the affected targets for (50/100)% of their effective threat and gives Tiger's Fury a (50/100)% chance to reset the duration of your Savage Roar to its 5-combo point maximum.

Tier 11:
Roguish Instincts: Increases the damage of your bleed effects by an amount equal to (50/100)% of your Armor Penetration and reduces their duration and the time between their tics by an amount equal to (50/100)% of your melee haste.

Tier 12:
Scent of Blood: Increases your dodge chance and critical strike chance by (.4/.8/1.2/1.6/2)% in Dire Bear Form for each stack of Lacerate on your target and by (1/2/3/4/5)% in Cat Form for each of your cat bleed effects on your target. Also causes bleeding targets to appear on the mini-map until they pass (20/40/60/80/100)% of your maximum tracking range.

Tier 13:
Feral Instincts: 3 minute cooldown, instant cast, requires Cat Form or Dire Bear Form
Your heightened instincts cause you to increase you dodge chance by 5% each time you don't dodge an attack and increase your critical strike chance by 5% for each attack that doesn't critically hit. Lasts 15 seconds.

Restoration:
Tier 10:
Abundance: Whenever your heal over time effects overheal the target, (25/50)% of the overhealing done will be done to another party or raid member within 20 yards of the target.

Tier 11:
Revitalization: Gives the tics of your heal over time effects a chance equal to (50/100)% of your spell critical hit chance to critically heal. Living Seed will be activated by these critical heals.

Swift Healing: Your haste also reduces the duration of your heal over time effects and the time between their tics by (33/66/100)% of its effect on the cast time of your other spells.

Tier 13:
Cenarius's Blessing: 5% base mana, 40 yard range, instant cast, 3 minute cooldown.
Places Cenarius's Blessing on the friendly target, reducing all damage they take by 50% for ten seconds. All damage taken while Cenarius's Blessing is active will be transferred into a damage over time effect that deals the same amount of damage over ten seconds.