My Life As A Gamer: Going To The Shadowlands

The second filler expansion for World of Warcraft ends at 5pm Central Standard Time today, when Shadowlands goes live. Time to say goodbye to the hub I operated from for two years. (Yes, for you new folks, I play Horde and that is my main character of 15 years.)

Now we see if the cycle I said was the case is the correct take or not. That take is that the game has degenerated into a Good-Bad cycle, where their development team is no longer capable of consistently delivering a high-quality play experience within the time alloted for development per expansion, so one expansion is now consistnetly bad and filled with filler bullshit to keep people busy while they finish the stuff that matters to them.

This is the cycle that played out after Mists of Pandaria (which was a good expansion), where Warlords of Draenor was an unqualified disaster followed by a well-received Legion expansion that everyone agrees was a good time. (Not flawless by far, but good.) Now that Battle For Azeroth--again seens as a pile of filler full of suck and blow, despite some good elements--is over we are expecting Shadowlands to be an overall good experience.

I am tell you now that if you are not already subscribed and ready to go that you should wait. Let those of us suffering from Sunk Cost be that first wave off the boats to Omaha Beach. Watch our streams, watch our videos, read our blog posts and articles, etc. before you decide to jump in or not. There are bad signs of degenerate gameplay and these need to be investigated.

The first, and biggest, is that we have Yet Another Borrowed Power Mechanic. Replacing the Artifact Weapons of Legion and the Heart of Azeroth/Azerite Armor we have Anima Power and Covenants. The second is that we have a new iteration of the Garrison/Order Hall/War Campaign. These are timesucks meant to keep you not only from playing your alt characters, but from play anything but the main specialization of your main character. This contradicts official statements on making the game friendly to playing anything but mains on main spec.

As author David V. Stewart has said, this is a consequence of Games As Service as implemented. The business model is meant to timegate players to extract maximum revenue, either by paying to bypass timegates (not an option in World of Warcraft, aside from levelling up) or by ensuring recurring revenue via subscriptions (what WOW does). We'll see how hard the timegating is shortly, but if it goes as those reporting from the Beta state, don't expect to do anything but playing your main character in their main specialization for at least three months- not if you have a real life away from the game like a full-time job, a spouse, children, etc.

We'll see if I'm wrong about this, but I have plenty of experience informing my assessment and I've learned not to get my hopes up.

And as for why I'm still playing? Because I've been able to play without me spending any real money for six years due to the game allowing you to buy store credit with in-game currency, and that credit in turn buys game time and expansions. I've even been able to buy other games for sale by Blizzard in this manner. Take a look at your gaming expenses; it's stupid-cheap to play WOW once you know how to make gold efficiently, which is why I kept doing it this long.

But if this is another two-year suck stretch? Nope.

Will report back soon.