Do you miss WoWMatrix?

It’s been about six months since the release of Patch 3.1 and the smack down of WoWMatrix by Curse and WoWInterface.  I recall at the time being quite perturbed at the single-handed decimation of an app I had come to rely on for keeping my addons up to date.

Now, several months later, I have to say I could care less about the whole issue.  At some point after WoWMatrix stopped working for me, I downloaded the Curse client and registered at WoWInterface for the addons I could not get via Curse.  Because I am a Mac user, the Curse client is still free for me to use, and it works perfectly.  I have no complaints whatsoever.

I’m wondering how others feel?  Do you miss WoWMatrix?  Do you still use it?  Are you still holding a grudge against Curse?

Achievements: Holy or Shadow?

In a recent post on our guild forums, a friend good-naturedly called out several of our guildmates for being ahead of him in Achievement points.  This led to some bragging and some trash-talking, all of it in fun, but of course as always with gamers there is a very real underlying spirit of competition to the whole conversation about Achievements.

Blizzard wouldn’t give us Achievement points if they didn’t want people to brag about their score.  Heck, even by calling these feats “Achievements” Blizzard is asking us to measure ourselves against each other–and the double entendre in the word “measuring” is fully intended.

My question is, do we really need more competition in this game?  I love Achievements, personally.  It gives me something fairly innocuous to do when I don’t feel much like doing anything else.

“Oh, I can bake a chocolate cake for an Achievement; let me do that and then just log off.”

You get Achievments just for fully exploring an area.  You get an Achievement for catching 25 fish.

But as I was reading the forum post at my guild, I found myself thinking with a sigh, “Ah great, yet another standard I won’t measure up to.”  I’m currently 36th in our guild in terms of Achievement points.

Yes, I know I have a problem.  I’m competitive, but I can’t really compete.  That’s not really the point, though.  I think the tendency to view the game as a middle school-ish cock measuring contest–a tendency I admit I am guilty of as well–is pretty insidious and in some ways can sap a lot of the fun out of the game.  The best example is the most common: getting to 80 (and reaching level 80 is an Achievement).

There was a blue post at the WoW forums awhile back by Ghostcrawler, who said that anyone who had reached level 80 by that point (early December) was a hardcore player.  He also said that the majority of players hadn’t reached 80 by that point.

A lot of people took issue with being considered hardcore, and I found that interesting.  Starman on the World of Warcast podcast took issue with being called hardcore because he dinged eighty about three weeks after installing Wrath.  Others, I think, didn’t want to feel like just because they were eighty so quickly, that they have no life; but secretly, inside, they were probably proud that they turned eighty under the deadline set by Ghostcrawler and thus were part of the elite.

First of all, it’s interesting how achieving something has value for some people relative to their own position in the hierarchy of achievements.  Starman doesn’t think he’s hardcore, because he knows people who were 80 within a week of installing Wrath.  I don’t think I’m hardcore, because I’m still not 80 yet.  However, a friend of mine, who only played for about two months during which time he only reached level 20, might think I’m really hardcore because, compared to him, I’m a super-fast leveler.

Anyway, because there is always someone who is going to be ahead of you in Achievements and in achievements can lead to a feeling that one has somehow “failed” at the game.  I think it’s difficult for many of us to simply enjoy a game for it’s own sake.  After all, it’s a game, and by definition a game is a competition between people.

I’m not arguing against the Achievement system here, but simply wishing I could play the game like a friend of mine, who isn’t in a guild, doesn’t raid or do instances, only groups with me, and doesn’t care a fig for Achievements.  There’s a self-confidence in him that I wish I had, and it does seem to allow him to enjoy the game in a simple way uncorrupted by competitiveness.

Ah geez, but there I go again…measuring myself against someone else.  It’s truly an illness.

Loose Ends

With a little over a month until Wrath of the Lich King hits shelves, are there any goals you anticipate leaving unmet when you travel to Northrend?

I feel like time is short, and looking at my quest log I know there are going to be any number of group (all those SMV quests!) or raid quests that I simply remove as no longer attainable.

My hunter will probably not unlock the Ogri’la content, and even if he does he won’t get much beyond Neutral in his rep.  He won’t reach Exalted with the Skyguard, either, though he might make it to Revered.

My Shaman may not make it from 64 to 70.  I’ve lost interest.

I will not be able to level a Horde alt to 70.

Holdwine will not be able to get the Mongoose enchant from Karazhan.  I’ve seen it drop several times but lost the roll each time.  My guild is no longer fielding Kara teams, now that our interest has become focused on getting through SSC and TK, with the ultimate goal of hitting Black Temple and Hyjal hard at the end of the month.

Holdwine won’t earn the title “Champion of the Naaru” or “Hand of A’dal.”  There is still time to achieve these, but it seems unlikely to happen.  I’m not too disappointed, though, since there will probably be more titles in WotLK–maybe even some humorous ones.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve achieved in the game thus far.  I feel like my Warlock is very well geared, considering I am a casual player.  I’ve seen a lot of high end raid content, and I look forward to seeing Black Temple at the end of the month.  Most of all, I’ve had fun, and for that I really have to give credit to my guild.  Not only would the game have been less fun without them, but Holdwine wouldn’t be nearly so well-geared or accomplished.

I never fully realized the importance of friends in a game like this until playing the WotLK beta.  The loneliness, as well as the necessity of pugging everything that required more than one player, was really depressing.  So here’s to the future.  Even with so many loose ends, there remains so much to look forward to.

November 13

Now we know the date.  That prompts the question, how is this going to change your gameplay over the next couple months?  Will you stop raiding?  Will you work extra hard to level that alt to 70?  Will you grind out the dailies like a Chinese gold farmer because you still need your epic flying?  Will you finally finish skilling up your fishing to 375?

For me, I’m not sure anything is going to change dramatically.  I raid because I enjoy playing with 10 or 25 people to achieve a boss kill, not for loot.  So I’ll probably continue raiding when I have the time.

I do have one alt, my Shaman, in his mid-sixties that I really ought to finish leveling.  However, beyond reaching 70 my goals for him have been changed because of the Wrath release date.  I don’t see myself grinding out his Shattered Sun or Skyguard rep.  There simply won’t be enough time, and frankly my hunter is more important to me in that regard anyway.  I’m already working on his rep with those factions, and I’d like to even open up Ogri’La for the extra Skyguard quests.

I figure it will be enough to get my Shaman to 70, and then I can just sit back and wait for the 13th.

Getting to Know You

In one of those flashes of brain activity that can either lead to a “Eureka!” moment or turn out to be merely another Senior Moment, I had what seems like a great idea just now.

Someone ought to create a WoW Networking site, similar to Facebook, in which players can enter as much or as little about themselves into the online database as possible.  The only required fields would be character name, WoW Realm, and real life hometown.

This idea occurred to me as I was wondering if anyone in my hometown plays WoW (presumably there are), and if so, how would I ever find out?

Thus the purpose of the site, as I see it: to allow people to identify players in their local area.  Why would anyone want to do that?  Mainly,  because some people may want to extend their in-game friendships to real people outside the game.  Groups of real-life friends, usually numbering in the single digits, often play together and sometimes even create small guilds.  This networking website would allow for the extension of that idea further outside the game.