Machus

I'll walk over to the shop shortly, in about 30 minutes, and get my copy of WLK, because I think it would be fun to do this (not much happens in my town).

I'll probably even install it, assuming I can shift some stuff off my hard disk.

What I don't know is whether I'll bother playing it, any more than getting on the boat to Northrend and seeing the scenery.

I'm kind of bored with this game. I dread another reset of my character development, another leveling...

When you gain four lvl 70 epic items after an hour of grinding! True, the large floating necropolises and undead circles all round the landscape are another clue.

I like the new Undead Cleansing set. It makes me look like a paladin, and I got a horn to summon a pet paladin too. Finally someone to dispatch those melee-only skeletons in Scholomance! My old Undead Cleansing set, as well as the items from Balzaphon are still in good condition, and I wear them occasionally. Hoarder though...

I'm really enjoying the achievement system, which I think is the most awesome improvement to the game that 3.0 brought. The particular achievements that I'm enjoying at the moment are exploring the old world.

Part of the reason I'm enjoying them so much is I was sure I had explored all of it, except for a few regions like Azuremyst or Silvermoon. Not so. I've had to revisit the places where I leveled like Ashenvale or Stonetalon (somewhat dog-headedly, or a human mage) and discover...

Since taking a break from WoW between 3.0 and Wrath, I've come to realize once again how deeply frustrated I am about just one aspect of WoW game design. No, I'm not unhappy that WoW is time consuming, or that it is addictive, or that it can be hardcore. These are positive characteristics. No, I'm frustrated that my time playing WoW is almost completely and crushingly uncreative.

Let me state up-front that I love the game. If the game just sucked, or even if it was mediocre, I wouldn't...

Since we got our 3.0 abilities we've all been going around finding content trivial, be it heroics, legendary raids of the past, M'uru or whatever. The obvious question that comes from this is "Will WotLK be too easy?". Will content be dumbed down relative to what it used to be, are people going to be zerging instances, and so on.

We'll find out in a few months time of course, when average players are doing Naxx and heroics. But in the meantime, we can look back at what wiped...