____Pondbrain___________________
                 017 . Is this real life?  Oh yes.  Yes it is.

On one hand, as I have mentioned, I have a lot of criticism for Blizzard.  As some have noticed.  Maybe.

On the other hand, and I think this is obvious to anyone paying any attention, I love the fuck out of this game anyway.  Not to spite the shit that makes me furious about it, no.  There is a lot to love about this game.  And in my opinion more is added in a big way every expansion.

You see, when I heard about World of Warcraft being an MMO I knew I was going to play it.  Why?  Because I have owned every single Warcraft and expansion there was before World of Warcraft was even talked about openly (that I know of.)   I was already in love with the lore.  I knew without question I would play Horde.  Why?  Because in my opinion Alliance was written from day one to overall be hated.  Granted, Horde has various reasons why now it can be also hated equally based on things Sylvannas and Garrosh are currently doing.  But that's apparently going to be faced in MoP. 

I'm getting off track here.  The point is I've been a big fan of the lore since Warcraft days.  Do I get pissed off still every time I see a Pandaren based on the big change they did to them from looking like this:

to looking like this?

Yeah.  I really fucking do.  Do I still get pissed when there are invisible walls in the world that you have to fly around for no reason?  Yeah.  It pisses me off.  See the reason most of us who played Warcraft are vocally crying Kung Fu Panda vs. the original Pandaren?  What the fuck from any of the first 3 warcrafts have taken such a drastic change? Please, email me and tell me.  I've had convos about this but nobody seems to come up with shit.  Have lurked quite a number of forum threads about it on various sites, nothing.

But I keep playing.  And I'll probably be playing this for a long time because I love this game.  Most all of us do.  I would like to add it's not just because it's an amazing time sink.  It is.  But that's not it either.

Permit me please to run through various experiences in the game that have locked me into it above and beyond the lore.  People bitch about being grounded on some new expansion launches for a long period of time.  There's a reason.  And I find it to be a valid reason.

Four guildies including myself were questing into Northrend.  I'm not sure exactly where we all started but we ended up in Dragonblight.  We wanted to quest in the east half of Grizzly Hills.  The four of us set out together to head out to a quest hub we all could do that only one of us had found and wanted to dig into.  Five and I had noticed a mountain to the north of the path we were taking.  Without saying a word on vent him and I split off from the group and rode north, trying to find a way to climb to the top of the mountain. Not long after we broke off the other two asked what the fuck shiney object got our attention this time.  We both said "A MOUNTAIN!!" at the same time.  They doubled back and came to see what the fuck.  They saw it too and were equally impressed, great work Blizzard.  Even for a cartoon game there's some surprisingly cool / beautiful shit you run into. 

The visual developers have great, great imaginations.  Ulduar?  Naxx (though the inside is massively bigger than the outside and I never understood why the fuck they do that, nor why the worlds are so small, everything packed together .... whatever, anyway) -- ToC, all of it, was a pretty cool idea.  Especially the way they put that quest hub with the plague sprayers in view of inside the raid.  I know our 25 man hadn't had time to do the quests overall and a couple of us mid-raid were like .... What the fuck i going on out there with the plague sprayers? One of the only people in the raid had to explain between pulls. 

The Nexus / Coldarra.  Fucking awesome.  That purple based mushroom area in northeast Deepholm.  Some of the designs that make BRD / MC / BRS stand out so much.  They really are good at tieing things together in an interesting way, visually.  Yes, I may also get pissed off when I see a fucking 600x600 pixel image stretched out for thousands of pixels in two directions to make up a wall.  Ok.  And in small instances there's no fucking reason for that.  But in some isolated places of Dalaran with the masses of pieces that make that up, yeah.  Fine. Dalaran by the way, I do understand being as compact as it is.  And fucking well done on the above ground part of that.  Pretty bad ass. 

Blade's Edge Mountains?  Fucking awesome.  Was a horrible pain in the ass to quest on foot/ground mount, but uhhh..... Wouldn't it be?  Look at the place.  But the badass factor was worth it. And all the high impossible to get to places 'till you could fly, those quest hubs and shit?  Good call.  Gave a second life to the place as you returned to grind out whatever mount / faction.  Sunwell?  Pretty cool idea too, along with the way the Isles were unlocked.  I didn't like molten front at all, the way that forced everyone to do the quests individually rather than as a group on the server.... But....  Still visually interesting.  I've been critical of the fire in the game but.....  Still, some of the design work has been cool disregarding the fire graphics.

Disregarding no player or npc reflections, or shore waves or any real appearance of wind in regards to water..... The new water is a major, beautiful improvement over the tiled .gif type crap tha.... Yeah.  Much better and makes some zones pop.

The sunshaft shit is really great.  While it was pretty amusing to see that grade of lighting with fucked up global shadowing and ancient barrens graphics pre-shattering, overall it's enhanced the cartoony game more than I ever imagined anything ever could. 

I'm really interested to see if this night and day difference in lighting is as obvious and contrasting in MoP against current WoW as I've heard.  I've always thought it was really fucking irritating that the difference between night and day, disregarding the moon/sun type difference in the sky, was very very small.  Granted I suppose I'd take it above not being able to see fuck all at night.  But for fuck sakes, ....   I'm interested to see.

The achievement system was a great idea.  It really made the time sink aspect of the game go from the surely achievable for most view before hand to the currently pretty much fucking nobody will ever get all those achievements.  Which is very cool, IMO.  I've never been an ePenis type but chasing that dream is far more interesting in my opinion than pretty much anything else in the game, getting shit done and showing it off wise.  On a pretty huge scale, actually.

The random LFG, while I think is quite awesome, is something that took some time to grow on me.  Originally I was pretty pissed off - and this has shown itself to be increasingly true over time - because I was sure nobody would bother leaving cities anymore and it would turn the majority of the world into something nobody ever saw.  Now, it's only true for a few I've come to learn.  I understand most people still get out and see everything for one reason or another.  And I do kind of miss the days when putting groups together enabled you to say "No, that guy will just wipe us for lols" and so on.  But the convenience almost always outweighs the fuckwit plate classes that go in .. well, they might as well be naked, as a tank, and pull 4 pulls LOLOLOL I'M DPS SOMEONE ELSE TANK......  That stuff is rare enough that the time saved overall is immensely less of a burden than scouring trade and friends / guilds / etc for people to run heroics with pre-LFG.  And LFR is a godsend for people like me who have zero interest in all the work that truly goes into the majority of guilds you would raid with.  Just because I don't believe in being in a guild where I ever put anyone on ignore.  Lots of smiling and getting along when otherwise I would say, fucking dude climb up a tree of broken glass shards and fuck yourself with a small atomic bomb you fuckass piece of shitcunt. That's the price you pay these days to raid, and LFR takes that pain away.  Shit, you can pretty much always jump in LFR with raid chat turned off and if you know what you're doing, know your job, all is well.  You just punch babies and roll on loot.  Pretty fucking win, truly.

The encounter for Aeonaxx, the experience with the Camel... There's a lot of very worth while things being added to the game.  Darkmoon Faire is also better than it ever has been.  Anyone who disagrees with that I believe probably has some sort of mental condition. A lot of the better features in addons over the years has been slipped into the game.  Do I agree with that, without the developer(s) of the addons getting a 'thank you' few hundred bucks or WoW emblazed buttplug or something?  No, I really don't, but I also understand that's Business.  I understand if they did that there undoubtedly would be fuckers coming out of the woodwork OH HEY THIS IDEA WAS IN THIS ADDON HEY GIVE ME A BUTTPLUG TOO.  No.  No fucker.  But yeah, all the same, it's nice for the masses.  Especially those who are paranoid about getting addons, or call addons cheating (WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?) - now it's part of the game, enjoy.  Pretty swell.

To conclude, I fucking love this game.  I do.  And I'm signed up on one account at least with Annual Pass.  Only one because I'm not confident I can swing $30 / $45 / $60 a month if I have to.  $15 I have no question.  

All the bullshit aside, I surely wouldn't be playing if the PVP system, or anything else I've criticized, was enough to hold me away.  Nor the GMs apparently not giving a fuck about a laundry list of shit they really, really fucking should (as long as the shit is stated as against the rules, fucking enforce them for fuck sakes.)  I'll still be here.

And yeah, I have tried to quit a few times.  But no time sink matches WoW. 

Not yet.

And I don't really see anything on the horizon that has this combination of rich lore, features and visually creative people.   Buggy piece of shit engine even the developers even bitch about sub textually and openly... withstanding.

I'm most critical of those close to me.  It's called sharp constructive criticism.  :D

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