So after watching some videos on youtube I decided that a specific release schedule for this may not be the best for me staying on top of things so from now on it'll be mostly as I feel like writing. However back to the warcraft related topics.
With the excitement of 5.0 being on the beta realms and a lot of hinting at a launch date being released soon there's a couple things that are pretty important. There are three major phenomenon that crop up when a new expansion is around the corner.
1) Burn out. It's really easy to burn out at this point in the expansion. In fact I'm pretty sick of raid nights as it is. We do a pretty good job of running through DS in a couple hours, especially since the 30% went in. That doesn't stop me from really not wanting to go to raid on tuesdays simply because it's relatively boring. It's not difficult anymore because we outgear it and it's been nerfed, but we still have the chance to wipe on pretty basic things. I think ever week we die at least once to ultraxion because of people not soaking the appropriate hour.
Another form of burn out which may not seem quite the same is taking a break from the game. A lot of cases crop up at this point in the launch cycle where people take a break until the X.0 patch or the actually expansion launch. Often these people do not return these breaks or just lose any interest in the game at all and disappear.
What's the solution to this? Well if you really like warcraft and plan on playing for a long time (or have a huge log of play time stocked up due to D3 CE or long term subscriptions) there's a couple things you can do to continue to enjoy it.
The first is to just play less. During progression it's very likely that people will be on nearly every night trying to do something in the game and it's still very exciting. Farming mats, doing some dailies for new gear, getting some gold for whatever reason, etc. Cutting back on your game hours will make it feel less like you have to log on and more that you're getting on to accomplish something. Now don't reduce your hours to no hours or you're very likely to just stop playing the game altogether.
Second point. Keep active in the game doing things other than raid. Sometimes this is hard since to a lot of people raiding is really the only thing they do in the game. For the most part raiding is why I play the game and without the progression stuff I do get pretty bored, however finding fun things to do like getting a group to go back for a second round of "Herald of the Titans" can keep you in the game without making you sick of it. Levelling new characters can do this as well, just pace yourself. Similarly don't stop raiding, even if it's just the 2-3 hours a week clearing 8/8 H it's something that will keep you in the game and make it less likely you'll just leave.
Lastly, try picking up something new in the game. If you don't pvp try getting into it. I know this can be daunting and there's some real problems with entry-level pvp. However, this is something new to do that may get you excited about a whole new aspect of the game. There's some other points regarding sticking to the game but I'm going to address that later since it works better for another section.
2) New/returning players. You will *always* have a wave of new and returning players every time there is a major patch or expansion. 4.2 Saw the biggest resurgence I've seen in a long time, with a smaller one during 4.3. With mists I can garuntee there will be armadas of new or returning players. This poses a lot of problems including crazy economies on the server, lots of raiding roster inflations and a lot of lower end players. A lot of those lower end are that way simply because they aren't used to the game changes or are new to the game as a whole so I'm not saying that the people are bad I'm just saying that they are new and can sometimes pose problems when dealing with them.
So what are the major problems with them and how do you deal with it? Primarily you have to be aware that things are in flux and there's almost nothing you can do about it. Just ride the wave so to speak. You're going to find a *lot* of things like really low dps or tanks that can't hold aggro in LFR/D. Healers that have trouble with mana or with keeping people alive. It's just going to happen and you can't get upset at them. I know it's tempting and I'm guilty of making fun of people in LFD from time to time but it's impotant to remember that they are playing the same game you are and more good players isn't a bad thing. In fact it's probably the best thing for the game and for the raiding environment.
Try to help out people who may not know better. If you see someone undercutting you by 50% on the AH just let them know that everybody loses when they undercut that much. I know plenty of people who, once told, stopped halving their posts and instead started undercutting by a gold or two. Also if you see someone posting something for crazy expensive when it's the only one of it's kind up, try helping them find a better price and don't be afraid to try and haggle them down a bit.
When running LFR/D don't just point and laugh at people pulling 3k dps on ultraxion. If you someone who plays the same class/spec as you and they are under performing try to help them out. I've met other players in BGs who did some silly things that only seem silly when you understand the game better. Fury warriors with daggers for example, or enhancement shamans with FT MH and WF OH. It happens, especially since sometimes the way you get skills while levelling don't always direct you to the optimal setups. Don't be mean about it, but try and help those who may not be aware of things. Pointing people to common resources like elitistjerks or femaledwarf is extremely helpful if you can do it in a constructive way. Be nice people, it only helps. Think about one of those players actually learning how to play the game really well and eventually finding their way to your raid roster. You'd rather they knew what they were doing and helped out your team than the raid roster scraping the bottom of the barrel because there are so few good players you can't get a hold of them anymore.
3) New xpac excitement. This isn't so much of a problem but I do have one major caution to people who are very excited about mists. Please check your information and the information of others. There are some great resources out there that digest the information for you. Try the beta yourself, or if you can't/haven't gotten into it try the PTR. In addition to the problem of information knowing that it is just around the corner can lead to an increased incidence of burnout. A lot of people will give up for now and wait for the X.0 launch.
I know I get really really excited about the new content and it's often hard to keep track of it all. I highly recommend places like wowhead/Zamofficial or MMO-champ as they make it a lot easier to keep track of all the changes. Don't try and keep up with all the beta changes to every class/spec/zone/etc you will give yourself an aneurysm. Just wait until the 5.0 patch and check out the patch notes there. Alternatively if you are very interested in it, and I highly recommend you keep up with the changes just don't run yourself down with it, please participate in the beta and give feedback. The only way to make the game better is to give feedback.
The absolute best way to give feedback is to play the game, post on the forums and do it as constructively as you possibly can. Posts like "Ret pallies are useless" is itself useless. Posts along the lines of "In PvP we don't have a good answer to problems x, y, z which will completely shut us down" are very good. The objective is to provide a couple major things with the feedback:
-Your opinion. It's important to tell them how you feel about it, but that can't be all you're doing.
-The problem. Try and identify the problem or at least where you think the problem might be.
-Numbers if you have them. Not always the most useful but they can't hurt.
-Experiences. Tell them what you did and what your reaction was.
There's some more to it but it's really hard to nail down exactly what makes good feedback because basically all feedback is generally considered helpful in one way or another. If a hundred thousand people all say something there's really good reason for the developers to, at the very least, look into it. However, and this one is big, you have to refrain from posts like "I'm underpowered, I need a buff." Without data to back up things like that it's mostly clutter.
If you're wondering how else to provide that sort of feedback there are places on the internet where people may be asking for data sets. This means something like running up to a target dummy, doing your rotation for a half hour, logging it, and emailing or posting it where they can collect extremely large amounts of data to compare.
In any case I hope that helped some people in some respects. Remember this is everyone's online world and a better player base means a better game.
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