Do it again

World of Warcraft has recently captured me again.  I suppose it wasn't much of a surprise because I am stuck here at home and I need something to soak up 8 hours a day of downtime.  What actually got me to do the thing though was Wendy being eager to go back to our old haunts and reignite the addiction.  Wendy and I have been looking to find games to play together again and WOW absolutely fits the bill.

I was nervous coming back because there have been some expansions that have deeply disappointed me.  Cataclysm was the worst offender because they designers decided to make all content purely on rails.  No choices or flexibility - you do all things in a single order, or do nothing at all.

Thankfully Battle For Azeroth doesn't seem like it has that problem.  There are some big storylines to do, but there are tons of random quests all over and there seem to be tons of choices in how to play.  I suspect it will be really weird when we hit level cap though because we are almost 2 years into this expansion so there are going to be huge gear gaps to make up before we can do anything even near the current raid tier.  I am used to being into an expansion on time and going through content at a slow pace, but everything is already out there to be had.

I remember the old days when I knew everything that was happening in the game, but I know nothing now.  I looked at the level caps for expansions and saw 60, 70, 80, 85, 90, 100, 110, 120, 60.  Wait, what?  That sequence of numbers has something really odd in it...

And apparently in late 2020 the entire game will radically shift.  All level 120 characters will drop to level 50, and the entire world will be set up so you can level from 10-50 in any expansion you want, and 50-60 in the new xpac. This seems amazing to me, because the current levelling situation is a mess.  When you want to go to a given expansion it is a puzzle to figure out how to get there, and travelling from one to another feels strange.  You also outlevel an expansion and have to abandon all the content there.  With the new update you can just adventure anywhere you want from 10-50, so you won't have to worry so much about how to get to each expansion.

This seems like a fantastic change.  Instead of progressing through the entire story of more than a decade you can just pick the story you like the best and bash through that on your way to the level cap.  So many choices, and so much less being lost at how to get to the next area you are required to visit in order to play.

WOW certainly is slowly fading away, but it does seem to me that the people running it are getting better and better at their craft, finding the best possible way to craft each part of the game.

I am already dreaming WOW.  Thinking about gear upgrades, rolling spec choices about in my mind, wishing for addons to streamline my play.

It has me again, and I don't know when it will let me go.