I miss attunements

Just for fun I decided to get the key to the Arcatraz for my paladin today. She was only in her low sixties when WOTLK came out, so I never got to do anything related to BC's engame with her. Now she's eighty and working her way towards Champion of the Frozen Wastes, but I still enjoy going back and working on some BC stuff with her as well. She's also halfway through her Karazhan attunement, for example.

I'm actually kind of sad that there are practically no attunements in WOTLK and to be honest I'm a bit surprised that nobody else seems to feel that way. Any time I've seen someone comment on the lack of attunements in Wrath, their comment could usually be summed up as "good riddance".

To me, attunements are a wonderful and unique way to still advance your character once you've hit the level cap - beyond just upgrading your gear over and over again, that is. What better way to get a sense of progression than to actually work your way from one place to the next? Run normal Magister's Terrace and you'll be qualified to enter the place on heroic! Do a couple of five-man dungeons to prove that you're experienced enough to handle the ten-man Karazhan!

I believe that it's actually quite similar to the levelling experience: Kill enough mobs/do enough quests in Duskwood and you'll be able to cross the border to Stranglethorn Vale (without being instantly mauled to death by some tigers). Now, I know that some people don't like levelling and would prefer to start every new character at eighty right away, but I always figured that those were a small minority. Yet nobody seems to miss the "instance-levelling" provided by attunements. I don't get it.

I suppose one could argue that some attunements in BC were too lengthy and convoluted. If you wanted to get an new raiding character attuned to Mount Hyjal, you would have had to drag him through four different twenty-five-man raids first, among other things. However, Blizzard realised this and gradually loosened the requirements to access the various BC raids anyway. I didn't really mind that as it was done one step at a time, not unlike the way they've increased levelling speed for lower levels. Also, they didn't actually remove the attunement quest chains from the game, so you could still do them for your personal little achievements.

In WOTLK on the other hand, there's been nothing right from the start. Everybody can pretty much go anywhere as soon as they hit eighty. In practice this means that people will simply gravitate towards where they can get the most loot in the shortest amount of time, which is why there seem to be about a dozen Naxx pugs on my server every day, but heroics are mostly abandoned. Of course you can still do things "in order" if you want, but good luck trying to find heroic groups when everybody just skips them to go straight into the easy raids.

There also don't seem to be any quests connected to instances anymore. I fondly remember all the things the Violet Eye asked of me, or how the Keepers of Time wanted me to fetch those vials from Vashj and Kael. Not anymore! I still remember how incredulous I felt when I found out that there wasn't a single quest connected to the new Naxx. Seriously, nobody wants Kel'Thuzad dead and would pay for his head? The same in Ulduar: To be fair, we got a cool video on the official website, but again I was disappointed to not see any kind of follow-up in the game. Rhonin could have asked us to go there and join the good fight or something. How hard would that have been?

I don't really care for being able to go anywhere, at any time, in any gear. I want to feel like my character actually has a clear path ahead of her - because the journey is the reward.