After my little retrospective about War Within, I wanted to take a moment to look the other way - forward - to talk about Midnight. Specifically, about how weird it feels to me that it's coming out in less than a month.
When we were still in Dragonflight and War Within was the thing to look forward to, I had some concerns. I'd really enjoyed Dragonflight, and I was worried about how War Within was going to change things.
With Midnight, I don't really feel anything like that. If I had to articulate any concerns, I guess I might point out that with two out of the four expansion launch zones being revamps of old zones, Midnight might end up feeling like there isn't enough "newness" to it (*cough*Cataclysm*cough*). But that's not a huge worry for me or anything.
However, at the same time, I'm not really particularly looking forward to the expansion either. I don't feel negatively about it, mind you - I pre-purchased a couple of months ago, and I expect that I'll have fun playing the new content. It's just...
In a weird way, it doesn't really feel to me like an expansion is coming out. To me at least, Midnight currently has the vibe of just another major patch.
Partially, I suspect the whole Worldsoul Saga thing is to blame. I already talked a bit about that in the context of the big expansion reveal back in August. Traditionally, WoW expansion announcements have been these huge surprise events: What's going to be the next big thing? Where will we go next? What will we find there?
Midnight didn't have anything like that, simply because we'd known for a long time that we were going to fight the void in Quel'thalas and that's exactly what we got out of the announcement as well. Not a huge fan of Xal'atath? Sorry, you're signed up for more of the same.
The other contributing factor to my weird lack of excitement is probably the relentless patch cadence that Blizzard has been following since Dragonflight. And don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that frequent content patches are a bad thing! Truth is though, nobody can fire on all cylinders 24/7, 365 days a year. Players need breaks.
People will probably consider this a hot take, but I don't recall ever minding the so-called content droughts towards the end of an expansion. As someone who was never at the cutting edge of the newest content, it gave me some time to get caught up, maybe level an alt, as well as pursue some goals that weren't tied to the most recent content patch. I'll always remember the last months of Wrath of the Lich King with fondness, simply because I used that quiet time to go back to the old world and get the original Loremaster achievement for example.
These "down times" give you time to recharge and get ready and excited for the next big thing. Except this time around, the husband and I were grinding Legion Remix like crazy people until only a few weeks ago, and now we're just tired. The other day he told me that he hadn't even logged in since the pre-patch because he's still feeling burnt out from Lemix. How can you get hyped for what's coming next when you're still feeling burnt out from the last major event?
I don't know; like I said I fully expect to have some fun with Midnight when it comes out, but in terms of new expansion excitement I'm not sure I've ever felt less of it (at a time when I was actually playing and enjoying the game that is, obviously I didn't care too much about what was happening when I wasn't subscribed).
All I can say is that if you're not fond of X, then you probably wouldn't want to see the latest batch of Blizzard Gear emails. They've got t-shirts with her on it.
ReplyDeleteI both am and am not looking forward to it.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who never had much of a connection to the 'current' Quel'thalas (although I did take a lowbie belf mage through the zones' storylines in... 2023...? and have more recently visited it for lorewalking and the Shadowlands belf-specific questline), I'm definitely looking forward to habing a more 'organic' connection to the zone, if that makes sense. I of course wish it was under different circumstances story-wise, which is as I've expressed before where my excitement is dulled more than a little bit.
I also agree that things are being done 'too fast', but given that so much of their annual content cycle revolves around the M+ seasons I also feel they've pushed themselves into a corner with 'needing' to push out high-end content on a regular basis. S4 would have been useful for allowing more time, but at the same time I feel TWW has reached a point where it is time to move on rather than continue to keep spending time in that expansion. Certainly, unlike Dragonflight , I have no particular wish to have more reason to stick around in Dornogal etc. I am definitely more than ready to move on to newer territories.
Certainly, of the three expansions I've now been around for 'properly' during the pre-patch, this is easily my least favourite. Sure, Dragonflight has a major advantage in that it had the dracthyr starting experience as its backbone, but even outside of that they established Raszageth. TWW's pre-patch story provided the only tangible hint that we'd be visiting K'aresh at some point in the saga, as well as establishing Alleria's fear of losing those she loves (which was actually handled better here than in the entire expansion...). Midnight's has... what? Established that Rommath and Umbric are begrudgingly working together again, but otherwise it's just saying 'hey, the Twilight's Hammer is back again'. I mean, heck, Archbishop Benedictus returns as a mini-boss, which should be a reasonably big thing, but he's just a mob to be ganked and moved on from.
So, yeah. TL;DR: Most interested in getting to experience Quel'thalas in a more meaningful way for a change.