The Fail of Theramore

I know, I know, but you gotta let me have this. It's too fucking hilarious! For almost a year now, players on WoW have got zero new content. Nothing. Nada. Zilch! And it cost them a whole lot of money every month. I can laugh at myself there, too, since I was stupid enough to assume I'd keep playing, went for the 1 year sub to get Diablo 3 (another tragic story) and in doing so, I too have helped fund the development of absolutely nothing. Yay!

They've announced the fall of Theramore ages ago. People were talking about all-out war, about the climax to the everlasting battle between the forces of the Alliance and the Horde. People were expecting important characters to die there, something to make the two warring factions hate each other more than ever before. Apparently, the whole thing was eventually described in one of the WoW novels. Personally, I am not familiar with that stuff, because for some weird reason, I prefer to just play my fucking games and not spend any money on books in order to understand wtf is going on.

Well, stupid me. Maybe I should have read the book, because I don't really have a clue what's goin' on here:

So a random nameless goblin drops a bomb on Theramore and from what I've seen in the video, he managed to blow up that fortress, which was of absolutely zero meaning or importance in WoW. It used to be mildly entertaining back in WoW classic, when you had to do a first aid quest in there. But the quest got removed, you never entered the place anymore, I don't even know who the fuck was inside, if anyone, and now it's gone. I was expecting the whole island to get nuked, a huge mess, sunken ships and all that, but it turns out the place is mostly okay. Phew, right? :P

Okay, maybe I was being a bit too optimistic when I expected a world event similar to the opening of AQ or world-wide surprise zombie invasions. You know, biiig stuff that used to happen around Azeroth, sometimes in order to set the stage for new expansions. I'm not saying that they were all perfect, but they were big, they affected people and they talked about this stuff. Now I can team up with two random players, fight a bunch of peons (or footmen on Horde side) and get a shitty little cutscene, which explains nothing.

The whole thing is over in ten minutes. It feels like a slightly inflated Halloween-Event. You know, the shit you queue up for once a day, kill a boss, hope for some fun loot, go back to the daily grind when you're done. The fall of Theramore, something that was meant to be a world-changing event to set the stage for renewed, all-out war, is one of those things you just do in ten minutes. Queue up, kill some bad guys, end of story. Did I mention this is the first bit of fresh content in nearly a year?
In part, this may be my fault for fully expecting a large-scale world event. You know, people of both factions fighting on there for days until the inevitable happens. Get people involved. War, large-scale pvp, see the place burn. I dunno, maybe Blizzard decided that the servers cannot really handle that sort of thing, that it's more casual-friendly and easier to approach in groups of three. But something that was cracked up to be so big and important shouldn't be over in a mere ten minutes, without explanation, without context. Especially not when the whole community is starving for content! At the end of it, that entire event feels meaningless and bland.

It's so messed up, it's borderline funny. Think about it: There hasn't been any real content update since The Hour of Twilight went live in November 2011. Nearly ten months ago. In the meanwhile, subscribers have paid 90 Pounds, 130 Euros or 150 Dollars to be allowed to log in and play, without any actual fresh content. Now they're getting a disappointing ten minute trashmob-grindfest to set the stage for an expansion pack, which costs nearly the full retail price of any current day PC game (34,95 EUR digital download) on top of the usual monthly fee. Hilarious!

Dead horse, I know. Anyone planning to grab MoP knew there wouldn't be any new content until the furry fat fucks go live and most of you have probably pre-purchased the damn thing anyway. And if you're seriously looking forward to gaining another five levels and experiencing another week's worth of new content (whee!), you're not gonna care just how awful Theramore really is. But it really makes me wonder if people are still happy to pay monthly subscription fees when stuff like this happens. Guild Wars 2 cost me money once - when I bought the client software. No subscription fees, no extra cost and all the optional stuff in the cash shop can be bought with gold. I have just used some ingame gold to upgrade my regular game version to a digital Collectors' Edition.

Do I seriously believe they're gonna release brand new zones, dungeons and quests every month? Of course not. I'll be done with all the content I care about, just the way I was done with my stuff on WoW. But on GW2 I don't have to cancel my subscription and renew it to come back several months later. I don't have to keep on paying money to repeat old content with a new character. I've already bought the game, now I can play as much or as little as I want and I don't have to feel ripped off when nothing happens for an entire fucking year. Now there's a business model I can agree with!
It really makes me wonder. GW2 sales are through the roof. And with millions of people seeing how much you can get these days without actually paying any fees whatsoever, they might look back at WoW and ask themselves if their pricing is still fair. If they're still really getting their money's worth.

People worship Blizzard and the stuff they create for a reason. I don't think we'll ever see anything as big and impressive as WoW again. That game is a phenomenon and no matter how many times people declare it dead, this behemoth still has more subscribers than any other MMO ever had. But when your community is starving for stuff to do and you fail to deliver, then they might remember just how strong and affordable the competition out there has become. Pandaria had better be good! Damn good, even, or the guys at Blizzard may have to feel that raging, pissed off and possibly slightly self-entitled gamers don't like it when they feel ripped off. Bioware already know it, Diablo 3 gave Blizzard an idea, now it's all up to the pandas. I'm excited to see how the community will receive it.

On an unrelated note, I'm heading straight into another virtual identity crisis, thanks to this guy:

Ras Deadeye and Corky the raven. Because ravens are cool.

In a world where people earn their money by slaying trolls, goblins and other nasty shit, I'd probably try and protect myself with the toughest, heaviest suit of armor I could possibly afford. This is why I don't agree with light or medium armor in my games. I don't have the patience or talent for stealth, I don't need to wear light stuff that doesn't hinder my movement. I'd want to be sure I can take a fucking hit - because if nature doesn't design you for stealth and silent movement, then you'll want to be sure you can actually survive being big and obvious. You get the idea.

Alas, when you add stylish, awesome, black leathery steampunk-pirate coats to the picture, that suit of platemail suddenly ends up looking awfully functional and not very sexy.
That guy up there is my ranger. I don't usually play ranger-types. I love the idea of having a faithful animal companion, but hiding behind a pet, shooting stuff from a safe distance and wearing only medium armor simply isn't my cup of tea. Rangers in GW2 can be played exactly that way - use a bow, shoot things, let your pet take the hits. But you don't have to.

When I fight a baddie with my ranger, it's usually a little more like this: I use a warrior-style leap to jump at the enemy, shave 50% off his health bar with a stacking bleed attack, whilst spamming traps for additional bleed and poison DoTs. Next, I switch to stereo axes to apply another quick 5-10 bleed stacks, then proceed to chop him to bits with a whirling axe flurry. In the unlikely event that he's still alive and trying to run, I finish him off by throwing my axe, which also happens to be an excellent ranged weapon. Fun shit!

GW2's combat system allows me to play my ranger like a berserking melee badass, whilst retaining my ability to dish out decent ranged damage where necessary. In a disturbingly nerdy way, this particular style of combat actually makes sense for my character: He's only got one good eye, the other one is dull and blind. That was one of the fun cosmetic options in character creation. While this is really just for looks and doesn't affect gameplay, it would be a bit weird to use longbows on a toon with no perception of depth, so hacking shit to bits seemed to be the logical solution. I can still throw a family pack of axes, but when you chuck about half a dozen of them all at the same time, scoring the occasional lucky hit is really not a matter of accuracy.

Another thing I enjoy about this class is the tag-team of pets: That fun little corvid on the screenshot is Corky, my pet raven. Unlike the flying pets in a certain other MMO, Corky knows how to fucking land, he doesn't block anyone's god damn camera and he's a fun, bird-sized pet. When Corky takes too much damage in battle and needs a break, I can push a hotkey and immediately replace him with Spunky, my pet hyena. No need to wait for the raven to rest and regenerate, no need to waste precious time throwing him a heal, I just switch him out with one button. And by the time my Hyena gets exhausted from battle, the raven will be ready to go again. There's only a small cooldown on the switch hotkey.
You may tame every single one of the available pets in the game, there is no limit, you don't need a stablemaster. Then you put your two favourite pets on the active slots and switch em in and out with the press of a button. Fucking awesome!

Of course, nothing is ever perfect. Neither are rangers or their pets. Ever tried sneaking past a particularly nasty spawn of baddies when suddenly your pet decides it's a brilliant idea to attack a champion (elite baddie) several levels above you and all of his minions? The AI does some incredibly strange things at times. And for as much as I'm enjoying my ranger - leap, trap, bleed, switch, whirl,  throw - that kinda stuff kills a baddie in just a few seconds, but also requires a million button presses. On my guardian I just use a leap, spam my stupid greatsword whirl attack and I'll eradicate any number of max level baddies all by myself without taking any damage whatsoever. It's stupidly simple, there's no talent required and a trained monkey could do it, but I can't help but feel that my ranger is somewhat gimp in comparison. Farming, gaining levels, killing stuff... everything is a tad slower and requires a lot more effort on Mr. Deadeye. On the other hand, my ranger can rack up insane amounts of ridiculously easy pvp ranged kills where my guardian would wiggle a gay little stick - because a wand is a guardian's only utility for useful ranged DPS. :-/

The coolest outfit is ruined when you're forced to wiggle a little stick.

Regarding their coolness factor, the ranger wins hands down. Still, he's gonna need some love in the balancing department. Dungeon groups exclusively look for warriors and guardians, as they faceroll their way through the enemy hordes mashing only a single button. Rangers have to work much harder to dish out similar amounts of damage, whilst generally damaging smaller amounts of enemies, taking more time to kill them and, in turn, getting hit a lot more and a lot harder. They're fine in pvp, they're okay at your regular everyday pve activities, but that just about sums it up. And then there's this tiny voice in my brain, nagging, remind me that I'm all about the heavy armor and shitloads of damage, not compromising with a class I don't usually play. Decisions, decisions... argh!

-Cat