it is kind of stupidly refreshing to encounter someone else who had That experience with progression raiding in their 20s. Doesn't happen often, beyond the people I still know from back then, anymore!
Meeee toooo and I'm relieved my sudden Wall of WoW Text out of nowhere was not unwelcome! I mean, I still play with some of the people I raided with in BC, but often when I'm in other spaces, I feel like there is a big, meaningful chunk of my life that nobody else can relate to. Progression raiding (and the process of going from a new recruit, to an officer, to a class lead, to a raid leader) taught me a lot about how to manage and set boundaries with people, and shaped the way I think about leadership, success, and failure to this day. Probably a lot of people learn about those things in their early 20s, but the specifics of how I learned them are not something I can easily share with most people.
the writing in WoW was never, ever compelling to me
Yeah, I'm with you there. I never played the RTS games so I didn't come into it with an investment in the story, either. IMO the shakiness of the writing was less of a problem in vanilla because there was less Big Story to tell; when most of what you're reading is just snippets from random quest-givers, and you're just a random adventurer, it kind of works and hangs together as a big silly fantasy world to play in. But it seems to me that when they try to do Big Story it's often repetitive (the Old Gods are threatening the world! again!) or they write themselves into a corner (the characters are tired of war... but the war can never end because it's baked into the game). Some players love the lore and that's cool! But for me the story is mostly a backdrop for the game content.
got the same sort of joy out of my core group of five just... reading each other's minds and acting as a unit to take on serious dungeon challenges.
This sounds like you would love mythic+, because that's exactly what I get out of it. But I also hear you on not wanting to do the leveling slog. To be fair, the leveling dungeons do ramp up somewhat in difficulty as you go on, and 100 levels isn't quite as much as it sounds like since they've squished the amount of XP needed to level so many times, but it's still a barrier.
You Must Have This Many CoH Priests To Ride
Hahaha, oh yes. When we were in BT, I was priest lead. We had a lot of priests and somebody had to tell them all when to go holy and shadow, and who was buffing what group, and whose turn it was to spec into icky Divine Spirit. I loved playing CoH holy and I healed most of the way through BC, but in Wrath I was the swing healer spot and I ended up going shadow more often than not. I played shadow for a while in Cata too (it was awesome then!) but there was some roster turnover and we needed a healer again, and whatever they'd done to holy and disc by that point, I just could not get down with it. I tried but it felt all wrong. That was when I picked up the shaman, and clicked with it right away. The core mechanics have stayed relatively consistent since then so I've had no reason to give it up. (Sometimes people complain that shamans never get any big updates... I don't want shamans to get any big updates. :P )
Tanking is what I've done by far the least. I had a prot pally alt in Wrath and I tanked some alt/pug Naxx raids, but for some reason being in that front-and-center role makes me so damn nervous in a way that I never am when I heal or DPS. I can't relate at all when people talk about being scared to heal, because healing has been my comfort zone for so long.
Still haven't decided what I'm playing in Classic. I had a 60 hunter and 60 priest and enjoyed them both, but I'm tempted to go shaman and see the oldschool version, since I never played it until later.
How did you find Wildstar to be? It was so hyped up, with the whole "old guard WoW developers leaving to do an MMO right" thing, but I never got around to trying it, and the next thing I knew it was shutting down.
no subject
Meeee toooo and I'm relieved my sudden Wall of WoW Text out of nowhere was not unwelcome! I mean, I still play with some of the people I raided with in BC, but often when I'm in other spaces, I feel like there is a big, meaningful chunk of my life that nobody else can relate to. Progression raiding (and the process of going from a new recruit, to an officer, to a class lead, to a raid leader) taught me a lot about how to manage and set boundaries with people, and shaped the way I think about leadership, success, and failure to this day. Probably a lot of people learn about those things in their early 20s, but the specifics of how I learned them are not something I can easily share with most people.
the writing in WoW was never, ever compelling to me
Yeah, I'm with you there. I never played the RTS games so I didn't come into it with an investment in the story, either. IMO the shakiness of the writing was less of a problem in vanilla because there was less Big Story to tell; when most of what you're reading is just snippets from random quest-givers, and you're just a random adventurer, it kind of works and hangs together as a big silly fantasy world to play in. But it seems to me that when they try to do Big Story it's often repetitive (the Old Gods are threatening the world! again!) or they write themselves into a corner (the characters are tired of war... but the war can never end because it's baked into the game). Some players love the lore and that's cool! But for me the story is mostly a backdrop for the game content.
got the same sort of joy out of my core group of five just... reading each other's minds and acting as a unit to take on serious dungeon challenges.
This sounds like you would love mythic+, because that's exactly what I get out of it. But I also hear you on not wanting to do the leveling slog. To be fair, the leveling dungeons do ramp up somewhat in difficulty as you go on, and 100 levels isn't quite as much as it sounds like since they've squished the amount of XP needed to level so many times, but it's still a barrier.
You Must Have This Many CoH Priests To Ride
Hahaha, oh yes. When we were in BT, I was priest lead. We had a lot of priests and somebody had to tell them all when to go holy and shadow, and who was buffing what group, and whose turn it was to spec into icky Divine Spirit. I loved playing CoH holy and I healed most of the way through BC, but in Wrath I was the swing healer spot and I ended up going shadow more often than not. I played shadow for a while in Cata too (it was awesome then!) but there was some roster turnover and we needed a healer again, and whatever they'd done to holy and disc by that point, I just could not get down with it. I tried but it felt all wrong. That was when I picked up the shaman, and clicked with it right away. The core mechanics have stayed relatively consistent since then so I've had no reason to give it up. (Sometimes people complain that shamans never get any big updates... I don't want shamans to get any big updates. :P )
Tanking is what I've done by far the least. I had a prot pally alt in Wrath and I tanked some alt/pug Naxx raids, but for some reason being in that front-and-center role makes me so damn nervous in a way that I never am when I heal or DPS. I can't relate at all when people talk about being scared to heal, because healing has been my comfort zone for so long.
Still haven't decided what I'm playing in Classic. I had a 60 hunter and 60 priest and enjoyed them both, but I'm tempted to go shaman and see the oldschool version, since I never played it until later.
How did you find Wildstar to be? It was so hyped up, with the whole "old guard WoW developers leaving to do an MMO right" thing, but I never got around to trying it, and the next thing I knew it was shutting down.