The patch dropped today, to the cheers and chagrin alike of many players.  Myself, I kind of fall into the latter category, not because of hating on what they’ve done in the patch– I’m looking forward to transmogrifying still, I just need to get some things together– it’s just an overall sense of disenchantment with the game.  I’m wondering if this a precursor for me actually being over my Warcraft phase, or if it’s just another little speed bump in a road already strewn with few week breaks every couple of months or so.

With new Heroic Instances and the option to now take down Deathwing (that’s right, Dragon Soul is here), it seems as if this patch should have something for everyone, but… I don’t know, I find myself completely detached from it.   I logged on, adjusted some things, and bought my shadow priest some better bracers, but before too long I found myself longing for the days of old when logging on to play WoW was something I treasured, instead of just something I felt I had to do.

While the patch notes themself explain in detail just what you can expect from the patch, the few things I was looking forward to the most were:

• Transmogrification – This new feature allows players to customize their gear like never before: copying the appearance of one magical item onto another.. You’ll find Transmogrification, Void Storage, and Reforging vendors in Cathedral Square, Stormwind and The Drag, Orgrimmar. (something that I was keen on for the idea of dressing my priest in Tier 6, finally)
• Improved Leveling through Outland and Northrend — They’ve decided to remove most of the group quests, making them soloable, and put all the dungeon quest givers inside the dungeon (finally) , as well as lowering the exp needed to get from 71-80, which to me is the best thing in the world because I loathe Northrend and Outland with a burning passion after having gone through them so many times.  They’re not challenging, they’re just obnoxious.

That’s it, really.  While the new dungeons and raid content have most people in a tizzy (and most of my friends list when I logged on consisted of people plowing their way through the content already), I find it lackluster because it’s going to end up the same miserable grind all new content is.  Not to mention the fact that it’s being released after only a year, leaving little doubt that they’re going to be stretched thin for the next year or so until they get Mists of Pandaria ready for release.  We’re going to be rehashing the same concepts and ideas until our fingers are bloody, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

They do have openings for things like they did with BC, opening up secondary raids that are almost more appealing than the main raids themselves, little bits of content that’ll pique everyone’s interest with niche lore and such (Karazhan, for example.) for when people were ready to blow their brains out doing Black Temple and Serpent Shrine Cavern  But somehow I still find myself struggling to get into the mood to do anything productive, including leveling my poor little gnome mage and dwarf hunter, both experiments into the idea that leveling something new on Alliance side might help make me interested again (once they hit roughly Outland level I lost interest and drifted off into the world of nothingness again.)

I want to be enthused about this game, I want to, but I’m finding myself just looking for something to take hold of me for a while until Mists of Pandaria drops, like somehow things will get better if I just distance myself from World of Warcraft and what it is for a while– in which the beta for Star Wars: The Old Republic was helpful, offering me a needed release, but not nearly long enough, and our lack of ability to afford it squashed most of that idea– and most of all I want to play Diablo III and immerse myself in that world and play style for a while.  I feel suffocated by my own gaming addiction and it’s not a fun thought.

The best part about this patch for me was the excitement of getting my Tyrael’s Charger, but even that was short lived and fell by the wayside after a few moments of play– besides, it’s not nearly as awesome as I thought it would be, but it’s still a pretty nice treat– and I found myself on my gnome mage, killing a couple of rares and setting up her new unit frames.  While these things are necessary and sometimes fun, the lack of add-ons being updated also left as our taste in my mouth, because Blizzard’s default anything is pretty horrendous (I also miss my Silver Dragon, boo.) It’s going to come to a point soon where I have to throw myself into the game again just to make sure I don’t lose complete taste for it, as we’re doing the year long subscription for it, and gear myself up to try out some of these new raids.  I skipped Firelands entirely, but after my boyfriend went once and was already bored of it, I didn’t see any reason to bust my hump to find a guild and gear to raid with.   But, it’s inevitable that I’ll find myself doing that with Hour of Twilight, because in the end, what the hell else am I going to do with my time?