Patch 4.0 and Beta Burnout
Patch 4.0 is upon us, ladies and gentlemen. It’s on the PTR.
MMO-Champion estimates the Cataclysm release date at November 2.
The end is nigh.
It sure took its sweet time coming.
Beta News Overload
May. That’s when the Beta opened. Cataclysm news has swamped the wow community for four full months now. And don’t even mention last year’s Blizzcon, or the months of alpha leaks. The wow community has been saturated with all Cataclysm news, all the time, for so long.
Those in the beta struggle daily now with the grossly unfamiliar and the radically redesigned, the poorly-tuned and the just plain broken. Meanwhile, the rest of us mere mortals content ourselves with the incredible volume of information emanating from the beta.
There’s a lot to take in. The people in the beta are getting an imperfect albiet closer look at it all, and the most of us left out have only the inevitably biased views of the masses by which to judge.
Mainly, we find ourselves swamped with the QQ, the fighting, the cheering and the ranting that inevitably results when an online world with 11 million incredibly passionate believers finds itself faced with a radical redesign to practically every working aspect of the game. Positive reports are few and far between.
Passionate people, angry or otherwise, are most likely to be the loudest voices online, and so those voices are the ones that seem to define the character of the beta process – at least for me.
This can be a little wearing for the rest of us.
Losing Heart and Losing Steam
Don’t get me wrong. I want people to care.
For example, I desperately wanted Rhidach in the beta – no one better to judge with a discerning eye how the my beloved class and role would function in a post-cataclysm world. I’ve followed Gravity’s detailed descriptions through alpha and beta, Kurn’s holy pally musings, the healing experts at World of Matticus, World of Raids’ occasional videos, and Rilgon’s up and down journey through the beta hunter. I even put World of Raids’ Blue Tracker in my Google Reader.
I want skilled communicators and talented players rigorously testing my beta. That’s the whole point of a beta. Cataclysm absolutely depends on the dedication of its testers and the quality of their feedback.
But I’m not a tester. I’m just a newshound. I’m your garden variety forums lurker, avid tweeter, and half-assed blogger. I’m two or three degrees of separation away from anything close to actual Cataclysm experience.
It used to make me interested. Angry. Happy. Excited.
Now? Now… I’m just tired. I can’t get engaged in it.
Cataclysm is interesting to me in a far-off, clinical way. I vaguely want to read about what’s going on, but I just can’t get worked up about it anymore – not until it’s on my live servers, affecting my life.
Cataclysm Won’t Be Perfect
I welcome new things, even broken new things. I don’t even expect it to be perfect, or close to it. Wasn’t anyone around for WOTLK? It’ll probably be ass-all broken for months! And god help me, I’m looking forward to it.
I want it to be as perfect as possible, of course, but that’s the job of the beta testers – I can get worked up about it, but it doesn’t do anything for me. All it does is make me depressed!
There will be rage when Cata drops. Oh, the world will rage. I expect enough flaws to fuel a veritable avalanche of QQ and tears enough to fill six oceans. Twitter will break, #Cataclysm will trend, and the intertubes will clog up with the cries of ten million warriors claiming paladins are still OP. Or something like that.
I can’t wait. Even if I have to rage myself. Even if I end up spending my time complaining about how my class is broken and begging for fixes – I want Cataclysm here and now!
I can’t wait for all the new information Cata will bring. There will be tons of daily, informative blog posts here courtesy of my (thank god) concise cotank. There had better be blog posts over at Avenging Wrathy. There will be so many Maintankadin forums threads from the best and brightest minds in my community, full of delicious maths, pages of code, colored graphs and truckloads of theorycrafting. Unlike beta posts, all these things will be directly relevant to my live servers. I want them here now!
For good or for ill, broken or working as intended, Cataclysm will be something fresh and new and interesting.
It’s just so far away.
But you know what’s right here? WOTLK.
The End of WOTLK Is Nigh
Patch 4.0 now – suddenly – looms before us. An end to Lich King raiding for good. If you’re anything like me, you’re suddenly thinking: 1) Thank goodness! Cata’s finally coming! And then… 2) Oh my god, I still have things to do!!
There’s a time limit on WOTLK now. Suddenly I’m jarred out of my vague beta-related depression and back into the world of Arthas. I don’t have time to wallow in indecision or lose focus. Soon, just a few weeks away, WOTLK raiding will come to an end for good. I’m glad its coming, but I still have things to do! We only have a few weeks left!
How do I want to spend the last two months of this expansion?
Do I want to look back on the end of WOTLK and see that I slowly faded away, letting my frustration with the state of the beta and my exhaustion with ICC color how I approached my endgame goals? Do I want to let my 10 man lapse out of self-doubt, laziness, or lack of focus? Do I want to slowly give up on everything, right when it’s finally getting difficult?
For me, the answer is no!
Enveloping Shadows still has tons of raid content ahead, within our grasp: an 11th heroic boss on 25, and Drake achievements to gather. I sure would like to wipe a bit on Heroic Halion 25 and (gasp) Heroic Lich King 25 as well. And I still have yet to break the top 100 on WOL for Heroic Festergut, to my great disgrace! Ugh!!
This expansion is not over for us yet!
So you guys in the beta, keep plugging away. I love your posts, but I’m not going to let the fighting and the raging screw with my head anymore.
I’m going to focus myself on the here and now, for me: the end of WOTLK.
Armory Feed
@hazmacewillraid
13 September 2010 at 1:36 pm #
Truthishly, I am quite annoyed at the constant barrage of beta news. Granted, I get annoyed because I’m not there.
It’s kinda like when you’re walking by a young child with some ice cream and you’re thinking to yourself “Boy, I’d like some ice cream…” and as soon as you verbalize that thought, a sales rep from Haagen Dazs pulls over, steps into your personal bubble, and begins yelling very loudly about some new and experimental ice cream flavors, all the while throwing pamphlets and company pens at you.
… What were we talking about?
@Rhidach
13 September 2010 at 2:19 pm #
I can’t believe you used the word “truthishly”–and yet irregardless is a great sin!
@hazmacewillraid
13 September 2010 at 2:36 pm #
http://www.entertonement.com/collections/1415/Jillian
The word in its natural habitat…
I can’t wait for Cata.
ICC is around for nine months now. I have seen every boss so often now. Our guild is not among the best, raiding 10 man only and only on 9/12 hardmodes, but… it is so awfully boring.
I want to get the 10man drake from ICC before Cataclysm ships and I’ll probably pay our server first guild the 50k Gold, get my drake and be happy.
However, no matter how boring it seems to be right now, it was fun.
WotLK was my start with this game and some things were terrible, some were good.
I am looking forward to Cataclysm. I like change. I am totally hyped about archaeology, lorenerd that I am and what they change around with disc priests.
I’d loved to test it myself, but I had no luck ^^
And yes – our guild also has some things left to do, some “goals” we set ourselves that we want to achieve before we are setting new goals and… everything that’s left to do right now is giving it our best :)
I’ll stop talking now XD
Xerian’s last blog ..Great raid!
@Anafielle
14 September 2010 at 2:04 pm #
I’m bored too. Halion was just not enough to hold my interest! We are nowhere close to doing him on heroic, and on normal, he’s easy now.
Nine months of ICC… that’s like four or five months too many.
As you can tell, I too am not in the beta :)
I’ll be posting some ICC10 hard mode strats soon! Maybe that will help you get those last few ICC10 achievements for your drake :)
Probably not :)
But that’s because some people there do not care about achievements or just generally suck horribly.
Although I really like some people there I’m mainly sticking with them because they are the only serious 10man only raid on my server right now. I think that will change with Cataclysm, and I might switch to another guild if my current cannot live up to what they achieved around Ulduar times.
And actual raid planning is more about some twink raids or getting level 60/70 raid achievements etc.
So I’ll just have to be boosted to get my drake. Which gives me shivers, I generally tend to not ask for boosts at all, it’s lazy. Oh well.
Xerian’s last blog ..Great raid!
I remember being in the WoTLK beta and how fun it was and all the information imput and all the testing it was fun to partake in the process.
But at the end of WoTLK beta i was simply burned out and with release just around the corner. I simply went on break for months to recover so was not even around at launch of WoTLK which spent all the time testing.
I guess for Cataclysm i’m on the very other end of the spectrum this time around. Been on break from WoW for months I stayed clear of reading anything Cataclysm oriented. Nor did I attempt to resub to try to get into the beta as a chance. Thus compared to most in WoW at the moment I have no Cataclysm info overload of any kind. Its more of a information deficit. Yet i’m not in much a hurry to get on overload either at this point.
Its been rather nice to just have a fresh perspective on Cataclysm reading whats new. In so many places I turn to read it seems lots of players are on some form of burnout, mental anguish over their class or raging of some form all due to the run up to Cataclysm.
I’m taking some pleasure in all this I guess having being on vacation a while from all the information overload that’s the run up to Cataclysm has been.
Ardent Defender’s last blog ..Resurrection- Im Very Much Alive
@Anafielle
14 September 2010 at 2:08 pm #
“Its been rather nice to just have a fresh perspective on Cataclysm reading whats new. In so many places I turn to read it seems lots of players are on some form of burnout, mental anguish over their class or raging of some form all due to the run up to Cataclysm. ”
Yes. Stay out of it. I think you will come back to WOW (if you choose to) with a clean view of it, one not colored by months and months of being really involved in beta news.
I totally understand when you said you were in the WOTLK beta and burned out before it even went live… after seeing how gruelling the cata beta is… I could see that happening. I’m sure I’ll be able to name people who have done the same.
You should come back for cata though (not before, but during) – just to see what’s new :) And then decide what you want to do.
But the information right now is so difficult to take in. I too will take all my cata news with a grain of salt and just get to know Cata when it goes live instead of judging it before it gets here.