My World of Warcraft crisis

I'm having my personal World of Warcraft crisis, triggered by failing ten Black Morass runs in a row. It is not that I don't believe I'll ever make it; one day I'll have the right combination of classes, skills, and luck to get that damn key to Karazhan. But the frustration makes me doubt the whole WoW end-game concept of repeatedly ramming your head against a brick wall, until that wall finally breaks and gives you access to the next brick wall. I am agitated, frustrated, and annoyed, and wonder why I should play a game that does that to me, when all I want is a game that entertains and relaxes me.

The Black Morass is hard, but not impossible. I tried it with many different groups. About half of the groups just had the wrong composition, which is easily noticed by the group not being able to close one portal before the next one opens, which automatically leads to you being overwhelmed after some time. There are 18 fights in a row, you just need a few seconds break between them to drink and regain mana, because mana potions are on a too long cooldown. One mistake or piece of bad luck in that series and you can restart from zero. I had a couple of groups who would have been able to win this event, but there I stumbled on different manifestations of bad luck and a few bugs that Blizzard is responsible for. I've had one group member fall through the world to his death, had two mobs bugged on perma-evade destroying Medivh's shield, one time the second boss resetting to full health after being nearly dead, and once a lost internet connection. And of course many, many cases of people having to leave after one wipe or two, forcing me to redo it with people that first needed to learn the encounter. And that was all with guild groups, I can't even imagine how horrible Black Morass would be with a pickup-group. Even the guilds most dedicated hardcore players reported needing 4 to 5 attempts before getting their Karazhan key.

The point is that this shouldn't be so hard. This isn't the key to Mount Hyjal. Karazhan is just the first 10-man raid instance, so this is the equivalent of getting the key for UBRS. Sure, getting the key to UBRS wasn't trivial, but it was a lot easier than Black Morass, and only one person in the 10-man raid needed the key. For Karazhan everybody needs the key. Getting the key to Molten Core and Onyxia was easier than this.

When Blizzard announced that they would lower the number of players in a raid, and make smaller dungeons, I assumed that the level 70 end-game would be more accessible for the average player than the hard to organize huge 40-man raids of the level 60 end-game. I was wrong. Blizzard errected a number of walls in the form of attunements and keys that keep the average players out of raid dungeons. And it turns out that smaller raids mean that less members of a guild get to raid each evening. You simply can't take the same 40 people that did a MC run and split them into 4 viable Karazhan groups. You just wouldn't take people like dps warriors or feral druids (post-nerf) into Karazhan.

I still remember my very first World of Warcraft instance, doing Ragefire Chasm in a group consisting of 5 shamans. That was fun, because in spite of being far from an ideal group composition, it still worked. The harder dungeons get, the smaller becomes the selection of guild compositions that still work, and talent builds that still work, until you end up with groups that all fall into the same boring template. And anyone who doesn't want to comply with that same boring template is automatically excluded. And this is where World of Warcraft now is with the Burning Crusade, a huge selection of different dungeons, only accessible by a small selection of the player base. If you read the comments on my post yesterday about the Black Morass, you find lots of helpful hints saying you *need* this or that class with exactly this or that talent spec. And nobody even notices any more what is wrong with that very idea of needing specific classes and builds.

And that is just the beginning of the new raid circuit. Apparently the first Karazhan bosses are easier than Black Morass, but then the raid hits another wall, and wipes on the same boss many times, until finally beating him after a few weeks and moving to the next boss. Rinse, lather, repeat. The repeated failure and frustration is built into the system, and necessary to stretch the content to last for a year. But hey, if you got one month supply of coffee, adding enough water to it for it to last one year isn't the best possible plan. Add to that the inevitable tensions that every failure as well as every choice of who gets a raid spot and who gets what loot induces into a guild, with the inevitable guild drama ensuing, and you get a sort of gameplay that really isn't much fun. Beating that one obstacle is nice, getting phat loot is nice, but there are long intervals between those events that just make it too frustrating to be worth it. For every one raid where you beat a new boss and got a piece of new gear, there are several where you just got a repair bill. Is that really how I want to spend my evenings? I don't think so.