My problem in World of Warcraft is that I don't know when the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, will be released. GameStop famously published a date of November 3 2008 with the explanation that "Official price and release date have NOT been announced by Blizzard. In this case, the price and release date were determined by the GameStop e-commerce staff, (comprised of overpowered warlocks), using a combination of 6 and 20-sided die.". Some optimists still believe that WotLK will come out in the first half of 2008, based on Blizzard's declared goal of publishing one expansion per year. Some pessimists see the expansion slip into 2009. And while I personally think that Q4 2008 is most likely, I simply don't know for sure.
Baring some kind of miracle, Wrath of the Lich King will bring another big wave of mudflation, with green gear from level 75 being better than current Karazhan or PvP epics. So if I engage in some game activity I don't like now, just to get phat loot, and WotLK comes out in half a year, I'll look rather foolish. Of course if WotLK really comes out only for next christmas or even after, gathering better gear while waiting would be more useful.
My favorite activity in World of Warcraft is group PvE. My warrior is now at 12k health, 11.3k armor, and 486 defense, so I'm just strong enough to start tanking my first heroics. Only finding a group is hard, as many people are now rather doing PvP, because the rewards are better. I would also like to raid a bit, but that would be with my priest. There are less tanks needed in raids than healers, and my gear deficit hurts the tank more than the priest. Plus the priest has far more raid experience, I know how to raid heal. I just wouldn't want to do it every night, especially not if the raids last into the small hours of the morning.
So the plan is doing a bit of raiding when possible, doing some heroics when I can find a good group, but given the organizational difficulties of both raid and heroics PvE, I'm pretty sure I'll be stuck with nothing to do half of the time that I'm online. So I'm looking for alternatives. I finished one of these alternatives, getting my second epic flying mount. Currently my warrior is leveling up fishing, he got from 125 to just over 200 this week, but the process is rather boring. But at least fishing skill is something that won't be invalidated by the next expansion. I could gather some more money with daily quests, but of course having already done 5,000 gold worth of daily quests, these start to be boring as well. And it isn't obvious for what I would need that gold in WotLK, apparently there are no new mounts to buy. Plus I'd expect gathering gold to be easier at level 80 than at level 70. Another obvious alternative would be leveling my mage to 70, which would give me a tank, a healer, and a dps class. I'll probably do that, but not full time, I'd rather play the mage slow and profit from rest xp bonus. Now that the mage got through the new Dustwallow Marsh quests, there is only known content for me until level 70.
Of course I could join the crowd and do PvP. I'm not a big fan of PvP, and my current level 70s aren't optimal for doing PvP. DPS warriors are apparently doing quite well in PvP nowadays, but then I would need to respec and give up my dream of being a tank. Not only do tanks suck in PvP, Blizzard also made extra sure that there is absolutely no tanking gear to be had as reward for doing PvP. My holy / discipline priest would be able to do PvP without a change of talent build. But PvP with a healer isn't very interesting. In arenas you are always the first to die, and in battlegrounds healing is a rather thankless occupation. For healers the PvP reward situation is somewhat better than for tanks, but not as good as for dps classes. So my best PvP option would be the mage, but then I would need to get a move on leveling him to 70. Actually by the time I reach 70, PvP might be the only way for him to get any good gear at all. There is a current trend that the rewards from PvP get better all the time, while rewards for PvE dungeons remain the same. If WotLK is still far in the future, we might see season 4 or even season 5 of the arena, pushing the arena gear of season 2 and 3 into "buyable with honor points" mode. At which point I could probably forget about getting a group for a PvE dungeon or heroic dungeon for my mage, because nobody will go there any more, they'll all be in PvP. At least a mage in PvP would be a lot more fun than a tank or a healer.
Did I forget anything? Can you think of something else that would be useful to do before the next expansion comes out for World of Warcraft?
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