Why the hurry?

Complementary to the previous post about the Burning Crusade distribution is the interesting question of *why* everybody is so eager to start playing the World of Warcraft expansion on the very first day. Given the expected difficulties to get hold of the Burning Crusade on the 16th, and get it up and running on the first day, why don't we just wait a week before starting? But the reasons for wanting to play as early as possible are many.

One is simply a lack of alternatives. Even if you don't buy the Burning Crusade expansion at all, many of the expected server problems will keep you from playing the pre-expansion WoW anyway. If the login server crashes, or the game servers break down under the load, nobody can play World of Warcraft in any form. And then there is the social aspect: if everybody else is playing the new content, and you don't have the expansion yet, you'll be pretty lonely in the old lands. It will be hard to find anyone for lets say a dungeon trip to Scholomance, and there will be no Molten Core raids whatsoever for some time. Even the currently crowded battlegrounds will probably stand near-empty in the first week of the expansion.

Another reason for wanting to start early is people being competitive. Even more than previous MMOGs World of Warcraft has trained people to value others more for their level and gear than for their character. Many players will "race" to level 70. But this isn't a fair race, you can win it by starting earlier than somebody else, and by "running" longer every day than him. While installing the Burning Crusade a week later is probably less stressful and frustrating, it would automatically start you with a disadvantage in that raid.

More importantly is the related reason of keeping up with the Joneses, or in this case mainly your guild. Guilds in World of Warcraft often have only one purpose: raids. And many guilds will try to get back into raiding as fast as possible, which means getting a sufficient number of people to level 70 as fast as possible. As an added complication the size of raids is going down from 40 to 25. As guilds will start raiding as soon as they have 25 players at level 70, rushing to level 70 is a good strategy to get a place in the guilds core raiding team. By the time the slower people reach level 70, you will be more experienced in the raid content, and better equipped, and might thus beat them out in the selection of who will be allowed to participate in the next raid. Sounds kind of Darwinian, but this is something that will happen in many raid guilds, planned or unintentional.

Personally I'll try to grab the expansion on the first day, but if that doesn't work out I won't be terribly sad. I plan to explore the new content to its fullest, and not rush to level 70. But I'd like to keep up if not with the top, but at least with the bulk of my guild, for the simple reason that I'd like to do a lot of 5-man instances. Guild runs are always so much more pleasant than pickup groups. Raids, well I'd like to at least see the level 70 raid dungeons. But I have doubts that these will keep me playing WoW until the next expansion comes out in a year or so. If I feel that the new raids are just like the old ones, and if some good new games come out, I might take a prolonged break from World of Warcraft. But hey, you never know, maybe I get hooked leveling a blood elf mage to 70 instead.