I’ve been on a World of Warcraft hiatus this year. No one was surprised to see it coming, including me, given my responses to my own 2011Year in WoW review. But I kept an eye out for BETA information of interest, and still read BETA related posts that came across my twitter feed. At about the time pet battles were implemented into the BETA, my interest in the changes, and the new content, reached a fever pitch and I happily was given a BETA key (thank you again @Krizhek!) with which to play and see if my love for WoW would be rekindled. And it was.
Of course, my love for my shadow priest Anexxia confounds the empirical evidence on this mind you. She’s my favorite MMO character of all time. And I missed her. So she does give me somewhat purple-tinted glasses for the expansion.
That said, however, poking around and exploring all the new areas, and fishing up the many fish that reside there, learning Pandaren cooking, and even getting started with my own Tiller’s kitchen garden got me really revved up about playing WoW again. So much so that I reactivated my live account to start looking around for some new active guilds in which to play. Because I want to be ready to go when the pre-expansion activities hit.
I think the key to what grabbed me in the expansion, in addition to missing playing my shadow priest, is how so many of the little things I enjoyed doing (fishing, cooking, collecting mini pets) now are such a bigger part to the game (or better integrated with each other in the case of the cooking/fishing/gardening.) I am not sure that I will even roll a monk at all, but I will definitely have a blast making my way through all of the new scenery in Pandaria.
What about you– are you planning to play once the expansion hits?
I never thought I’d have any interest in going back to WoW, but I am really eager to play through the Pandaren starter zone and see the overhaul the game has gone through since I last played. I am going to start totally fresh. New account, no twinks. I think I will enjoy WoW more approaching it from a new player’s perspective.
I think that’s a great idea– but I am way too attached to my bazillion battle-pets-to-be to do that! But I am going to do some starting over guild-wise, and server wise.