Character Advancement and Fun

And so it came to pass that Vaexxi, a troll shaman from Durotar, would prepare for her final steps towards the level of 70.  She will be my fifth.  The problem I have, is I’m wondering just what I’m going to do with this character.  I’ve already determined that she will remain enhancement…she will be my “useful” melee dps character.

However, despite the usefulness of an enhancement shaman to a physical dps group (via totems, unleashed rage, and bloodlust), I will likely almost never get to raid with this character.  I am needed to play my paladin as a healer in raids and many groups.  It’s not that we don’t have any enhancement shaman in the guild, we just don’t have a steady raid group and this has certainly hampered our progress possibly more than anything.

Why do I continue then?  I mean, sure, once and a while I’ll get to lay down some windfury craziness in a 5-man.  Why am I leveling dps alts at all?  Clearly I don’t use them for farming (I’m just as likely to farm primals on my holy paladin as any other toon…consecrate AoE farming ftw).

It’s character advancement.  Leveling a character is the fastest, most immediate, and effortless form of advancement in the game.  While leveling, you are continually pushing your boundaries upwards.  You start by doing 15 dps (or something similarly low, heh) at level 1, improving that with new gear and new abilities all the way up to 500+ dps at 70.  And you can do this in less than 10 days /played.

What from there?

You enter the endgame.  Assuming normal progression through the raid instances, your progress slows to a crawl.  The only advancement that remains is through gear and, if you are still a new player, skill.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to get better at the game.  I’m far from the best I’m sure, but I think I’m reasonably skilled at most things PvE anyway.  (PvP is a different boat…I do suffer from tunnel vision pretty bad and haven’t had enough motivation to get better…but I don’t keyboard turn!)

As well, the gear may be fleeting, but Blizzard has done a good job of making it both important to progression and as something to strive for. It looks cool, and is a matter of pride for some.

The endgame used to be very linear. However, through the opening up of PvP gear, badge rewards, more badges, boss nerfs, and the removal of attunements, the raiding game is much more open than it used to be. However, I’d bet that most people are still running Karazhan, the very first raid instance in the expansion.

I am reminded of how often I was still running UBRS pre-BC, despite having gear from ZG, AQ20, and MC. Of course, it wasn’t for gear upgrades then, it was to help people get attuned. Usually for Onyxia…an attunement which still exists, mind you.

Given that I feel I don’t have all that much to learn in order to get better at the game, this means that currently for me, the best form of advancement is gear. And gear upgrades at 70, once you hit the point where you’re fleshed out in enough level 65+ blues to enter the raid zones, are far between. You’ll get maybe one per week. And in many cases, this gear upgrade will net you something in the realm of at most a 3% increase in effectiveness at whatever it is your character does, and that’s being generous.

Anyway. I’m still leveling characters. Through the same old content. The Dustwallow Marsh updates were fairly exciting, it was nice to get to do new quests. However, what I want to see most is new zones for leveling from 1-60. Or new classes.

This is why the expansion is exciting to me. I like that we’re all probably going to get to see Naxxramas now for sure, but it will be the first taste of quick advancement my 70s will have had for a good long time. There will be new zones, new quests, and a new class. Wrath will be an expansion for me to enjoy, and should keep me playing the game for months thereafter.

But for now, all I really have is alt-leveling…and I’m running out of classes.