Remember that time before The Burning Crusade launched and things just felt… what’s a good way to say it… routine? Or maybe you were only around for the BC to Wrath of the Lich King transition. Regardless, a number of things have struck me as odd as of late… some good and some bad.

First the bad. Ulduar is still where many guilds are working through content (and I’m focusing on the 10-mans here), but with the loot available in ToC and from Emblems of Triumph/Conquest there really is no point in running Ulduar unless you’re one that just wants to see the content (thankfully I fall into this category). Further, the gear disparity between Tier 8 and Tier 9 seems huge, and the multiple versions make it confusing for some players to figure out where they need to go to get what.

I can’t help but feel a lack of desire to work through the new content. The first couple of encounters in ToC are easy enough for us to complete, but then the “PvP” encounter is like hitting a brick wall repeatedly. Don’t get me wrong, I love a challenge, but going from smooth sailing to suddenly making absolutely no progress isn’t exactly the way levels of progression should work in my opinion.

Granted, a lot of this could simply be related to <devnull> not being interested in PvP-type play as a whole, and I’ve heard many grumblings surrounding a feeling of resentment for being forced to play that type of encounter. I can understand the feeling well even if I don’t completely agree with it, but I do agree the “bull****” factor is there when the NPCs do not have diminishing returns on their crowd control abilities but we do, and ours seem to start with roughly half of their typical length.

However, the good outweighs the bad significantly. Once you have a couple of level eighty characters things tend to seem monotonous, and running the same heroics/raids for gear over and over gets old. While this is the opportune time for many to take a break, Blizzard has certainly provided a number of alternatives for those interested in taking part.

I play the game for the social aspect and for raiding, generally speaking. The achievement system has its merits for getting me to do other things as well, and for the most part I have no gripes with the achievements as designed. Currently <devnull> is struggling a little on the first two points, and I can see where my desire to log in and play is curtailed a little as a result. However, I still enjoy logging in and playing around with one of my numerous alts (especially my Blood Elf Paladin), and while my time may be quite limited I still want to log in even though I, quite often, end up not getting near as much time to do so as I plan.

Great, but what does any of this mean to me? Simple, this is the type of situation that makes a lot of people take breaks. I have no doubt <devull> is going to be at a serious disadvantage when Icecrown Citadel finally lands, but compared to destroying morale by trying to get people to sign on and fight through an encounter they really don’t even want to face… well, I’ll take the disadvantage in gear any day.

A lot of the changes made with patch 3.2 were certainly for the better, but some of those changes aren’t panning out as well as I hoped they would. My desire to try to gear for Icecrown isn’t really there when comparing pieces of loot yields very little difference, and in my mind a small enough difference I can overcome the deficit with skill. Granted, we’ve lost a few players recently as well and are back to barely having enough for 10-mans… fighting that cycle gets to everyone eventually.

I hope this is a temporary issue that works itself out before too long. We’re going on a few weeks now with these types of issues though, and honestly I’m curious if recovery will occur or if this spells the end of our progression raiding for a while. In the meantime, maybe it’s time to finally do some of those other achievements, like Obsidian Sanctum leaving all three drakes up?