3.1 Removes More Game

Current patch notes are a changing thing so I won't bother to link them here, tomorrow the link might be out-dated.

But, a discussion can be had.

First, Blizzard decided to remove ammo, though not happening for 3.1, it is still in the works. Now we are seeing the removal of some of the books that teach skills. The skills will instead be made available at trainers.

You can no longer fail while performing gathering skills.

Inscriptionists will now learn 3 research recipes when researching for the first time.

The time it takes to gather herbs and catch fish has been reduced.

Flint and tinder are no longer needed for campfires.

Do you see the pattern?

Amidst of cries that World of Warcraft is now too easy, Blizzard has decided to make things even easier still. I never considered myself a hardcore gamer, but maybe I am...to some extent at least.

Oddly enough, some of the changes simply do not make sense. For instance, some books required to learn skills are being removed, but they added a book for first aid in Lich King that is a BOP drop. The other first aid books are at trainers/vendors...or something.

On a side note, the decision to allow mineral nodes to produce all of their loot in one attempt isn't fast or efficient enough for some people. Now they are leaving behind unwanted items which must be great fun for other miners who come up to a node only to find some stones. So now Blizzard has adjusted the despawn rate to ensure a new spawn appears sooner. That won't stop people from finding the partially looted nodes, but fewer will do so. I suspect that people often left stone before the strike change, but because mining generaly took longer to complete, it wasn't a big deal since the nodes would despawn before too many people found them. But now that mining is so much faster, more partial nodes began turning up. Whoops!

I do approve of the added graphics options. It's nice to know that World of Warcraft continues to be tweaked to take advantage of new technology.

Still, I can't help but feel the game is becoming less with each attempt to make it faster.

Tobold has pointed out that healing used to be a slow process that allowed time to make decisions, but now the player must mash the biggest and fastest heals that he can and not worry about over-healing or even wasting heals on a target that didn't actually need it. Just keep the green bars as full as possible and don't think about the process.

I'd rather have more micro game added than taken away. I might actually enjoy the new arena though, if it is a solo endeavor as someone pointed out to me. Would be nice to see those rewards spread throughout the game though istead of bunched up together, but then people might have a hard time finding oponents.

Maybe I just don't know what I want from World of Warcraft anymore.