Old habits die hard - and a toast to the New Year

My mage picked up herbing and alchemy, just because I hadn’t been brewing potions for ages. The other day, I spent some time getting my alchemy skill up using all these herbs I had gathered.

And then I went out to level, and, as I would have done in 2005 or 2006, quaffed a troll’s blood potion, an elixir of health, and an elixir of wisdom, and off into the wilderness I went.

After a while, I glanced up to my buff bars, and for a moment of confusion, I wondered why there was only the elixir of Wisdom on there instead of the three I used to see in similar circumstances in the past. And then I remembered recent patch notes… And hovering over all  the potions I had just gobbled down, they all were marked as Guardian Elixirs.

Fortunately, only minor stuff, so I didn’t just waste a fortune for nothing I could also have activated BuffProtectorGnome and thus avoided the problem, but I didn’t on this low level mage.

This is just one of the innumerable change which makes WoW in a quite different game from what it was in 2005 and 2006. Do I like all of them? Of course not, and I don’t expect anyone to. The way Blizzard tweaks and keeps reworking certain mechanisms also shows they don’t always like all of them either. Good ideas on paper don’t necessarily translate into good things in the game.

The point though is that patch after patch, the game is evolving, and there’s an intent to make things better behind it. While we tend naturally to fear change, and spend hours debating about some aspects of a change which may be particularly unfavourable or threatening, in truth we wouldn’t be playing a static, stale game anymore, having stopped for a long time.

2008 will likely see the release of the next expansion, and bring its share of changes to the game. As a player, I embrace change and hope for the best of things to come. As a person, I wish you all a rich and successful year. May you be successful in your endeavors and relationships, and may you find or preserve balance between life and our favourite hobby.

To 2008!

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