The Daily Grind: Do you ever feel pre-expansion apathy?

by Brooke Pilley Jun 10th 2009 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Expansions, The Daily Grind

I have been talking to a few of my friends who play Warhammer Online lately and they are all feeling the same thing: pre-expansion apathy. This is basically a feeling of indifference or a lack of motivation to log in and play WAR knowing that The Land of the Dead live expansion is going to release soon.

This is not the only MMO they have experienced this in either. I remember playing World of Warcraft before Burning Crusade and organized guild raids were nearly non-existent for two months leading up to the expansion. Many were either PvPing or crafting to pass the time or simply not bothering to log in at all.

The reasoning my friends are using for not playing WAR right now is actually pretty logical. Why should they bother trying to grind for gear and wards when the 1.3 patch will introduce the sigil and vessel systems? Also, the gear in The Land of the Dead is said to be better than city dungeons and roughly on par with that found in Lost Vale, so why would they bother farming the same dungeons they have been grinding for months when a new one is coming just around the corner with potentially better itemization?

Do you ever get the same feeling in your MMO? Do you think this is more strongly felt in gear-based progression MMOs or is it a result of something else?

Tags: apathy, blizzard, expansion, mudflation, mythic-entertainment, war, war-1.3-patch, war-patch-1.3, warhammer-online, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Mr Angry said on 9:34AM 6-10-2009

Nope

Rumil said on 9:50AM 6-10-2009

I can understand how some would feel that way. However, with myself I'm the opposite! With WAR i'm ranking up alts to 25 so I can play through all the new content at different levels. When Burning Crusade was coming out or WOW I was doing the same. I feel more of a need to log in and play before an expansion but I'm not running old now useless content, I'm levelling alts.

I do think gear based progression is to blame. There can be ways to buffer a pre-expansion lull though. With WAR you will still need wards to fight the new lair and dungeon bosses so, until the sigil system comes out, running city dungeons and Lost Vale is still needed if you do not already have the wards.

Vulturion said on 9:47AM 6-10-2009

Well, logically, I'd have to assume that much of what is classified as pre-release apathy is simply that people have exhausted the content in general terms?

However, the sigil example you gave is definitely one of the rare examples of inflicted apathy; I'm a believer in the band-aid school of revising myself, and would much rather such improvements land out of the blue rather than be preceded by weeks of "YOUR CURRENT ACTIVITIES WILL SOON BE OBSOLETE MWA HA HA" pre-warning.

Knyle2 said on 10:04AM 6-10-2009

It all depends, the war expansion is gonna be tons of fun compact action, so there's reason to make sure Im on my A game.

Now with games like EQ2 its awesome, because u don't need to rush there, heck, u don't really ever need to go there aside from the MCDONALDS FACTOR (whereby idiots will always flock to a new mcdonalds even if they have been to mcdonalds 1000 times) a.k.a. u will have to go there, because others will want to.

But with games like wow where, u could either push "hard" aka practice your dance moves every night, so u can down nef, or KJ, and then replace ur loots with greens from quests 2 lvls later. heck yea,
i dont even know why they keep the old content in that game, soon when everyone with an 80 starts at 55, there wont be anyone anywhere but northrend,

so yea, with wow i did, but i don't with war

Myria said on 10:36AM 6-10-2009

Pre-release apathy?

Nope.

Post-release apathy?

Definitely.

Death by expac seems a depressingly common syndrome in MMOs.

CCon99 said on 10:37AM 6-10-2009

City of Heroes goes through this every few months. They release a new Update, people flock back for 2 months, then the servers begin to dry up little by little till the next Update is released. Every 4 months my Global list goes from 3-6 people playing 1 month, to 15-20 people who came back for the new features.

Sephirah said on 10:55AM 6-10-2009

"Why should they bother trying to grind for gear and wards when the 1.3 patch will introduce the sigil and vessel systems?"

I find this kind of sentences quite interesting, as they imply that the game isn't something people play for fun but only to get more purple pixels that somehow gives a meaning to their life through a process they actually dislike.
It's more or less like a boring work that people do only to earn the money to pay the bills, with the difference that at the end of the month they're actually a little poorer.

sugewise said on 3:48PM 6-11-2009

that is what 9 out of 10 of the wow crowd are here for, the purple pixels.

Meagen said on 1:24PM 6-10-2009

I've been going through intermittent burnout in City of Heroes for a couple months now, but since the expansion (Going Rogue) has been announced, I hardly ever log in. My thoughts are something along the lines of "I don't want to play the boring old stuff. I want to play the shiny new stuff. But the shiny new stuff isn't here yet. I don't want to play the old stuff, so I don't feel like playing the game".

Curiously, I keep playing Guild Wars even though I'd much rather be playing Guild Wars 2. Maybe it's the complete lack of information on the new game that makes me not miss it that much.

Sharon said on 12:38PM 6-11-2009

In my WAR guild, there's definitely a sense of apathy right now. Our forum is filled with tons of "Taking a break for now" posts. Admittedly, some people drifted off out of frustration with things like fort and city siege crashes and rollbacks, rather than apathy, but the apathy is definitely there.