Options, options, and more options

I read this post by the always awesome The Ancient Gaming Noob today and found myself nodding in agreement with him with every sentence.  It’s refreshing to read his viewpoint because it so closely aligns with mine, while other bloggers that I love to read are basically “finished” with most of Mists of Pandaria and keep talking about the “end of expansion” era and even in some cases, their boredom.  I understand why they’re in that situation — they’ve mostly been playing World of Warcraft steadily since MoP released and most of them have strong active guilds that enabled them to see most of the content.  For players like myself and TAGN, we’re playing catchup in an expansion that has So Much Freaking Content that I’d have to give up any other hobby and social life if I wanted to see it all.

I’m currently in a state where I recently got my first level 90, Treetopsy.  She completed Jade Forest, Valley of the Four Winds, and Krasarang Wilds, and that’s it.  I did maybe 1/4 of the quests in Kun’Lai Summit before dinging 90, and haven’t been back.  I have missed out on a ton of the questing and exploration content in all the other zones.  I just discovered the Shrine with all the teleports to major cities after asking about it on Twitter.  I still haven’t gone back to Halfhill to do any farming — I still don’t really understand the point (I haven’t looked into it though).  I haven’t fished up all the achievements in Pandaria. I haven’t even STARTED to look at the various factions to see what kind of pets or mounts I could do.  My highest level battle pets are only level 12-13, so I am missing out on tons of pet battling content.  And just last night I went to the Timeless Isle for the first time, and if that isn’t overwhelming I don’t know WHAT is.  I have also only done one of the MoP dungeons on normal, none of the heroics, no challenge modes, no scenarios.  I don’t even know what the Brawler’s Guild is or why I’d want to do it, but it intrigues me as well.  There are dailies all over the place on some Throne of Thunder zone that I’ve barely heard of.  There are rares all over that beg me to kill them, but I haven’t even discovered the zones they’re in. Then there is LFR and the Siege of Orgrimmar stuff which sounds like lore-filled fun that I hope to get to do before Warlords of Draenor comes out.  Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the other distractions such as the upcoming Winter’s Veil holiday or the Darkmoon Faire or any of that fun content.  See my predicament?

To make matters worse, I don’t really love playing a Boomkin and so much of this content requires a DPS class to really enjoy. I  don’t have a feral set (yet) and don’t know the quickest way to get one so that I could switch over to questing and stuff while in kitty form.  And my level 80 Disc Priest is just so damn fun to play that I want HER to be the level 90 that I do all this stuff on.  But I still love healing as a Resto Druid, so I don’t want to abandon Treetopsy.  Ugh.

So, like the Ancient Gaming Noob, every time I check an item off my to-do list, another 3 items appear on the list.  This isn’t a bad problem to have, but it’s just fascinating to me how much content WoW has and how compelling it is even 9 years after the first time I installed the game on my hard drive.  I’m watching other people get absolutely sucked in to the game even after they’d declared themselves moved on long ago.  My husband is going to ding his first level 90 tonight, and he has several others in the 80s.  My best friend came back to the game this go around with us, and she just got 80 last night on her Ret Pally as well.  And we have a little guild with a few other friends who have returned and seem to have been bitten by the bug.  Not to mention the bloggers who have been installing the game and getting back into it lately as well, like Belghast and Stargrace.  I love reading their posts, because it seems like we’re all doing different things.  That’s the magic of WoW and 9 years of content. 🙂

Some people hate treadmills, and I understand that.  The treadmills are what keep me completely hooked though, the illusion of utmost choice.  I know that no matter how much I play, I won’t ‘catch up’ or ‘beat the game’ because there is so much to do.  It’s kind of ridiculous, in the best way possible.