We can do ZG, no problem - or at least the first couple of bosses. That part doesn't require any mofo-booya gear. It's a learning experience.
... rant / dribble alert ...
But .. I can see why people are becoming bored with the game in general. As with many things (except sex of course), rinse and repeat becomes tiresome and trivial (regardless of how dangerous the instance is) and people start losing interest when questing has already made them into "kill x of y"-zombies.
Right now WoW has this to offer for level 60s: Socializing, BGs, Questing, Instance runs for phat loot (meh), crafting and well .. that's pretty much it.
You've been questing since level 1, BG'ing since level 10 (if you happened to like that sort of thing) and get into the instances around level 14. Once you hit 60, you pretty much run out of "normal" quests and everything has (Dungeon) or (Raid) suffixed. That's fun for a while, but bit by bit, the drudgery starts to sink in. Relying on other players to finish the quests, going back to the same instance time and time again to complete the nth chain quest will eventually wear most people out.
TBC will be a breath of fresh air for the players who are fed up with starting their 10th character just to have something to do, but it won't make the game any better than it already is. New areas to explore, new races and new professions. Hooray, but when you're already fed up with instancing and questing, TBC won't have much to offer.
I'm guessing the game has reached "critical mass" and old players will start to disappear. New players keep coming in and TBC will increase the new subscriptions a little bit for a while, but unless Blizzard introduces some radical new concepts in the game, I believe many old players will move on to other, newer MMOs and never return.
WoW is a great game, but the staying power of WoW starts to lose its charms after a year or two of even casual playing.
How do you keep WoW fun then? It's entirely up to the people in SoG - Blizzard won't do anything - at least not anytime soon.
In the guild we can't do much but tickle the socializing part, but it can be fun. We could arrange some competitions:
- Noob Mad Dash (Level 1's run from their spawn point to a location somewhere in Azeroth)
- Powerleveling 101 (Get from level 1 - 15 first)
- Low level raiding (Form a raid group of level 5s for example and kill an elite)
I know a bunch of guilds arrange events like that to strengthen the community, get people together for a few laughs and what-not.
This turned into a mad rant, but I hope you all stayed with me this far.
