Don't let the title fool you, WoW does matter. It matters to enough that if the people that play it all gathered in the same place you would have the 12th largest nation on earth by population (so says the latest data). The fact is that WoW redid the MMO genera and made it's own massive niche in the world of online gaming. But it has hit a lack luster feel to me and I used to play for days at at time. So why when the game came out, did I skip it and not reactivate my account? Easy, I was in the beta.

I don't feel that much explanation is required here because if you like WoW you are still reading and already know what I am about to say. If you don't like WoW it isn't likely that you made it to this paragraph. So for the purposes of educating my mother (whom could be the only person that remains) the WoW beta allowed me to mess around in the new lands and play the new Deathknight class. It was fun, but I quickly woke up to (virtual) reality.

The new continent is just that: new areas to do what I have always been doing in WoW. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it does not inspire me to purchase the expansion. What did get me going was the Deathknight class so I lept right on that content, having always played the undead in Warcraft3, like a ghoul in a candy store of dead peons. It was amazing fun to go through an evolving story that was, basically, an out door instance tailored to just you doing horrible things to your enemy, lots and lots of them. It does a good job to show off new mechanics, lets you get the story of the knights going, and understand how the very unique skill mechanics work. It also lets you see that a Tauren Deathknight looks just a bit more stupid than a gnome Deathknight.

Then they give you the reason to join the good guys by doing the whole "betrayal, we are bad but lets kick the crap out of the really bad guys" story line. After that you are level 58 with pretty great gear for the level and you go to the Burning Crusade expansion content to kick the crap out the Hellfire content.

Just like everyone else.

While I didn't have a problem with the fact that a full group of Deathknights (and only Deathknights) could complete the instance dungeons in Hellfire I began to consider what was going to happen from here on out. You will be surrounded by tons of the same class and pretty much have to grind like mad to catch up 10 levels behind the rest of your friends whom have already decimated the new content. I didn't join an online community to always play alone and it suddenly felt like a great deal of work.

The class is still great fun but when my perception of games becomes work; I bail. Perhaps in a few months when things calm down I will log in to play my DK. While I know that I could always break out past characters, I am pretty bored with that idea as well. What I do know is that any healer class that is just sitting at level 60 when they start to level in the first expansion content will be jumped with so much Deathknight love and adoration that it will be border line rape at the first hint of /shout "Level 60 priest,shammy,druid,pally" lfg.

See you in a few months.

Seabass