I've been reading a lot of posts about attunements, and I got to thinking about why exactly I like attunements.
The major reason is that I don't really like the gear game. I don't like making Best-In-Slot lists, or debating exactly what gear I need off what bosses. I just run stuff, and if something drops, I take it if it is better than what I have. My gear tends to evolve organically.
A good attunement chain or questline gives me a reason to run dungeons. It's something that I'm working towards, rather than my average gear ilevel hitting some minimum threshold. I do like beating every boss once, but after that you're just doing dungeons to prep for the next boss, or for social reasons.
I like having that extra goal to work towards.
Another element that was kind of similar were the old 8-piece class sets. I like collecting class sets, and don't mind running dungeons multiple times to get the set. I'm not really sure why this is different from running dungeons to get a pre-defined Best-In-Slot set, but it just is. Perhaps its the difference between making your character more powerful versus just collecting sets.
Perhaps it's just that Lightforge was so awesome. (Still in my bank!)
It just seems like in Wrath and Cataclysm, you ran 5-mans in order to make your character more powerful, so you could tackle raids. While in Vanilla and TBC, making your character more powerful was a secondary goal. You ran 5-mans to work on your attunements, or to collect your class set, or work on your class mount quest. And almost as a side-effect, your character got more powerful.
I think you are spot-on with the Vanilla and TBC comments though I think the mentality of running dungeons for something other than gear upgrades began to fade in TBC with the introduction of Badges of Justice (and their subsequent inclusion in raids and the improvement of gear they could buy).
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly, I would not miss sites like EJ if they all suddenly disappeared, but I am fairly sure that BiS lists are here to stay.
And last aside...I do wish they'd bring back some more class specific quests/sets outside just the raid ones.
There's nothing wrong with BiS lists, and more power to the people who like them and like ticking items off as they get them, who like feeling that they are making their character more powerful.
ReplyDeleteIt's just not really something that motivates me in particular.
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ReplyDeleteHonestly, EJ has nothing to do with this post. I will delete any further comments about it.
ReplyDeleteSo... achievements are more than capable of replacing attunements for you? Or do your extra goals only work when they are required to do something else... that doesn't even sound like you are doing (e.g. raiding)?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I understand why making them mandatory for raid access would change anything in your view.
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean is that since you LIKE doing them, as long as they exist in any incarnation (in particular a non-gating one), you would run them anyway.
I enjoyed attunments as well, they were long, involving and required me group with actual people (i know... thats crazy talk in an MMO) instead of mindlessly running the same 3 dungeons for a two days then calling myself "ready" to raid. No sense of achievement, no real idea why or how i somehow invaded BlackWing lair (new one) without any of hinderance or rational story explination....Just that i clicked a portal and there i was.
ReplyDeleteI actually enjoyed the way they used to do attunements. (Have the gate there at the beginning when everybody is running that content, and then remove it once a new tier comes out.) I don't know... they just felt kind of epic. Not simply "I hit cap, so now I'll raid." Plus it generally "required" you to at least accidentally get some gear as you went through those dungeons.
ReplyDeleteI thought the attunements played such a big part in the MMO experience. Even when they were frustrating, it was cool to finish an attunement chain and get your new raid key.
ReplyDeleteI guess the Wrathgate questlines in Wrath felt a bit like a single player attunement, maybe that's the sort of thing we'll see in future.
With attunement gone and aside from gear lore, achievements to specific fights, and recently transmog are still valid reasons.
ReplyDeleteWhen HoR came out, the first thing me and my guildies did was making a premade group with the guild to do the achievements specific to fights. We did not need any gear from it, as we were heroic FL geared. It was a lot of fun.
Up to this day I am still sad I never experienced something as massive as the AQ unlocking. Heck, maybe it was horrible, but I still didn't experience it. I'd imagine it being plain epic to suddenly have some kind of higher goal as a faction on your guild, but is also opens up an economic opportunity. The player decides how to interact with the system.
I enjoy levelling, despite how freaking long it takes, because there's all this cool content to distract me. Same thing for attunements, they're one way to distract you from the amount of grinding it takes to get slightly more powerful.
ReplyDeleteThey do need to remove the older ones, in step with justice gear. They also need to be very clearly signposted, it was way too easy to miss some of the vanilla attunements.