The cycle is the same whenever a massively multiplayer online role-playing game gets a healthy dose of expansion content: weeks of glorious excitement followed by a slow descent into lassitude. It’s all a matter of when it hits. For me and World of Warcraft’s Legion expansion, that’s right about now.
It’s sort of like finding a new restaurant nearby. You stop in for a curious visit and discover you really like what they are serving. The menu is an exciting array of undiscovered tastes that brings you back again and again. Then maybe you have a dish you don’t like, or you find yourself eating the same thing over and over again. It’s a cycle we go through regularly in life, be it a fast food restaurant or a relationship or Blizzard’s latest MMO expansion.
I had a good month. I leveled a whole bunch of characters. I collected a couple dozen powerful artifact weapons. I completed hundreds of story and world quests. I did all of the dungeons on regular and heroic. I even started in on mythics.
But now, eh. Not a bad eh, just eh. I’ve seen much of the content, from core story or class Order House questlines, and most of what I’ve not seen involves wading through that which I have in order to get to the different bits. The dungeons are getting repetitive while the random people I play with grow less forgiving of small mistakes.
I’ve found myself fiddling about in non-Legion content as a means of keeping things interesting. I’m leveling a Shaman, trying my hand at healing. Some of my guildmates in Exalted With Taco Bell have taken me on some old-school raids, which I have a blast tearing through. I’ve begun experimenting with random plugins, trying to give the game I’ve been staring at constantly for a month a fresh look and feel.
I probably just need a little break.
I don’t hold the post-expansion ennui against Legion. My review of the new content stands. It is some of the most exciting and divergent stuff I’ve seen in World of Warcraft. I’ve played more of the game over the past two months than I have in years.
It’s just time to relax a little bit now. Get some low-level healing in. Catch up with some other games. Save up my energy for the 7.1 Return to Karazhan update whenever that hits.
My time in Legion isn’t over, it’s just no longer urgent.
How are the rest of you World of Warcraft players faring? Still full speed ahead, or losing steam?