The last wing of Icecrown Citadel is set to open in World of Warcraft today and, with it, the final big encounter of Wrath of the Lich King: the face off with Arthas. For the next few weeks, servers will be alive with activity as guilds focus on taking down this final baddie and officially getting ICC to “farm” status.
As with any big, final, patch of the expansion, the next few months are tentative. Many guilds will struggle, getting to the Lich King, and will be occupied for some time to come. Others will beat it fairly quick, gear up their members, and become bored. The better of these situations, of course, is the newer guild taking their time to get through.
Yet, I predict that within 3 months, the truth that there is no new content coming before Cataclysm will settle in and players will become restless. Even those players who haven’t finished the current content.
The truth, as I see it, is that within those 90 days the players able to see the Lich King will have seen it. The others, for some reason, are unable to get into the content. Both types of player face the same conclusion though, nothing new is coming and what’s there may as well not matter. It’s done or a forgone conclusion.
So, once more, we enter into the burnout drought before an expansion pack. We’ll have lots of information on Cataclysm forthcoming, I’m sure, since Blizzard has to keep players chomping at the bit. Despite this, activity is almost sure to drop.
The good news is that players taking a break from WoW is a very positive thing. For the player, they’ll come back with their batteries refreshed. For other MMO studios, now is the time of year where their games will get more traffic and hopefully earn extra subscriptions. The players coming in will get to see how green the grass really is and, hopefully, have a lot of fun too.
At once, the drought is a time of boredom and excitement.
Now where’s my Arthas YouTube video? What do you mean they’re not up yet?
*tap tap* Ensidia? *tap*
Is this thing on?
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