Blizzard Entertainment released patch 5.4 for World of Warcraft last Tuesday (with the requisite 127* hot fixes afterward), which implemented a large number of changes across various platforms: class, world, dungeons and raids, gear and mounts.

Blizzard took a hard look at some of the classes—hunters and paladins got the most changes but no class was left untouched—continuing the trend they started with the Mists of Panderia expansion, changing spells and abilities from talents into class skills. Does the new system make playing one’s class easier? Definitely. Gone are the hours of research and game theory over points spent on talent trees. The abilities that define a class and a spec are no longer left to the player to decide; rather Blizzard has defined them for us, and served them to each class as a fait accompli.

This is not a bad thing, but it is symbolic of the dumbing down of the game that has occurred since its Wrath of the Lich King expansion. While it was never considered the hardest of hard core MMOs—Everquest and Final Fantasy XI share that title—WoW at one point required skill and knowledge in order for a person to reach end game raiding. Blizzard’s attempts to appease both its audiences—the casual player and the hardcore raider—has mostly succeeded. But gone are the days of rep for resist gear, arguments over swords vs. daggers, raid progression being counted in months rather than days, Holy-Disc priests and Shock-adins. And occasionally, when we see a talent that used to be a choice become a required spell in our rotation, we miss those days.

Another Island Flying Mounts Don’t Work On

Patch 5.4 does not buck this trend. More talents became known skills. Things that once had to be glyphed have become passive abilities. Epic gear is literally on the ground for people to trip over (these 496 ilevel epics are now known as welfare epics. Cruel, yes. True? Yes) allowing anyone with mobility to acquire gear and raid (at least in Looking For Raid). The new isle—which players are sent to by Chromie (welcome back, Chromie!) is out of time (a clever trick to allow for Blizzard to take away flying mounts, because why would a player want to use something they’ve spent hours working for?) and heroes are needed.

As Heroes we are, off we go to the Timeless Isle, to be greeted with a ‘go explore the island’ quest. Seriously. They didn’t even try to get you to deliver a letter or a desperately needed potion or anything.  We’re also encouraged to open any chests we see lying about, and oh, here’s a new rep grind and new coins to collect.

At this point we liked to say a few words about rep grinds. We have, contrary to popular opinion, a real life. And in that real life we have daily tasks like dishes, and cooking dinner, and doing the laundry, and picking up the living room. Rep grind dailies are the WoW equivalent of having to do the dishes. They were never fun, but Panderia took them to the level of a full time job. A day’s daily quest on one toon could take four hours. And, if you want the Legendary items available through the Black Prince quest lines, then add in the required LFR, Normal or Heroic raids for another six to eight hours weekly.

At Least the Scenery’s Different

While 5.4 addresses this somewhat (gear is now found in boxes rather than having to slog through seven different reps) there is still a lot of ‘just run and kill things’

‘how many things?

‘ALL the things.’

Which is essentially what the Timeless Isle is. It’s Maine the day after deer hunting licenses come out. People travel in packs and kill every elite in sight. Rares die in seconds. The island’s timeless because what you’re doing never changes. Ride around in a circle, and kill things. By the time you’ve completed the circuit, there are more things.

Is this drastically different than before? No. Any MMO—or RPG for that matter—is going to have a requisite number of ‘go kill ten wolves and come back to me.’ It’s how you gain experience and level up. But the Timeless Isle is for level capped raiders. Why do we need to massacre turtles for two hours every day?

Is it new content? Yes. It’s even fun, for a little bit. Opening chests and finding purple has a certain awesome cachet about it (especially for those of us who remember how hard purple gear used to be to get) and it does allow for people to sidestep the never-ending rep grind (unless they want mounts…) and still be geared enough to LFR. But with all the things Blizzard could have done, the Timeless Isle feels a little…easy.

The fact that there is content only accessible to be players who completed certain quests already (the Black Prince quest line and the cooking profession quests) is a nice nod to players who achieved certain things in the prior patch and something we wish Blizzard would do more of, other than the random achievement.

Time to Take the Fight To Hellscream

The new Siege of Orgrimmar (SoO) raid content offers fresh bosses but the mechanics don’t start getting innovative and different until the last wing (the eleventh to the fourteenth boss). So far, the really exciting thing in 5.4 is Flex Raiding. Harder than LFR, easier than Normal, with no ilevel or role restrictions–and cross-server friendly–Flex raiding is an alternative for players and guilds who wish to experience new content without the PuG mentality of LFR but who maybe aren’t 100% ready for Normal or Heroic difficulty. It also allows guilds to gear more than 10 people in order to create a stable roster of geared players. While the first two wings of Flex have been criticized as being too easy, the theory behind it is sound and we look forward to seeing how it is implemented in later raids.

Proving Grounds are another new thing introduced in Patch 5.4. These solo instances allow a player to pick their role (dps, tank or healer) and then sets them against NPCs to ‘prove’ their skills. Gear is normalized to a 463 ilevel (higher level items with procs will still proc, but the rate is adjusted, though legendary proc remains the same) and the encounters are a test of skill and class knowledge. The grounds come have Bronze, Silver, Gold and Endless rounds and the achievements are already becoming requirements for high-end guilds.

The round’s difficulty scale is a little off, Bronze and Silver are deceptively easy compared to Gold. Potions don’t work and a player is never out of combat (except in Endless, where there is time out of combat every ten waves for drinking/eating) so cooldowns and mana/energy/rage/focus management are key. Players do get the full 8/8 buffs and can flask and food buff up if they want. There is a reforger there, as well as vendor with Dust of Disappearance, as talents, glyphs and stats set up for optimum raiding dps/healing/tanking are not always the best set-up for the proving grounds.

A Solid Update to the Game

Patch 5.4 is a solid new expansion; Players who liked World of Warcraft before will continue to play (with minor complaints); people who have never played will probably not be compelled too, and those who have left the game will not feel pangs of regret. As always, some classes are a little over-powered, and others have been nerfed a little too much, but Blizzard has always had a see-saw approach to class balance.

Patch 5.4 went live on Tuesday, September 10^th, with the new raid content in LFR available on Tuesday, Sept. 17^th.

World of Warcraft and its expansions are available from Blizzard. 

*not an accurate number in regards to hot fixes. There may have been more.