I need some insight from people that may be in a similar situation. Sorry for the wall of text in advance!
A little background info on my situation: I adore TBC. I started out as a noob in 2007 and took my time leveling to 70. Fast forward to one year ago I was super stoked for TBC Classic to the point that I made plans to level with a group of guildies months in advance.
Phase one of TBC Classic was an absolute delight. I love every zone in TBC and it felt great doing the quests again with friends and helpful people I’d meet in my travels.
I only did Gruul and Kara back in 2007 so it was awesome to do those raids again and get fully bis geared. In my non- raiding moments I would do HC dungeons and professions. When I was done on my main I leveled a hunter to 70 and got him attuned to kara.
Right now is a different story. I still love flying through the zones and taking in the atmosphere but I mainly do that on the 2 days I raid SSC and TK. I’ve cleared all and am 10/10 for a while now (with an awesome guild I might add) and while I look forward to BT and onwards I have this hollow feeling about tbc, that yet again the best part is behind me. The open- world questing and meeting people.
You see I have a baby on the way that is due for mid January. While I still like to play I find raid-logging to be a bit meh. I tried leveling an alt but I can’t see myself doing all the endgame stuff again on a new char while taking care of a child, Maybe I can figure out how to raid 2 days a week, who knows, or even one. I’d like to experience Black Temple at least but at this point I accepted I’d be only raidlogging, and that’s a bit sad.
I’ve started playing retail again to just collect stuff and raid casually, nothing too serious. I know people like to bash on SL and I get it, it’s not the best expansion by far, but it gives me a whole lot more to do besides raiding.
I know I can’t ask people to decide this for me but what would you do in my specific situation?? On the one hand I love TBC just too much to leave it behind and I wanna experience it all, on the other I can’t see myself playing the way I do now, and raidlogging is a bit meh.
Tl:dr: not a quitting thread, just some advice/insight needed. I loved P1 in TBCC but now I feel I’d be raidlogging until the end of TBCC.
You don’t say if you are a single parent or not.
If you aren’t then arrange with your partner to have a day or evening to yourself where you can raid, also let them have their own day or evening off too. You don’t both need to be on call for the baby at the same time.
And yes we’ve talked about it and my wife is more than willing to let me keep having my raidnights, though we both have no idea what having a newborn is like.
Most of my guild (and probably lots of TBC players) are in their 30s and about a quarter (if not more) have little kid (between newborn and 2 years old) and are doing just fine raiding 2 days a week.
An example is a close IRL friend whose kid is now 1 year old, it was rough in the first few months (had to stop raiding for a while) but now is back and kicking, he made a deal with his wife so he takes on 2 other nights and she covers while he raids (baby goes to sleep about 1.5 hours after raid time).
Not only that but he actually has 2 raiding characters lol. Though, worth mentioning, he has been working from home in the past 1.5 years due to the pandemic.
You may not be able to keep 100% attendance but it should be more than fine. And even if you can’t keep up a raid schedule, these days pugs are also very effective and most guilds also do alt runs where they can squeeze you in.
If you don’t enjoy raiding then I don’t think you can enjoy TBC longterm, period. TBC is mostly about raiding. Even in WotLK, the PvP scene became a lot better, but PvE-wise it was still all about raiding basically - everything else (dungeons, dailies and whatnot) were functional to raid progression.
Dunno how much Retail has besides raiding, I’ve not played it that much. I heard stuff about pet battles, Torghast and whatnot. Maybe you’d enjoy that more? Or maybe you’d enjoy a different game altogether.
I used to be a hardcore raider in retail but since my return to it I’ve been taking a very casual approach in just doing old raid for transmog and mounts, and doing story quests. Tbh I’m having a good time there.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the raiding in TBC, it’s just that I envisioned it to be… more? I really wanna see Black Temple but it’s a shame that I dreamed about TBC Classic for so long just for it to become a raidlog experience. It felt different when I played it back in 2017, I saw people leveling everywhere all the time. That’s on me, I know, but even in Classic a year back I saw a lot of people out in the world.
Not sure what you envisioned it to be, to be honest. Personally I feel like the raiding experience is a lot better now than it was back on Classic. Back on Classic, the raids were painful slogs with barely-interesting trash mobs and bosses (at least until late AQ), only made even more painful by world buffs and extremely expensive consumables.
As for people “out in the world” in Classic… what do you mean exactly? More people out in the world farming mats/gold? I mean, maybe… though I dunno about you, but I don’t feel exactly happy when I head to some place for farming purpose and it has more players than NPCs Other than that, the fact players can travel above the ground with flying mounts possibly has a role in it too. But yeah I’d like to know more about what you mean because I’m kinda puzzled.
When I run out of ”content” I like to do Arenas and level alts/gear alts.
At the same time, when I last played retail it felt like a set of chores you had to do every day in order to stay competitive (Legion), like gathering artifact power. I much prefer systems when there is a clear completion (such as TBC reputation, arena gear, etc etc).
With a kid I’m sure raidlogging will feel much better because there is so much to do outside of the game but those raid nights can be a huge relief from those daily chores.
What does exist, rly, besides raids and PvP? I mean, until Mythic+ dungeons were introduced, you know there was no permanent dungeon progression, dungeons are mostly there for pre-raid gearing. And… what else there is exactly? World PvP? Gold farming? Dailies? I’m seriously confused here, what were you hoping for?
Well if you were used to 2.4.3 TBC, then yeah the game feels a bit hollow now. It’s an unfortunate reality that the best part of TBC is, rly, the last two phases - where achievs are mostly lifted, rep reqs downgraded to Honored, and there’s a lot more PvE activity overall. Though on the bright side, that’s pretty much how the entirety of WotLK was like. I know haters gonna hate, but that version of the game was incredibly popular (and still is on the pserver scene) for good reason.
Though at the end of the day, it’s still raids and PvP. The expanded badge vendors simply make it so that your character can get rdy for raids somewhat sooner, or at least without relying as much on RNG (for example, I rly like that T10 no longer has specific slot tokens but instead uses marks of sanctification while you buy the base T10 from vendor, it rly lessens the impact of RNG on your character progression)
This. My bestie now has two kids and he manages to raid (first month is pain thou). He did exactly what Dottie suggested - he talked to wife about that, he’s helping as much as he can at non-raid evenings and she do as much as she can to let him raid
This is not entirely accurate, heroic runs provide badges, crafting gear is close to best in slot plus a few PVP pieces can be got quite easily.
I’m a social player and has been guildless for most of my journey through vanilla and TBC, pugging through the attunements is fun and doable.
Kara pugs run all the time and I’ve gone through the instance many times.
by far the best expansion with Wrath running close.
Other than that, the fact players can travel above the ground with flying mounts possibly has a role in it too. But yeah I’d like to know more about what you mean because I’m kinda puzzled.