What's next for you?

Since we're rapidly approaching the last major patch on Frostmourne before its inevitable reset, I'd like to start a short discussion thread.

Assuming a realm of a similar format is released straight after:

Would you play through the patches again or was the server just a fun distraction during the pandemic?

What do you think went well or what changes would you like to see to make it a better experience on such a server?

Did you lose more than you gained?

Feel free to leave suggestions, share experiences and discuss.

Nice thread. My props to you for wanting to gather people's feedback on the server, so that we can have a constructive discussion about its strong and weak sides and give ideas to the staff on how to handle it in the future.

In this post, I'm going to write my PERSONAL OPINION about some things, so bear with me.

1) I'm a person, who loves experiencing new things. After my long break from WoW, I joined Warmane over a year ago. Up until Frostmourne was released, I only played on Icecrown. There I had participated in various ICC and RS raids before my guild lost its core players and decided to retire. When FM was first announced, I was intrigued by the news. Back on Icecrown, I didn't really experience the whole content. While it's true, that I had participated in some Naxx, Uld and ToC raids, I did that mostly for the sake of farming achievements or transmog. I couldn't feel the difficulty of those instances, because most of us were either fully BiS or close to it and the bosses melted down regardless how we played. Like, we afforded to ignore some boss mechanics and the success of the fights wasn't at stake. All of this was the reason why I didn't find those raids to be interesting and worth replaying. FM offered the opportunity to relive those raid instances in their glory days and to have a fresh™ experience. I mean, I had seen many people praising Ulduar for being a masterpiece and I was excited to see how true that statement was.

To be fair, I enjoyed and I still enjoy my time playing here, but after the reset I am not willing to go through the same stuff again. It's just that I dislike having limitations and being stuck with a specific content for a long period of time. And, no, I am not willing to spend time playing in two different realms. That's too big of an investment and I prefer to do something else in my free time. That's why I am not planning on returning to FM after the reset. I haven't decided what I will do when that happens (I might return to IC, give Lordearon a shot or just play other games - like Heroes of Might and Magic III), but I don't want to play on a server with limitations again. The first time was enjoyable, but the next ones aren't going to be for me. I'd like to explain it with a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxpW2ltDNow

According to Bartle's Taxonomy, I am considered an explorer - a person, who loves experiencing new things. I am not an achiever, who wants his name to be included in Warmane's "Hall of Fame" or be part of the crème de la crème. The server doesn't have anything exciting to offer me anymore. By saying this, I don't want to downgrade the realm or its features. On the contrary, I honestly think that it has a lot of potential - pvp and pve-wise. In terms of pvp, people can participate in different metas (fight against different arena comps). In terms of pve, people fight for Realm First achievements and for being placed on the top of the PVE Ladder. So, imho the server can satisfy the needs of the "achievers" and it will live on.

2) I can't propose any changes, sorry. I can't think of anything, that would improve FM's experience for the majority of players. I think it's good as it is (though, according to <Invisus> there could be more ways to incentivise PVE competition). I've heard people complaining about bugs in the past, which had made some boss fights easier than they should have been, so maybe that could be taken into consideration. I think, that it was a good idea to shorten the period of some patches (ToC) and to extend it for others (Uld and ICC), so the devs should definitely keep doing that in the next cycle.

3) Yeah, I did gain more than I lost. Like I've said above, I've experienced the glory Wotlk has to offer and I'm thankful to Warmane for creating the server.

Great topic!

I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing next go around, except that I'll be rerolling horde. I spent a great deal of time and effort this season saving up and helping my guild out, and will likely be more selfish the next go-around. I started getting serious toward the latter half of Ulduar, and to be honest, I'm not much of a fan of the Naxx or Uld patches and may hold off playing with any level of seriousness until ToC again. Classes don't feel very good until you're reaching around the 4.8k gear score, so that's one of my motivations for waiting that long.

I think the faster timeline has some good and some bad points. It was nice of staff to provide two seperate lockouts in one week, but at the same time, that makes hardcore raiding very exhausting as it always feels like you have to raid 6+ days a week to get any major progress, whereas only three days would be necessary if it were one lockout.

If they do the two lockouts again, I would like to see daily RHC and weekly quest rewards doubled as well. It seems strange that they didn't do this considering the accelerated timeline, making the ICC patch a real pain in the *** to get frost emblems at a reasonable rate.