One month after.
Level 70.
Enter flying school, earn my wings and flying license, ordered for shipment of the organic helicopter, up up and away the leap of faith into the once-untouchable sky of the World of Warcraft. Exploring the zones at altitude is incredible and breathtaking enough. Here is one very good reason to set terrain distance to the max. And thereby convincing you to purchase a more powerful graphic card.
Well, to be more exact, just the new lands of the Outland. Because Blizzard refuses to rework the old Azeroth world to accommodate freedom of flight. As a professional in software development, that makes total business sense. But sucks for players.
Speaking of old content, I suppose that also means the old raiding dungeons that Blizzard had been painstakingly designing and developing for faithful endgame players are forsaken and gone the direction of the trash bin. And in the process, Blizzard mocks its entire base of loyal customers.
What am I talking about? Endgame is excrutiatingly difficult; it takes an excessive and unhealthy amount of time, discipline, dedication to achieve successful results. The items gotten out of the whole testing experience is truly hard won. Everything Blizzard threw at gamers before The Burning Crusade saw to it that they spend lots of time at it (worst is the drudgery of grinding for faction reputation), which in turn converts to play bills and cash turnover for Blizzard and Vivendi. The amount of money the hardcore players give away is not insignificant.
Yet, with the expansion, the majority of these equipment are shockingly rendered obsolete. Uncommon (green) and rare/superior (blue) items gained through casual play challenge the significance of our epics, and make us wonder what all that time and energy was spent for. Sure there are still certain items (like 3-piece Bloodfang for my rogue) that I maintain in order to get some bonus abilities. But by and large nearly everything else has been replaced. Blizzard has essentially pressed the Reset button on us and made us almost on par with non-raiders, and leveled the field in the pursuit for new gear. Sure, it would be meaningless if the expansion didn't offer us raiders something new to look forward to. But at least consider a "compromise" like an upgrade to our existing gear to show that our hard work was not for naught.
The [implicit] message from Blizzard? LOL u spent so much time/money playing our game to earn those items? idiot.
And maybe I am an idiot for continuing to play ;-)