Breakfast Topic: Attunement, hassle or not a big deal?
I recently dinged 70, finally after a long haul. Naturally, I was all hopped-up to run Karazhan until I learned I needed to first complete an arduous attunement process. Ok, I've known for months that I needed to do this, and it's not that arduous at all. It got me thinking about attunement in general, though.
Frankly, my initial reaction to any sort of flagging was negative. I started in EverQuest and its Planes of Power expansion each tier required its own flag. Once guilds got far enough along, latecomers like myself were well and truly screwed as most guilds weren't inclined to go do any back-flagging. They'd usually mumble something along the lines of "how the hell are we going to progress if we're holding newbies hands through the same zones, day after day." Thankfully, pictures of the guild leader and a goat came in handy.
Thankfully, WoW has few attunement needs--Kara being the most common. Even almost a year later my guild is more than willing to help me through the process--it seems everyone has two or three alts needing this, so groups have been easy to come by.
During the process, I got used to working with my guild mates. I haven't done many instance runs with them, so it was nice to work as with them. One of my guildies plays the same class as myself and he gave me some pointers. And he's right--in hindsight using multi-shot to pull with misdirect cast on the priest was a poor idea*. All-in-all, the process has been enjoyable, educational, and, one six-hour-frustration-filled-night in Shadow Lab aside, painless.
While I'm not done yet--I'm hoping to wrap that up next weekend--I was forced to admit my initial reaction to attunement was off-base. I think Blizzard's got the right mix: relatively few zones needing it, but require enough group-steps to force players to get used to it--especially those casual solo players like myself.
What do you think about attunement and what would you change if you could?
* if you made your sarcasm save, that's a joke.
