Just looking over the final patch notes, and somehow this one had gotten by me before…
Well, I guess the AH market for Golden Fish Sticks is about to plummet. Too bad – I made a ton of gold fishing and cooking those. On the other hand, now I won’t end up with a whole bag full of feltail after a fishing session.
Readers of Warcraft blogs are certainly aware of what is happening in WoW. We all use an assortment of online information outlets and do our own research. The fact that we are so interested in WoW that we spend time researching it, reading about it, and writing about it separates us from the general population of Azeroth. We know everything. (just kidding, of course)
But we only account for a very tiny fraction of the WoW player base. There are players who do not keep up with “current events” in WoW. Heck, there are still players who don’t know about Thottbot or Wowhead.
How many of the millions of subscribers had no idea there was a patch coming today? I’m not talking about new subscribers – I am asking about people who have been playing for a while. How many level 70 players will hear about the new badge rewards for the first time in Trade channel chatter? How many times will someone mention Magister’s Terrace, and get a response of “what?”
These are unanswerable questions, of course. But I am curious just the same.
Certainly, reading WOWInsider is not required to be a successful Warcraft player. For many players, they only think about WoW when they log into the game. How is this new content being conveyed to that player base? How would someone find out about the new fishing dailies and crafting patterns if they didn’t read WoW-related web sites? Is it Blizzard’s responsibility to lead players by the nose to the new content? Should Guild officers inform their guildies? Is word-of-mouth sufficient?
Again – these are rhetorical questions. But since my mother has recently started playing it has made me much more aware of the player who is “in the dark.” I can’t tell you how many times she has asked me a question, and when I gave her the answer she replied with “how was I supposed to know to do that?”
