First as an off note: It seems being an average casual healer isn’t the most unique spin on blogging; I just have to hope I can still find a spot in the community.

This is my take on a shared topic from Blog Azeroth suggested by Jaded Alt

Christmas time

As a little boy I had very organized parents. They managed to have all the Christmas gifts bought and wrapped weeks before Christmas Eve. They were however lousy at hiding it. I used to sneak in to the closet and poke, shake and squeeze, guess and hope. The younger you are the more the size of the gift matters, the biggest packages was the ones who got the most attention. As you grow older the things you wish for tend to get smaller but the price tag gets bigger. In an effort to make things harder on me they started to wrap the little packages in bigger boxes. Now I aren’t the sharpest tool at all times so this actually had me fooled the first few times but eventually I was on to them. This taught me a valuable life lesson, never judge on first appearance alone.

Early news

To me the information and news from the PTR is like those gifts in the closet. I poke and squeeze it, I gasp at possible nerfs and oohs at planned buffs. I look at the talent trees and build different specs, calculates and theorizes. I can start doing gear choices in current content based on what will come with the next patch. But I also realize that it is early news, that big package looking like it could contain a TV might be holding a new laptop. So even if I know that not everything you hear about the patch will make it to live I love to read it, build up my expectations.

For the semi-casual guilds like mine I think it’s good that tactics and suggestions is out there when the new content hits. We don’t have enough raidhours to bang our heads against that new ugly, big (they are always big), bastard, to try and find out what evil it does and how we counter it. Having a list of its abilities and a suggested tactic makes it possible for us to keep some sort of progress. Since we usually just about meet the requirement for the content, being able to execute the suggested tactics and down the boss is satisfaction in itself.

The Downside

There is always a downside, isn’t there. As much as the early information can trigger anticipation of what’s to come I assume it can trigger resignation if the changes you see does not suit you at all. Just waiting for the nerf to hit can often be worse than dealing with the actual nerf when it goes live.

For some guilds, depending on their motivation for raiding, I guess knowing that the instance they are currently raiding will be obsolete in 2 weeks might make them throw in the towel and just wait it out.

I can also understand those that say that the PTR makes the “First kill” achievements less valued as the top guilds has already been doing the practice and when it goes live it’s just a matter of who gets there first. Since I don’t play in that league I will not try to opinionate on it.

All in all I find early news a good thing as long as you realize it’s not necessarily a TV in that big ass Christmas gift.