World of Warcraft: "Durability of Durability"
Posted: Monday October 18th, 2004
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Blizzard announced recently that World of Warcraft items would be given "durability". Here's some info on what "durability" means within the context of the game: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patch10-11-04.shtml
Now, the value of this system can be argued, but ultimately, it boils down to being a money sink. It's a way for Blizzard to get money out of circulation. The problem is the system works fine versus the high level characters that rake in gold hand over fist. But, for people like me, the money is not readily available to fix my weapons every time I return to town after a fight. That money is needed to cover the cost of learning my warrior specific skills, buying a horse, buying trade goods, etc.
I've been too busy to play WoW since the implementation of Durability, so I can't really talk about how trivial or bad it is. But, I can say that it doesn't make me, personally, happy. For a casual gamer that just wants to log on and play for an hour here and there, this is another drawback.
It won't stop me from playing the game... but it will probably become the subject of quite a few mean comics strips, if it sucks, I'm sure.
--- editted to add my 15 minute experience with the durability system ---
Here's my brief report on the durability system. NOTE: this is only a 15 minute trial (I have too much else to do).
15 minutes.
I killed 15 mobs between 40 and 43 (I'm level 50).
I lost 18 durability points on my armor from a total of 480. About 3.75%.
I lost 3 durability points on my sword from a total of 85. About 3.5%.
It cost me 3 silver 72 copper to repair the lost durability. I looted just over 20s.
All in all that's not bad. The only real problem was that there wasn't someone at Camp Mojache to fix my items, so I had to hearthstone back to Ogrimmar.
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