Here’s a short one. It came to my attention upon logging into World of Warcraft after The Shattering patch went live that everything has, in fact, changed. For me, this meant that the quests I had in my log were all gone thanks to the destination areas now being…uh…wiped form the map. I then realized that I am actually one of the lucky ones.

See, not being a min-maxer or even someone who gives a fig about stats, gear or anything that requires research, I essentially have nothing to relearn. I can just pick up and go. Some people, however, aren’t so fortunate.

Think of all of the class guides, zone guides, and dungeon guides that have been published to the web thoughout the years. Useless. All of the strategies that people have come to rely on, the ones that they memorized to the point where they could execute them in their sleep, effectively removing risk from their reward…all unusable. Zones have been recategorized and redistributed so people have to relearn a massive chunk of prior knowledge.

In short, take pity on your long time WoW friends. While we were off experiencing the wealth pf experiences that the MMO genre has to offer, they were gorging themselves on the same meal for years. For them, it will be like they moved to a new game, ao they’re bound to be scared and confused. Take good care of them, dear friends, in their time of need.