Phaelia over at Resto4Life made a post today about preparing for Wrath of the Lich King, even going so far as to start a shared topic on Blogging Azeroth.Many responses to this topic that I’ve read are about gathering gear. I’m less concerned with my character’s preparation, and more concerned with my psychological preparation. I’ve written about this previously when I railed on the culture of hunting down pre-patch info before Alpha had even started. With the Family and Friends Alpha in full swing and hemorrhaging game data, it may be time to revisit this topic.

In general I am of the opinion that if you want to enjoy your WoW experience you need to approach the game casually. Once you let the game become a job, you start to find it lacks the enjoyment you found when you started. This is usually something you realize long after you’ve crossed that threshold and it may be too late to turn back. It can be that moment you realize raiding has become a chore, or when you find yourself frustrated at the lack of drops or stupid teammates you hate but know you need. It could also be that moment you find yourself lacking the desire to play because that new expansion is going to come out and wipe out all your progress.  Wrath of the Lich King threatens to just that.

To combat this you need to approach the game casually, which can be boiled down to one thing: do the things you enjoy. If you focus on doing things you enjoy in and of themselves it is hard to become dissatisfied with the game. This could be questing, making alts, or just running instances with your friends. It is most likley not grinding badges, gold, or raiding with the goal of getting specific pieces of loot.

However, I don’t want to say we shouldn’t think ahead a little. The expansion is coming, and we don’t want to find ourselves disappointed by our previous choices. Enjoying yourself now does not require cultivating ignorance, but might rather require looking ahead so that you can be comfortable with your decisions and have greater enjoyment down the road.

The first thing to note is that everything will change. I can’t say this strongly enough. This means that specs and gear will be different. There are leaked talent trees and spells, and even an announcements by that they will be merging healing and damage gear, and melee and spell crit and hit ratings. Also, this information is still subject to change, so making any major decisions based on leaked data would be unwise. You will want to be prepared for surprises, as there will be many.

With that in mind there are a few things that you can be reasonably certain of:

Solidify your base of friends.
Another thing that never loses value are friends. Now what end-game progression is de-emphasized you can spend more time helping their alts, enjoying instances, and polishing off all those group quests you put off. You don’t want to just disappear for the months before the expansion because friends will be very valuable in the first months as you all learn the new content and tackle the new instances.
Experience never loses value.
Go see all those instances you never ran. Never did AC on heroic? Maybe you should try it once. Never got into raiding? Grab a Gruul’s or Kara PuG just to see what it’s like (though I can’t promise success).
Currency always loses value.
In order to make the new content feel valuable relative to old content, the currencies of the old content have to lose value. This means gold will be worth less as people make more of it which drives up prices for everything. Also, badges will likely be worth less because they won’t want a bunch of level 80 characters blitzing level 70 instances. Honor will also decrease in value when people are able to make more at level 80. Thus if you have currency, you might want to spend it before the expansion to give you maximum return when you are leveling through the new content. On the flip side, you will want to hold off on big purchases because the currencies will be easier to get once the expansion hits and the item will likely be replaced quickly.
Stock up on percentages
The equipment that ages best are the pieces that have percentage effects. Some of these have hidden formulas that reduce their power with levels. Items such as Hand of Justice will always be a solid choice, as will some of the Darkmoon cards with percentage effects. However, we will have to see how items like Bangle of Endless Blessings scale since they have hidden formulas that may be adjusted to reduce their power past level 70.

That’s my not-so-short approach to Wrath of the Lich King. You should take it with a grain of salt of course. After all, what do I know? I play casually.