Well, one short answer is “not much anymore, which is why I hadn’t played in a long time before coming back recently”.
Another short answer is “I often say that WoW is a glorified IRC server; I mostly sign on to socialize with guild mates”.
There’s a longer answer, though, and it’s this:
Hunter is one class. I play others. Actually, I’ve always primarily played tanks, and tank classes have never been anywhere near so monotonous to play.
Even in 2006-2008 (the period of the Burning Crusade expansion, when the “only hit Steady Shot” approach worked), to say that hitting that one button repeatedly is the only thing you needed to do to win was a bit of a simplification. True, your rotation was as simple as can be; but there are other aspects of correct play, both in-the-moment (DPS cooldown timing; mana management; positioning and other things to do with fight mechanics; pet control) and during-downtime (gearing; pet optimization; writing appropriate macros). I can honestly say that playing a hunter in raids at this time was genuinely and unreservedly fun (in addition to the aforementioned other aspects of play, this was partly because being the best at DPS was very satisfying and rewarding).
The game content itself (story, characters, fight mechanics, etc.) is interesting (though this is less true recently, imo).
So, while I understand and acknowledge your reasons for not playing (and indeed they were my own reasons as well for a long time), I disagree with taking my aforementioned hunter experience as a strong example of WoW being boring.
Well, one short answer is “not much anymore, which is why I hadn’t played in a long time before coming back recently”.
Another short answer is “I often say that WoW is a glorified IRC server; I mostly sign on to socialize with guild mates”.
There’s a longer answer, though, and it’s this:
Hunter is one class. I play others. Actually, I’ve always primarily played tanks, and tank classes have never been anywhere near so monotonous to play.
Even in 2006-2008 (the period of the Burning Crusade expansion, when the “only hit Steady Shot” approach worked), to say that hitting that one button repeatedly is the only thing you needed to do to win was a bit of a simplification. True, your rotation was as simple as can be; but there are other aspects of correct play, both in-the-moment (DPS cooldown timing; mana management; positioning and other things to do with fight mechanics; pet control) and during-downtime (gearing; pet optimization; writing appropriate macros). I can honestly say that playing a hunter in raids at this time was genuinely and unreservedly fun (in addition to the aforementioned other aspects of play, this was partly because being the best at DPS was very satisfying and rewarding).
The game content itself (story, characters, fight mechanics, etc.) is interesting (though this is less true recently, imo).
So, while I understand and acknowledge your reasons for not playing (and indeed they were my own reasons as well for a long time), I disagree with taking my aforementioned hunter experience as a strong example of WoW being boring.
Acknowledged. I mistakenly assumed that your description of Hunter DPS mechanics was meant to be a current and representative example of the game.