Yeah the "Must-Do" list for this expac is very short. Almost everything is voluntary. Most people who I've met seem to think this is good and a kind of throwback to old-school WoW.

@Wildfeather Just complete the Maw stuff and the renown weekly stuff and you're good if you're casual. The covenant set you get is really, really spread out over months and weeks. So if you ever feel you're undergeared (like say, when LFR drops and you want to try that), PvP Vendor is highly recommended . The gear is mediocre but serviceable till you get some quality stuff. You can also do callings if you're into that, but WQs this expac are tedious. They do reward some hefty gold and conduits though.

And yeah, wrt to lore... it feels alien. Cause it is alien. Its actually the first time we're heading into a place that was not even remotely set up in WC3. They seem to be trying to set up an expanded universe.
This is what I meant in my previous post that a lot of the storyline seems to happen off-screen, or in different covenants, or in the book, etc. Its a problem unless you're a lore-fanatic or a completionist

They seem to really, really want you to make alts. Like I chose Kyrian for my main DH especially for the Uther quest line (The damage is ofc helpful XD). And you have to choose Night fae if you want to see the Tyrande Quest line. Same for Ravendreth and Kael'thas, etc.

And it almost feels like the Castle Nathria raid has no impact on you as a character. But if you've followed the lore, then you've pretty much defeated another Argus-level character in Sire Denathrius. He's pretty much the architect of all that has happened in Azeroth till now...

And this why I suspect they'll sooner rather than later break open the Arthas-glass in case of emergency. My guess is Arthas will be to Zovaal, what Illidan was to Sargeras in Legion. The Prisoner will become the warden. Poetic Justice and all that.


@Gengar Dude, I remember reading somewhere that they've nerfed the drop rate on item drops at the end of dungeons (Only +10s and higher, you can expect decent drop rates). You can't go about it the same way like in previous expansions. I got 1 drop from doing 10 Dungeons and even that slot I had a legendary, lol. Got a 200 belt on Altimor, but I've only done like 3 bosses on normal.

If you're not going to do PvP, then you'll have to slow down gearing. As in, about 2 definitive armor per week. And since you have a lot of choices in the weekly chest, it means you'll be fully geared only at the end of a month or 2.
If you do PvP, then its 3-4 items per week. And you can start aiming for BiS at the end of month 1.
And you'll get weapon tokens in raids . So we'll be able to buy weapons.

I've only managed to do +5 max this week since I don't have a guild and have to rely on PuGs. But I'm at iLvl 187, and forgot to farm the weapon token this week. That's a bummer.

And I don't get the frustration with the Maw lol. It feels like any other zone with a timer to me. There's a place you can catch a temporary mount just beside venari's cave. Then there's riftstones and a portal within the cave. I dunno, its been pretty chill for me doing dailies and stuff in the Maw. But a lot of people do seem frustrated with the zone. Thats also probably why elethium is still trading at 200 G per piece. Making almost 4k per day just off of elethium. XD

 

If they want me to take the WFR seriously, they need to have a separate server for these guilds to compete on so they can start at the same time.

Unless there's been some crazy corporate change over the past few years and EU and Asia can sync up their server resets? I was always under the impression that there's little they can do about that for some reason.

 

I'm a little sad that they nerfed Torghast...

Hard torghast was soooo fun.

Now... I just did +8 one with my dps having 85k hp before reaching floor 5 lol.

 

Torghast isn't balanced around it being 'hard.' It just fails as a concept if you get bad RNG and don't get any good powers. Not only that, you won't fail until you waste an hour and get to floor 4 or 5 in the old system.

I think it was super frustrating the way it was before, mainly bc it was tied to Soul Ash. I'm fine with the old difficulty if I can Soul Ash cap another way, or they can have the upcoming mode be the difficulty spike people want.

As for me, there aren't nearly enough powers for Torghast to be fun for me. Maybe we'll get that later in the expansion, but as an Arcane Mage, it boils down to 'get int, buff Arcane Blast, buff Time Warp, win.'

I think, given more time, they'll start added spec specific powers. Then we'll get some real fun.

Tbf, there was a hilarious build on beta where you couldn't move, but blink has no CD. Combine that with the power that leaves a mirror image when you blink and all the MI buffing powers and it's got hilarity written all over it. I've yet to see the blinknoCD power on live though.

 

Some of the Torghast powers exist exclusively to be bad. I think that's an issue in itself. Making Torghast doable if you only get bad powers is probably fine, but it kind of defeats the purpose. When you get a "good" run, Torghast is really fun. I think that there should (if there isn't already) be an upgrade you get that makes it so the game always offers you a % Stat boost so that even the most miserable run can be done in a decent time by stacking a Stat to absurd points.

I play a prot paladin though so when I run around with 100k hp and grind everything to death that's kind of me living out the fantasy.

Will be trying shadow priest soon and see how that goes.

 

Is anybody else following the story?

Spoiler

All I'm saying is at least Arthas had the defence of being mind controlled. The moment where Sylvanas actually pulled the same stance as Arthas fro mthe WotLK cinematic I cringed so hard I almost snapped my own spine. I'm not sure if making me laugh is their goal though.

Props to Andruin for snapping back, but he's not as spiteful in throwing her bullshit back in her face as I'd like. And I feel like only Tyrande is still pissed off about the Teldrassil genocide. I think that's what's ultimately pissing me off.

Yes Sylvanas, tell us about our lack of agency after you've burnt countless of innocent alive, I'm totally interested in your existential crisis.

 

Me, I've personally had a long held suspicion that whoever writes Sylvanas at Blizzard is a hardcore closet Yandere Fan. Like they're literally making her into one...

 

I think I'm a little irrationally angry about it because she used to be my favourite character in the universe, and now I just can't stand her.

 

Lying liar lies to kind-hearted soul in order to manipulate him? I'm shocked I tell you, shocked!

Sylvannas is a bad person. She always has been. At her best she was a bad person whose interests aligned with the good of most of the people she was responsible for, but never think that the good of those people will get in the way of her goals.

Also starting to feel like there's nothing productive to do in WoW atm. I know that's total nonsense but now that the campaign has ended I have to either do raids (no time), m+ (would need to dedicate significant time to relearning all dungeons), or pvp (which I'm so far behind the curve on its not funny). I'm going back and trying to solo old content while I wait for some motivation to figure out what I want to do, and leveling some alts.

Does anyone know which class has necrolords and night fae as their recommended covenants?

 

Fire and Arcane mage are amazing with NF. I think hunters are great too, but I'm not 100% on that. Shadow Priest is balanced on all of them with Necro being slightly ahead.

I feel you on WoW. I actually quit this week after realising I was basically dreading logging in every day. The only thing I remotely enjoyed was the raid (I got H Sludgefist down with the guild I joined), but I despised doing literally every other bit of content.

• The Maw is garbage and shouldn't be in the game.
• Torghast gets repetitive reeeeeally quick. It needs way more powers, and it should only need 1 run a week to cap Soul Ash.
• Basically all the covenant stuff (NF only, I only played on my Mage) is a waste of time. Once you unlock the ability to get Runes and Soul Ash from mission table, just treat your covenant as transmog stuff. I can't believe how utterly garbage the Queen's Conservatory shit is.
• I have always despised WoW PvP, but if your guild is doing heroic and you despise gearing through M+, get used to it. PvP is basically the only reliable way to gear. It's actually a really great gearing system, if you like that content...
• And M+ is just terrible. The fact that you often get THIRTY FIVE anima as your only reward is a slap to the face.
  
• I think ultimately Raider.io ruined the game the most for me though. I have 206 ilvl and should be doing at least 10s, but I don't have the time or the desire to spam M+ to boost that stupid fucking score so I can get into pugs. Fuck me then I guess.

I just had that 'What am I even doing?' moment the other day and contacted my super chill GL to let her know I couldn't do it anymore. I don't want to go as far as to say I hate the direction the devs are taking the game, because I think a lot of my issues can be explained by the game just not being finished and pushed out.

 

So.... Ummm yeah.
I've been feeling oleaginous even opening World of Warcraft the past day...
Its especially confusing since I was actually enjoying the current patch and the story-line...
Feeling very unsure about continuing to playing WoW.

So, to the people who were actually playing the current content or even WoW TBC... what're you guys going to do?
Continue playing and ignore this shit-show?
Discontinue playing and delete anything to do with Blizzard?
Continue playing with a constant salty taste of ashes in your mouth (I'm personally leaning towards this one since I have a sub... )?

Edit: To the unaware. This Shit. The initial reply from the company was smarmy as all hell.
Fuck Blizzard. :/

 

Yeah, I get that.

But I think, what feels like a kick in the privates is the subscription. This has happened before with other games, but it was always a one time buy.

So it was always like Bought and forgot.

The sub though, feels like continued support to the company.
But I guess, there are a lot genuinely decent people who work at Blizz who would be disenfranchised if everyone boycotts it.

 

To expand on this a bit, everyone who is currently working or worked at Activision Blizzard over the last like decade has some level of culpability for the bullshit that happened at the company. The leadership deserves the lions share, to be sure, but the leadership can't make certain behavior acceptable over the protests of the employees at large. They're, at the very least, responsible for tacitly accepting it and not stopping the people engaging in the bad behavior.

It makes sense why they wouldn't, to be sure, and it's very human, but that Burke quote about evil only requiring good people to do nothing still applies. The employees at large not being willing to say "hey yo man, that shit ain't cool" is part of why things got so bad, and i don't have a lot of sympathy for them as a result

 

I hate this as Blizzard has so many of my favourite titles.

90’s-late 00’s they were amazing, but he last decade they have rarely had anything even approaching a win.

 

I think Blizzard's initial 'smarmy' response has a lot to do with the state jumping the gun. I think, if you look at some of the moves the company has been doing over the past few years, there might have been a feeling of 'we're trying to fix this, and you kneecapped us anyway.'

What I mean by that is... looking back... there's a lot of big wigs leaving Blizzard that I once thought one thing about, but with this recent story, might think differently about now. The almost creepy focus on inclusion with their 'Inclusion Nexus' or whatever at the last Blizzcon, or whatever it was called. I think the tone of the initial statement comes from that. They investigated, brought their results to the higher ups and likely said 'start changing or you're screwed,' and they did, then they screwed them anyway?

I can't say I have much sympathy (for Blizz). I can't imagine myself in a situation where even the most benign of these stories happening before me does so without cracking someone's head against a wall.

Especially with how much I despise drunk people in general.


As for feeling bad about consuming their products, do what feels right for you. I'll point out though that the people truly responsible for this culture (imo the ones not meting out consequences. I don't think you can NOT have stories like this happen without almost 10k employees) are in some deep shit now and will likely have to step down (including JAB). You'll only be punishing the people who slaved to make the games you love (?) despite these conditions.

I feel much more conflicted with games like Genshin and putting money in the pocket of the CCP, so I can sympathize with your plight.

 

Activision/Blizzard being a shitty company is not new information. I don't even think this lawsuit is new information, I think it's just been officially filed. Or maybe I'm just getting dejavu because I coulda sworn a lot of this sexual harassment stuff came up last year (or maybe the year before) and all those accusations are what caused the lawsuit to happen. I definitely know it's not the first time I've heard about Bobby Kotick being in Epstein's black book (though whatever that actually means is up for debate.)

People have been saying it for 15 years, but the only way the company is going to die is if they kill it themselves, and honestly, they've been doing a pretty good job at that. They've only have so many classics they can remake, and they've already poisoned that well in multiple ways. They have a super entrenched fanbase, not so dissimmilar to Magic players or WWE fans, that no matter how awful the company is, or how awful they treat their fans and customers, people will stick with them no matter what. Blizzard has had so many "straws that broke the camels back" that I find it hard to believe that this one in particular would be the one to finally do it.

 

Ehh, yes and no. Fanbases like the one Blizzard's built are remarkably resilient, but once things start to go wrong, they really go wrong. It's actually exactly what happened to WWE back in the early 90s IIRC; they were on top of the world and could do nothing wrong, and then practically overnight it was like a switch flipped and they couldn't do anything right.

The fanbase isn't going to go anywhere, until they've all already fucked off.

Will this be the thing that does it? I doubt it. Most people don't actually care all that much about a company being shitty, they care about the product they get from that company being something they like. I don't see this particular thing having much of an impact. If Blizzard doesn't manage an unequivocal win from one of the next handful of games they ship though? That might just do it.

 

Lol. Playing again. >_>

And...

Spoiler

Elune let Teldrasil burn to save Ardenweald.
Kekw
LolBlizz