The "monsters have more HP, players deal less damage, and you get less XP overall" was an explicit and purposeful change by Blizzard to elongate the leveling process. After all the furor they faced on the boards, in articles, and in face to face communication if they backtrack now i'll laugh so hard. Whether the stat squish affected how long the leveling process takes or not, it'd make me laugh even harder if they were like "well, yes want leveling to take longer, but not THAT much longer!".

But also cry because I don't have time to play right now. I fucking ALWAYS miss pre-xpac launch events...

 

Unless they super nerfed it after they recently hammered heirlooms and added scaling beginner zones, levelling is fine.

I thought it was bad too, but I realised I was just doing it wrong.

I just levelled a monk for the VE heritage armour.

As an example, I levelled from 60 to 80 with only doing Borean Tndra and Fjord.

 

When did everyone come to Ner'Zhul? Syao got me to go there during MoP, but I haven't been on in about a year.

 

Been maining Priest for a long while, so that was never in question going into bfa. However, I've been stumped for while what to play as an alt.

Originally it was between DK or DH. Pre-patch launched though and both just feel horrible with the global GCD introduction, so immediately turfed them as options.

Rogue still feels pretty good, but I'm kinda tired of them to be honest. Rogue was my first class in vanilla so has my most played time, I've kinda moved on (though I'll probably come back as usual as the xpac becomes more alt friendly. Sub is always great at high gear levels).

Then i started hearing good things about warrior. Note, Warrior is the one class I've never raided with. Each time I tried to pick them up they've always felt clunky and boring to me... (I would have adored Gladiator stance had I not inconveniently gone on hiatus when it was in it game, alas...)

Not anymore they fucking don't.

I haven't messed with arms yet, but Fury is bananas. So fun, so fast. They also have so much cleave, so dungeons will be even more fun.

Tl;dr if you're down on the gcd stuff as melee (I don't even notice it as a caster main tbh. I thought the bitching was overblown until I played DH and DK...), try warrior. He'll defo be my alt.

Really cool candidate to have as a Dark Iron dwarf too :3

Naturally I'll be farming SoO every week now to get the Garrosh shoulders. Too bad we can't hide our chest pieces...

 

going into bfa i am going to play my lock again and my alt will be my pally, i cant wait for dark iron dwarfs to make a shaman. or the new human druids

 

Demo got nerfed numbers wise. Looks like destro is the spec for highest damage (and least screen clutter, lol). The new lock animations look fantastic too.

If those new fox goblins are real, my rogue will be all over that lol.

 

I've been thinking about this pre-launch stuff and the story a lot this past week (so before even learning anything substantive, I've got to give Blizz props for an amazing and gripping set-up).

I'm starting to suspect that the Horde side of the scenario will end with the killing of Malfurion, while the Alliance will end with burning down Teldrassil as they retreat, so the Horde can't use it.

I'm thinking either Tyrande or Anduin orders it. I can see the former - already not a huge fan of the Horde - becoming a bit... peeved when her peace-loving 'beloved' who never had any interest in the Faction War is slaughtered, so I'm leaning that way.

Though, it would be a really odd decision to kill off Malf the second you write Illidan out of the story...

 

They already character assassinated Malfurion last expansion pack anyway (there are some people who STILL don't realize that it wasn't actually Malfurion that Tyrande was chasing after in that quest chain). Strictly speaking, none of the night elves ever really liked the new world tree anyway (and it was started by Fandral...) so it wouldn't bother me if they decided to burn it to keep it out of the Horde's hands.

That being said, the entire concept of conflict in Kalimdor is and remains to be stupid. The Night Elves as a whole have had the idiot ball super glued to their heads since WoW came out.

Do you REALLY mean that the Night Elves, whose empire spanned the entirety of Kalimdor post-shattering, not only abandoned their close allies the tauren to annihilation to some stupid centaur, but somehow remain unable to (despite close relationships with all the natural gods/forces) to push some (not even) roided up orcs out of their sacred forests? There are night elf generals whose experience defeating fel empowered factions exceeds 10,000 years. Yet a bunch of a rag-tag orcs and undead bodies can not only successfully launch a guerilla and air attack against a night elven town and several outposts, and seize sacred forest lands and defile it, for x-pac after x-pac.

Night Elves have been nerfed into oblivion in order to allow the fantasy of a Horde to exist since day 1. If the leaders of that faction are killed I wouldn't even care anymore, since the night elf race in WoW bears almost no resemblance to the faction it was in WC3, and none of the racial heroes (faction leaders + actual people in positions of authority) act in any way similar to their WC3 counterparts. How does Tyrande Whisperwind, general of the sentinels (masters of ambush tactics to the degree that it terrified even Grom Hellscream) need to be lectured on patience and trap detection by boy! Anduin?

Blizzard's destroying of the world tree is just one more in a long list of illogical and incompetent decisions that Blizzard has decided to force on the Night Elves.

edit:

P.S. you might be able to tell i'm salty that my favorite faction from the WC3 game got turned into poop.

 

There's a handful of plate chest xmogs that are basically invisible. Like, legit plate gear that looks like a handful of leather straps style.

I'll have to talk to my paladin buddy who likes to abuse that for hideous transmogs to get the names for em, but I definitely know they exist.

 

picking up a destro warlock as what's going to effectively be my first character on wow. (was recommended it by syao and luckylee)

 

Irregardless of spec, warlocks are a good choice. Affliction was #1 throughout Legion, and somehow the warlocks are getting nothing but love as we enter BfA.

I'll be sticking to my Hunter/Druid combo. It may not be the flavor of the month, but they've served me well.

 

While I think you're overstating how much Blizz have shit on NE as a race, there's no denying they've taken a rusty hatchet to Tyrande's character. They've turned her from a badass moon mage/assassin into some kind of spiritual soothsayer.

And don't even get me started on her model. I'm still triggered by her wearing fucking heels. It's even more egregious given his awesome her HOTS model is - perfect even.

Anecdotally, everyone I've spoken to didn't pick up on that it was Xavius impersonating a pussy Malf in that quest - it was communicated horribly. Compounded by Tyrande losing her shit instead of scoffing at the cringey acting.

Imagine how cool it would have been if, after say the second 'phantom' Malfurion, Tyrande ended the quest and said 'Enough of this charade. You are testing my patience and only delaying your demise,' or whatever.

I don't think it's unfixable though. As I've said, if you'd told me ol' weepy 'I'm so proud of my King' Jaina would become my undisputed fav character, fisticuffs would have ensued. There's been a lot of turnover in the story department. I'm willing to give them a charge to right the ship.




Re plate chest xmog, you can see all the options in game. Problem is what might seem like straps on an orc or human seem modest when on a dwarf, given the same model is stretched over a smaller torso. A torso that'll only get smaller as I reserved the name Furyosa in preparation for my female DI dwarf warrior (you see the Furiosa face tat and bald head?! So awesome!)

Yes. I know Furyosa is the best warrior name ever. Weep in envy.

 

So, people who said they're leveling toons...
Are you guys leveling from lvl 20 or just from lvl 100?
I was planning to lvl a DK in Ner'zhul right from 55 to 110...
So if someone is doing it from scratch I can do that too...

 

Dude, unless you're doing it on one of the available allied races, wait until you unlock the new ones. Heritage armour and all that.

 

Which of the things that I said was untrue or an exaggeration? Night Elves were described as a savage and vicious race which was able to call to arms the natural forces of the land against the destructive invaders. Chimera, stone giants, and faerie dragons were all useful weapons in their arsenal that disappeared between WC3 and WoW, even though the conditions that lead to their awakening and inclusion in the Night Elf forces did not disappear. If anything, those conditions were exacerbated.

The Night Elves were so effective in driving out the orcs from Ashenvale that Grom, not wanting to disappoint Thrall with his failure to obtain the material resources he needed, drank Mannaroth's blood again and killed Cenarius (which never gets talked about ever again, by the way, and Grom never expresses any remorse for). Yet somehow, after the events of the World Tree the orcs are able to fight evenly (and then outright win) against those same forces (who also conveniently never use their full might ever again). After WoW came out, the night elves moments of success occur almost entirely in novel only, or only as informed victories (we barely even see them show up to Gilneas), meanwhile the burning of Aastranaar, the defilement of Ashenvale, etc. are all displayed in game.

Also the Night Elves are shown to have a close relationship with the Tauren, yet the Tauren somehow need to be saved by orcs from marauding centaur and quillboar, even thought they're literally right next door to their night elven allies. A fair portion of the early tauren were all druids too, which all had access to Moonglade. Getting help would literally be as easy as talking to the Sentinels around Moonglade (since all the NE males were sleeping) and saying "hey, we're getting wrecked, do you mind walking a few miles and helping us not be annihilated?". Nevermind the tauren turning their back on a relationship that's been cultivated for 10,000 years to align themselves with people who invaded this world under the direction of the Burning Legion, and pretty recently had drank demon's blood to empower them to kill Cenarius and invade the lands of the Night Elf (which the Tauren would have known was sacred lands, but said nothing, and they also never had any problem with Grom's killing of Cenarius even though there's ample evidence to show that Cenarius himself would have personally taught at least SOME of the tauren druids that made up their society).

Blizzard has been murdering their lore from day one, Night Elves just got the worst of it because they're always being hyped up as a bunch of super-badasses (to date: they essentially turned back the Burning Legion's first invasion with the help of the dragon flights and natural gods, dismantled the Black Empire, etc.) that are getting their butts kicked by people who've been on Azeroth less than 100 years and primarily reside in a resourceless, barren lands where only minimal food can grow (at least pre-catacylsm) .

 

Started from level one, have by now toiled my way to 70.

 

The Black Empire was dismantled by the Pantheon. It was an empire that pre-dated even Azshara's empire. The old gods mostly fought amongst each other using elemental lords and their armies, the elves weren't even a race yet. The primitive trolls might have been around at that point, I'd have to re-read Chronicle to be sure, it's been a while.

Aman'thul literally tore Y'shaarj out of the earth, and he was buried so deep it basically tore the world apart and created the Well of Eternity. From memory the well caused the primitive Trolls to evolve into Elves over time. So no, they didn't help dismantle the Black Empire.

Their claim to fame was rebuffing the first invasion of the Burning Legion...which they kinda caused...

I said I agreed with you that Blizz has historically taken a dump on the NEs. I said you exaggerated it because they largely take a dump on everyone - that's what happens when those in charge of the story are constantly changing. The Tauren example is a good one, but there are loads of plot holes like that littered around the world. Like why the fuck would the Nightborne choose to side with the Horde after both the Alliance and Horde helped liberate them in Legion? Pandarens implementation in WoW? (I'm not an anti-panda man, but the whole 'just choose a side in a blood conflict and whatevs, we're chill' is so dumb) The killing off of the Aspects? Night Elves aren't unique.

The Tyrande thing is more egregious to me specifically because that's character-based. One can understand a race's entire lore shifting over time, things like that are commonly retconned when a new team wants to take a franchise in a different direction. The character specific butchering I find more distasteful, mostly because it feels like the writer behind it just shrugs it off because they're not their characters - I hope I'm wrong about that btw.

 

You do remember that the Black Empire predates even the Troll empire, right? Night Elves (Elves in general, really) didn't even exist until thousands of years after the Black Empire fell.

The Night Elves' singular achievement of note was being one of the primary contributors to the effort to drive off the Burning Legion in the first invasion, which they were largely responsible for in the first place, before immediately turning back to their isolationism and ignoring everyone else on Azeroth. There's plenty of things Blizzard've done to individual characters worth bitching about (Illidan springs immediately to mind, given what Legion's done to him, but he's far from alone), but the faction as a whole hasn't been meaningfully damaged from WC3 -> WoW. They just haven't been winning against the Horde, in the region that's about six inches away from the Horde's main center of power and commerce, and halfway across the continent from their own.

Also, I'm not sure where you got the "Night Elves and Tauren are totes allies" from. That shit didn't even exist in WC3 (it's literally the primary subplot of the Orc campaign in Reign of Chaos: "The Tauren have no allies, let's be their ally against the centaur and they'll help us settle here"), let alone WoW or any of the supplementary material.

 

There might be mention of a shared history/alliances - likely Druidic in nature, I mean Cenarius did bless the Highmountain Tauren after all - in Chronicle I just haven't gotten to yet, but given the tone of Wildfeather's complaints, and that it seemingly stems from the WC3 era, I doubt he's citing Chronicle either, lol.

 

You're right that I mis-remembered the black empire (you know, that ancient empire ruled by the Old Gods) and the empire of the Ahn'Qiraji (you know that ancient empire ruled by an Old God).

The War of the Shifting Sands happened. It was not the Black Empire but the Ahn'Qiraji. If you think the Night Elves went back to isolationism after the Sundering I'm not sure what lore you're reading.

Night Elves and Tauren fought together in the (now ret-conned) War of the Ancients, and the Tauren druids at Moonglade demonstrate that there was likely some relationship between the Tauren and the Night Elves.

The Horde didn't have a center of power or commerce when they first stepped onto Kalimdor and they were still able to beat back the Night Elves since almost day 1. The Horde had no business s being able to push back the Night Elves after the battle for Hyjal in the first place (except through plot armor, which they did). You can clearly see that if you look at the arrangement of lands arrayed against them, night elves had strongholds in Stonetalon, Feralas, 2 significant fortifications in Ashenvale and the entirety of Darnassus. Many of these are military installations maintained by druids or sentinels and have always been represented as well fortified and manned.

The Horde had Orgrimmar and Thunderbluff plus Camp Taurajo. The Horde was origi ally founded from the remnants of: the weakest tribe of Trolls, the remnants of a Tauren tribe, and the remnants of the orcish Horde (post internment, after facing several battles with the Human Alliance).

Were it not for plot armor any person would find it absurd that the Night Elves were (and do) actively lose the battle for Kalimdor.