The implication of that picture was that the players/game-world will turn to Arthas to be rid of Sylvanas.

 

I know, I was responding to trooper who thought of the possibility that the mastermind was Arthas.

 

They've said that you can level from 1 all the way to 50 in any previous expansion. So it should take about as long as it takes to get through, say, Northrend fully to finish leveling.

 

I always thought the “There must always be a lich king” line didn’t actually cone from Terenas but from Nerzhul. To basically keep the engine running.

I’m not all that hyped up about the slight retcon they got going regarding the crafting of the helm but I guess they can say the Nathrezim crafted it in the shadowlands or something.

Also I seemto recall the location for Icecrown was selected specifically for the fact that there was something “special” about it magically.

I don’t know there is too much nitpicking at the moment, but people are forgetting the most important fact.

“Tempest keep was merely a setback!”

 

I'm not sure what they're doing with gear. I desperately hope that they're finally going to axe titanforging, as that's one of the biggest issues with the game right now. I don't think they've said either way though.

I do know they're bringing back legendary gear like we had in Legion, but it's supposed to not have any RNG involved. My assumption is that it'll work like the end of Legion, where you do stuff and it drops currency that you can then spend on a specific legendary. Not sure though.

I've also heard that they're removing the infinite grind of their post-leveling leveling system (read: AP), but all the promo material talks about "Anima", which sounds an awful lot like Azerite, so I'm not sure how that's gonna work. My gut feeling is that they're keeping the system but removing the tail from it, so you finish leveling and then get to start Anima leveling, but it's got a fixed end point that you get to reasonably quickly. Could go a lot of ways though.

 

From the sounds of things, you earn the Anima currency from pretty much all content so you're not forced to do specific shit five times a week so you don't fall behind everyone else, and then you can spend it on a variety of things that can improve your character. That way you're not having to keep track of so many different grinds for different rewards that you can only do when the game says so.

 

Snippets I picked up:

• Levelling stuff would be super nice... if I didn't already have a max character of every relevant class because of all the boosts they gave away over the years... (I think I still need Shaman?)
• Titanforging is already gone in 8.3 and going forward. I think the bigger issue is if Corruption gear is a bigger clusterfuck - but I can't see that sticking around either given the specific contextual relevance it has to N'Zoth.
• The figure behind Sylvanas is supposed to be some yet unseen character called 'The Jailer' iirc, a totally new character apparently. Whether that's it or that's supposed to be Mueh'zala, I dunno.
• We're supposed to craft those new legendaries from mats we get from the tower thingie, completely deterministic.
• Odyn (with his eye) and Heljya (and her lantern) will be playing a big role.
• No faction 'rework' or removal because we play in a plastic world that's never allowed to evolve despite where the story takes us.
• 'Hell' (which I think The Maw serves as in the Shadowlands) is broken and all recently deceased heroes have been funneled into it rather than going to their correct resting place, boosting its power and starving the four other regions (represented by the Covenants) of their 'Anima.' We're the only ones able to travel to and from The Maw, which makes us of greatly intriguing to the denizens of the Shadowlands, who thought such a thing was impossible. This has been so for a couple of years, so expect to see Varian and Saurfang.

I've gotta say, the one thing I keep thinking about is Arthas in this expansion. What happens to him in The Maw (because he's surely 'repenting' there) without Frostmourne and Ner'zhul warping his mind. Is he still The Allmighty LK? Or did he kind of revert to Arthas? Are they gonna Illidan him? Can he please just fucking kill Sylvanas please? PLEASE?

 

From what I've read and looked at, the new zone "Exile's Reach" is compulsory for new players only.
What happens is the new players play Exile for lvl 1-10, ending with a 2-boss mini dungeon, which gets them familiar with the new game. If that's the person's first ever character on the game, they have to level up 10-50 on BFA. Again, I'm not completely sure about that, but its apparently to keep story continuity going on for new players, since BFA story line is kind of the precursor for Shadowlands.

For people leveling alts (Second character and forward), you can do 1-10 either in Exile or your Normal starting zones. Then you go to your respective capital cities where Chromie is waiting for you. You then get to choose which expansion you want to level up 10-50 inside.

I quite like this system tbh.

No, no. I don't think Arthas will be the Mastermind. I simply meant that Arthas/Uther/Kel'Thuzad/Ner'zhul might be a central figure/NPC/Plot-carrier for the shadowlands expansion.

Its almost confirmed that we'll see Kael'thas, Varian Wrynn and maybe Saurfang.

On a seperate note, reading through all the other media like books, novella etc, gives a much clearer picture of Sylvanas and BFA in general than what I had just playing the game. I would honestly recommend other people like me, for whom the lore forms a major part of their game-play experience, to read through the stuff. Or at least go through lore videos. Bellular did a nice one on Sylvanas recently.

And yeah, trailer notwithstanding, I am now somewhat hyped for Shadowlands. >_>

 

I mean, yes, but the corruption mechanic is just a (somehow) worse version of titanforging. It's literally doubling down on all of the worst parts of titanforging, and adding even more RNG to the affair. When I say I hope titanforging goes away, I mean any system that randomizes loot. The only layer of RNG loot should have is whether or not it dropped when you kill the boss. That's it. Anything on top of that turns the game into a never-ending slog and a direct path to hard burnout.

 

Tertiary stats are actually pretty great. It's essentially what Blizzard pretends Titanforging is, a "moment of excitement" where you go 'oh hey, neat, I won the slot machine roll', but with irrelevant rewards so that it doesn't feel bad when you don't have it. I have zero issue with tertiary stats, and wouldn't mind at all if that continues forever.

Gem slots are a bit less forgivable, as it's RNG with significant impact on the item (last I heard, 5-6 months ago, a gem slot is worth ~10 ilevels), but it's fairly common and the benefit is the same regardless of the gear it's on, so it's not horrible. I'd still vastly prefer them to go back to the BC/Wrath model, where sockets were just part of the itemization budget for items and meant to give you a degree of customization on your loot rather than dopamine triggers, but I can live with gems in the current form.

It's just that Titanforging is the spawn of satan, designed to psychologically coerce players into doing all of the content, forever, to chase after that godroll titanforge. It's the worst kind of game design, built to prey upon people already invested in the system to drive "engagement" and sunk-cost psychology for Blizzard's stupidly overpriced macrotransactions. It is beyond awful, and it needs to go the fuck away as quickly as humanly possible.

 

Don't underestimate how powerful gem slots are. They're insanely powerful and almost more cancer than ilvl bumps.

The tertiary stats are just hot garbage though - indestructible aside.

In a perfect world, I don't think I like loot drops at all that aren't physically worn by the monster that drops them, and are thus iconic items (think warglaives). In said perfect world, we craft most of our loot with trade goods we harvest from our foes. Or if the monster is big enough, we loot it off corpses they've eaten (for even more style points, make it loot from people we know they've defeated.

I don't think enough thought goes into the RP of loot in general.

 

Yeah, like I said, a gem slot is worth about 10-15 ilevels, or a two-stack warforge-titanforge. It's quite good.

There's two primary differences between warforging and gem slots though. The first is that a gem slot on item A is equivalent in all ways to a gem slot in item B, and it's fairly consistent to have somewhere in the 2-4 gem slots in a full set of top-tier gear. This means that you can get a gem slot on literally any piece of gear and get the same benefit as any other, so you don't need a specific piece to have a gem slot, just gem slots in general. And if you get lucky enough to have more than the 2-4 average, then great.

The second, and vastly more important IMO, difference is that a gem slot will never take normal raid loot and make it equivalent to mythic loot, for example. The big issue with titanforging isn't really that it introduces a layer of RNG to the loot; that's annoying, but it's not the end of the world. The big issue is that it creates a perverse incentive structure where if you want to min-max, you need to be doing literally every piece of content you can, meaning every raid on every difficulty, every mythic and mythic+ with worthwhile drops, etc, as often as you possibly can to maximize your chances for a god-roll titanforge, or you can constantly feel like you're not doing "enough" to min-max. It turns the traditional incentive structure on its head and ensures that no one can ever have best-in-slot gear, when a big part of the game is getting the best possible gear. This in turn leads players who hop on that treadmill to burn out super quickly and disengage from the game entirely.

And for better or worse, gem slots just can't do that. At worst, gem slots incentivize you to do the highest difficulty of the top raid every week, which if you're trying to min-max you'd be doing anyway. As a result, while I'm not super fond of random gem slots, I don't think they're nearly as much of a problem as titanforging.

Also, I 120% agree with you on loot being things you can physically see on the enemy. I would love that to bits, would make the loot feel more integrated with the world, rather than an extra system tacked on after the fact. They'd probably have to overhaul the loot system substantially to do that, or the art design would be incredibly busy on most bosses. Could probably come up with a variant on the old valor system, where bosses dropped currency that you could use to buy gear from a vendor, to do it, but they abandoned that for a reason, so I'm not sure how well it'd work out long-term.

 

It's actually less work, in my mind.

Take BWL for instance, majority of the 'loot' would be dragon scales, bones, teeth etc from majority of the enemies in that instance (Chromatic dragonscales have certain properties, killing Vael gives you super duper red dragon scales that's brilliant for crafting healer gear etc).

You use those items to craft epically powerful loot for most slots. Maybe there's only 5-10 'named' pieces of loot in the entire instance that come from Nefarian - his helm that drops off Rag for some reason, his mace, rings/necks etc. Maybe Vael has a few pieces of jewelry too. Maybe they're legendaries like the Glaives.

The loot should tell a story. AND PROFESSIONS SHOULD BE AWESOME!

 

I'm not if they explained it somewhere in greater detail, but how will this work? Will you just go through said portal and experience the zones that were added with whichever expansion you choose to play in or will the whole world-state revert to whatever it was?

 

My assumption is that it would work exactly like it does now, where you get brought to the starting area for that expansion with a breadcrumb quest, and then you go through the expansion like normal.

 

500 pulls deep into Azshara and I'm never pulling her again with my guild even though we haven't killed her.

This is how it ends i guess haha

 

I'm ignorant about the specifics as well...
Does Chromie turn back time to get you into those zones? Or do you just go and do quests from the bulletin board like we do now, after choosing a specific expac? Or is there a special questline that then merges into the expac story?
No idea lol.
All I know is we get to choose the expac after Lvl 10.

 

Given it's Chromie, by definition she's turning back time to put you in that expansions' 'time period'. From what I understand, you're not 'locked in' and can move to another exp, but you can go 10-50 in one expansion.

The whole point of this feature is as a NG+, so story isn't a top issue. Story is a main issue for new players, which is why they need to go 10-50 in BfA, as it leads into the latest xpac and provides the needed context for the latest story.