That's literally the leveling experience. You get a taste of each one before you choose.

But you're a Mail wearer, all mail transmog post Cata is trash lol

 

Yeah, that's mostly what I'm waiting on; that and confirmation on the mounts.

As for mail transmog, that's largely true. The Shaman set from Nighthold is pretty great, but the rest is varying degrees of trash.

 

Wow. Torghast looks fucking incredible...

 

From a graphically stand point they've data mined potential support for ray tracing. Whether or not that is just the new zones or a full overhaul, if at all, remains to be seen.

 

I dunno if you're referring to Torghast, but by 'looks fucking incredible' I mean they look like they're insanely fun to play.

 

Yeah, it looks like Blizz is finally catering to the core player group who're focused on gameplay a lot.

For me though, the story/lore needs to be told cohesively.
I just did a full play through of BfA with a newly leveled warrior and it is confusing and disconcerting to say the least. To put it in perspective, there is a good long story in there. But it is told in such a fucking messy manner that almost everything gets lost in the tedium.

I'm of the opinion that if you want to test the story telling, play through the whole thing in a stretch without patches. And BfA sucked in that manner. Legion was absolutely beautiful compared to this. You could fully experience the whole expac even if you created a character in the last 3 months of the expac and after the last patch at that. From the dream, to nighthold, to suramar, to argus... you could enjoy it in a completely standalone fashion.

BfA messed up in that. All things considered, BfA had a good story to tell. A little complex, but good. but they buried it under sooo much grind... Some content, you couldn't heads nor tails about without having read the books that they released. Some , you couldn't make sense of without playing a Horde toon in parellel and some you'd just get tired of the grind for unrelated stuff. And that ending was absolutely dreadful.

Hopefully Shadowlands is more cohesive than that. I don't mind if its simplistic, but it needs to be told in a satisfying manner.

Related thing I'm absolutely excited about, is the alt lvling. I want to fully experience legion while lvling damnit.

 

I don't know about that. They are still making weird choices on class designs. WoW gameplay was peaked on MoP and is in constant downhill since then.

 

I can't really comment on that, since I'm not a gameplay focused player...

But, A lot of shamans and warriors I've talked with are happy about the changes. The lone balance druid is decidedly unhappy and the DH... well, lol DH is simplistic to begin with.

Having said that though, all that most people are expecting, is that the gameplay gonna be better than BfA. Which is a very low bar to surpass, lol.

 

Current wow players are like battered wives at this point. We had everything in MoP. Classes could do a lot of things so you could actually bring the player not the class. Valor, coins, reforging and default gem slots (I cannot believe this became something to be missed) means that you have good control over your stats beyond farming a set of new gear. While titanforging existed (and it was a mistake that should've removed then) its effect was very tiny and when you did get one all you said was "huh, neat".
I stopped playing during Legion after burned out from mythic dungeon grind. They turned this game into a Diablo clone several layers of RNG. Challenge mode dungeons were a beautiful concept but they have to ruin it.

 

Mythic+ is actually great, quite possibly the best addition they've ever made to the game (though by the look of it Torghast may quite possibly take that spot).

BFA's big problems are 1) everything is systemitized and connected together, leading to several infinite grinds, 2) class design is shit, and 3) the post-loot systems are somehow even worse. The rest of it ranges from acceptable to actually pretty great, but since those things are so core to the game, the game itself is kinda shit right now. Shadowlands looks to be fixing 2 and 3, at minimum, and since there's no AP and the like, it's probably fixing 1 as well.

On the whole, Shadowlands appears to be a very good expansion that will finally be addressing the issues Legion introduced and were carried over into BFA. Can't say any more than that until I can actually play it, but everything shown of it so far has been phenomenal.

 

There's one downside I see to Slands atm. It looks like (as things stand) classes will be/feel very bare-boned again, and we'll be getting a lot of the power we want through the legendaries we craft in Torghast and through Covenant abilities/soulbinds.

I think I'd be fine with this if there weren't so many dead talents in our talent trees.

 

Agreed. They've made some decent first steps with most of the classes I know well enough to comment on, and it's early in the alpha, so I'm moderately hopeful that they'll keep iterating and improving on the class design changes. But there's only one way to find out.

 

Unfortunately, they've basically said 'this is it,' regarding Class Design for the most part. They've said they're open to more changes on the pruning and unpruning side, but this large dump basically represents where the classes will be come launch bare a few exceptions (missing talents, general numbers, etc)

 

True, but at the same time, what Blizzard says and what Blizzard does don't always line up perfectly. It wouldn't shock me to not see any changes, but it also wouldn't shock me if they did adjust some things, especially if they get a bunch of feedback around it.

Edit: Personally, what I'm hoping happens is they add the soulbinds and whatnot into the alpha and immediately get a bunch of feedback of "this shit is awful, just make the good bits of this baseline and scrap the rest of it" and they actually do that. Will it happen? Probably not, but I can dream damnit.

 

I think I'm in the minority when it comes to Covenants.

I genuinely want them to put their foot down on this. This isn't like Azerite armour, this is about being an RPG. Choices don't matter anymore in WoW, the thought of having to make a choice (with sufficient knowledge going in ofc) that'll give me significant power, yet also have drawbacks, really excites me.

Some of the powers I've seen need to be changed or better tuned obviously (there's one that's such a default choice for Arcane Mages that it's absurd), but that's fine. That's an easy fix. Their design philosphy is that each covenant should get their time to shine, and that's just so great. It means it means something that you're a Kyrian Rogue (you weirdo), or a Night Fae Disc Priest etc.

They'll never be able to go full RPG (like, say, giving up combat potential so you can talk your way out of problems, or steal etc), but this is a step I'm excited for that I have no doubt will be reversed by launch so that you can swap covenants like talents and none of it means anything.

As usual.

 

Honestly, I'm perfectly fine with Covenants and locking in the abilities and the like. As long as there isn't one that causes you to do double the damage of folks in the other Covenants or whatever, which should be pretty easily doable with even minimal playtesting, it's perfectly fine to not be able to freely swap Covenant abilities.

I just think specifically soulbinds, as they've described them, are going to be a colossal pain in the ass, just like Legion relics were. I hated relics then, and I hate them now. The whole system is bad and they should feel bad for even considering it. At the very least, they should ditch the stupid consumable shit in it and just make it a series of unlocks with each individual soulbind.

Edit: I will say, though, that at least they're not making the mistake of that godawful forge from Argus and randomizing the consumables on top of it. Gotta give them credit for not being that retarded.

 

levelling 3 rogues because of the boa recipes for covenant specific legendaries fuck me

 

Lol.
My main is Dps DH (Alliance) of course.
I've also leveled a Human Warrior, also alliance.
Have a half leveled Horde Tank DH.
I might just level another Horde range toon.
Gonna be playing 4 toons.

The thing to see is how exciting the leveling gonna be after this.

 

I wish they would change the heirloom system to a more sacrificial system instead of the gear scaling to a significant degree with each level. You're way too powerful kitted in full looms but I feel like I'm wasting time if I don't wear them. So I would like to see a system where you still get your xp buffs but your heirlooms are only as good as the best piece if gear you have sacrificed to it for that toon. You can only sacrifice gear you can equip. So if you find Shadowfang at level 19 and you are level 19 and can equip it, you sacrifice it to your heirloom and it replicates that. So if you than ding level 20, your heirloom sword is still the level 19 Shadowfang until you find a better piece of gear to sacrifice to upgrade your heirloom. Loot actually matters when leveling again, and if people want to twink they would have to put effort and not just be lazy and wear full looms. PvP and PvE becomes enjoyable for new players to WoW because they don't get curbstomped as hard, or get carried through dungeons. Some people want to play the game and not feel irrelevant. People with heirlooms would still get the xp buffs but you wouldn't grossly outpower new players who don't have heirlooms, just outlevel them instead.

 

I'll probably drop priest if Shadow doesn't get reworked. I still love Disc, but I don't wanna play a class with only one spec i wanna play.

Honestly, it seems like only the melee classes look interesting to me. Probably not Rogue despite how much I love Sub.

Thinking Pally or Warrior. I've never mained either. I'm leaning Pally... but i do love my DI fem dwarf warrior Furiosa lol...

I was also seriously considering shaman, but ugh... Mail mog...