Gear as a ‘Reward’ in Warcraft

So I don’t usually comment on stuff but SoulSoBreezy posted a YouTube video about the datamined ‘18 gilded cap’ from delves for season two. He invited comments and I had thoughts.

My first argument was basically that I don’t think there should be a cap at all.

NO delve specific cap. That’s what I think. I mean I started the season running 8x delves every week to max vault. I did that for like a month on my main and then I didn’t need to anymore. I did it sometimes on an alt but truthfully I didn’t have time. For someone that just does delves? Let them play! Equality. Fun for everyone.

I raid. My guild gets Ahead of the Curve every tier. In The War Within I switched classes (from Prot Paladin —-> Prot Warrior) and tried M+ for the first ever time. I’ll only run guild groups and we don’t have a regular M+ time slot like we do for raids, so I will go weeks in between runs. Currently sitting at about 2.2k score.

I say all this to establish my ‘bonafides’ because I feel like the argument for “cap of 18” is to somehow ‘pacify’ players that raid/M+ and that feels like absolute nonsense to me.

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Twenty Years and Player Housing

Just found this in my drafts. I forgot to finish it haha.

So player housing huh? Did anyone have that on their bingo card? Honestly no I wasn’t expecting it. I figured they’d have to have an announcement of something for the 20th anniversary but I pegged my expectations a lot lower, I was thinking a new allied race. I remember reading an interview with Ion I think and he said player housing would take so much dev time, that it would only be something they’d do if they were effectively ‘sunsetting’ the game. Like you can have player housing, or you can have new raids/dungeons. I mean that was the joke when garrisons happened. They actually put a gravestone in the garrison of ‘Ray D Tear’ or something like that.

Part of me is worried. I mean are subscription numbers dwindling so much they need to pull out the ‘big guns’ like this? On the other hand content pace seems to be increasingly massively (I can’t keep up!) so it’s not like they are slowing down on patches. I don’t get the vibe of a game sliding into retirement. Maybe it was simply that they wanted something super big to celebrate 20 years and it doesn’t get any bigger than player housing!

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The Waning Days of Dragonflight

Back in December I made a post debating about whether I would unsubscribe or not – What’s your Game? – and ultimately I think I was unsubbed for all of a couple of weeks. The sub ended December 28th and the blizz announced the Seeds of Renewal patch (with Reclaiming Gilneas) and I just couldn’t resist. The Gilneas starting zone is one of my favourites. Back in Cata days half my alts were worgen.

Anyway, I was still on a raid break. I sat Season 3/Amirdrassil out. I put in that blog post that I was trying to play more casually and remember why I loved the game. That I had got hooked achievement hunting/collecting mounts, pets etc. and to go back to that. This ‘attempting to play casually’ is something I have kept doing in the last few months.

Before I continue one last note about another blog post, the one I did on the Waning days of Shadowlands. In that I talked about some of my issues with the Shadowlands expansion and a bit about the upcoming Dragonflight – what I liked the sound of, what I was hesitant about, and what I wished was coming but wasn’t. I think I noted in that blog post that I had done a similar post pre-Shadowlands (it’s becoming tradition it seemed) and that it was interesting how much I still agreed with my past self – how much had actually come true. That is very much what has happened this time.

My big concern with Dragonflight before it launched was the profession rework – what do I hate the most now? Ah yes, the profession rework. The whole quality star system should go die in fire. I haven’t succeeded in levelling any profession bar fishing and skinning I think? And it pisses me off having to buy enchants from the AH (they are expensive).

But before I get too much into that how am I feeling about the game these days? I said above I had considered taking a break, and was trying to remember why I liked playing. Six months later – have I remembered?

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What’s your game?

I’ve never been as good at blogging here as I hoped. In the beginning this was my Warcraft blog, and then I expanded it to Swtor and Marvel Heroes (and not bothered changing the header since). I now ramble about all kinds of things. I mean let’s not pretend otherwise, these are rambles. I pretend like there’s a difference as I separate out my copied over tumblr rambles from the ‘real’ blog posts, but really they are much the same stylistically. In the beginning I think I tried to make them more legit – just as I tried to keep a blog theme – but this is what it’s become. As this is basically my private ramble spot, as I don’t think anyone reads these even if they are technically publicly accessible, I guess it doesn’t matter.

Anyway, I’m not too sure why that was on my mind as an intro but it feels related somewhat because this is a blog post about Warcraft, and about approach I guess.

I have made a number of posts about Warcraft over the years. If you track back through them you’ll see I change my opinions about some things. I’ve been playing this game on/off for a long time (since January 2010) and as I have changed, the game has changed. There have been times I’ve felt the game has become incompatible with me, and that was the case recently.

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It’s that time again

I think I use that blog title a lot. I am sure I have used it for NaNo in the past but really it works for anything with a countdown to a ‘launch’ date.

Dragonflight. In less than two weeks we’ll be levelling to 70 (again) and I am actually quite pumped. This is typical of me pre-expansion launch. I make all kinds of plans about how it “will be different this time” in terms of getting stuff done like levelling professions, gearing alts etc. and then it never turns out like that. I haven’t been able to do anything but run my main since Mists. I eventually did level the Shadowlands professions but not really in time to do any good with them. The Legion and BfA ones are still a mess…

Anyway! Reality will bite soon enough and I wanted to do a post talking about the classes and the various specs. I’ve been playing this game over a decade now. New classes have been added, and new specs; specs have been reworked, and some things have stayed the same or have they? If it’s been a long time unless I try it then how do I truly know? I guess I don’t and I can’t even say it’s unlikely to have changed in a significant way as – rogues. I loved the aesthetic of that class but until they had a big rework in Legion? I couldn’t kill anything before I died and it was just zero fun.

So let’s talk classes!

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I got into Beta!

The last beta I was in was Mists of Pandaria. I believe from looking back at the blog posts for that time that was because of the ‘annual pass’ blizz were running. I think they did some kind of ‘get a beta key’ incentive. Honestly it was so long ago I don’t remember. Anyway this time I just won the luck of the draw. The moment beta is announced I always check that I am opted-in but expansions have come and gone and no invite has come my way. I totally wasn’t expecting one and then Friday, Spetember 30th – boom! What an email to wake up to! I’ve been drafting this blog post ever since. I intended to do my blogging about it but time has just flown and now it’s looking like pre-patch might drop next week. The expansion is releasing end of next month and with the number of bugs…

Anyway! How has beta gone?

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Musings on Warcraft in the Waning Days of Shadowlands

It’s probably a bit premature to call them “waning days” as there’s probably best part of a year (minimum) left in the expansion. However, we’re into the last patch and I have some swirling incoherent thoughts, that I’m going to try and make sense of and write down.

There have been eight Warcraft expansions thus far. I start off with this fact because I don’t feel like I can really evaluate Shadowlands without also referencing what came before it. I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the very real impact outside factors have. I first started playing Warcraft at the end of January 2010 – over 12 years later I’m still here, but I’m 12 years older and a lot has happened in those intervening years. There is always the question when the ‘rosy-tinted glasses of nostalgia’ come out, as to whether the game was better back in the day, or whether it was the place I was in my life that influenced how I viewed it.

So what did I think of Shadowlands then?
I phrase it as ‘what I thought’ because this is a highly personal evaluation. It’s not what was objectively good or bad – it’s how I felt about it. I said to someone yesterday that what I thought sucked, might have been what someone else thought was the best part – and this is probably why blizz struggles so much. They literally can’t please everyone. Quite often I feel that then leaves them pleasing nobody, as they try to find the middle-ground, but I digress.

It is absolutely no secret (except to this blog because I haven’t done a post about Warcraft since 2019 apparently) that I haven’t vibed with Shadowlands. But why is that? Let’s take points one by one.

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Warcraft Woes

None of this is serious I’m just venting.

1) I’m raiding on an alt because I’m playing on a different server. I haven’t had the time, nor the inclination, to do stuff twice so that alt hasn’t done the war campaign, or Nazjatar, doesn’t have reputations or good essences, the heart of Azeroth is still low etc. AND it’s a Demon Hunter which I love (great class!) but compared to the other tank classes for raids it sucks. I feel so damn squishy because I don’t have the Demon Spikes uptime and I feel like I’m missing a cooldown.

2) So obvious answer is to level a better class (paladin perhaps?) and then swap as there’s probably 9 months or so left of BfA including a whole raid tier BUT with the levelling revamp in Shadowlands I don’t want to level anything now. It’s going to be so much faster (apparently/hopefully) and so I’m thoroughly demotivated on that which is annoying me because I want to get set up on this other server. I figured I’d read the beta reports, find out what tank class is doing the best (out of paladin/demon hunter/monk/druid, or I guess death knight but I don’t like that one so much), and then level that one from 9.0 onwards. I’ll probably (definitely) still level Tai first and complete everything but with the New Player+ they talked about in Shadowlands, hopefully whatever main alt I pick I’ll be able to maintain better than I have with all the damn prerequisites in BfA.

3) Warcraft costs money and I’m about to be very poor. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to afford the subscription once it runs out in January, let alone buy Shadowlands right now. So all of the above could be utterly irrelevant. At least I’ll still have Swtor that I can play and my Steam games.

New Class: Mercenary

I said I was disappointed that there was no new class announced for Shadowlands, that made me think what could they have added?

There are 12 classes. So looking at them (or how I see them anyway):

  • warriors are basic fighters, the footmen (plate) (tank, melee)
  • paladins are warriors + have the devotion to the holy light. The healing spec makes sense to me because in a battle, standing still (easy target) should be armoured up (plate) (tank, melee, heals)
  • death knights are warriors but they draw from death with the runic system etc. (Plate) (tank, melee)
  • shaman draw on the elements, have totems (mail) (melee, range, heals)
  • Hunter has a melee spec now I think? (Which is weird), marksman (all the shooting) and beast mastery (animal friend) so a lot more diverse. They have generally been marketed as being a nature type hunter, roaming the wilds (mail) (melee, range)
  • Demon hunters were elf warriors I guess originally and then studied the legion and got their powers from the fel (leather) (tank, melee)
  • Druids are literally shapeshifters getting their power from nature (leather) (tank, melee, range and heals)
  • Monks are martial artists with a love of beer (leather) (tank, melee, heals)
  • Rogues are the sneaky, backstabbing type wielding daggers and stealthing around picking locks (leather) (melee)
  • Priests have the devotion to the holy light but they also have the void in the shadow spec (cloth) (ranged, heals)
  • Mages throw magic around (cloth) (ranged)
  • Warlocks are like mages but they went to the dark side and have demons (cloth) (ranged)

So what are we missing? Well that depends on what angle we’re approaching the problem. Armor types split 3/2/4/3 with mail being the one trailing the pack. There are 6 tank options, 5 heals, 9 melee and 6 range. More important than the details there is the big question – what are we aesthetically missing? Continue reading

Not good company to be in

I’ve been dwelling on the Shadowlands announcement trying to work out what was bothering me about it.

Is is the lack of clarity regarding levelling and the future of the game? Because as I said in my previous post if it’s Classic-BfA choose your poison, then Shadowlands, that’s cool with Shadowlands being the new thing BUT what about when the ninth expansion comes? Will it be Classic-BfA choice, then Shadowlands, then new thing? Isn’t that just restarting the cycle? Also people will be sick of Shadowlands and the levelling curve will be weird.

Is it the lack of clarity regarding levels and what they will do to the ability to solo old content and also what about flying? Because yes they have confirmed we should still be able to do everything we can currently re: farming old raids etc. BUT how exactly will that work? Also I currently can fly everywhere. So if I want to quest in Kul Tiras/Zandalar and level an alt flying around then I can. In Shadowlands when the BfA level range becomes 10-50, what about then? Are they going to take away what I can already do? I see the backlash riots from here.

Is it the lack of concrete information and conflicting statements on levelling? Because I did some quick and dirty math and Ion said that “getting a level every 15 minutes doesn’t feel epic” so I’m assuming they don’t want that BUT they have said levelling will be 60-70% faster and that 10-50 will allow completion of an expansion. The two don’t mesh together very well as using Mists as an example, when that was current it was approx a level per zone, which splitting 40 levels makes for 6.6 levels a zone. It did not take anywhere near 7 hours to do a zone, more like 2-3 which makes for a level every 25 minutes or so? Now I’m not bothered by this I like the whoosh sound, I just want confirmation it will be faster because it takes so long now I’m completely demotivated by it. (also I will not be levelling until Shadowlands).

Or is it simply the feeling of dread about lack of a real key feature?

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