Well, 8.1 dropped and by the next day I'd finished all of the new content (except the pet battle dungeon). Take that as you will. Along with a ton of bug fixes, Blizzard released:
- a new warfront, which was a re-skinned version of the first one. If you already have 340+ gear, once you've played it once, you're just a glutton for punishment.
- two new island adventures
- a continuation of the war storyline…to a point. Only 3 of the four mission series are playable currently and the fourth will be available late next month.
- added new recipes for professions (the initial ones were seriously lacking diversity)
So for now, no new dungeons or a raid until the second half of January. There's supposed to be world incursions to fight, but I haven't seen one in a couple of evenings of playing.
Everything else is them playing with dials to try to improve things. They've increased the rates at which you earn artifact power (azurite) and gold a bit. They've lowered the xp requirements for leveling up characters pre-BFA considerably. They've increased the rewards for letting your Alliance self get ganked over and over again in world pvp from 10% to 30%, but it's all uninspiring.
For excitement, I enabled "war mode" on Strev and found out 3 things:
1. People don't want people with war mode on in their questing groups, even if it is just to kill a world boss
2. I seriously suck at world PvP. (To be fair I knew this one already.)
3. By making them significantly more frustrating, World PvP actually makes finishing world quests more engaging.
Spent a little time on Spindizzy and leveled her up to WoD territory. She's now 91 and going strong. I skipped a lot of WoD content when I started Legion. Consequently, no flight and it is slower going. Still a lot of fun, even if she dies more often than Strev & Anyth-- not having an escape button like invisibility or feign death results in higher repair bills.
I may block out some time with Strev just to go back and earn the "Pathfinder" flight rewards for the place.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Sunday, November 25, 2018
and...that was BfA
Called it. So the bloom fell off the rose when I discovered that the very final Jaina mission, the Siege of Boralus, was a mythic-only dungeon you can't queue for. SERIOUSLY, BLIZZARD? Gating story content behind MYTHIC dungeons---whargarbl. Fine. I figured "How bad could it be?" and spent about 30 minutes in LFG finding other kindred souls who just wanted the stupid thing done for the story.
The long and the short of it was we wound up with a skilled healer, an incredible tank who took the time to explain what he was doing and why, and a couple of other DPS who .. well, tried really hard and were nice people who cared enough to watch strat videos on the fights beforehand.
All things being equal, the boss fights were actually quite enjoyable and the map was really fun. I took one death because of not fully understanding the first boss' fight mechanics, but after a battle rez, I quickly clued in on what to do (drag boss into bombs when he fixates on you) and how to do it (run to the other side of the bomb, not through it). To our credit, although we lost people in every fight, we never wiped. I tell you, I have never seen people gush at the end of a dungeon run like that. Best of all, I got to put the Jaina plot to rest.
I'm now revered with all of the factions except the Tortilla Seekers (yes, I know that's not the turtle faction's actual name but now it is the only thing I see), which allowed me to finish off the artifact necklace upgrades (which itself is now level 30) and finish the rest of the "war campaign" story… which wrapped up all of the current available content, sort of. Technically I still need revered with that last faction for the Pathfinder achievement and getting exalted with 7th Legion gives me access to another race of dwarves I will never play. As an aside, I wish I had known about the Contracts a few days earlier-- Inscriptionists can make "Contracts" that give a week-long buff that gives a bonus 10 rep for a specific faction per world quest completed. You can get them on the AH for under 100g, so that's nice.
I dropped inscription, which I had just picked up for Legion, and went back to my old reliable skinning. A few minutes yields hundreds of gold worth of materials and that gets me by. All told, after wasting about 30k on very short-term gear upgrades and another 6k on pets, I have a bank full of enchanting materials and have broken even on gold.
So, with BfA effectively "done", I can say that they seriously phoned it in this expansion. I enjoyed the ride, but there's nothing they didn't do better in previous expansions and certain changes with professions just seem petty. Example: They removed First Aid skill from the game, although tailors can still make bandages. Fishing goes from 1-150, but there's no difference between any of it. No related achievements; the fish from pools can be caught consistently without pools. There's no real 'trash fish' and even if you catch gray junk it is 3+ gold a cast. I'm just disappointed, really, at the total lack of effort.
Looking at the 8.1 preview, I'm hopeful. Well, not for fishing, of course, but I'm looking to see where they go with the story. In the meantime I have two months left on the sub, so I'm achievement hunting and solo clearing old 25-man heroic raids for transmog skins.
Skimming over some of my older posts, here's a couple of things I got wrong:
- The amazing world quest map layouts and buttons to auto-join groups isn't part of the base game. It's an AddOn called "World Quest Tracker" and I highly recommend it.
- With Warfronts doesn't matter who wins...it may be like a pve tol barad, but it will ALWAYS switch sides. If your side holds the zone, you get to farm it for stuff for a week. After a few days, the other side contributes enough raw materials to "fight for it", where they can play the mini-game for a few days then control it for a week.
Quite finally, I broke down and joined a guild just because I liked their name: "Heathens Aplenty". They are doing heroic raiding-- maybe I'll see about tagging along for one of those rides.
The long and the short of it was we wound up with a skilled healer, an incredible tank who took the time to explain what he was doing and why, and a couple of other DPS who .. well, tried really hard and were nice people who cared enough to watch strat videos on the fights beforehand.
All things being equal, the boss fights were actually quite enjoyable and the map was really fun. I took one death because of not fully understanding the first boss' fight mechanics, but after a battle rez, I quickly clued in on what to do (drag boss into bombs when he fixates on you) and how to do it (run to the other side of the bomb, not through it). To our credit, although we lost people in every fight, we never wiped. I tell you, I have never seen people gush at the end of a dungeon run like that. Best of all, I got to put the Jaina plot to rest.
I'm now revered with all of the factions except the Tortilla Seekers (yes, I know that's not the turtle faction's actual name but now it is the only thing I see), which allowed me to finish off the artifact necklace upgrades (which itself is now level 30) and finish the rest of the "war campaign" story… which wrapped up all of the current available content, sort of. Technically I still need revered with that last faction for the Pathfinder achievement and getting exalted with 7th Legion gives me access to another race of dwarves I will never play. As an aside, I wish I had known about the Contracts a few days earlier-- Inscriptionists can make "Contracts" that give a week-long buff that gives a bonus 10 rep for a specific faction per world quest completed. You can get them on the AH for under 100g, so that's nice.
I dropped inscription, which I had just picked up for Legion, and went back to my old reliable skinning. A few minutes yields hundreds of gold worth of materials and that gets me by. All told, after wasting about 30k on very short-term gear upgrades and another 6k on pets, I have a bank full of enchanting materials and have broken even on gold.
So, with BfA effectively "done", I can say that they seriously phoned it in this expansion. I enjoyed the ride, but there's nothing they didn't do better in previous expansions and certain changes with professions just seem petty. Example: They removed First Aid skill from the game, although tailors can still make bandages. Fishing goes from 1-150, but there's no difference between any of it. No related achievements; the fish from pools can be caught consistently without pools. There's no real 'trash fish' and even if you catch gray junk it is 3+ gold a cast. I'm just disappointed, really, at the total lack of effort.
Looking at the 8.1 preview, I'm hopeful. Well, not for fishing, of course, but I'm looking to see where they go with the story. In the meantime I have two months left on the sub, so I'm achievement hunting and solo clearing old 25-man heroic raids for transmog skins.
Skimming over some of my older posts, here's a couple of things I got wrong:
- The amazing world quest map layouts and buttons to auto-join groups isn't part of the base game. It's an AddOn called "World Quest Tracker" and I highly recommend it.
- With Warfronts doesn't matter who wins...it may be like a pve tol barad, but it will ALWAYS switch sides. If your side holds the zone, you get to farm it for stuff for a week. After a few days, the other side contributes enough raw materials to "fight for it", where they can play the mini-game for a few days then control it for a week.
Quite finally, I broke down and joined a guild just because I liked their name: "Heathens Aplenty". They are doing heroic raiding-- maybe I'll see about tagging along for one of those rides.
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Proudmoore Keep on Burnin'
Left a mage job in Gnome City
Castin' in Gnomeregan e'ry night and day,
And I never lost one moment of sheepin'
Worryin' bout Theramore's kin'
But we'll keep on yearnin'
For Jaina who keeps bein' spurned an'
Trolled and trolled and bein' sold up the river…
Wiped a lot of times in Uldir,
Didn't stand in fires, but still the tanks cried,
But I never topped the DPS charts,
'Til I ran Alterac and nuked far and wide
But I kept on yearnin'
For Jaina who keeps bein' spurned an'
Trolled and trolled and bein' sold up the river…
So I went down to the river,
Walked among the shadows; found Jaina inside
There she stood haunted, hounded by the troubles,
Burdens that she's carried since the day Arthas died…
So I finished up the Jaina Proudmoore stuff with just the Very Final Quest to go, which is (of course) a new dungeon. It promises to be nifty in a manning a city under siege sort of thing. Disclaimer: nifty in a WoW sort of way. I'm fully expecting it to fall MARATHONS short of the actual city-under-siege Epic Battle content I played in Lord of the Rings Online. (For all of its faults, some things they did incredibly well.) The earlier Jaina rescue portion was well-handled and blended cut scene and story throughout a single player instanced scenario. It really struck home how much emotional baggage she's been carrying and internalizing since the days of Warcraft III. All in all, I wound up liking a character I hated and liking a character I loved even more.
Nice work, ActiBlizzard-- you get one point for this, but I'm sure you'll screw something else up soon to make up for it.
Castin' in Gnomeregan e'ry night and day,
And I never lost one moment of sheepin'
Worryin' bout Theramore's kin'
But we'll keep on yearnin'
For Jaina who keeps bein' spurned an'
Trolled and trolled and bein' sold up the river…
Wiped a lot of times in Uldir,
Didn't stand in fires, but still the tanks cried,
But I never topped the DPS charts,
'Til I ran Alterac and nuked far and wide
But I kept on yearnin'
For Jaina who keeps bein' spurned an'
Trolled and trolled and bein' sold up the river…
So I went down to the river,
Walked among the shadows; found Jaina inside
There she stood haunted, hounded by the troubles,
Burdens that she's carried since the day Arthas died…
So I finished up the Jaina Proudmoore stuff with just the Very Final Quest to go, which is (of course) a new dungeon. It promises to be nifty in a manning a city under siege sort of thing. Disclaimer: nifty in a WoW sort of way. I'm fully expecting it to fall MARATHONS short of the actual city-under-siege Epic Battle content I played in Lord of the Rings Online. (For all of its faults, some things they did incredibly well.) The earlier Jaina rescue portion was well-handled and blended cut scene and story throughout a single player instanced scenario. It really struck home how much emotional baggage she's been carrying and internalizing since the days of Warcraft III. All in all, I wound up liking a character I hated and liking a character I loved even more.
Nice work, ActiBlizzard-- you get one point for this, but I'm sure you'll screw something else up soon to make up for it.
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Kul Tourist
Last night was more of a "checklist evening", as I had little time and wanted to maximize it.
I ran around cleaning out remaining world bosses on my nightly WQ tour. The very nice thing about open world group content, including the world bosses is there's a little button that lets you create/join a group that's there for that content. With world bosses, it is an auto-join raid that phases you into the group's server and there's usually a pile of dead world bosses as people drop and join after each speedy kill. It makes the experience pretty trivial, but very nice rewards for the trouble of running out where one is.
Afterwards, I finally got around to claiming an outpost on Zandalar I'd been neglecting for a while. As you gain faction reputation, you buy the ability to start follower missions that culminate with you walking to the middle of gods-knows-where in Trollville to establish a small camp. The benefits of doing so is that it gives you another flight point, which helps when exploring the other continent immensely. Speaking of, I took a few minutes to drive around and get the achievement for fully exploring the Horde and Alliance islands. This really didn't take long, as I'd gotten most of the locations by questing, but some areas along the map edges had eluded me.
Knocked out a small 3 man quest that had been lodged in my log for about a week, giving another small achievement for finishing "The Long Con". It was one of the few 3-man fights I've found that I couldn't solo and I'd been having a devil of a time scaring up a group for it. Really glad to have it off the list.
I ran around cleaning out remaining world bosses on my nightly WQ tour. The very nice thing about open world group content, including the world bosses is there's a little button that lets you create/join a group that's there for that content. With world bosses, it is an auto-join raid that phases you into the group's server and there's usually a pile of dead world bosses as people drop and join after each speedy kill. It makes the experience pretty trivial, but very nice rewards for the trouble of running out where one is.
Afterwards, I finally got around to claiming an outpost on Zandalar I'd been neglecting for a while. As you gain faction reputation, you buy the ability to start follower missions that culminate with you walking to the middle of gods-knows-where in Trollville to establish a small camp. The benefits of doing so is that it gives you another flight point, which helps when exploring the other continent immensely. Speaking of, I took a few minutes to drive around and get the achievement for fully exploring the Horde and Alliance islands. This really didn't take long, as I'd gotten most of the locations by questing, but some areas along the map edges had eluded me.
Knocked out a small 3 man quest that had been lodged in my log for about a week, giving another small achievement for finishing "The Long Con". It was one of the few 3-man fights I've found that I couldn't solo and I'd been having a devil of a time scaring up a group for it. Really glad to have it off the list.
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