So, I’m curious about World of Warcraft, and how the game is these days. I’ve been looking a bit at forums and news, but its pretty hard to see past the anxious hand wringing of people fearing their character being nerfed, and the like, so I figured we at least had a few players here?
I’m mainly interested in leveling, and enjoying the experience leisurely, but not really into end game gear collecting. Is there still any kind of exploration worth anyone’s time in the game? Or has anything been streamlined to get you to max level as I read about a few years ago?
What is there to do, other than questing and collecting miniatures?
I never got to max level in WoW, so I don’t have any of the special items that help you get exp faster (heritage?), and I have tried to get into the game a number of times without success. The issue for me is that the questing/fighting, which used to require at least some skill and situational awareness, has been made super easy mode, so it’s boring as heck. However, it still takes a whole lot of hours of that boring as heck content to get to max level, where I keep hearing things start to improve. I just can’t stomach the road to max level. I may have missed something obvious, and if so, maybe someone here will clue me in :)
There is a lot of exploration in the game. The Draenor zones in particular reward the player for doing so. In fact, the only way to be able to fly in Draenor is to do most of the quests and explore the zone. Most of the mobs are trivial but there are scattered enemies throughout that pose a good challenge. Most of the quest hubs have a similar pattern. Get there, do 2 quests in a particular small area. Come back, turn those in and do 3 more. Come back, turn those in and get a quest to kill the boss who is a bit more challenging. Kill him and move to the next area. Then in Draenor there are mobs marked on my map with a star. These are zone boss mobs who will always drop a BOP blue or purple. Some of these guys are quite difficult.
Leveling is quite quick even without any boosts or heirlooms. I have gone from 80 to 100 with one character playing some nights and weekends. Because there is so much new content I do not feel like it is boring. The scenery and story usually keep me entertained. The challenge of pulling and killing enemies is long gone but in some ways maybe that is a good thing. I do not long for the days of Burning Crusade where quest after quest was “kill 15-30 of these” and each one took a minute to kill.
Another thing present in Draenor is your garrison. You essentially get to build your own town and the NPCs there provide quests. Later on there is a lot of grinding involved but it is kind of cool to see your little own area of WoW grow and prosper. I have not done anything in Legion but I am told it is the best expansion thus far.
Leveling is the fastest it has ever been. I never use heirlooms, only rested experience, and my toons outgrow leveling zones long before they have finished doing everything the zone has to offer.
In the Mists of Pandaria expansion, players were introduced to growing crops on their farms to provide everything from vegetables to cloth and metal.
In the Warlords of Draenor expansion, players have a garrison in which to mine ore, gather herbs, as well as utilize various buildings for professions. A player’s garrison is their HQ, quest hub, and nerve center. This expansion was the first to require a lengthy achievement (one per account) in order to be able to fly in the Draenor zones.
I haven’t played much of Legion because unlocking flying in Legion is much more involved than ever before.
Right now I am playing in the older expansion content, mostly MoP and WoD but some Wrath and Cataclysm. And I am still finding content I’ve missed in years past. There is still plenty to do.
I suggest using only one toon when playing WoW these days. There is just too much to do to make running numerous toons feasible.
There is an incredible amount of stuff to do in WoW.
Questing, dungeons, and raids. MoP and prior dungeons and raids can be solo’d to -
Collect mounts, pets, transmogs, achievements, and titles.
PvP in battlegrounds, arenas, and occasionally world PvP.
Pet battles and collecting (think pokemon).
Unlocking Flying in Legion is exactly the same as it was in WoD – just do all the content once, and then you unlock flying across your account. But yes, it’s disappointing that the world designers who designed BC and WotLK around end-game flying have apparently left Blizzard, because it seems they’ve lost that skillset.
If anything it’s mostly slightly less involved because there’s only one post-patch reputation grind and WQs ought to make it a bit more manageable. (Whereas the Tanaan Jungle reps are absolutely godawful and singlehandedly prevented me from ever getting Draenor Pathfinder.) Which isn’t to say it’s easy, or that they should be forcing you to do everything before unlocking flying, half the point of which is to make doing stuff less of a pain. In particular, there’s a group quest in mid-to-late Suramar plotline that is fucking atrocious and which is why I quit playing most recently.
No, it’s not the same. Players have to do much more in Legion than they did in WoD. There are two achievements now instead of one. Players can’t get the ability to fly in Legion by soloing; they could in WoD. The only thing that’s the same is that it only has to be done once per account.
If you purchase Legion, you get a boost to level 100 included which you can use if you so wish
Legion starts you out collecting a powerful class/spec based artifact which becomes your weapon for the entire expansion. Think old-style WoW class skill trees, but this time in all kinds of crazy shapes themed along the artifact. They also introduce you to a class order hall, and you are progressing quests in your class order hall as you knock down the Legion quest zones. The positive point of this is that your character identifies much more strongly as a member of your class and spec.
Legion dynamically adjusts mob level to your character level, and employs a hub and spoke model. There are four zones on the outside of the wheel that you can tackle in any order. By the time you finish three, you may be 110. Definitely by the time you finish four.
The “hub zone” in my opinion is one of the best quest zones Blizzard has done in a long while. It introduces you to an ancient offshoot of the night elves and their city, which is basically level 110 questing executed very well.
If you want to take it slow, avoid any zones in which a demonic invasion is taking place. You will get huge experience boosts by completing those dynamic quests. Many people are using them to quickly level up and gear alts.
Getting a group for any quest has a lot less friction than it did in the past, especially if you add on mods such as “World Quest Group Finder”.
If you like five man dungeons, another highlight of Legion is the dynamic difficulty adjustment of dungeons with the mythic dungeon system, making 5 mans very relevant through the course of the expansion.
Draenor Pathfinder may be a single achievement but it’s functionally the same approach to unlocking flying - do everything in the expansion first. The only real reason that one’s a single achievement is that for quite a while during Warlords Blizzard was insisting they’d never offer flying again. Only after extensive backlash did they hit on the Pathfinder achievement compromise (and it’s not much of one, IMO). When Legion came, they had already established the system but they wanted to have an incremental step that could be achieved prior to patch content coming out to round out the full Pathfinder unlock.
Also, just to reiterate, Tanaan Jungle was the fucking worst and the rep grinds there were incredibly stingy and poorly implemented. (Also, one of the reps was all group-oriented elites so while it’s technically possible to solo now and maybe a few high end players could do it back then, it certainly wasn’t designed to be soloable.)
I started back a few weeks ago. My playing history is:
Launch to TBC, 3 months in TBC, a break til WOTLK, 3 months in WOTLK and now Legion.
I did 40man raiding in vanilla and really enjoyed it (I was a resto druid that joined the top raiding guild on the server with blues and was expected to slot into Twin Emps/C’thun as is). But, I always preferring levelling characters, exploring and doing 5mans with friends the most.
I thought WOTLK was a bit boring, quests were far too easy and terribly bland. 5 Mans seemed too easy, including on heroic. Zones were forgettable.
Impressions so far in Legion is that they have utterly ruined the 0-100 levelling experience. 5mans are terrible, no-one talks, there’s no real strategy and everyone just rushes through them. I won’t say the changes to talents from TBC are worse, but I don’t particularly like them.
All of my characters seem to take more skill to play in terms of rotations, but that could just be the frenetic pace of 5mans and the fact that world mobs die so quickly I never have a chance to actually test rotations.
If it were possible, I’d play a vanilla or TBC server with 3-5 friends and enjoy the levelling experience as it was. I’m no longer in a rush to get to a certain level and I’m ok with playing a few hours every couple of nights and taking months to cap.
I got Flying in the Draenor expansion long before Legion was released with my Tauren druid wearing greens that he got from quests and drops. It is not possible to get Legion flying by soloing. End of story.
I agree with you. The multiplayer has effectively been taken out of MMOs so much that I’m not sure there are any actual multiplayer persistent worlds out there anymore in anything but name. Soloing is not only the norm, but seems to be what people want. Would be nice to have one or two out of the multitude that are group based again for the minority who enjoy them.
I resubbed (without buying Legion) for a month to play a new character with a friend I played vanilla WoW with.
Firstly, he refused to remove heirlooms. It seems to be similar to the ‘water finds a crack’ thing people were talking about in Civ recently. Even though the goal isn’t to level as fast as possible, actively making the choices to slow down levelling and make the experience harder is a step people just won’t take.
Secondly, because of heirlooms increasing XP, I had to buy heirlooms to stay even close to his level range so we could play together.
Even with the merged server and cross-realm stuff, zones feel empty. Since that’s the case, I’d rather an empty zone just be people on my server so at least there’s some sort of continuity in regards to possibly seeing the same name more than twice ever.
My friends list from TBC is basically gone. It seems almost everyone moved their char to a different server, or a different faction, or simply changed name. That was a really bleak way of monetising the community at the expensive of community health.
I’ve only just started on Cataclysm 5mans, but they seem eminently forgettable thus far (and I didn’t rate WotLK particularly highly either).
The way vanilla 5mans have been eviscerated makes me desperately sad though. Did Deadmines with an appropriately levelled group and we blazed through it in less than 6minutes. Deadmines was my first instance and I can still remember the experience of it very clearly. Maraudon which used to be a real challenge was about the same, and ditto for Dire Maul.
The only real challenge I faced in my one year return was Mythic raiding, and mythic dungeon on the high end of the current + range (it has moved a lot since the start). I still had fun, but the trappings of OCD personalities like mine are all largely the same. Dailies, lots of carrots on lots of sticks, etc.That being said… I still had fun. The big pull for me in this game this year was the guild I got into and the friends I made there. That is the real draw of WoW. lots of people to meet, and you can always find a group similar in play style to your own.
I broke away in early July, and have been clean and sober for over a month. Do we get some kind of coin for one month clean? Do I have to do some kind of daily to build points for my sober coin? =)
Thanks for the excellent writeups everyone. Im not sure that it has what I want anymore, especially since the graphics are becoming slightly dated for me as I’ve been looking at it.
In theory, the game is great, but there is still way too much grinding to level 100 I fear.
