World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth

I hated artifact weapons. The beast master one was ugly. I liked the MM artifact, but didn’t want to run MM. I hated grinding AP power. It wasn’t until the end, where doing a few quests basically got you all the traits I could stand it.

Having ‘the artifact’ this time be something I can’t see, bring it on.

Looks like another filler expansion along the lines of MoP, or even worse, WoD. The major new features seem more like cleaning up old broken/unfinished stuff (levelling experience, world PvP, race variants, faction PvP) and milking some nostalgia bucks from classic mode. I give zero cares about any of that stuff.

Story-wise, I think most players were expecting an Azshara + N’zoth expansion. Although we get the former, it sounds like the Old Gods/Void are pushed off to the following expansion. The stakes have never been lower.

I don’t get how they expect to stem the loss of subscriptions with such a weak-ass expansion.

I would call this far more fillery than either of those. Mists went harder on Horde vs Alliance than I’d like, but there was still a whole new continent with new intrigues and threats. Warlords advanced nothing in particular but the time travel scenario was at least novel, the aggression of the old Horde plus “modern” technology was reasonably threatening, and seeing untainted Draenor was interesting. Meanwhile here we have the shittiest storyline they have running and…I guess more of the basic setting we’ve already seen?

I’m torn. I agree that it doesn’t seem super exciting, but I also think you can’t have constant escalation. Legion is literally world-at-stake stuff from beginning to end. You’re wielding weapons that you’ve heard legends about for the last ten years, you’re collecting McGuffins from the builders of the world, and you’re the paragon and leader of your chosen class. Like, where do you go from there? What better gear is there than your artifact weapon and your legendary armors? What progression can you make if you’re already World’s Best Shaman/Warrior/Whatever?

It feels like a step down to go from Savior of the World to Settler of Territorial Disputes, but that’s the cost of an evolving world – the scale of the conflict has to ebb and flow. Otherwise, they’d have to announce the Warcraft Multiverse expansion, sending our overpowered heroes to the Korhal sector to fight the Protoss and the Zerg.

I think of it as a similar jump from Cataclysm to Pandaria – you save the world, you lower the stakes, and you gradually ratchet them back up over a couple of expansions.

I think escalation isn’t necessary. But again, this is the worst storyline they have and they should be killing it, not centering it.

This reminds me that I always like to see RPGs (MMO or otherwise) where you’re not saving the world, you’re just an adventurer making their way.

Oh well…

For me, the story of a WoW expansion is pretty far down on what I like about it, It is more the game mechanics and what you do on a daily basis after you’ve done that patch’s content that affect my enjoyment.

I stopped playing WoW because they ruined the “feel” of my druid. At one point, druid was just an amazing class to play from a mechanics standpoint. Being able to instantly change forms, and the general speed and responsiveness of the things you could do in combat. They turned that into a horrible sludge of failure.

I personally have never payed much attention to what foozle they want me to chase, it’s all about how the moment to moment gameplay feels, how cool the world and gear looks, and how tedious the grind is.

Probably be the first expansion i skip entirely other than Cataclysm. But in all fairness I haven’t stayed in an expansion longer than 2 months since Wrath. I beat the first raiding content, start doing it with an alt or two, and then remember I hate WoW. I’m self-aware about it at least. I just don’t have whatever specialized OCD you need to have to do the same dungeons and raids dozens if not hundreds of times that I had in my youth.

It is definitely something that tends to go away the older you get. I think it has to do with the same mechanism that makes drugs less effective the longer you take them, your receptors just become immune to the stimulus after a while. I’ve noticed a steady decline in my tolerance and/or susceptibility to grinds and chasing foozles the older I get.

As much as I have loved WoW, I can’t see myself putting another several hundred hours into it. It will take something really different, something PvP based, to get me to buy in.

I suspect it also has to do with most people’s available free time declining drastically from their youth.

BoA is available for pre-order, btw. Released on or before Sept 21st.

Also!

Oh joy! More grinding to unlock the new races. According to Wowhead:

Unlocking Allied Races
To create each Allied Race, you need the following:

Battle for Azeroth purchased.
Completion of a special quest achievement and reaching Exalted with the related faction.
    Progress on this is account-wide and is not limited to a specific faction. For example, you could complete the required Nightborne achievement and faction on an Alliance character.
Your new Allied Race character will start at level 20.

We have added the ability to track your progress towards unlocking each Allied Race:

Nightborne: Exalted with the The Nightfallen and completion of Insurrection
Void Elf: Exalted with Argussian Reach and completion of You Are Now Prepared!
Lightforged Draenei: Exalted with Army of the Light and completion of You Are Now Prepared!
Highmountain Tauren: Exalted with Highmountain Tribe and completion of Ain't No Mountain High Enough

The worst part of the grind for me is the Argusian Reach rep. Even the blue WQs only give 75 rep. At least all blue WQs give Argusian and Army of Light. I’m still only honored with those two factions.

Nightborne the end is in sight. I just need 6k to hit exalted.

ok, it says if i preorder battle, i get legion for free. however, i’m still behind on expacs and didn’t get WoD. do i have to buy that too?

I’ve just came back and I’m here to tell you. I cant figure out WHAT is good or going on. I know you regs that have been playing steady for years understand it, but when I come back at 110 on a coin I have no idea. I am gonna level a warrior from the start and NOT take the coin. I figure by the new expansion Ill be 106 by my math. lol.

Korialstrasze Yelorna
(Id give my left arm for a good fun raid team one more time… )

I’ve been told by a current player that iLevel for raiding at the end of Legion was 900s and I haven’t played since at least half of that number.

Blizz is also deflating damage from 2mill crit to like 10k at time of Battle patch too? Jesus.

No, all expansions before the current is free. Once Battle is released, Legion will be free as well.

Didn’t you get a 110 trial? Where they teach how to play a spec of your chosen class at 110? And then if you don’t like it, you can delete or undo the character and use the 110 trial on another class. Yes, diving in at the end can be overwhelming, much like any other MMO. But by the time you level that newbie up to 30 you’ll have a good enough grasp of the class to switch to 110.

They’re doing another stat squish because things are ridiculous now with bosses having 7 BILLION health. It’s just dumb. The stat squish will no doubt break a ton of shit, just like the last one did.