World of Warcraft: Dragonflight - 11-28-22

As a hunter, I had a lot more fun with that class in classic up through LK. LK in particular was a blast as a hunter. Oh, how I miss LK explosive shot.

Yeah, LFG/LFR pretty much killed the social part of WoW. Prior to LFG, you had some personal accountability, and since it was a pre-made group there was often more patience. I remember doing Shadow Lab for my KZ key and my group was pretty patient with me not really knowing how to play my class.

With LFG/LFR you could get the content done without needing a pre-made, but that really brought out the go-go-go and the asshats. People just wanted their damn valor badges and if you slowed them down by .0001 seconds of normal, well, you are a bad player who should feed bad. And delete your account while you are at it.

So, Classic gets rid of that, and also up through Wrath, also is what a lot consider peak WoW.

I get tempted, but fuck man, getting to level 70 to do Wrath again is not something you take care of over a weekend.

The “collectors” edition will come with a level 68 boost.

Also, new accounts can make DK’s right away (during pre-patch even)

I guess I don’t see the bad part of this. Sure, you do the LFG/LFR knowing that it is a roll of the dice with who you will get in the group (people might forget the lovely bots that were around back in the day) BUT I always had/have the option for doing a premade with my guild buddies. It is so much easier with LFG/LFR that I am OK dealing with randos.

Honestly, for me at least, the best change was making the raids scale to size instead of setting specific numbers (and getting rid of 40 man raids). I’ve really only been in heroic raiding guilds and it is so much more fun to organize and execute these now than before.

Now the actual raid content has always been debated, but being able to go with 10 or 15 or whatever was such a quality of life change.

LFG made it easier to experience a lot of the dungeon content for a player like me who wasn’t active in a guild. I liked it in that regard. What I didn’t like was every dungeon being a speed run. I couldn’t even skin for leather and keep up.

Others covered it, but pre LFG/LFR had more personal accountability, generally had people talking to each other and not just silently speed running.

Was it a hassle, more time consuming and less efficient? Yes to all three. But it made your server feel a bit more like a community rather than the equivalent of bots along side you.

I totally get the “but I didn’t have 30 minutes to find a group and then do a 60 minute dungeon run” sentiment. But The LF tools really crushed server community; Classic, I assume, offers a small way back to that atmosphere l, though it may be gauche to many these days.

I agree with all of this 100%, yet don’t think I could actually go back to it either. Even though in my mind, I want to. Reality says no.

Cue meme girls ‘thinking about playing WoW Classic’ / ‘playing WoW Classic’

And that’s why, every time I think of playing Classic, I think of the time it takes to level, and go “bah.”

You say that but running mythics where there was no LFG sucked because the community was large and toxic, there was a timer on the content, and the required skill level was quite high.

In contrast I enjoyed OG Cata heroics (despite all the complaints at the time - which lead me to conclude the problem was that most LFG healers were bad and didn’t know how to heal). People understood the content was difficult for most people doing it so it wasnt so “go go go”.

Oh no. Nonononono. Blizzard thought it would be cute to make healing involve “meaningful” choices in Cata, with the bottom line being that it was way too easy to go OOM. Combine that with an idiot tank that doesn’t want to wait for the healer to mana up and a bunch of raid-like mechanics in the 5-man dungeons and healing became a miserable experience. One of my WoW high points was healing a Lich King kill, but healing in Dungeon Finder made me quit heals for good. It wasn’t coincidence that Blizzard started to offer payoffs to tanks and healers soon after.

This is a far cry from a Night Elf Mohawk.

Blizzard just posted a preview of professions, and honestly, this is the part of the expansion I’m looking forward to most.

Alpha dropped today, content creators got access a few days ago so YT is “blowing up” with videos.

11-28-22. I haven’t been following the beta closely, but I still feel like this thing is going to ship unfinished.

Many of the podcasters seem to think that the beta is going well, but we’ll see.

Pre-patch drops today featuring the new talent trees and that’s about it. I expect most specs to be woefully underpowered compared to where they were yesterday as Blizz trots out their usual excuse that everything is balanced for level 70.

I know I’m just a grumpy old man at this point, but I thought this video was quite shit. An ancient enemy has returned, yet again… Also half the video is dedicated to trying to explain the terrible proto-dragon concept that was introduced in Wrath.

Protodrakes are terrible…ly awesome, you mean!

Sure! Just call them drakes and boom, problem solved.

Blizzard instead said they were the predecessors to dragons which fucks up everything.

Well, yeah. But at least you got to punch him in the nose.

New Dragonflight Cinematic out today with the new pre-patch launching after maintenance.

New Hero class and race, the Dracthyr Evoker available today

It’s pretty cool, as are most of their cinematics. Definitely worth a watch even if you don’t play.