World Of Warcraft

Looks like some pacing feedback got taken and adjusted. Dailies in invasion zones now give 125 rep (up from 50) and visions are up to 250 per quest (also up from 50)

I think the quick fix would be for, if you lose all sanity or die without defeating Thrall/Alleria, a dialogue box opens asking if you want to reset the vision or exit and collect rewards.

If you reset, then you sacrifice all earned rewards in exchange for being able to repeat the vision without consuming another vessel. If you exit then you will be granted the rewards earned on your final attempt. There is no limit to how many times you can reset aside from the limits of your actual, real-life, sanity.

If you went in with a group, then different group members can pick different options. If that happens then the players who chose to exit will collect any rewards earned for themselves and the remaining player(s) will be able to retry without anyone who left.

As you level up the cloak, you're actually forced to do other areas, because after level 6 they stop dropping from the Thrall/Alleria chests and start dropping from the side area chests, you actually don't need to kill the final bosses to get the rewards, if you wipe the chests for what areas you did complete still spawn, so that's actually a bit less stressful than it sounds.

Combined with the massive buff to Coalescing Visions the hotfix today did, it'll be a lot more practical to risk failing visions for greater rewards, since after level 6 it also moves to one upgrade a week.

Edited by NaraNumas on Jan 22nd 2020 at 4:19:00 AM

The Bilefang Mother is the worst rare ever. >.<

The subject recently came up on a World of Warcraft podcast I listen to (Lorewatch), and I've found myself intrigued by an idea.

Could we have an exploration-focused expansion with no global-scale threat whatsoever?

Here's the basic premise I'm looking at: After Shadowlands, we've resolved all the immediate threats to Azeroth and/or existence as a whole and things are otherwise pretty quiet in the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. The Alliance and Horde have reasonably amicable relations.

Then we uncover the existence of a new continent on the far side of Azeroth. The Alliance and Horde send separate missions of exploration there, which the player participates in.

When we go there we find a mix of familiar races that have found their way to this new land over the millennia and entirely new natives. Some of the familiar races have cultures that resemble their existing counterparts, others have developed in wildly divergent fashions.

There are crises and threats there too. But even the final boss is on the same tier as the Thunder King. A dangerous enemy to the local population that will cause untold suffering if left unchecked, and may eventually launch an invasion of the EK or Kalimdor if they are allowed to secure their position, but are ultimately not a dire threat to Azeroth as a whole.

This might be a hard sell, MoP had some of the same elements and while it is generally remembered fondly nowadays it had a very lukewarm initial reception. But I also kind of think that it might be time to reset the stakes to bring the story back down to a more grounded level. Especially after Shadowlands, which is poised to have ludicrously high stakes.

It's certainly a possibility, one of the maps seen during...Wrath I think (?) had an whole entire continent on the other side of Azeroth.

I'm not actually too concerned with the question of whether or not Blizzard has ever had a conception of a continent on the far side of Azeroth. There has to be a decent gap between Kalimdor/EK when going the other direction, so they can just declare a new continent exists there.

Or they just do what they did with Uldum and Padaria and come up with some magical reason why such a huge landmass was only recently discovered.

It would just be funny to me if some new continent suddenly appeared since we now have a spaceship that could have seen it at any time.

Option two: The Lightforged Draenei already know about it, but haven't mentioned it because none of them have realized it is an undiscovered landmass.

"What do you mean, you haven't found it? It's right there!"

In all seriousness, what they'd probably do is start sprinkling hints that there is another unexplored continent out there in the expansions leading up to it. This could very well include a Lightforged Draenei offhandedly asking what a particular landmass they saw from the Vindicaar was called only to be met by blank stares.

...come to think of it they could potentially fold this concept into the Dragon Isles. Either by placing the Dragon Isles off the coast of the new continent, or by making the Dragon Isles themselves a large archipelago like Kul Tiras is. I'd probably prefer the former since I think a large impenetrable continent lends itself better to the exploration theme.

"So you're from the other side of the planet. Cool. So how have things been over there in the last few decades or so?"

<one summary of the events of Warcraft I, II, III and WOW later>

"...I'm suddenly very appreciative of how dull things are here."

Hey, did Legion ever explain why Suramar wasn't the waterlogged ruins Maiev went through in FT? I know they explained how it survived at all but not how it suddenly became intact again.

That was just a full on retcon I'm fairly certain, with no cruft or explaining how Maiev made that mistake, they were just hoping people forgot about it.

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, the Shadowlands prequel novel. "Shadow's Rising" has been announced and will release on July 14th.

It's written by Madeleine Roux, who previously wrote the 3rd Traveler book for Blizzard. From the summary and excerpt it looks very interesting and hopefully can strike the right balance where it enhances the experience of Shadowlands without feeling like required reading.

And to compare it to some previous prequel novels, Before the Storm released about 2 months before Battle for Azeroth launched. Illidan released about 4.5 months before Legion. War Crimes was released just over 6 months before Warlords of Draenor. And Tides of War was released just one month before Mists of Pandaria.

Given this, I don't think we can draw any real conclusion beyond that the timing of the novel is consistent with a 2020 Shadowlands release. It also means that it probably won't launch before late August, but I don't think that would surprise anyone.

Blizzard prepping the Battle.net backend for Shadowlands Alpha

Right now I'm fairly confident we'll get the Shadowlands alpha in March. However we might have some official previews laying out what players should expect to see when they actually log into the alpha before this month is over. This development tracks reasonably well with that prediction.

One of the witches in Drustvar says "The world shall burn" while attacking you. I don't know, it seems like their actions are limited to Kul Tiras.

The Heartsbane Coven don't really strike me as the type to limit their ambitions to just Kul Tiras. Had they actually succeeded in fully overrunning Drustvar and toppling the Proudmoore Admiralty they would of turned their attention beyond the shores of Kul Tiras.

At which level can you solo the Sunken Temple?

I'd probably say 70s, at least, if not sooner. That puts you ten levels over the highest potential enemies, who shouldn't go past 60, give or take a level, due to scaling and you should have gear enough to overpower most things you'd run into.

Yeah, that's true (my Blood Elf Paladin, who I was playing as last night, is Level 71), but I can't solo Jammal'an the Prophet. He keeps turning me into a troll and it starts the fight all over again; it's an endless cycle. x_x

Edited by Demetrios on Feb 26th 2020 at 10:39:29 AM

Ah, the mind control. Forgot about that. Not sure there's an easy solution other than "kill him before he uses it", assuming it's not set to certain health limits.

The solution is usually to find somebody who's willing to help you with that

Yeah, but they're specifically asking about soloing, so that didn't occur to me.