World Of Warcraft

I want to believe that, but let's not forget that they scrapped Warlord's original endgame about a final battle with AU Grom due to how the expansion in general was floundering and went "fuck it, just throw some last minute Gul'Dan and Legion content in so we can spend the next year focusing on Legion."

Plans change all the time, but that's because the creative process is always highly iterative. A story that hasn't changed significantly from the first draft is generally a pretty terrible story.

Heck, Argus wasn't even the originally scripted finale of Legion. Orginally we were going to stay on Azeroth the whole time and there was going to be a whole new island in the Broken Isles call Thal'dranath. Blizzard ditched Thal'dranath because it was just more "fighting demons in Elven ruins". Now this was hardly a last minute change, and probably happened well before Legion was even released and certainly before they were deep in development of 7.3, but it was still a major change in direction.

What's important to keep in mind however is that these changes are made because Blizzard believed they made the story better. The exact circumstances of where Sylvnas ends up at the end of BfA has probably changed several times as the story came together, and while I think at this stage the broad generalities are probably locked in some details may still get tweaked.

And none of this is a bad thing, as long as they are making changes because they belive it makes the story better rather then the placate some loud subsection of the fandom that they really should of known about from the beginning.

So now part of me is debating whether to keep going with my Horde and Alliance mains (A BE Paladin and a Draenei Shaman, respectively), or use my new NE Demon Hunter to steamroll the pre-Legion content for completionist's sake and so I can get at least one class order under my belt.

On an aside, anyone else like to make little stories/bios for their characters and how they relate to each other? I find it kinda fun.

I know I did for my Undead Warlock, Tauren Druid, and Orc Death Knight in Legion upon learning that the Artifact weapon quest lines for Affliction, Balance, and Unholy were the exact same quest in all 3 cases. I like to imagine they teamed up on this one, the Druid somewhat reluctantly given the company.

Edited by sgamer82 on Oct 27th 2018 at 8:29:57 AM

I don't really have detailed backstories for my characters or relate them to one another, but I generally do have some notion of their overall mindset.

My Worgen Druid for example didn't really change all that much personality-wise when he became a Worgen. He was always more then a little bit of a wildman. And while it doesn't stop him from trying, he consistently fails to act like a normal human.

My Human Warlock thinks Demon Hunters are a bunch of winy sanctimonious hypocrites who aren't willing to admit that they use dark powers because using dark powers is awesome.

She also thinks the Heartsbane Coven are a bunch of losers for swearing their allegiance to some doofus who lost a war against the early Kul Tiran settlers. While she was never tempted to join the Legion because that would involve serving someone, she at least had some understanding of why someone might want to align with a cosmos-spanning force. But to her Gorak Tul is just some random ancient warlord who was too incompetent to expand his empire beyond Kul Tiras and was ultimately beaten by a bunch of primitive humans. Hardly worth noticing, certainly not worth serving.

Edited by Falrinn on Oct 27th 2018 at 11:05:05 AM

I do have some backstory and so on written out for my characters, and I consider carefully about how they would react to the storylines of each expansion. My world "setting" is mostly that my main is the Champion of Azeroth, and the others are basically lieutenants from a "gameplay" point of view, though they're obviously closer to friends storywise.

...So I just found out that each faction capitol has an NPC who can turn your experience gains on and off so you don't accidentally outlevel your desired content.

...I sure wish I had known that before my BE Paladin reached level 68 before even finishing the Eastern Kingdoms and not having even touched Kalimdor yet! -_-

Now that we are officially in BlizzCon week and have a decent handle on the events of 8.1, any final predictions?

I'm going with:

Beta release timeframe for WoW Classic.

8.1 trailer, which following the tradition of Legion will be a cinematic set early in the 8.1 story.

A new character piece cinematic, possible a high-rez character piece like Old Soldier, though it could also be a more standard prerendered cinematic.

8.1.5 details, which will include Warlords of Draenor timewalking and playable Kul Tirans/Zandalari.

8.2 announcement, which will include a new raid (probably the Azshara raid), with an associated dungeon/questing zone. At least two new heritage armor sets for classic races. Vulpera and Junker/Cyborg Gnomes announced as Allied Races. New Warfront, this one with a setting either Horde themed or truly neutral as the first two have leaned strongly Alliance.

Mic drop 8.3 announcement, just as we had in 2016. Which will be Ny'alotha.

Silvermoon Warfront with Phoenix God reborn. Felo'melorn is found and maybe some Kael'thas fluff. Or Kael'Thas reborn as the Phoenix God?

Fall of Silvermoon raid. That one goes south fast, after Alleria/Velves do something stupid and Void erupts in Quel'Thalas. Everyone is evacuated but the zone is left uninhabitable. This one can be the Alliance atrocity everyone is asking for.

I'd lean against a Silvermoon Raid because it would mean two consecutive raid tiers where the Alliance invades a Horde city. Plus I think in terms of raiding we are done with strictly Horde vs. Alliance raids, future raids might have Horde vs. Alliance encounters in them, but I think the focus is going to shift towards Azshara/N'Zoth in terms of the main story.

Silvermoon (or alternatively, Quel'thelas or the Ghostlands) might be a decent place for a Warfront however. It certainly fits the bill for a setting that's more closely affiliated with the Horde to contrast the two Warfronts we've had that had more Alliance-aligned settings.

I sort of agree and disagree. Before moving on to more global threats this needs to get more personal on the Horde side, if Blizz wants to claim any faction conflict exists at all. Any action thus far can be made "good" by scapegoating Sylvanas. To perpetuate faction conflict, it needs to get more personal than justified retaliation. Undercity was just a jab at Sylvanas. An unnecessary atrocity against a Horde constituent is necessary - someone that is a long-lasting part of Horde and really didn't ask for it in a general sense. Silvermoon is on the same continent as most of the Alliance forces and the last actual bastion of Horde there, among other things that paint a target on it.

And that zone needs a radical re-design one way or the other.

^Agreed - as I've said before, currently anything and everything the Alliance can do is justified by 'but Sylvanas has done or will do worse'. 'Horde does stupid evil thing -> Alliance crushes evil Horde with justified righteous fury' does not a cycle make.

That would actually be rather redundant coming after the Battle of Draz'alor. The death of King Rastakhan is treated as a really big deal that turns the Horde-Zandalari alliance from a stratigic coalition into a strong union. It is a large-scale attack on a city only loosely affiliated with the Horde that results in the death of it's leader after all.

And unfortunately I think it's a bit of an impossible task to create moral parity between the Horde and Alliance as lomg as Sylvanas is involved. The Burning of Teldrassil was just too unprecedented, too large scale, and too deliberate for the Alliance to match it. Not without some epic character derailment anyways.

If you can get Sylvanas out of the picture then the equation changes. But until then it's not something that's achieveable.

+Sylvanas being easily blamed is the problem. If you can put all blame on one character then there is no faction conflict. It is just glorified character conflict.

Alliance have got plenty of 'pushed a faction into Horde arms events in their history. Another one, albeit shown more personally, is just more of the same.

Silvermoon is a perfect storm of opportunity. Belves have a personal relationship with both factions. Alliance has made a lot of bad choices regarding Belves. Belves considered rejoining Alliance but were treated on a level of a war-crime at the wrong political moment in a wrong political place. Then there are Alleria + Velves just waiting to trigger something really bad. The set-up is there! Let one of them come near Sunwell at the wrong moment and there will be a lot of consequences. And Alliance has all the justified strategic reasons to show op on Silvermoon's doorstep.

Alliance doesn't even need to make a conscious choice to do a Bad Thing^TM. Just one person needs to make a wrong choice at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, and the whole Alliance will go "did we really need to push that far?".

To be clear, my main issue with the idea is presenting it as a raid tier.

That means two consecutive raid tiers that involve the Alliance invading a Horde city and serve the same basic function in the story the Alliance attacks for and achieves most of their on-paper objectives, but at a high cost that serves as a rallying cry for the members of the Horde most directly impacted, just on a more intense scale the second time around.

A Quel'thelas Warfront, with associated lead-in quests like Darkshore has, could serve that function just as well. And it wouldn't need to one-up the Battle of Draz'alor and we could go to some new places in 8.2.

And just in terms of reading the pulse of how 8.1 ends we seem to be entering a more clandestine phase of the war. Having a second "attack on faction capital" raid, really in either direction, runs counter to that.

You're not wrong.

I don't mind the conflict being one-sided. As long as it is impactfull and progresses the plot and character stories.

The main issue with that though is that after Teldrassil, any cooling of the Blood War that doesn't involve Sylvanas paying for her crimes in some capacity is sure to cause cries of "cop out" from Alliance players, especially those who are Night Elf fans.

It's not really a cooling of the conflict in general, just that it may be entering a phase where both factions are more focused on undermining the other than launching massive, large-scale offenses. The Alliance out of concerns that such action will come at far too high a cost, and the Horde because they aren't in a position to do so in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Draz'alor.

And on the Alliance side, undermining Sylvanas specifically seems to be the objective. It's actually for this reason that I wouldn't fall over in shock if it turns out the Saurfang questline doesn't get unlocked until after Draz'alor releases, placing it after the raid in continuity.

What this means in practice is that open warfare will be largely limited to wherever the new Warfront is, plus a few skirmishes, and the raid/dungeon/outdoor zone can be focused on a mutual antagonist like Azshara.

Edited by Falrinn on Oct 29th 2018 at 8:29:14 AM

Double post, but I thought I'd bump the thread to call attention to Blizzard officially confirming that they'll mainly be discussing post-8.1 content at BlizzCon.

Obviously this has been my operating assumption, but it's nice to get explicit confirmation.

Just had a heck of a night in WoW. My roommate and I, leveling our respective Shaman and Druid, completed the Achievement "Icecrown: The Final Goal". I'm going to say right now this is not a soloable achievement if you're in the actual level range, as there are numerous 5-player quests that have not been tuned to be, themselves, soloable.

That wasn't a huge issue, as between us we were able to get through most of it with him in his Guardian spec and/or me in my Restoration spec. The hardest fights were slow-and-steady, but perfectly doable. But the final quest we needed, the very last one, was "The Fate of Bloodbane", where you have to take out a powerful Lich King Death Knight. And he is, indeed, powerful. He hits like a truck to start with and becomes even worse at 50-60% health. On top of all that, it's a phased quest, so we couldn't cheat by having one use a high level alt to help the other.

We finally pulled it off by kiting him around the pit you fight him at, me in Elemental and my roommate in Balance, firing off whatever insta-casts we could and little by little wearing him down and hoping I didn't pull him too far in a direction that he wound up running back and resetting.

In the end, we got it and the achievement, and I do not recommend trying to quest in Icecrown alone.

I don't recommend questing in Icecrown at all.

So many lame quests that require you to use NPC mobs instead of yourself. Really ruined the experience for me.

The Ebon Blade Eye of Dominion quests were the only ones really bad about it. Anything else was, at worst, a one off unless there's something I'm forgetting.

X3 Had a similar reaction levelling through BC thinking I can finally get the zone's meta-achievment

Blade's Edge requires that you get to the point with Ogri'la where there's only dailies left, which requires a lot of boring apexis shard farming.

Shadowmoon Valley was even worse because not only are there multiple quests that need crafting mats from the BC-era, not only do they send you to other zones constantly, not *only* do you need to do at least four dungeons, but you also need to complete the entire netherwing storyline, which means you need to hit exalted.

Never ever leveling there again.

Edited by NaraNumas on Nov 1st 2018 at 12:46:54 PM

Sort of along these lines, after spending some time leveling Allied Races, one thing I do think the game needs in the absence of a true world revamp, is a "technical revamp".

Group quests in certain WotLK and BC zones is part of it. Ideally I'd like to see them nerfed to being solo quests (when they are tied to a non-group questline) or split off from the zone's loremaster achievement.

Making quest rewards budgeted more consistently is also something that needs to happen. Currently loads of quest reward gear lack secondary stats entirely or is severly underbudget.

Quests that use the old escourt mechanics (where only one player/group per shard can do the quest at once and the NPC can sometimes get much too far ahead of you) need to be converted into using the modern escourt mechanics.

And finally breadcrumb quests need to be reworked so they pop up when you finish questing in an area rather than when you are high enough level to quest in the target area. Applying level scaling globally resulted in a weird situation where you are often given a quest sending you to the next zone as soon as you arrive.

Now that I know about the EXP removal NPCs, part of me wants to reroll my Draenei DK so I can apply the gag and still be able to access the dungeons via the queue.

Can't do it for my BE Paladin since I'm WAY too invested in her at this point as my main Hordie.

Speaking of overleveling, steamrolling the vanilla content on my NE Demon Hunter is so satisfying so far.

Edited by SomeNewGuy on Nov 1st 2018 at 1:11:18 AM