First impression is that I’m drinking from a firehose.

I started a game as Rome, cause you know, Rome rules.  The game looks and sounds good, though not a whole lot different than Civ V.  Sean Bean’s narration is a nice addition mind you.  The overall presentation is fairly solid, though a few of the menus aren’t terribly intuitive.  Research/Civics selection menu is slightly too big for my tastes, as it’s hard to see the relation between all the items.  Selecting a city can be confusing in all the options/buttons.  Backing out of menus isn’t done with ESC most of the time, but with an on-screen button.  These little UI tweaks are more of an annoyance as compared to the rest.

The core systems work mind you, and are quite intertwined.  Builders and Settlers work very similar to before.  Roads provide some benefit (Rome rules).  Merchants travel for trade.  Emissaries are in for city states.  Still confused as to how I can deal with other nations with only a few clicks.  There’s a lot of “I want to do this, but I need to do this, and this, and this first”, which is both cool but also frustrating.

Combat is a good example.  With 6 nations on the map, I know that a military way forward is going to be required earlier rather than later.  To that end, I went down the military route and had catapults, bowmen and legion up fairly early.  Taking down the Barbarians is fairly easy, including their little towns.  I figured I was ready to take down a city state.

I was wrong.  Even with 3 catapults, 3 bowmen, 2 legions and a great general, it took nearly 10 turns to take down the city.  And it was the weakest city, only at rank 3.  I saved before hand, to be able to go back and apply what I learned. And what I learned is that an early military attack doesn’t make sense unless you dramatically outnumber the opponent.  I was nearly 2 ages above my opponent and it wasn’t enough.

I’m going to have to rethink my strategy.  It’s a fun game, but when I hit that hurdle, I shut down for the night.  That is honestly the first time I shut down a new Civ game.  Not sure how to read that…

WoW

The Rogue’s class quest requires a run through Maw of Souls and Black Rook Hold.  DPS queues are 30 minutes.  My DH tank is under 2 minutes, my Monk healer is instant.  So doing it as DPS, not so much fun.  I’m on the “5x 12 hour quests” phase now.

Now that I hit 110 with him, I have zero interest in doing group content with him.  If I could assign a negative number, I would.  I like the Rogue, sure.  Outlaw has it’s nice perks when you get a solid roll.  It just pales in comparison to playing a tank or a healer, and my time is much better invested both of those rather than another alt.  I’ll keep the artifact research going mind you, maybe come back to it near the holidays.

Speaking of holidays, I’m on 15 runs of the Headless Horseman without a mount this year.  That’s on top of the ~50 runs over the years.  Luck is not on my side.

Back when raids reset weekly, we had time gates.  When Lich King patched in daily quests, we really started to feel it.  MoP really took it to the limit, with dailies everyone and in everything.  The thing about these time gates is that they were expiration windows.  You had to do X content in Y time, or you simply missed out.  That still exists today mind you, but the timers are more relaxed – usually around 2-3 days.  The feeling of “got to do it all now” isn’t as present.  This certainly maps to the more casual gamer demographic.

What WoD brought to the table was progress windows.  The garrison missions provided items and gear if you waited long enough.  It took all of 2 weeks for someone to develop a mod to quickly sort and assign those missions for the best returns.  Unless my math is wrong, I was making something around 1.5k per day, for 15 minutes of effort.

The issue with this type of time gate is that the reward is not tied to the effort, or at least, not tied psychologically.  It’s a set-it-and-forget-it type of event, where riches fall from the sky.  You only really notice that the gear faucet isn’t working when the stuff stops flowing.  As compared to actual events that culminate with rewards, like killing a boss and getting a drop, the timed missions separate you from the effort.

Which is odd, because life is about waiting for things to come about.  I put a turkey in the oven, I plant vegetables in the garden, my wife was pregnant and saw the child grow.  We are used to waiting for good things.  But we are invested in these because we are active in their growth.

I need to pay attention to that turkey so it doesn’t burn.  I need to feed/water/weed my garden to have it grow.  We needed to keep the baby healthy and secure.  These are active events that force me to pay attention to what’s going on, where I am further investing for success.

Legion cut a lot of the WoD stuff out.  Today, there is no real reason to run any champion missions.  There will be for 7.1, as you will need an ilvl 850 champion to unlock Karazhan, but for today… there’s nothing really to be gained that cannot be gained through other means – faster and more direct means as well.

The exception here is Artifact Research.  At 5 days per rank, and 24 ranks, that’s 3 months of waiting.  Each rank increases by a non-linear amount, so you get a lot more value from going from rank 14 to 15, than you do 3 to 4.  I understand that there is a catchup mechanism, my DH is using it as he’s maybe 2 days behind my Monk.  Still, it’s an odd structure.  You’re not directly rewarded from the event, it simply impacts other rewards.  Where an item might be worth 20 artifact points now, eventually it will be worth 4800 points later on.  That is a massive difference.

It would certainly be nice if we could have more of the “I built this” feeling when time gates are applied.  I don’t see how that would possible work with WoW, given the various tools, as the closest we’ve come was the garden in MoP.  Player Housing comes close, and Wildstar sort of scratched that itch for me.  Archeage likely is the most obvious candidate on that front, though EvE certainly has a big foot in the game.  The feeling of a time gate as being an investment, rather than a hurdle… that’s where the gold pot is found.

My Brewmaster is at ilvl 850, even if he is near the bottom of the popular charts.  My DH is just around ilvl 840.  Both are around 18 pts into the main artifact.  Neither have set foot in a mythic dungeon or LFR.  Neither have had a drop from a world boss either.  This is entirely from world quests.

I’m somewhat curious as to whether this is a problem or not.  Certainly, I can increase my ilvl, but why?  I can clear anything in the world without real issue.  I am above what’s needed for mythic dungeons.  What’s left are raids and mythic +.

I have little interest in mythic +.  I think the idea is sound, but ehh, I don’t play WoW for the stress of beating a timer.  Raids are a little different.  WQs have given me more than enough gear as compared to LFR.  LFR would only be for the lore.  Normal raids might be an option, what to get the artifact appearances and some level of challenge.  Heroic raids mean little to me.

So the main gearing question seems to be moot here.  I can get all I would need just by playing casually.  Sure, I won’t hit ilvl 880, but there’s no reason for me to do so.  It’s a conscious design decision, certainly.  Where LFR was practically seen as a gearing requirement, this expansion has provided multiple paths that are a better time investment.  It’s now back to the original intent – let people see the content.  That’s a good thing right?

Badges

I am still of the opinion that the best system for gearing is badgeing and tokens.  Both still allow for the RNG to apply to some degree but take a large sting out of bringing alts up to part later on.  There is a reason nearly every game since WotLK came out has this alternate gearing method – it works.  Badges make all the content relevant, regardless of your level or gear (FF14 does this wonderfully).  The downside was the tokens were only ever found in dungeons, making the gearing for said dungeons a challenge.

Tokens avoid those times where in vanilla you’d get a shaman head piece drop on an Alliance raid.  The ability to turn in a token, while still in the raid, is the best of both worlds.  Gear drops, it’s useable by a lot of players, and immediately equipable (though not enchanted or gemmed).

It Feels Better

I like the WQ gearing model.  It isn’t as sudden as what badges provide, and due to the random upgrade feature, you can really luck out.  It makes leveling an alt a rather easy affair.  You can’t jump into raids the day after 110, but that’s never the point.  And the WQs send you to dungeons for better drops as well, so it’s really a multi-path solution to a very old problem.  Heck, some of the WQs require a group to clear, so there’s more social aspects to it as well.  It reminds me a fair bit of the rift-hunting at max level within, uh, RIFT.

Overall, I think this system is a dramatic improvement on those that came before.  It’s an integrated system that links all the other functions of the game.  It forces people out into the world, and has very natural integration with group content.  It doesn’t feel like the progress is too fast, or too slow.  And with the random upgrade feature and chance at a legendary, it doesn’t feel punishing without reward.  Lots to learn from this.