I closed off Tiragarde Sound now and have a few thoughts on this zone.  The most important thing that impacts this thinking is that I was 120 1/3rd of the way through, so everything past that point was entirely optional.  Gear was useless, though the rep gain was quite nice, and it’s a pre-req for Pathfinder part 1.  Plus, I wanted to see the whole story.

There are two big differences in Tiragarde compared to the other alliance zones – travel can be done by boat and its’ really 2 different zones in one.  The boat thing to kick off.  You still have flight travel, but the boat is an option.  I find it neater to look at and thematically sound, but seems to be a fair bit slower than actually flying there.  And at 120 with the Flight Whistle, you’re likely never to use them again.  Shame really.

The zone split is important, in that Boralus splits the zone in a 70/30 weight.  70% is is the lower half and relates almost entirely to pirates & shipwrecks.  Super theme, a lot of fun, but not a whole lot of variety.  Freehold is exciting, and the siege break on the gates is great to drive the story forward.  Honestly, after that siege portion completed, I expected the zone to be done…but then there’s the 30% up north.  Which is about a hunting camp, kobolds, and mind-controlled pirates.  It goes on for way too long and doesn’t map with the rest of the zone.  The last bit in the NW has you fight underwater, and has a horrible escort quest (Penny).  It just feels significantly weaker than the rest of the zone.  You do end up shooting a canon at a giant squid.  So there’s that.

In terms of the alliance zones, they each have their own highs and lows.  The highs in Tiragarde are higher than the others, but the lows are much lower.  So depending on what part you hit, your satisfaction will change.  Do the north first, and then things will be fun near the end.

In terms of all-around fun, I enjoyed Stormsong Valley the most, then Tiragarde, then Drustvar.   They are all as good or better than the Legion zones, which is great.

Next steps is to complete the Horde zones for the War Campaign.

‘Cause there will be alts, right?

The journey to 120 was both faster and slower than I had imagined.  I spent the time to read the majority of the quest text, as I had in Legion, so the act of leveling was pretty similar.  I had extra XP from all the herbs I was collecting (more on that later), and there’s what appears to be an insane collection of quests across each map.  I’m sure there’s a meme somewhere being built where you see a ! everywhere you look.  It was slower in the fact that there are only 3 zones, and within those zones, the themes are quite similar.  In Legion, if you didn’t like the look of say, Azshara, you could go somewhere else. If you don’t like Drustvar… tough cookies.

I was about 1/3 complete Tiragarde Sound when I saw that final ding, and then things went a bit off the deep end.

So Much Stuff To Do

• World quests (only if you’re friendly with everyone, which is hard not to be)
• Regular dungeons
• Heroic dungeons
• Mythic dungeons (not +)
• Island Expeditions
• Pathfinder Part 1
  • Exploring all 6 zones (yes all 6)
  • Completing all the main quests in each of your faction zones
  • Raising all factions to Revered
• Getting new gear

Honestly, the direction goes from vertical(get levels) to full horizontal mode in 2 minutes and you’re generally at a loss of what you should be doing vs what you could be doing.  As a piece, all these items are a means to an end, and often cross related.  Right now, my focus is on clearing out the last zone.

Scaling and Entitlement

The biggest problem with Legion was it was good and people kept playing it til the end. Nice problem to have! The second biggest problem is that it gave out legendaries and epics like candy, and everyone was massively overpowered by the time Argus showed up.  8.0 nerfed everyone (7.2 nerfed leveling), but for a max 110, it was generally manageable.

From 110-115, your legendaries still work, and their effects are very noticeable.  You likely have 2 pieces of Azerite gear by 115, though the skills on them are a shadow of artefact/legendary powers.  116 to 119 is hard for some classes, you feel a lot weaker.  120 is a wakeup call since WQ are all balanced for a specific item level – which everyone is missing by 20-30 points.

Players feel entitled to that sense of power because it lasted so long.  Getting an alt decked in full epics was a matter of days, not weeks in Legion.  We now need to redo that treadmill.  I’ve added a few nice pieces but I certainly feel that pain.  But then again, if that carrot on the stick wasn’t there, why do content?

That said, I do agree that there’s a fundamental problem with the initial curve.  The fact that you can unequip items and get stronger  seems to be shoddy design.  Any blackbox test would have shown the curve being an issue, so they obviously accepted it as working properly.  That someone figured out how to bypass that check…how I love crowdsourcing!

Gear Upgrades

Maybe there’s something broken, but world rares only drop i273 items, which I out level by a wide margin.  They don’t seem to scale their drops.  WQ drops are in in a similar space where the bottom of that is i280.  Bad rolls, and the WQ will not reward you with any upgrades at all.

Dungeons do give i310 items, and generally that’s ok.  Except for Azerite gear.  My neck is not yet high enough level to open the 2nd ring slot, meaning that functionally the items are worse than what I have equipped since I’m losing a passive bonus.  For example, I have one head piece that gives healing when I use a DoT attack, and also heals me every 6 seconds.  I’m a tank, that is very useful.  I’ve had a half dozen “upgrades” that were 10 levels higher and only 1 skill available, and a skill I don’t want (like randomly AEing targets, or faster movement speed).  I collect for the ‘mog, then sell the piece.  That is not fun.

Weapon drops are quite rare, yet have a significant impact on player power.  I’ve yet to see any in WQ, and dungeon drops aren’t exactly easy to find.  At the end of each zone is a close out quest with a weapon though, so I suggest not completing those final quests until 120, and then only once the reward level is closer to 290.  Clearly this wasn’t an issue with Legion as weapons always had upgrades through their slot mechanic.  It’s a bit jarring here.

Looks like a long trail to get to a higher level, which I don’t mind too much.  Would be nice to reach heroic dungeons in a week or so.

Professions

I stand by the theory that Legion killed most professions.  BfA has made crafters irrelevant for the most part, with the exception of the always fascinating “start of expansion” burst.  Scribes are selling decks, crafters are selling armor, potions are all over the place, bags for everyone.  There are Bind of Equip items as well, selling for insane amounts of gold.  I lucked out and had one drop, it should fetch ~800k on my server.

Recipe increases are no longer fully gated behind dungeon runs.  We’re back into the reputation unlocks, and making things.

The good side to this is that for harvesters (herbalist here) it is a stupid time to make money.  I sold all the herbs I collected from 110-120 for just over 30k gold.  I’ve max ranked all but 1 herbs – the horde-specific herb.  Anchor Weed is maxed, and I get 5 herbs+ per node.  Each herb sells for ~400g.  That’s right – each node is worth 2000g.  Compared to a WQ that gives me 70g, or a war table 18 hour mission for 50g.  Did I mention that my server’s Auction House is broken?  Makes it feel like a raid boss.

Dungeons

1. This is a new expansion, with new dungeons and mechanics to learn
2. I haven’t tanked to consider mechanics in 2 years
3. My skills/talents set have changed, making the group rotation a bit different
4. I am underpowered for most content
5. DPS still haven’t learned to interrupt
6. The default UI does a horrible job of explaining mechanics
7. Tanks insta-queue!

This above has made the dungeons I’ve run, well, an experience.  I’ll talk about the Temple of Tides specifically.  There are 1-2 specific regular mobs that cast an AE heal that maxes everyone, making for indefinite fights.  Those need to be interrupted.  There’s 1 mob that casts a channeled spell (something like Carving Dagger) that will drain 100% hp from a DPS and cannot be interrupted/stunned.  There’s another water elemental that casts chain lightning – again a 100% hp drop that cannot be interrupted/stunned.  Finally, the placement of mobs and the abundance of ae/knockback make for some interesting pulls.

To be clear, I think all those mechanics are interesting and force you to pay attention.  Start of an expansion is when to do it.  But there needs to be some training wheels for the DPS to understand their role on non-boss mechanics.  Interrupt a heal is one thing… but a non-interruptable 100% hp drain attack?  Now we need line of sight mechanics, or stacking mechanics.  Cool.  Tell people either during the fight, or have them find a way to figure it out in a fight without dying multiple times.

More to Come

There’s still a lot of content to cover, and I’ll have a few posts to address the big things.  So far it’s a lot of fun mechanically.  There are plenty of options for content, regardless of what you like to do.  Quests are generally well done, though perhaps a few too many kill X / collect Y variants.  Only found 2 escort quests (I would have like to let Penny fight her own way out, thank you).

It works, it’s fun, and it’s motivating to come back. So far, a thumb’s up.

From this article.

The crux of this post will focus on the following statement

“There has always been some question as to what the Horde stood for,” said Danuser. “And that has changed and evolved over time. Is it this disparate collection of outcasts that nobody will align themselves with? And that’s why they’re together, out of necessity? Or is it this group that’s driven by honor and courage? Players have been able to identify and pull out parts of the storyline that they favor and maybe turn a blind eye to some of the other things, but all of those things have been part of the Horde’s history.

I call shenanigans.

If the Horde has one problem it’s that it has been given extremely poor leadership post WotLK.  Ogrim Doomhammer was a nutter, fine.  Thrall took over in WC3 and moved away from the fel-rage model and back into the honor/courage mindset.  This was held up through Cairne & Vol’jin.  Thrall was positioned more as a Mary-Sue through Cataclysm and a change was certainly required.

Garrosh was an interesting choice as warchief, as he operated under absolutes.  He went off the deep end in MoP, but that followed the somewhat standard trope of  “die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain” that was all the rage at the time.  (See Batman and Halo franchised for examples). If people can recall, the Horde did not agree with him and joined with the Alliance to take him out.  There was a grey area for a while, but it did reach a tipping point.

Vol’jin came in next for WoD.  WoD as a whole didn’t have any leaders but Khadgar.  The Horde surely didn’t have an Yrel equivalent.  He was there but had minimal impact.  He died on the Broken Shores at the start of Legion, just like Varian – but with way less impact and dashed many Horde hopes.

From WoW launch until Legion start it would be hard to argue that the Horde lacked consistency or values.  I don’t mean the faction leaders, I mean the general Horde.  Goblins are their own brand of mad-scientist and are just as crazy as the gnomes (just less scrupulous).

Undead as a faction, that’s another ball game.  Sylvanas has always looked out for her and hers from the start.  Ruthless and unforgiving, but not petty or emotional.  (Which I think is the main pain point most people have with the burning of Teldrassil, as currently shown.)  Her style of leadership – of victory at almost any cost – intersects a lot with the Horde’s vision of honor in combat and not surrendering.  But it’s crystal clear in player’s minds, and the other Horde leader’s minds that they do not agree with her methods.

If you think about it a bit, you come to realize that aside from Magni acting as the speaker of Azeroth, there are no alliance members who are actually in tune with the planet.  Sure, aligned with the Light (paladins & Draenei) but not nature.  The Horde is about living with nature and finding balance.  Testing one’s limits.  In the D&D alignment spectrum – the Alliance tends towards Lawful Good (with Greymane, Jaina, and Shaw as exceptions), and the Horde tends towards Neutral Good, if not outright Neutral (with Sylvanas being more Neutral Evil).

Back to shenanigans.

The Horde has few questions about self-identity.  They have questions about their leadership.  I’m all in for BfA exploring how the Horde identity comes to terms with the fact that their leader shares only a portion of their values.  I think that would make a very interesting story line – if it’s only within the Horde.  Especially considering they are in the hear of Troll-land, where their shamanistic roots can be further explored.

Legion brought Artifact weapons which were pretty darn amazing.  They generally had some link to the overall lore.  They looked pretty darn good.  The best/worst part was the set of passive buffs that the weapons applied, that certainly modified your playstyle.  Heck, you needed them to make the class even mildly relevant.  To get access to those buffs, you needed Artifact Power (AP) to get more points to invest in the weapon.  It turned the focus of the to have an AP farm as a priority – at least until you reached the “necessary” buffs.  It took a few weeks effort on a given class.  Maxing a weapon took longer.

There was a catch-up mechanic, called Artifact Knowledge (AK).  But you needed to play in order to research AK.  Say you come back after a month, it may take a week to get the AK back to where it needed to be.  At higher AK levels… you would get billions of AP.

The system wasn’t so much broken, but had issues with incentives.  With high level gear, AP was the only target.

Late in Legion, they simply gave everyone max AK.  Then launched a system called Netherlight Crucible.  This gave a left/right tree of choices of passive buffs to the artifact weapons.  Say an fist attack would do extra damage, or heals would double click.  Math showed that some of these buffs were massively better than others, and they were randomly assigned to gear.  You may have gotten a super max level boost to the weapon, but the passive buffs weren’t any good.

Azerite Solution

WoWHead has a good guide to explain this.

The concept made sense, the implementation just needed some tweaking.  AP is still there.  It still acts as a gating mechanism for passive buffs.  You have a necklace and it gains AP, levels up in rank, and gives some minor stat buffs.

The previous AK/AP issue of farming is address by the requirement for the next rank of AP dropping by 30% every week.  The AP drops in the world remain the same number, you just need less for each rank.

The ranks are required to unlock passive buffs on Azerite gear (head, chest, shoulders).  there are 2-3 buffs per piece, depending on quality.  You need higher ranks of Azerite in order to access more of those buffs – very similar to the AP system in Legion.  The road to 120 should get you enough AP to use all the dungeon gear you find.  The folks who are raiding mythic (when it’s eventually unlocked) should be able to unlock most of the buffs.  That means the motivation to farm AP is dramatically dropped.

The next gap was the set of passive buffs and the randomness of those buffs.  It would appear that now the buffs are set in the gear before it drops.  So if you’re looking for a specific set of passives, look for areas that drop that specific piece of gear.  It’s less useful while leveling where you’re replacing gear, and some passives are much more fun than others.  The real test will be in dungeons, where an item may be a generic power upgrade (ilvl) but the passives are less useful.

Time Will Tell

I do think that the worst parts of AP/artifacts are addressed in BfA.  Rather than AP being the only focus, there are clear diminishing returns (30% reduction per week) and a whole lot less randomness to the effects on gear.  Curious to see how this plays out after 4-6 weeks.

Let’s start off with the Stormrage Server population.

There are more monks on Stormrage than there entire populations on other servers

It is #3 in total population, and the largest pro-Alliance ratio in the game.  There are over 900,000 Alliance toons.  There are only 2 other servers with more than 900,000 total players.  So yeah, it’s big. And a launch server, so it’s also old.  The general rule of thumb is that if there’s a problem with WoW, Stormrage is the first to feel it.  Guess where I play?

BfA Start

I had done all of the lead up quests to allow entry to BfA.  A lot of people have talked about what comes next.  Magni has you click rocks and gives you an uber azurite amulet.  Takes about 2 minutes, then you go see Anduin and he sends you and Jaina to the isles.  This coming from Legion, where each weapon had a unique scenario that lasted 10-15 minutes.  I remember finishing this quest and going “that’s it?”

Anyhow, you end up in a boat, Jaina talks to her mom who disowns her, and you end up in jail.  There are plenty of videos of this, but gosh does it look good.  Kul Tirans have amazing models.  The world simply looks amazing.  There’s green and brown, but no neon and no demons.  The city (Boralus) is sprawling, and a look that reminds me more of Borean Tundra (if it wasn’t frozen).  The art/world builders deserve a lot of kudos for what they’ve done.

Stormsong Valley

This is a bit more like Mist of Pandaria, with large rolling hills, waterchannels, tunnels to explore, and tentacles everywhere.  Ok, maybe not so much MoP.  But I wasn’t 10 minutes into this zone before I saw tentacles.

Taken from r/wow

Those bad guys cover the entire east side of the map, with a dungeon on the NE.  I crossed what looked like the Bifrost to get there.  It looks great, and the story is cool.  It’s a bit on the nose though?

The middle of the map has the Horde coming in for a bombing run.  Not quite sure why, and that quest area is my least favorite.  There are animals to the south, bee area to the SE which is neat, awesome looking quillboars to the SW.  Then there are pirates.  Lots of pirates.  They look great.  I miss the BB days…

I did end up replacing my artifact weapon with a green weapon.  That hurt.  I’ll eventually transmog to something else, but after 2 years of the same general look, it is hard to let it go.

The questing is a lot different than Legion.  There are what seems like 20 or so questing nodes, and there are breadcrumbs between them, but no real order of preference to move forward.  It feels like the next logical step from Blizz after levels clearly don’t matter.  I am exploring at my own pace, and if I don’t like one part, I move to another.  It works.

The downside to this is that my questlog is overflowing.  I have targets all over my map. At least it looks like the quest cap has either been removed, or put to a much higher level.

Now What

I’m at 113 now, with about a quarter of the zone to go.  Then 2 more zones afterwards.  I have no interest in blasting through the content, I want to pay attention to the details and take in the sights.  Being a gatherer has a large boost to experience gain, which means I’ll hit 120 long before I’m done the questing content.

For now, I’m taking down a rare when they get in my way.  I’m leaving all the treasure chests for when I hit 120.  I know a lot of guides recommend putting your collected gear into the scrapper for material.  I am not all that convinced right now.  A weapon could get me ~75g.  So maybe I should scrap cheaper gloves.

At this rate, I guess I’ll hit 120 later next week and then try out some dungeons.  So far, so good in terms of minute to minute gameplay and world building.  Still wondering where this yellow brick road will lead…

Stormrage went down faster than… well it went down.  No surprise.  It goes down every major patch.

The advantages of an older server is that there is a large establishment of, well, everything.  It’s the highest % of Alliance as well.  Finding a guild means just logging in and taking one of the dozen invites you get within 2 minutes.  Auction House prices are usually pretty cheap.  The actual in-game world is part of a shared pool of servers.  I mean, I see Horde players, I just know they are not on Stormrage.

Still, my Stormrage roots are mostly gone.  The majority of folks I played with have long since left the game and a server transfer would not be out of the question.  CRZ would allow me to join another guild on a linked server… but those outside are off limits.

Except…I have 7 max level characters and transfers cost $32 a pop.  I am not spending $210 on that effort.  Sure, the DH would be the least impacted since I could get one to 110 in about 2 days of effort.  That leaves 6 folks to go – the youngest of all being the Monk. I am not all the interested in re-leveling everyone again, certainly not after the 7.3.5 / 8.0 changes that pretty much tripled leveling time.

Which really makes you wonder why Blizz doesn’t offer mass character transfer services.  I’m sure there are other people like me that would be willing to pay for a large swap, at a reasonable rate.  Say $100.

Who knows, maybe I’ll level yet another character on another server and see what happens.  Worst thing would be getting the costs for flight speed unlocked… everything else is account wide, right?