You don’t have an MMO unless you have fishing.  UO built that into my psyche.

WoW’s fishing had been the definition of a peaceful grind.  It has rarely provided much tangible benefit, except for the fun and some minor cash generation for selling fish on the AH.  Maxing actually fishing skill is a fraction of the effort to get the rest of the neat toys (read less than 1% of the time).

Legion brought a fishing artifact – Underlight Angler.  It takes about ~3 hours to go through the necessary steps.  It is so much easier to do with flying, as it gives quick access to Margoss (for special lures) and extremely fast access to fishing pools.

Once you have it, you leveling through catching more rare fish.  Each one gives 50AP.  I prefer Stormheim for this, as with the proper lure, the pool is 100% stable and you can pull out 20-30 fish.  There are 3 tangible benefits to getting this artifact and filling out the slots.  Walking on water, faster swimming/water breathing, and lower aggro radius while fishing.  These benefits carry through into BfA.

There’s more you can get through if you want.  There’s the friend model from MoP that has 6 people you can grind away.  Further grind away for some more rare drops which allows you to collect material to exchange for toys/cosmetics.  The friend grind really requires some groups to make due – except Margoss.  That one is long.

You can also go back into MoP or WoD and acquire some useful equipment/mounts.  You don’t really need a pole.  Having a Water Strider (water walking) is extremely useful for leveling.  A raft allows you to fish from pools while standing on the water.  Pretty much essential if you really want to do some fishing.

BfA brings in some changes, and more of the original Vanilla format for fishing.  It’s been a long while where there were ocean fish, then zone-based fish.  It’s changing to faction fish (some alliance, some horde), and 2 global fish.  The legion artifact still works, but the “port to nearest pool” won’t work.  Which is really a dumb skill, since it has a 5m cooldown and fishing a pool takes about 2 minutes.  I struggle to see how that ability could be abused.  Anyhow, instead of being on the pole, you need to use a specific fish for this ability.  The same fish is used for feasts – so it’s likely to go for 100g per fish on the AH.  Who wants to pay 100g for a port that could be done in 10 seconds of walking?

Still, I look forward to getting back into the zen of fishing.  It’s a great break from the go-go-go of regular MMOs.  And who knows, maybe someday we’ll actually get to fish up something more fun than fish.

Similar to Isey, I’ve been putting some level of thought into this.

By the end of Legion, I have a Monk, Demon Hunter, Paladin, Rogue and Death Knight all at 110.  Shaman, Druid, Hunter are at least in Legion, but I wasn’t a fan enough of their mechanics to keep going.  I’m sure at some point I mentioned why I don’t play cloth casters, and my general aversion to Warriors.

We’re only a week into the BfA class changes, but I have been keeping tabs with various videos (a lot of Icy Veins truth be told).   I know that the Warlock is rejigged (and I have one in the 70s) to be more fun.  I also know that Shamans and Druids are in an odd spot right now – at least in the fun mechanics department. So in terms of classes I want to play, let’s take a quick peek.

Monk

• All 3 roles, and the only reason for playing  panda.  It feels like playing an alternate version of WoW, as it’s so different from other classes.  I have a soft spot for MoP, and there is no class that is more thematically consistent than the Monk.
• The monk tank and healer roles are technically challenging, which is fun.

Demon Hunter

• The movement of this class is second to none and the best class for exploring any zone by ground.   They fit really well into Legion, but that expansion’s story is over so I have no idea what driver they have now.
• I dislike the look of the class.  It’s very dark and I find that all DKs look identical.

Paladin

• This is the brain dead class that can’t be killed.  I have little interest in it, other than the thematic link to the Alliance.

Rogue

• I’ve had one since the game launched.  They have been neglected more and more every expansion (MoP nearly killed them with Monks), and Legion put in the Roll the Bones (RNG) mechanic that makes them very un-fun in groups.
• I love their theme, and the ability to stealth and pick pocket everything that moves.  I guess I really like the concept but have trouble with the execution (pun!)

Death Knight

• I like the complexity of this plate class, and the themes are getting better so long after the Lich King story stopped.  They have a very high skill ceiling, which is also attractive.
• They are tremendously slow and I find little joy in playing anything but Blood.

Shaman

• On paper these guys should be the best class!  In reality, it feel like a lead-eating chimp is in charge of their design.  It really feels like a squandered opportunity – a mirror image of what the Paladin brings to the table.
• I play them out of pity and hope.

Hunter

• I loved playing hunter when pet management meant something.  Hunting new pets was a lot of fun.  Then pet battles came around and bye bye Hunter.
• The lol-hunter moniker is both real and a turn off.

Druid

• I already play a multi-role class (Monk) so have little need for another.  And Druid is so incredibly slow (Bear vs any other tank, Cat vs Rogue especially).
• The lack of customization (aside from Legion) was very off putting and by this point I don’t want to bother with the Legion content. Maybe later in BfA.

Mage/Priest

• I’ve played both.  I find other classes do a better job in both roles.  I like the look of Shadow Priests – but the squishynes of cloth is a turn off.

Warlock

• Always had a soft spot for these buggers.  Long ago when you needed to quest to get pets, it was a blast to go through.  (Ghostbusters quest was fun!).  Aside from Metamorphosis (which was taken by DH in Legion) was the only good thing to happen to them since Vanilla.
• BfA seems to have rebuilt the Warlock.  I’m playing one now, and it’s some fun.  Problem is getting this guy through the levels for BfA.  I’d expect some catch up event in the next 2 weeks (like Legion) to solve that issue.

Warrior

• I really don’t get why this class still exists.  Every other class does what this one does, but better.  Doesn’t help that I don’t like the look of plate classes in WoW and for the longest time, they were poor at self-healing.  Ah well.

War Mode

• I don’t think the 10% experience gain is worth even a fraction of the hassle of PvP content.  I played on a PvP server for a couple years and it was the least fun I’ve ever had.  I’d be quite surprised how that actually turns out in the end.

I am not enamored with any of the alternative races, for one primary reason : the need to re-level. First, the fact that those I would re-skin have a massive time investment and I don’t want to re-roll and lose access to the rare drops (recipes mostly) and fishing skill.  The Monk and Rogue are never going to be re-rolled for this reason alone.

Second, the changes to have every zone scale makes leveling very un-fun.  The BfA changes are not helping.  It is insanely boring to level from 60 to 100 for a +1 in STR as the only reward, and for it to take hours to get through.  Even with full heirlooms (my Warlock), it just takes too long.  Both in the length of time to kill something, but in the length of time in a given level.  The only incentive right now is heirloom armor – which does look cool – but not enough to spend 20+ hours to get.  Per race.  I’m sure it will be tweaked.

Short Term

The plan right now is simple enough.

• Finally unlock WoD flying.  I’m a week or so away of dailies to close this.
• Hit Exalted with relevant Legion factions.  I think only Argus is left for me, and they are all at Revered now.
• Level the Warlock to 110.  He’s 78 now if I recall.  I’d like to wait a week and see if there’s a catch up mechanic and do it that way instead.
• Close up my fishing achievements for Legion.  I love fishing and thought I had done this already.  I was wrong.

I haven’t even bought BfA yet.  I don’t know if I will until a week after launch.

WoW patched to 8.0 on Tuesday.  It did not go well.

And I mean this from nearly all sides, from developers to consumers.  Pre-patch should be renamed to client testing.  That’s what I call it at work.  We do all the tests we can internally (alpha), stage it in a test environment for clients to poke (beta), then have an initial small release in production (client testing) to a select group of users who know things can still go awry.  Blizzard does the same, they just happen to have a slightly larger scale.

And all developers dread the notorious X.0 patch.  Most people who spend time in IT will wait until at least a full sub release, if not two.  The larger the X gets, the worse the patches get.  Plain and simple, they need to take into consideration years of previous code.  Example – Internet Explorer.  If you ever had the chance to see that source code, you would find stuff from the 90s in there.  They had to dump most of it away, and rewrite Edge from the basics (also why W3 testing seems to finally work).

So, yeah.  Context on the post.  I get what Blizzard was trying to do, I get the challenges.  What I am most curious about is the level of failure this patch brought about, and the optics around that.  From the outside, it seems two things happened.  One, they made some new global variables to put in “big wheels” to adjust numbers across the board to save time.  Second, they don’t have black box testing.  The first one, I can see how it can make things go sideways.  I’ve had that happen.  But the black box testing always found it – especially when it took a larger scale.

What is black box testing?  The general idea is that you apply inputs on one end, and look at the outputs, without knowing how the insides of that box work.  If you look at how the code executes, then you’re too far in to see the larger bugs.  For example.  Enemies that are in the 80-90 range have 2x more hit points than enemies at 110.  Looking at the code won’t show you that, but testing against set use cases and analytics will.  It will not find the specific use case of sub boss X from 3 patches ago, that does the moonwalk instead of normal pathing (at least, it’s not likely).

It also appears that they didn’t stress test their login servers for pre-patch code.  Which again, seems a ridiculous thing after so many years of server meltdowns on every X.0 patch, and every expansion release day.

As for the actual content, I found numerous bugs.  Most in WoD (faction running and Tanaan).  All my characters appear to be 25% weaker at max level, and leveling is like hitting a meat wall.  The numbers need tweaking, and that’s doable in the short term.  Losing artifacts and their bonuses however, that is quite painful.  My monk is so much less fun to play, and has lost nearly all self-sustain ability.  As a tank, he could solo pretty much anything without much trouble – in particular invasion bosses on Argus.  Now, it’s 3-4 deaths per, unless I have someone healing me.

As much empathy as I have for the Blizz developers, considering the sheer amount of money they have, as well as a reputation for quality delivery, this entire event makes it seem that WoW has been delegated to the C team.  It certainly doesn’t inspire confidence in the actual release of the expansion.  I’m sure the large scale items will get fixed (squish related), but the fun aspect of classes we had in Legion is seriously diminished.  Not sure how that will work out.

With Legion coming to a close, let’s take a look back.

Launch

Relatively pain free as launches go.  Zones and dungeons were all working well.  There were a lot of good changes at launch for quality of life.

• Transmog:Appearances to help people sort out their looks
• Up to 5 players can tap an open mob, making world quests a lot more pleasant
• A simplification of stats (spirit, armor, multistrike, spell power were removed)
• Re-specing out in the wild for free
• Removal of glyphs
• Max gold increased to 9,999,999
• Max characters per realm upped to 12

The scaled content was well balanced in Legion zones, and made each area fairly similar in terms of challenge.  The loss (for some) of flying for leveling was offset with the flightmaster’s whistle.  The emissary quests were a good way to compensate for dailies, and there was always something to do when you logged on.  Small shout to the hookshot ability.  I found that to be a super tool.

The dungeons provided were all quite good, though Maw of Souls, Eye of Azshara, Vault of Wardens, and Halls of Valor were the ones that worked best for me.

7.1

We got Karazhan, Trial of Valor, Suramar Part 2 (Nighthold), more world quests – and Falcosaurs.  For a small patch, it did delivery some nice things.  It was nice to revisit Kara…and the nightmares of TBC.

7.2

This was a big one.  Broken Shores was launched, which brought new dungeons and a raid, demon assaults, class mounts, flying (!!), class hall upgrades (and followers), and pet battle dungeons.  It was a surprising amount of content for a patch.

7.3

Argus.  Which I would argue is a refinement of the Timeless Isle mechanics and lessons learned from the Broken Shore.  Invasion points worked for me.  99% of Argus as a quest / lore location worked for me.  The closure of the Burning Legion saga was really nice to see through.  The downside I have for Argus is that flying was removed for that zone.  The teleporters certainly helped, and trash was well spread out, so not too bad in the end.  Plus, it rained purples.

Artifacts

Giving players weapons of supreme lore/power was neat.  A bit jumping the shark, as there’s nowhere but down to go from here.  The customization of passive talents was fun for the first bit.  The Artifact Knowledge gating mechanic (to make the weapons stronger) was broken, and dramatically rewarded grinding.  When class power is measured in Maw of Soul runs… there’s a problem. It also made off-spec work a real pain in the butt to manage.  It also made alts a whole lot less fun.

The appearances of each artifact worked for me.  Collecting them was a fun challenge.  For most classes at least.  Some were gated behind weekly bosses, which was pretty dumb.  Still, the concept of power and bonding to a weapon worked, and clearly the Azurite system is a reflection of that.

I will say that it’s going to be funny to be replacing something like Ashbringer with a green sword that drops from a spider.

Crafting

I liked the ranked concept of crafting.  I didn’t mind the quest gating too much, but some of it was annoying when forced to do high level dungeons on an alt. You needed to gear them, then boost their artifact, then quest, then do more quests.  It was too long, and provided minimal value for most.

I’m not surprised that First Aid is gone the way of the dodo.  I am surprised that Inscription has not been merged with Enchanting.

Class Halls

This was generally better than garrisons, as it wasn’t about micro-managing.  It was thematic, and provided a reason for class fantasy.  The follower quests were not fun.  I further dislikes quests/dungeons/raids being behind these gates.  It was a lot of busywork.

But if you ignore the followers, then the rest of the class halls worked.  The people within the halls, the various quests, or even just the hall itself – lore-nuts were ecstatic.

Suramar

This entire zone worked for me, end to end.  Parts were open, the city felt like a city, there were tough areas, the questing was solid… it just worked.  The central quest to restore the tree was fun.  The pet zombie scenario was fun.  The costume worked.

Mythic + Dungeons

I ran a few of the lower level ones.  I had some fun.  The additional constraints changed the thinking of how those were run, though in 90% of cases it was better to run with a pre-made group.  I am in the camp that thinks that this type of content will replace raids as the top tier activity.

Character Alts

It was bad in WoD, as the garrison work was character specific.  Once you put in the time, then it was a crazy amount of busy work to manage it, but provided an insane amount of gold-making opportunity.

Legion seemed to double down on that theory.  As mentioned, artefacts were a serious grind for one spec, let alone one character.  Throw in the legendary (with 4 item cap) that had a dramatic impact on playstyle and it compounded the frustration.  Suramar dungeons were also gated per character.

I get the concept, Blizz wants people to be invested in a single character.  Well, it’s 2018 and that mindset needs to be tweaked.  Put in roadbumps for alts… fine.  Bigger ones for optional branches, but the main power line should be streamlined.  I don’t think we’ll ever see FF14s system here, but there’s a middle ground to be had… something like Rift’s core classes, or SWTOR’s Legacy system.  At least something given that they want people to re-roll their characters for a new skin of the same class.

Overall

Aside from the penalties to alts, I think Legion delivered an amazing package.  The timing of content release was good, the content was relatively bug-free, the lore was solid, the flows inside each zone worked…it was all rather seamless.

And there seemed to always be something to do, a reason to log back on and achieve something.  At least for a good long while.  I’d guess retention here was much better than in previous expansions because of it.

In the same vein as Tobold on this one.

I think there’s a ying/yang effect with WoW expansions.  I am under the thought that Vanilla/BC are the baseline, then each expansion past is solid, with the next being ugh.  WotLK was good, Cataclysm was meh, Pandaria was good, Warlords was meh, Legion was good, BfA…?

Of important note, the devs have been pretty clear that there are no items left before launch… all that’s left is number tweaking.  If a skill is broken, it will be fixed “later”.

Story

Let’s face it, the story in Legion was impressive.  The whole ant vs. god trope was in full effect and you took down the largest threat to the universe.  BfA is back to the Horde vs. Alliance model.  You know, that conflict that Pandaria showed was useless?  In both Warlords and Legion the factions worked together against a common foe.  I don’t quite get how time passes in WoW, but in the real world we’re around 4 years of being chummy.

It’s hard to argue with the logic in a game with dragons and tentacle demons…I concede that point.  That said, the best stories are the ones where character behaviors are consistent across multiple events.  It would appear no one learned any lessons.

Loss

Legion added a bunch of neat ideas to the game, and most worked out fairly well.   Order halls, artifact weapons (the concept, not the grind), leveling, open world questing…even Argus was a neat approach.  Most of that is out the window.

Normal with expansions, out with the old, in with the new.  But the new has to at least be attractive.  Feral, Shadow and Shamans are basically a bit broken from a fun perspective at launch, with numbers being boosted to make them competitive.  Which is odd.

Stat squish doesn’t bug me.  The GCD changes are a bit odd, which will certainly slow down the game.  A lot of those were rolled back, which is good. Curious as to how that plays out.

Raid sets are also gone, replaced with generic role-based armor.  Paladins and DKs will look the same.

Gain

What’s new aside from levels, zones, and dungeons/raids?  Artifacts/legendaries are being replaced by a new neck piece.  This works a lot like the Netherlight Crucible, were after certain power levels, you get a passive boost.  Lots of PvP options.

There aren’t any new classes or races.  Scratch that, there are new skins on existing races.  Not to the same scale of Goblins/Worgen, or even close to Pandaria itself.

Maybe

Perhaps this just means that WoW has hit its apogee.  Legion did some amazing things to the overall game.  Mythic dungeons were a great way forward.  Leveling was much better than in previous expansions.  Broken Shore / Argus were great improvements on the Timeless Isle mechanics.  The pacing of patches was solid.  The storyline made sense.

What Legion made difficult was alts (heck, even alternate specs).  Sure, leveling them was easy enough.  But tradeskills and power levels were taken behind the barn.  Artifact Knowledge / Power, random drop quests for crafting, horrible RNG for legendaries, Titanforging…all of that seems to be changed in a positive way.

Could simply be that this feels less like an expansion of mechanics compared to previous expansions, and more of a large patch instead.  There’s a lot of tweaking, but no large sweeping changes, or shiny new carrots to keep people going.