Personality Profile

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I would think most people have had some sort of personality profile in their lives.  First ones are usually in high school and relate to career development.  You may have had one at work later on, or taking some random online test.  They all seem to fall into the same general category, like Myers Briggs.

The one we’ve been focusing at work is Insights.  Similar model, but a larger focus on interactions between the profiles.

 

The north/south axis is related to data/feelings, respectively.  The east/west axis is related to introvert, and extrovert, respectively.  The challenges in communication between profiles is when they are directly opposite – so someone that’s mostly Blue (introverted and data driven) has trouble with people who are Yellow (social and runs with their gut).

The challenge with any of these assessments is that they are exclusive choices.  You are presented with options, and since it’s a priority, one choice is the “best” one given your current context.  Let’s say your house is on fire, you are going to make different decisions than if you’re just making dinner.  In that sense, these are role-based assessments.

So first some work context – I work in an IT related field.  The stereotype is generally there, with a whole bunch of Blue and very few Yellow.  When I’m trying to fill a gap in the team, I often leverage this model to figure out how best to pick a candidate.  The technical domain changes all the time, but it takes a mountain to change a personality type.  Too many Red and you get conflict.  Too many Yellow and no work gets done.  Too much Green and you have people waiting.  Too much Blue and you have analysis-paralysis.

My personal assessment puts me as a very strong Red, with part of Blue. so I tend to trend between Director and Reformer.  I struggle with the Support/Helper role, I really do.  There are times where I need to take a couple deep breaths before responding.  They need to feel valued in the larger sphere of work, and their motivators are not tangible.  If they wake up on the wrong side of the bed, well, that day’s a wash.  If they wake up on the right side of the bed, then they have some sort of magical sauce that makes the team 8x more productive.

A reminder that this is role based, so this assessment is related to work.  There’s an “unconscious” evaluation, one where you’re not at work.  I still trend in the same role, but my Red trends downwards, and it’s a more balanced view across the 4 colors.  Balanced, in the sense that I actually have Green in my non-work state, not in the sense of equal values.

My wife is an Inspirer/Motivator.  She’s damn good at it too.  That means our kids are exposed to two people who are mostly extroverted (my wife much more than I).  I consciously push into the Blue to offset my wife, and she works on pushing into the Green to offset me.  That still leaves a point where we both move into a “get shit done” mode, and that only gets you so far.  So we spend some time talking over our days, seeing what worked out and what we want to try the next time.  That we’re aware of this at all is probably the most important step.  Much easier to work on being a parent as a team, than against each other.

It’s interesting to think about the genesis of this post.  I’ve covered bits of it in the past, but a recent event at work really made me take stock of my personality once again.  It’s good to write it down again, remind myself that progress is really only achieved as a team, and that for every perceived weakness, there’s also a strength.

 

Leveling Speed

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What feels good for someone could feel off for another.  And in a game with multiple options, leveling between choices can vary wildly as well.

There’s really nothing that replaces the first time for pretty much anything in life.  It’s all shiny and new.  Games certainly have that in spades, where it may be mechanics that open up over time, or a story that just hits all the right notes.  Horizon: Zero Dawn was a damn feast in both those spaces, where more and more things just kept coming at you.  God of War’s story is just mind boggling the first time you run through it.  While both are made to play be played a main time, then perhaps a New Game+ (or much later), MMOs are instead meant to be replayed ad nauseum.  The leveling portion (getting another class/character to top level) is a part that just really struggles to come close to the first time.

Most MMO’s today suffer from this fatigue, not so much because the of the repetitive nature of the game, but because the games themselves are so old and that the leveling portion itself is a fraction of the totality of the game.  Since I’m leveling alts in WoW, I’ll pick on that for now.

There are few milestones in the leveling portion

  • 1 to 20 – starting experience
  • 21 to 60 – core skills (~24 hours from 1 to 60)
  • 61 to 80 – Frozen Throne + flying! (15 hours)
  • 81 to 90 – Pandaria (4 hours)
  • 91 to 100 – Warlords (4 hours)
  • 101 to 110 – Legion (4 hours)
  • 111 to 120 – BfA (12 hours)

Character progression-wise, 1 to 60 is where the real meat is.  You get pretty much the entire toolset by 30, and flying at 60, so the rest is all filler.  I still like to think that each milestone should be of similar duration, simply because the expansion mechanics do some somersaults.  I mean, you KNOW you’re in WoD because of the unskippable intro quest.  All told, it’s about 50 hours to get to 110.

Assuming you have heirlooms, war mode, and flying unlocked for every zone.

81 to 110 is all done within a similar timeframe – but only if you’ve unlocked flying everywhere – takes maybe 2 hours to get through each phase.  The 61 to 80 portion feels like it takes longer than the 21-60 part, but that’s not at all true.  Catalcysm was just after WotLK and we were still in the hub/fetch quest model.  There’s an insane amount of backtracking that is jut completely ignored once you can fly – and if you have any plans of visiting that content at all, it’s worth every second to unlock flying (remember to use a Human for any rep-based gains).

Now, the differences between classes is absurd.  A Hunter with War Mode skills (2 massive DPS boosts on relatively short cooldowns) can take out absolutely anything – even the 3+ targets in BfA.  It’s right on the edge of being a complete joke.  The other side of that spectrum is something like the Shaman, where even a single regular target can kill you.  I get the concept that each class has strengths and weaknesses, and for the most part they sort of all fit into this middle pack.  And because the class kits are determined way back at the start of the journey, the rest of the ride can be quite painful.

Now, the fundamental question here is Does It Matter?  In the context of leveling alts, not at all.  It’s just a repeat of what came before (minus the Legion Class Hall stuff, which can be awesome).  It’s a speedbum.  Where it does matter is in the goal of bringing in new main characters (either new players, or existing players changing classes).  The player’s enjoyment of the toolkit + leveling experience has a pretty big impact on the viability of that class long term.

If you have a chance, play a DH for an hour or so.  Then play any other class in the leveling process.  Or a WW Monk vs. a Rogue (or cat druid).  Some classes/specs have such a dynamic toolkit that moves beyond 2-3 keys, and their abilities just look damn cool.  Hate on Pally if you want, but there’s no denying that it looks like a Paladin should look.

Long post to short point.  I dont for a second imagine that Blizz has the resources necessary to re-jig the leveling experience or class kits.  I am hopeful that they address the time-to-level portion so that people can get to relevant content and current mechanics sooner.  Right now, Shadowlands seems to clock in at 1-50 taking ~20 hours – I still think that’s twice as long as needed.  It would be amazing if they somehow made the older content relevant again… but in nearly every respect that matters, that ship left port years and years ago.

 

 

WoW Class Mounts

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I keep falling back into Legion content – there’s just so much there.  There was a large focus in that expansion on cosmetic rewards, which I think is a great horizontal incentive.

One of those rewards is class mounts.  Some of them are very unique (Monk/DH), while others are upgraded basic mounts (Pally/Warlock).  The method to acquire there is really simple – get the Breaching the Tomb achievement.  I did this with my Monk was back in the day, so I figured it would be account wide.

Yeah, not so much.  In fact, you need to do a PILE of stuff to get here.

First bit, this is only relevant if you are leveling an alt toady, on a class you didn’t fully max to 110 back in Legion.  My Shaman did 100-110 by only doing about half of a Legion zone (heirlooms + rested + war mode).  I put one toe into the Class Hall to start the journey, then never went back.

Complete Class Hall

This means getting your title, and unlocking Heroic Weapons.  Again, sounds simple.  In reality this means unlocking all of your spec weapons, running at least 1 dungeon, running 2 sets of 5x 1hr missions, then a whole pile of instanced content.

The painful part is the table missions, since you’re effectively time-gated.  If there are 5 missions, it’s more than 5 hours since you need to be logged on to select a new mission.  The mobile app doesn’t do Legion content anymore.

The fun part is the actual class content.  Some classes have really solid storylines, some have really good quest content.  Some have both, some have neither.  If you’ve unlocked Nazjatar content, then your ilvl is enough to face roll pretty much anything, so there’s no actual challenge. That does put a whole lot more focus on the actual content.

All told, it’s just under a week to get through everything, mainly due to the time gates.

Complete Broken Shore

This is the same for everyone, which makes is very repetitive.  Everyone will stall at the Champions of Legionfall step – it won’t show until you complete the entire Class Hall portion.

  • A Legion Assault (every ~2 days)
  • 2500 Nethershards (do all the Assault WQs)
  • 50 Sentinax tokens, which usually has a ship up
  • 8 World Quests (this will take about a day to get enough)
  • 3 rares, which should be up, otherwise you need to wait a bit
  • 10 chests, which should be up but you need to fly around to find them
  • an 8hr table quest (ARGH!!)
  • A class quest to get a new companion

The class quest varies in complexity per class.  Some are really easy and over before you know it, some are quite involved.  All steps together can be luckily done in a day, but most likely will be done over multiple.

Reward

The actual Class Mounts!

There are some beauties in here.  The Monk mount is top of list for me.  Ban Lu spends a fair chunk talking to you as well.  The Mage mount is certainly unique, though the looks is really similar to the Cloud mount from Pandaria.  Demon Hunter has a great mounting animation, where you jump up and crash into the ground.  Rogue spins around and summons the Raven.  The Shaman is also quite thematic.

Paladin, Warlock, and Warrior all look like existing mounts.  Druid is better than their basic travel form, but looks better when not moving. Priest and Hunter are in this weird spot where they look cool from up close, but you wouldn’t really notice it from a few steps away.  To each their own though!

I will say that this model is unlikely to work once Shadowlands launches, only because the enemies HP will be so low that every class will 1 shot everything.  There are some bits of this process that are in the open world, and some classes are at a huge disadvantage in terms of actions per second.  Maybe this will just become an account achievement.

Throttling the Market

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WoW had a stealth fix applied that impacts people who play the Auction House, effectively throttling the number of transactions after a certain limit is reached.  High level

With this hotfix, we’ve implemented a new system that effectively gives each player a “budget” of AH actions per minute, and only kicks in once that budget has been exceeded. The system is tuned so that is should never affect players using the AH typically: buying consumables, listing gathered or crafted goods for sale, searching for specific items you want to purchase, etc. It should be essentially impossible to encounter the new limits for most players.

The first question I have is why?  I can only assume this is a throughput/TX issue where the servers were taking a major load and impacting other parts of the game.  It’s entirely possible that a very small fraction of players are causing a majority of the game load.  This is sort of like how time dilation works in EvE, where there isn’t a hard cap, simply a soft one that allows things to move at a snail’s pace.  Degraded service, rather than failed service.

Balance-wise, I am more curious as to where this threshold exists.  Long gone are the days where people posted single items rather than stacks, clogging up the AH space.  It was why I stopped playin a Hunter – getting ammo was stupid complicated.  Getting rid of thousands of individual posting isn’t a problem that needs solving anymore.

A long time ago I used to play the AH, maybe 30 minutes a day or so.  Made enough money to get a dozen+ WoW tokens.  I can’t see how anyone would have the Brontosaurus mount who wasn’t using something like TSM to make money.  It’s entirely the purpose of that mount after all.  Entirely normal to run a few hundred changes in a few minutes – cancelling auctions and reposting at a different price.  Filling up in materials.

The sidenote here would be snipe scans.  That takes a look across the entire AH for things that are well below market value.  It’s nearly impossible to find these manually.  Someone continually polling the entire AH would be a massive drain on server.

Should be interesting to see how this plays out in the long term market value.  It’s certainly a number Blizz can change over time, and I’m sure they are seeing server TX volumes take a massive nosedive.  Even more curious if this is account-wide, or character specific.  If there’s a hard drop (e.g. cap goes away after an hour) or if it’s a variable rate limit.

There’s a real world analogy here, where the majority of stock market transactions are high volume automated systems, making pennies a trade, but having millions of transactions a day.  It would be something to see what TX throttling would have as an impact to the market volatility.  Course that won’t ever happen, for reasons that are clearly obvious that the people making the most money in this behavior are also the ones who make the rules…

Milestones

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My eldest hits 10 this week.  There’s something about society looking at the X0 ages as big stepping stones.  I think it’s mostly about easier math, cause I can easily think of 2010 and what was going on.  The summer was a heat wave, everyone in the social group was having kids, and I went through a massive career shift in the fall.  With the support of my wife, in the first year I pushed extremely hard to get progress then, which I knew I’d be unable to do with a kid running around.  It’s paid off, and today I have the flexibility to spend more time with the family.

My eldest has seen some really crazy stuff.  She has little concept of a disconnected world.  For the longest time she didn’t understand that her grandparent didn’t have access to the internet.  Social Media has exploded in her lifetime, and kids her age end up watching TikTok, or some other insanity. She gets annoyed at TV ads but will accept ads on YouTube.  I think we’ve done a decent job at balancing real world and connected world, since she’s not bugging us for a phone.  She can follow, or she can lead.  She shares a lot of my passions, and has plenty of her own that I try my best to support.

The most fulfilling bit is seeing the sense of discovery in her eyes when she finds something I take for granted.  She (her sister and friends) fully dissected a fish at the cottage this weekend, and it was as if they had found hidden treasure.   The first time she rode her bike alone, her eyes were like saucers.  When she build a brand new tower in Minecraft that has a secret passage… it’s like showing me a new puppy.

Oh, there are days where she can drive me up the wall.  There are days where I drive myself up the wall, so that’s sort of part of the game.  I know there’s only a finite amount of time left where time together is assured.  Eventually she will spend more time with friends, have a job, and eventually university or other.  Eventually she will spread her wings and I will sit here with my wife and watch her soar, hoping I did good enough to keep her in flight towards happiness.

But that day is not today.  Today I get to appreciate the time I have, the opportunities COVID has presented to be with my family.  I can see her every day try, fall, get up, and grow.  I can share in her success and her stumbles.  And while this post references my eldest, it applies equally to my youngest… but it’s my eldest’ milestone.

And this milestone is just a reminder of how lucky I am to have a great wife and two amazing kids.

WoW Expansion Content

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Going through the leveling process a few times now on alts is certainly putting the various expansions basic content in focus.  Where it doesn’t do a great job is at the max level content, since it’s not really relevant today.

Leveling content, for a dozen reasons, is not a focus.  That there’s any quality at all is impressive given that 99% of the content is seen once per leveling stream.  The older hub/spoke model has turned into a storyline 3-5 quest node system instead.  You discover a zone, get some basic Qs, then branch out.  When you don’t spend half your time travelling.  The content from Legion is pretty much the same in BfA, even in terms of how much of that content is expected to be completed.

As the clock is turned back, WoD really was the kickstart for this model.  The hubs were larger/denser, but the bits were there.  Area bonus quests, hidden chests, rares, quest chains that culminate in a big showdown.  Pandaria had big hubs, but also a kick at a better integrated storyline to explore the world.  Cataclysm, WotLK, TBC are just… well they are just not good.  You pick up 5-10 quests, head out around the map, then come back for another wave of quests.

Now, once you’re at max level, things start opening up.  Dailies have been around for a very long time, but really took off in WotLK.  Pandaria brought in rep/rewards to a larger level.  WoD had the Apexis stuff, with rotations.  Legion brought World Quests and BfA just cut & pasted it forward.

Dungeons have been all over the map.  They were only ever relevant up to WotLK.  Pandaria had some at launch, but never tweaked them past that.  WoD’s were completely ignored as garrison rewards were better.  Legion tied a bunch of quests to them, and implemented Mythic mode for better rewards.  BfA has next to no reason to do normal/heroic dungeons – everything is mythic.

The system around Mythics is essentially a 5 person raid. It’s honestly a good system, allowing for difficult content in smaller chunks.  Long gone are the days of 40 person raids.  Now we have mythic raids and flex raiding.  These two systems really do focus on the core gameplay loop for WoW in the past few expansions – competitive PvE.  It builds a tiered community, and one that is always circling the drain.  Some bad flashbacks on the whole TBC keying mess.  If the carrot is a stat stick with slightly better stats, then eventually that horse stops running.  Those types of horses aren’t exactly common, so you end up with poaching/mergers of groups and the conflict that follows.  It’s not a sustainable model.

Tangent

I’ve gone back with my mage to get their class mount in Legion.  The class hall has no comparison in any other expansion.  The quest line, the exploration, the quests the characters… all of it.  The downside here is that characters only get to see it once, and it’s gated with table quests.  But it’s there!  Suramar as a zone had a pile going for it… and the daily zombie quest is much better than the Horrific Visions grind.  The Mage Tower was neat as it wasn’t power bases, but cosmetics.  There was depth and breadth in pretty much all the content.  The major gaps were around the proliferation of RNG.

On Track

The kicker for me is what is deemed worthy of “making the cut” from one expansion to another.  Some bits are so well used they can’t really be removed once added.  LFG is one.  LFR is another, stemming entirely from atrocious raid completion numbers in Cataclysm.  Transmogs aren’t going anywhere, and Pet Battles are a system that is screaming for the spotlight.  Mythics are now the content du-jour.

The concepts of invasions started in MoP, but really took hold in Legion.  The 8.3 version works for the most part (minus the bug variant in Uldum).  It’s somethign to do, every other day or so.  And provides another catch up mechanic.

But there remains a larger gap in the middle tier, the training wheels if you will to the Mythic world.  I’m calling back to the badge model of WotLK here, one where FF14 has done a tremendously solid job of making basic group content relevant.  Daily badge limits, and buy-ins to +10ivl upgrades is a start.  Piles of cosmetics.  Have pets drop.  Have mounts as a random reward for filling a specific role.  Make it a horizontal progress system.  I don’t see Blizz having the willpower to implement something like this.  I mean, technically it’s only a tweak to the timewalking system.  Pretty sure there are over 100 different dungeons WoW could re-use.

You’ll notice I haven’t even touched on professions.  The less said about them the better.  I am surprised that the fishing/cooking combo is still as valid today as it was in WotLK.

It will be interesting to look at BfA a month after Shadowlands has launched.  The paint is still relatively fresh on 8.3, and it’s already a massive improvement on 8.0/8.1. Yet, taking some time to take a solid detour in the Legion content really puts the variety and quality of content to the forefront.  Would be super cool to have a solid experience again.

 

 

Life Can Suck

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Wife and I paid our respects to a friend last night, who lost his son to COVID impacts.

This whole COVID stuff is having interesting impacts on people.  The “fluff” of everyday life is taking a backseat, and people are checking their priorities.  The need for a double americano just doesn’t seem all that important.  People are managing without awesome haircuts, and plenty of women are getting by without their nails done.  The concept of “essential” is really hitting home.

I’m not dismissing the joy of those specific luxuries, at all.  There are people that make a living providing luxuries, and frankly, provide a larger benefit to the world than any hedge fund manager ever would.  I won’t go into the whole wants / needs / rights conversation – blogs can’t convey the context required for it.

Instead I’ll take a different look here and focus on loss.  In the past 4 months, I’ve had 2 employees pass, one lost his dad, and 2 hockey buddies lose their adult children.  There’s no right way to mourn, and no consistent way either.  You could lose two uncles and one hits more than another for a billion reasons. The stages of grief may apply, but the time between them is unique to the relationship.

When the 2 staff passed, it was within a week of each other.  One numbed the impact of the other.  Was a reminder of the humanity behind the work, and that each person matters.  When my employee lost his dad, I didn’t even think to ask what he needed, I just said “take what you need”.  Some prefer to focus on work, others to reflect.  When my hockey pal’s children passed, that was a reminder to look at home and what I have here.  No parent should ever say goodbye to their child.  There’s a level of empathy here that’s made me take pause.

I’m an advocate for mental health in the workplace.  It’s easy to see someone with the flu who shouldn’t be at work.  Someone who’s suffering from mental health issues is a whole lot harder to see, but the impacts are similar.  Their productivity suffers (often for longer periods) and their situation can certainly impact others.  Taking pills generally wont fix it, just hide the symptoms.  It’s a much longer road to health.

I know when I lost my uncle a few years ago, I took a few days off to reflect and tried to go back to work.  I was not at all ready for that, and lasted about an hour before I just got up, told my boss I needed more time, and took another week to sort some stuff out.  No questions asked, no guilt trips.  Someone replacing me at 25% of my rate of work would have been better than me sitting there staring blankly at the wall.

My wife’s a teacher.  There are a significant number of kids who find refuge at school.  Not everyone has an ideal home – it wouldn’t be ideal then would it?  Same with people who work, or who socialize.  They may do it to avoid another situation.  There’s a spike in domestic violence, and people are struggling left right and center.  It feels like a boiling pot, ready to overspill.

To cycle back, this COVID stuff is making me re-think my approach to life and work.  Corners are a bit less sharp.  Making sure the foundational stuff is taken care of first, so that people feel value in their work lives.  The bells and whistles will come when they come.  For now, it’s more important that we treat each other with humanity and compassion, and realize that our neighbour needs it as much as we do.

RNG Sprinkles

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Part of the process of leveling of an alt (Void Elf Priest), I’m getting a clear reminder on multiple aspects of the dev thinking process over the years.  Quest design from Cataclysm in particular is a level of gameplay that really takes me for a loop.  MMO dev has come a long way.

The pace of leveling (or really, futility of it in WoW) is another post.  This one is about character design.

Quite a few class/spec combos really devolve into 3 main buttons, which are cooldown/resource related.  Talents then add a proc mechanic.  If you’re lucky, you’ll get another long cooldown button to press.  So what you see at level 20 is pretty darn close to the rotation you see until you ding 120.  I won’t get too much into the balancing challenges posed by talents, just enoguh to say that there are ones that are clearly better than others with only a small amount that aren’t viable.

The ability “un-pruning” for Shadowlands may address this, but effectively requires some redesign work for each class/spec.  That’s a ton of work.

But THIS post is about the RNG of character development – specifically Azerite and Corruption, as each are item-specific.  I’ve yet to find a spec that didn’t have a clear winner in the Azerite trait category.  There’s been a lot of tweaking since launch, but you’re not going to find a Frost Mage that isn’t stacking 3x Flash Freeze (2 stacks give more than 3 stacks of anything else).  The was a main pain point I had with the original system, where you would have a great trait, then get a clear ilvl upgrade but without the trait and just ignore that new piece.  The end result is a best-in-slot list that has massive variations, and you’re looking for 1 drop from 1 boss that is not so much optimal as super-powered.  Some Azerite traits will change player rotations, making some more suddenly more viable to use.

Corruption is the inversion of Azerite traits.  Instead of have the points on hand, you’re working on credit.  Your corruption “debt” has penalties to playstyle, but provides an insane boost.  Infinite Stars & Twilight Devastation are like a nuke on a fly.  They can account for 50% of a player’s DPS.  There are other traits that have benefits (Masterful for Frost Mages is quite impressive), but that requires a level of math that isn’t obvious without sims.  You put IS on any player, and they will immediately see the difference.  Doesn’t change the playstyle, you just have a massive passive source of DPS.

Oh, and Corruption is applied through RNG on drops, or RNG through a vendor with grindable currency requirements.  There’s no way to target a trait, other than grind currency and hope the vendor eventually has it in stock.  I’m cool with the RNG part, I am less so with the crazy passive power gains.  If you thought Titanforging was bad, then this would make you go up the wall.

The design choices here are quite odd.  The “plan” was to have scaling difficulty and less of a gap between a fresh 120 and a max 120.  That really didn’t work at launch of BfA, and Corruption traits seem to be the answer to it.  There are certainly catch up mechanics to get over that hump, give everyone a passive DPS boost, and sort of sweep 8.0/8.1 under the rug like it didn’t happen.  Azerite traits could use a bit of balancing, but the method of acquisition is straightforward enough.  Corruption as a concept is actually really cool, and parts of the implementation are a nice twist – the debt aspect in particular.  It’s the sum of the parts that I find irritating.  May just be time to accept the fact that stat squishes are going to be part of each expansion, as the power curve inside each is now at the exponential level.

 

 

 

 

WoW: War Mode

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In the previous post I mentioned that War Mode had great benefits for leveling – in particular in the portions that are pre-Legion.  The BfA content with War Mode puts you in the same zones as fully geared 120 players – you’re going to die a few times.  Still worth it if the bonus is 20%+.

War Mode as a concept is neat.  Add some extra risk for some extra rewards.  Where things gets messed up is in the actual risks and rewards.  So let’s start this backwards.

The rewards themselves scale from 10% to 30%, depending on faction balances.  At low amounts, the rewards aren’t exactly stellar.  1 death per hour is enough to offset a 10% gain to experience.  But let’s say you’re 120.  The rewards are limited to gold, war resources, and azerite power.  War Resources have been meaningless since 8.1.  Azerite Power has marginal use today.  Gold is always useful.

The risks are more complex.  You are sharing space with the other faction, and therefore you can be killed by the other faction.  You only share space with people who also have War Mode on, and if your % is high (20%+) then odds are there are MORE of the other faction than yours.  So yeah, the chance of dying is higher but in practical respects, most other levelers have no interest in attacking you.  People at 120 do, which makes leveling in BfA zones riskier.  The way WoW is built, most classes offer AE attacks as an effective way of dealing with content.  AE often triggers a PvP battle if you’re next to someone.  So you are going to be less effective if you avoid AE attacks.

Since the rewards are related to completing activities, you want to complete those activities safely and quickly.  Is it better to get 10% more gold completing a quest alone, with threat of PvP, or to complete a quest with 5 other people, no chance of death, and 5x as fast?  Any elite WQ is effectively impossible if there’s no one around to help.  So in this respect, it isn’t really a risk, it’s an active hurdle.  At max level, if you are not in a critical mass of other players, then there’s no point to War Mode.

Does it matter?

Really, does it?  Is WoW a PvP game?  Taking  BfA’s (poorly received) storyline out for a minute, when’s the last time we saw PvP as any sort of driver for content?  Even WoD had both factions working together, so you need to go back to Pandaria (early parts) – 8 years ago.

On even footing (like a BG), the Horde has a marginal advantage to the Alliance due to some racial skills.  That inherent advantage has attracted min-maxers where every advantage counts.  That adds yet another advantage to PvP for Horde players.  There are only two ways to offset that advantage – more “good” Alliance players, or more “power” for Alliance players.

War Mode tries to get there with incentivizing playing Alliance.  But the rewards are so miniscule that they cannot be seen at all as any advantage to pull someone AWAY from playing Horde.  Even if you were to swap all racials between factions, the playerbase is stronger on Horde and enough to offset the racial imbalance.  Not to mention the $$$ impacts of a faction change.  There’s only a small percentage of players who would pay to swap for a 1% gain to power.  There’s an astronomically larger percentage that goes “I’ve got friends and dozens of hours invested in this character, I’m good.”.

Way Forward

War Mode for leveling has next to no risk, it’s all reward.  Shadowlands is re-writing the leveling experience anyhow.  Unless the incentives are massively swapped (e.g. a % boost to primary stats in non-instanced content), there’s really no purpose to it for max level characters.

A good experiment, in the social carrot aspect is much larger than Blizzard had assumed.  But unlikely to matter in the long run.  Better off putting money in breaking the faction divide and getting people playing together.

WoW Alts

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When BfA launched my first 120 was my Monk.  Seems to have been the case since Pandaria, for reasons I’ve gone into a bunch of times.  My 2nd was a Horde Demon Hunter, on another server due to the DH restrictions.  I wanted to see the Horde storyline and DH is a ridiculously efficient leveling class.  When both hit 120, there was a major gearing wall, and the azurite system made by blood boil.  I dropped out until a few weeks ago.

I figured with double faction and xp, it was an ok time to use my pile of WoW tokens.  When I started, the roster looked like this:

110: Hunter, Rogue, Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Paladin, Druid

100: Shaman

80: Mage, Warlock

Warrior and Priest as bank alts.

Before I get into the details, there’s a question of why?  Alts are easier to play in BfA than Legion (by FAR!), and allow running older raids for pets/drops with less waiting for lockouts.  Also lets you see if you want to run another class as a main / fun factor.  It is in no way practical to run multiple max level characters.

Goals

First up was unlocking flying.  That took just over 3 days, as I had already unlocked Pathfinder 1 way back at launch.  Mechagon was the holdout faction, even with a contract that added +10 per world quest.  The bugger here is that Mechagon doesn’t have world quests, only dailies.

While I was unlocking that portion, I was testing the waters with the 8.2/8.3 content.  The Heart of Azeroth boost in Naz is quick enough, and you unlock a huge power increase.  That’s enough to survive the invasions that 8.3 brought, though you need an ilvl close to 420 to do the horrific visions for the cloak upgrade.  The side areas can’t really be done by anything but a tank and low ilvls.

I was keeping mental notes of what happened when.

The Alt Plans

Heirloom gear to 120 (head, shoulder, chest, legs, cloak) gives +45%xp.  The generic 100% boost helps.  The choice was with or without war mode.  I wanted to try without to see what happened.

Gearing would be weird bit, since scaling in BfA is all over the place.  I know that starting BfA gives you a weapon, and that there’s 1 quest per zone that gives you another.  Starting Nazjatar gives you a i370 weapon, and there are really high odds you get enough mana pearls to get 4 benthic (i385) armor pieces.  Get that sorted out, then WQ to fill in the ring/trinkets, and then armor again.  Mechagon is effectively useless for this.  That’s enough to start an invasion from 8.3.

The Execution

The Rogue was the next up to 120.  Stormsong Valley + another dozen or so quests in Drustvar (unlocking the first village).  That was pretty quick, a single death, but felt like I was hitting with a wet sponge compared to my Monk.  Gearing went relatively smoothly, focusing on upgrading the worst pieces first.  The cloak quest was painful to get through.

Next is the DH to 120.  Drustvar + up to the boat crash section in Tirigarde.  While it took more quests, the Drustvar experience was much faster than Stormsong due to the quest design.  Stormsong has at least 4 quest hubs that are just a massive pain to get through due to mob density.  If people aren’t leveling, then it’s just not fun.

Finally, I brought my mage up with War Mode enabled.  I’ll talk about that mode in a bit, but the experience gains were massive.  Drustvar alone was enough to hit 120, and that’s without any rested XP.  However, the mage died a LOT.  A bit from ganking, but way more due to power balancing.  They have no real armor, making them ultra dependent on damage output.  I leveled Frost, which is super proc dependent, which is greatly impacted by Mastery.  Crappy gear = low weapon power + low mastery. = low damage.

War Mode

This is a really, really weird system.  +25% experience and +25% rewards (gold while leveling).  Since every single zone up until Legion is designed to be faction specific quest lines, you rarely ever see anyone from the other faction.  When you do, it’s clear you’re both leveling. The gains are significant XP-wise, but 25% more gold on a 3g reward is meaningless.

Legion has some rough spots, as you can’t really use AE or trigger a massive fight.  If I did, it was often just easier to stand there and die than waste time fighting back.  The optional “clear this area” quests were skipped for that reason.  It was pretty quick, though I have to say the Artifact Weapon stuff is a bummer without the special skills.  Since Legion doesn’t give any weapon rewards, getting the artifact at 100 is the only thing you’ll see for 10 levels.

War Mode in BfA.  80% of Drustvar is cool.  The last 20% in the haunted village is less so.  I got ganked, and then corpse hunted for 10 minutes.  Being level 5 or 119, you are going to get stomped by any geared 120.  The flipside is that the XP gains are solid (saved ~1hr or so), and the BfA gold rewards are significant.  Was around 10k total by the time I hit 120.  That said, the second I hit 120 I turned off War Mode.

Why?  Cause 95% of world content is better in a group, and that means AE.  AE + War Mode = massive battles.  Useless battles.  I would much rather complete a WQ / event 5x faster than get 25% more gold.  More in another post.

Lessons Learned

There are many, many tools to help level up faster.  Only a few are really worth it.  Doing dungeon runs in LFG can be substituted.

  • Heirlooms armor – getting +45% xp is easy enough (head/chest/shoulder/back).  I suggest only having 1 cloak for all alts, rather than 3 of the (int/str/agi) if money is a thing.  A single piece costs 500+1000+2000+5000 = 8,500 gold.  Armor type matters (e.g. cloth for casters)
  • Heirloom weapons – from 1-100 this is very useful and relatively cheap.  At 100 you get an artifact weapon, and BfA is over quick enough.  1-100 costs 2,250 for a single weapon.  Getting it to BfA quality adds 10,500 to the cost.  The stats on the thing make a difference too.  Hunters are the worst here, since they are the only gun users.
    • Flying.  Sweet baby jeebers, make sure this is unlocked before leveling in a zone and that you buy the associated skills (Master is optional)
  • Zones: 1-60 any Vanilla zone is fine.  60-80 you want to do Borean Tundra (this is the slowest portion).  80-90 is Jade Forest.  90-100 is the starting WoD zone of your faction.  100-110 is Azshara.  110-120 is Drustvar / Vol’dun.  You’re only going to see 1 zone per level range.
  • Bags:  Get 20 slot bags.  You’re going to fill up like crazy.
  • War Mode: Turn it on.
  • Professions:  Mining and herbalism gives great xp.
  • Treasures / Rare mobs:  Treasure chests are worth collecting for xp.  Rare mobs should generally be avoided.
  • Gold: At best you’re going to make 15,000g from 1-120 doing quests and selling loot, and nearly all of it coming from BfA content.  Flying (280%) will cost you ~5,000g.

Heirloom Table

To give you an idea of where you can re-use Heirloom gear, as a full set of armor + weapons for 1-120 = 55,250g.  Druid as a Cat saves money.  Shaman as Enhancement as well.

STAT TYPE WEAPON
WAR STR PLATE 2HDN/1HND
DK STR PLATE 2HDN/1HND
PAL STR PLATE 2HDN/1HND
MNK AGI LEATHER 2HND/1HND
ROG AGI LEATHER 1HND
DRU AGI/INT LEATHER 2HND/1HND
DH AGI LEATHER 1HND
HUN AGI MAIL RANGED
SHM AGI/INT MAIL 2HDN/1HND
WLK INT CLOTH STAFF/1HDN+OFF
PRI INT CLOTH STAFF/1HDN+OFF
MAG INT CLOTH STAFF/1HDN+OFF